REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Wednesday, June 19, 2024 15:17
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PAGE 135 of 135

Saturday, June 15, 2024 7:39 AM

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Taiwan is one-upping Ukraine's navy to defeat a Chinese invasion

By Michael Peck | Jun 15, 2024, 4:00 AM CDT

https://www.businessinsider.com/taiwan-is-one-upping-ukraines-navy-to-
defeat-a-chinese-invasion-2024-6

Both Taiwan and America are looking to what has become the gold standard in naval drone warfare: Ukraine's campaign in the Black Sea. Vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Russia's navy, and with a long coastline to defend, Ukraine could have been bled white trying to defend against Russian amphibious invasions and coastal bombardment.

Instead, Russia's Black Sea Fleet has retreated from Ukrainian waters. In part this is because of land-based anti-ship missiles such as the Neptune, which sank the cruiser and Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva in 2022. But mostly it's because of robot boats that have relentlessly stalked Russian warships on the sea and even in port. In November 2023, for example, Ukrainian Magura sea drones sank or damaged two Russian landing craft and a missile corvette docked in Crimean ports and shipyards.

(If Ukraine's drone ships were built in America, Biden would forbid Ukraine from using the drones against Russian ships in water beyond 12 nautical miles offshore. Why? Because Biden, the old fool, imagines crossing Putin's Red Lines will mean WW3.

"The territorial sea of Ukraine includes the coastal marine waters having a width of 12 nautical miles measured from the line of minimum low tide both on the mainland and on islands belonging to Ukraine, or from the straight baselines joining the corresponding points."
https://www.un.org/depts/los/LEGISLATIONANDTREATIES/PDFFILES/UKR_1991_
Statute.pdf )

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Sunday, June 16, 2024 6:30 AM

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Massacres and Misery — The Policy of Russian Military Savagery

Russian military brutality and misbehavior are not accidental; they are Kremlin-approved, just as in Stalin’s time and beyond.

By Michael C. DiCianna | March 26, 2024

https://cepa.org/article/massacres-and-misery-the-policy-of-russian-mi
litary-savagery/

The West has the luxury of considering Ukraine’s future as an intellectual exercise; after all, there won’t be Russian tanks in Frankfurt or Chicago.

For Ukraine, it’s a very different issue, one that has been clear throughout the 25 months of Russia’s all-out war of aggression. That the war raises not just the prospect of military defeat, but of what follows — a brutality that often degenerates into outright bestiality.

The fall of Adviika in February showed the risks Ukraine faces this year if Western support is delayed even further. As the Russians pushed forward, they were as unapologetic and cruel as before. Reports of Russian soldiers executing wounded Ukrainian prisoners followed the retreat. Telegram channels showed victorious Russians looting the destroyed city for household appliances. Civilians who stayed behind face the terror of Russian occupation.

These are not one-off events. Last year, Tymofiy Shadura, an unarmed soldier of Ukraine’s 30th Mechanized Brigade, was filmed by Russian soldiers saying “Long live Ukraine,” his last words before he was murdered at close range with semi-automatic weapons fire.

The Ukrainian liberation of Bucha in April 2022 exposed the facts of the Russian invasion and occupation. More than 400 Ukrainian civilians were left dead in the streets, many showing signs of summary execution. Torture chambers were found in residential basements. Girls as young as 14 were forced into sexual slavery by Russian occupiers.

Casual consumers of news may consider this an aberration, possibly caused by unit dysfunction, as has happened in other wars — the horrors of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for example, or the massacres in some of the 20th-century European wars of colonial retreat.

But this is not the case with Russia. The bloodshed is based on something much more profound — a state-sanctioned policy and even encouragement of brutality. And its roots can be traced back centuries. As the programmers say, it’s a feature, not a bug.

Brutality, destruction, and looting are vital elements of Russian military doctrine. They’ve existed as a pillar of Russian military doctrine for almost two centuries. Policymakers should take note that revanchist powers do not play by Western rules; they disdain not only the taboo against wars of aggression but also the rules by which wars are fought.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a strategic continuation of the Russification efforts begun with the conquest of the Caucasus in the first half of the 19th century. Intentional and casual cruelty by the Russian military has been the spearhead tactic for such campaigns. To see this trend in history is not just a morbid lesson in crimes against humanity, but crucial to understanding what it means to tolerate Russian militarism.

The Russian Empire’s ultimate victory in the 101-year-long Russo-Circassian War resulted in a horrendous extermination effort. As much as 97% of the Circassian population was expelled from their homeland, with more than a million killed by the time it ended in 1864.

In The Circassian Genocide, historian Walter Richmond notes how Imperial army commanders rejected any acceptance of the humanity or sovereignty of their enemies, describing them as stateless “bandits” and “mountaineers.” The vocabulary may have changed, but the modern Russian denial of Ukrainian statehood and sweeping referrals to a “Nazi regime” in Kyiv show the same dismissal of any shared humanity. Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Circassian+Genocide

Communist revolt and rule did nothing to moderate Russian imperialism. Atrocities committed by both Reds and Whites during the Civil War have been well-recorded, and the Bolshevik genocide of Ukrainians and Kazakhs during the Stalin era is (now finally) globally acknowledged.

The thuggery of the imperial Russian army, now and in the past, has not limited itself to the empire’s wars of conquest and ethnic cleansing.

The tales of the Red Army’s rampage through Germany at the end of World War II are probably the greatest shadow cast across the allied victory over Nazi Germany. Approximately 600,000 German civilians may have been killed by the Red Army in the final months of the war. Far more infamous, and far too often dismissed, are the mass rapes committed by Soviet soldiers. It is harder to declare a conclusive total, but Western estimates range from 200,000 to 2 million women raped during Soviet occupation, including victims as young as eight years old.

The horrendous actions of the Red Army in World War II have long been explained, and in some historiographies justified, as revenge against a state and a people who had visited such horrors on the Soviet population. Putting aside the flawed moral logic of an eye for an eye in sexual violence, this dismissive narrative has long ignored the horrors the Red Army also visited on liberated female victims of concentration camps — including Soviet citizens and Polish women.

With the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in late 1945, a nightmare of the same sort was visited on Japanese civilians, as well as Chinese and Korean women. At best, the Red Army did not care about the monstrous conduct of its troops. At worst, it was using rape as a weapon of terror and a means of rewarding its soldiers.

Western leaders chose to ignore the means by which Putin crushed Chechen separatism between 1999 and 2009. This should have been sufficient for what Putin might do elsewhere.

Consider how the Russian army reduced Grozny to “the most destroyed city on earth.” Consider how he unleashed Ramzan Kadyrov on the Chechen population. Kadyrov, “a psychopath who personally tortures his political prisoners” according to Russia expert Michael Weiss, has had free range over Chechnya for decades. Experts argued at the onset of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Kadyrov’s presence was in itself a threat of excessive brutality to come (his men already had an appalling reputation for their thuggish behavior in the occupied villages of Eastern Ukraine.)

The historical record shows that the Kremlin is happy to pay its brutalized soldiers with the blood and bodies of conquered peoples. What else can be expected when recruits are drawn from a society with such high rates of domestic violence, murder, and spousal rape, and where the government has decriminalized violence against women?

Russian recruitment propaganda, when it’s not playing up some idea of the Russian soldier as a hypermasculine demigod, advertises promises like seaside apartments in Odesa, or “beautiful Ukrainian women.” The implication is clear: you can kill Ukrainians, live in their homes, and keep Ukrainian women as domestic slaves. And Russia makes little secret of its behavior — the brutal interrogation of a suspected Tajik terrorist this month, including severing his ear and forcing him to swallow it — was filmed and then reposted by senior Russian propagandists.

The US and the rest of the Western world bear a great deal of responsibility for tolerating Putin’s evils. American policymakers did little to punish or push back Russian military actions in Georgia, Syria, or Ukraine in 2014. Western hesitation has not just weakened global rules about sovereignty and taboos against rewriting borders by force, it has also undermined the international regimes to punish crimes against humanity.

Michael C. DiCianna is a research assistant with the Yorktown Institute. He has worked as a consultant in the US intelligence community for several years, focusing on military affairs in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

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

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Sunday, June 16, 2024 6:42 AM

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EU Commissioner: EU will match Russia's ammunition production in 2025

By Rachel Amran | June 15, 2024 3:12 AM

https://kyivindependent.com/eu-commissioner-eu-will-match-russias-ammu
nition-production-in-2025/

The European Union has accelerated its production of projectiles and will match Russia's production capacity in 2025, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said in an interview with French news outlet La Tribune on June 14.

The performance of the European defense industry has been lackluster, as the EU failed on its promise to deliver 1 million artillery shells between March 2023 and 2024. After supplying only about half of the promised rounds, Brussels shifted the deadline to the end of this year.

"By the end of this year, the EU plans to reach the level of 1.7 million projectiles per year, and in 2025 to match the production capacity of Russia, that is, to produce 2.5 million projectiles per year," Breton said.

Reports have suggested that Russia is managing to produce artillery shells at triple the speed of Ukraine’s allies for a quarter of the price.

Earlier this month, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin claimed that his country had increased ammunition production by more than 20 times.

"We accelerated the production of ammunition," Breton said. "In March 2023, we produced 500,000 shells a year in Europe and were already better than the Americans, who produced only 300,000. But since then, we have doubled this capacity."

The EU adopted the first-ever European Defense Industrial Strategy (EDIS) in March to support the competitiveness and readiness of the bloc’s defense industry midst growing threats from Russia.

Breton also emphasized that the bloc must continue to increase defense purchases "against the tension in relations with the Russian Federation," as Europe "must continue to rearm in the coming years."

"This need is shared by many EU member states and can benefit our defense industry. But it must be able to deliver weapons to the European army on time."

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Sunday, June 16, 2024 7:11 AM

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Ukrainian First Deputy Defense Minister Lieutenant General Ivan Havrylyuk reported that Western military assistance has begun to arrive in Ukraine, but that Western military assistance will likely not arrive at scale and significantly impact the frontline situation for several more weeks to months.

Havrylyuk told the Associated Press (AP) in an article published on June 15 that Ukrainian forces are still waiting on most of the US military assistance announced in late April 2024 to arrive in Ukraine, but that the limited amount of aid that has arrived is already reducing Ukraine's artillery shortages.[13] Havrylyuk stated that Russian forces' artillery advantage has recently decreased from seven-to-one to five-to-one as a result of US aid arrivals. Havrylyuk expressed hope that Ukraine will be able to better defend its airspace in the future following the arrival of F-16 fighter jets and other Western-provided air defense assets. AP also interviewed several frontline Ukrainian commanders and servicemen who confirmed that Ukrainian forces began receiving limited amounts of Western-provided shells but noted that the shells have not arrived at the scale that Ukrainian forces need to fully defend against Russian attacks. Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský announced on June 14 that the first round of ammunition from the Czech artillery initiative has begun to arrive in Ukraine and that the Czech initiative will continue to purchase and supply ammunition for Ukraine throughout 2024.[14] Lipavský noted that five countries have already contributed funds to the initiative and that 15 additional countries have pledged to support the initiative.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-15-2024

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

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Monday, June 17, 2024 7:52 AM

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The vast majority of the countries and international organizations that participated in the Ukraine-initiated Global Peace Summit in Switzerland on June 15-16 signed a joint communique on June 16 reaffirming support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.[1]

The communique also reaffirmed support for Ukrainian operation and control over the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) to ensure the safety of nuclear energy and installations, "free full, and safe" commercial navigation in the Black Sea to ensure global food security, the exchange of all prisoners of war (POWs), and the return of all "deported and unlawfully displaced Ukrainian children" and other unlawfully detained Ukrainian civilians. Over 80 countries and international organizations signed the communique, although Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Armenia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Brazil (which attended the summit as an "observer") were among the countries that did not endorse the communique.[2]

The Ukrainian President's Office emphasized that the purpose of the summit was to facilitate "fair peace ... based on the United Nations (UN) Charter and international law," highlighting Ukraine's effort to garner support from the international community in ending the war on terms that do not violate international law by compromising Ukraine’s territory integrity or sovereignty.[3]

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte stated on June 16 at the summit that "Russia should not be at the [negotiating] table now" and that there will only be peace in Ukraine "when Russia agrees to international principles and the UN Charter." ISW continues to assess that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not interested in good-faith negotiations and only feigns interest in negotiations in specific instances as part of a wider informational effort to seduce the West to preemptively make concessions that would violate Ukraine's sovereignty.[4]

Putin is unlikely to be interested in good faith negotiations for the foreseeable future given that he recently outlined a theory of Russian victory in Ukraine based on the assumption that Russian forces are capable of indefinite creeping advances on the battlefield to outlast Western support for Ukraine.[5]

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

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Monday, June 17, 2024 8:23 AM

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Trump threatens to cut US aid to Ukraine quickly if reelected

June 16, 2024 1:01 pm CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-ukraine-russia-war-threat
ens-cut-aid-election-2024/

At a campaign rally in Detroit, Trump criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling him “the greatest salesman of all time” for Kyiv’s push to secure U.S. support in its effort to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression more than three years after Moscow's all-out invasion.

“He just left four days ago with $60 billion, and he gets home, and he announces that he needs another $60 billion. It never ends,” Trump said.

“I will have that settled prior to taking the White House as president-elect,” said Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the U.S. election.

NATO countries last week moved forward with a plan for the alliance to take over from the U.S. in coordinating military aid to Ukraine, a shift widely perceived as an effort to "Trump-proof" the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

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Monday, June 17, 2024 9:01 AM

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While Ukraine has 80 countries on its side, Russia has North Korea, which is very like Russia, constantly threatening to nuke the world:

Russia’s Putin to visit North Korea in rare trip as anti-West alignment deepens

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/17/asia/north-korea-russia-putin-visit-int
l-hnk/index.html

Vladimir Putin is set to travel to North Korea for a two-day visit starting Tuesday, the Kremlin said, in the Russian president’s first trip to the country in more than two decades . . .

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Monday, June 17, 2024 9:31 AM

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Russia’s war in Ukraine is flooding the EU with illegal cigarettes

By Mark Temnycky | 06/16/24 8:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4721702-russias-war-in-ukrai
ne-is-flooding-the-eu-with-illegal-cigarettes/

Russia’s war in Ukraine has exacerbated crime inside the country. According to the Brookings Institution, it “significantly affected regional illicit economies and criminal networks.” This is not surprising, as all available resources, including those of law enforcement agencies, are directed to war-related activities. When a foreign invader is at the door, suddenly the black market in counterfeit tobacco, often run by Russian-associated organized criminal gangs, becomes a secondary concern.

According to the Tobacco Reporter, illegal cigarettes, which “accounted for [one-fourth] of the Ukrainian tobacco market,” are draining valuable resources needed to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s ongoing invasion. The Ukrainian government has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in tobacco tax revenue amid this criminal industry’s steady growth.

This black-market industry is affecting areas beyond Ukraine. The European Anti-Fraud Office has stated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine expanded tobacco smuggling routes, creating an illicit cigarette problem throughout the European Union. Due to the proliferation of these criminal products, the European Union member states have also lost hundreds of millions of euros in budget revenues.

If Ukraine cannot demonstrate progress in resolving the illicit trade issue as a financial menace, then the malign cynics and critics of Ukraine may be vindicated.

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

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 6:07 AM

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Russia is reportedly experiencing issues with producing artillery shells and select artillery systems. Ukrainian military analyst Petro Chernyk stated on June 17 that Russia likely has about 8,000 to 9,000 artillery barrels stockpiled and is able to produce about 150,000 to 170,000 artillery shells per month.[79] Chernyk stated that Russia, however, suffers from shortages of explosives for these shells, especially nitrocellulose — an intermediary good used in producing gunpowder and explosives.

US officials have recently stated that the People's Republic of China (PRC) is supplying Russia's defense industry with nitrocellulose.[81]

Chernyk stated that Russia is gradually shifting from using self-propelled racked artillery systems to towed systems but that Russia is suffering from unspecified problems with the tractors needed to pull such artillery pieces. Chernyk stated that Russia will be unable to increase its production of newer, higher-quality self-propelled artillery systems, such as the 2S35 Koalitsiya-SV and the 2S34 Khosta, as Russia only has five to six machines that can manufacture these systems.

Sky News, citing open-source research from US-based consulting firm Bain & Company, reported on May 26 that Russian defense industrial producers will likely be able to manufacture and refurbish 4.5 million artillery shells in 2024 (375,000 shells per month), suggesting that Russia may be refurbishing more shells than it is producing.[80]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-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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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 6:21 AM

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Russia charges a Ukrainian with 'Terrorism' for downing A-50 Radar Plane
(Previously, Russia claimed the A-50 was not shot down. Then Russia claimed the A-50 crashed due to friendly fire.)

Jun 18, 2024 at 5:47 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-a50-plane-ukraine-investigative-commit
tee-1914060

Russia's investigative committee said on Monday that it had approved a "preventative measure in the form of detention" against Colonel Mykola Dzyaman, a commander in Ukraine's military, in connection with the loss of a Russian aircraft on February 23.

The committee said the aircraft "was not intended for combat operations, had no weapons, and the flight was taking place exclusively in the airspace of the Russian Federation."

Colonel Dzyaman allegedly "gave an illegal order to his subordinate military personnel to destroy it," according to Russian authorities, which said 10 crew members on board had been killed and the aircraft destroyed.

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 8:00 AM

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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
SECOND: Are Putin’s Nuclear Threats Working?


They prefer that Russia should actually nuke us to demonstrate that they're serious?

a) The west CAN'T win. We can't win this conventional war (which BTW WE started) and nobody wins in a nuclear war.

The whole issue for Putin is NATO EXPANSION TO RUSSIA'S BORDERS AND NEAR ABROAD SECURITY.
June 18, 2024 7:30am EDT
A record 23 of NATO's 32 member nations are hitting the Western military alliance’s defense spending target this year. In 2021, only six nations were meeting the goal. That was before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Defense spending across European NATO allies and Canada was up nearly 18% this year alone, the biggest increase in decades. Thanks, Putin! (He responded by threatening to nuke the world.)

https://www.foxnews.com/world/record-number-nato-members-reaching-defe
nse-spending-goal-ukraine-war-persists

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 6:32 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


The issue right now isn't $$, it's military production. At the moment, an increase in NATO'S OFFENSE spending is being wasted on paying inflated prices for substandard weapons, and running a lot of $$$ thru the Ukraine washing machine



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

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

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 9:19 PM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The issue right now isn't $$, it's military production. At the moment, an increase in NATO'S OFFENSE spending is being wasted on paying inflated prices for substandard weapons, and running a lot of $$$ thru the Ukraine washing machine

I await Russia's victory before Xmas. You and Putin promised victory would be quick and inevitable, Signym. But I want it now! I eagerly anticipate the Orthodox Christmas parade through Moscow with thousands of Ukrainian Nazis bound in chains being slowly dragged behind tanks, leaving streaks of blood and skin on the pavement. The Russian crowds will howl for the glorious goriest spectacle!

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

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 9:25 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The issue right now isn't $$, it's military production. At the moment, an increase in NATO'S OFFENSE spending is being wasted on paying inflated prices for substandard weapons, and running a lot of $$$ thru the Ukraine washing machine

I await Russia's victory before Xmas. You and Putin promised victory would be quick and inevitable, Signym. But I want it now! I eagerly anticipate the Orthodox Christmas parade through Moscow with thousands of Ukrainian Nazis bound in chains being slowly dragged behind tanks, leaving streaks of blood and skin on the pavement. The Russian crowds will howl for the glorious goriest spectacle!

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Nobody ever said it would be quick.
As usual, you lie.


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

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

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 9:25 PM

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


Interview: Russia's War On Ukraine Could Drag On For Years

By Vazha Tavberidze | June 15, 2024 08:26 GMT

https://www.rferl.org/a/mark-galeotti-russia-war-ukraine-prigozhin/329
89771.html

Russia expert Mark Galeotti is a political analyst, author, and honorary professor at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES). In an interview with RFE/RL's Georgian Service, Galeotti says that while Russian President Vladimir Putin has put his country on a war footing, Ukraine's Western partners have not done the same. He predicts Russia's war against Ukraine could drag out for a few more years, with neither side strong enough to defeat the other. Fighting will determine, Galeotti predicts, "where the lines get drawn and what is the shape of the Ukraine that emerges."

RFE/RL: I read an article of yours where you try to predict -- thankless as that task might be -- what Russia would look like by 2030. https://inews.co.uk/news/world/russia-in-2030-ai-forever-wars-putin-30
68487 You also speak about Ukraine, you say Ukraine will be de facto divided much like Korea, although it could still at any point explode into violence. Is the conclusion to draw from this that the war now is going on to define the divide lines?

Galeotti: I wish it were not so, but I think that seems to be the likely situation. Also because, let's be honest, neither side has the capacity to sustain this kind of tempo of war indefinitely. We can see a couple more years in which they can maintain this kind of tempo, but after that point, for economic as well as human reasons, you know, inevitably the conflict will not stop, but it'll be more like two punch-drunk boxers in the ring sort of hanging on the ropes and occasionally coming out with a flurry of blows.

In that context, yeah, it's a question of where the lines get drawn and what is the shape of the Ukraine that emerges. Because, again, there's a big difference between a kind of an impoverished and miserable Ukraine that still risks constant attack by Russia or whether it is brought into NATO or the European Union or these sorts of things.

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

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 9:39 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The vast majority of the countries and international organizations that participated in the Ukraine-initiated Global Peace Summit in Switzerland on June 15-16 signed a joint communique on June 16 reaffirming support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.[1]

Of 195 nations, 92 attended. 70 were western countries, meaning only 22 were non-western.

60 were represented by heads of state (but not USA, Turkiye, Brasil, Saudi Arabia, India, or China).
77 actual nations signed the communique, which means 15 did not.

"India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates — which were represented by foreign ministers or lower-level envoys — were among those that did not sign the final document." https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-06-16/80-countries-at-
swiss-summit-agree-ukraines-territorial-integrity-is-key-to-peace

Some international organizations and non- state attendees inflated the signature count.
At some point, I'll find a list of attendees, but it probably includes such "powerhouses" like Vanuatu and Andorra.


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

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

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Tuesday, June 18, 2024 9:56 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:

Nobody ever said it would be quick.
As usual, you lie.
Signym, you are in poor health. Can you at least live out your last days with dignity? Or will you flail, striking randomly around you, never landing a punch?

Forever wars and facial recognition – what Russia will look like in 2030

By Mark Galeotti | May 26, 2024 (Updated 5:21 pm)

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/russia-in-2030-ai-forever-wars-putin-30
68487

Following another rigged election in March, Vladimir Putin has been inaugurated for another six-year presidential term. Assuming the 71-year-old lasts the distance, just what kind of a Russia might we imagine in 2030?

On the face of its, the regime will be even more personalistic, even tsarist. However, it will not just be him who has aged. As more and more of his cronies and confidants die or retire, he will have to elevate a new generation of ambitious leaders to manage the country for him. In the process, he will probably try and bypass the current herd of big beasts in his system, people who might nurture their own dreams of succeeding him.

There are already some signs of this, with ‘young princelings’ such as Dmitri Patrushev and Boris Kovalchuk – both the 46-year-old sons of close Mr Putin allies – being promoted in the recent reshuffle, along with Alexei Dymin, the 51-year-old former governor of Tula Region and previously been one of Mr Putin’s bodyguards.

This makes political sense: Mr Putin has always kept control of the elite by pitting individuals, institutions and factions against each other, so why not also generations? However, it also risks creating new tensions within the elite, especially as, unless infirmity or illness prevents Mr Putin from standing yet again in 2030, he is unlikely to have identified an heir. Or, at least, a single heir: there may well be a number, officially unacknowledged, yet whom Mr Putin will likewise play off against each other like Shakespeare’s King Lear, inviting his daughters to flatter him with the promise of lands and riches.

Although the Ukraine war could not still be being fought at the same pitch as today, it is equally unlikely that there will become kind of equitable peace. Instead, Ukraine will be de facto divided, much like Korea, although it could still at any point again explode into violence.

Nor, so long as Mr Putin remains in the Kremlin, will there be any return to the pre-invasion status quo with the West. Russia will remain locked in a bad-tempered Cold War 2.0 with us, under sanctions and responding with disinformation, subversion, acrimony and mistrust.

In the process, Russia will have fallen further and further into Beijing’s orbit. This is not likely to manifest itself in anything as crude as demands for the return of territories ceded in the so-called ‘unequal treaties’ of the 19th and early 20th centuries – at least not yet. Instead, near enough every new car, phone or computer will have come from China, and especially the economies of the Russian Far East will depend on Chinese investment. Why fight over something that you are in effect hire-purchasing?

Under the pressure of lasting sanctions, Russia will have been forced increasingly into a twenty-first century remake of the late Soviet Union, with a heavily planned and state-controlled economy bent to the needs of the defense-industrial complex, backed and enforced by an authoritarianism taking full advantage of the latest security technologies. Cameras running facial recognition systems will be on every street corner, station and apartment building entryway, police drones will buzz their way over their cities, and AI will be harnessed to scan emails and phone conversations for subversive language.

With no real ideology to underpin it, though, the regime will have to double down on nationalism, and a continued Orwellian rewriting of history to justify the policies of the present. Movements like the Young Army – which already has 1.5 million 8-18 year-old boys and girls in its ranks – will become all the more important as means of socialising the new generation into Mr Putin’s creed of grievance and glory.

The Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church will likewise be pressed into service to bless Mr Putin’s imperialism, kleptocracy and autocracy. With the population already beginning to skew increasingly in favour of its Muslim regions, though, where birth rates are higher, it will be a continuing challenge to rely on the Orthodox Church without alienating them. The Kremlin will nervously watch as Muslims in the army grows from its current 10 percent level.

There will still be an oppressed but surviving civil society despite everything, even lonely opposition voices, from democrats to ultra-nationalists who feel let down by Mr Putin. The real source of potential resistance, though, will come from the struggling economy. Moscow will still likely be a shining modern city, but the provinces will suffer as reserves run out and underspending on infrastructure, investment and services begin to bite. Wildcat strikes are one thing, but the Kremlin’s real fear will be the sudden emergence of a political movement like the Solidarity trade union in Poland from 1989.

Of course, it need not be like this. Mr Putin may die, or be forced by ill-health to retire. He could even – although for now this is the least likely scenario – be ousted. There might be some energetic young hawk in the Kremlin, or maybe even some more moderate technocrat like Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, not a democrat, but at least someone without the same imperialist instincts. Yet, sadly, for now the odds are that, six years on, we will still need to be talking about Mr Putin.

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

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Wednesday, June 19, 2024 6:05 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine is running out of soldiers

By Joshua Keating | Jun 18, 2024, 6:00 AM CDT

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/355547/soldiers-shortage-demographi
cs-population-conscription

Finding troops for the “meat grinder” in Ukraine hasn’t been easy for the Russian government. Russia does conscript soldiers every year, but conscripts generally can’t be deployed outside Russia. In the fall of 2022, the Kremlin declared a “partial mobilization” meant to raise 300,000 troops for the military. But more than twice that number are believed to have fled the country to avoid the draft.

Since then, however, Russia has managed to stabilize its manpower situation. It has done this in part by offering large signing bonuses that exceed average annual salaries in many remote and impoverished regions of Russia, and by granting pardons to prison inmates. (Pardoned prisoners made up the bulk of the fatalities in Bakhmut.) These tactics have largely kept the public backlash to the hundreds of thousands of casualties manageable.

The worries about personnel are far more acute in Ukraine, which has a democratic political system and about 100 million fewer citizens than Russia. The long lines that formed outside recruiting centers immediately after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 are a thing of the past. Today, there are desperate shortages of Ukrainian troops on the front lines.

The average age of these soldiers is over 40 — shockingly old by global standards. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently signed a controversial law to lower the age for draft eligible men from 27 to 25. (The average age of an American GI in Vietnam was 19.) The government has resorted to a number of carrots (giving volunteers the right to choose their own battalions) and sticks (highly unpopular street patrols to find young men avoiding the draft) to replenish the ranks. And like Russia, Ukraine is also now recruiting prison inmates to serve.

Another similarity to Russia: Ukraine was in a state of precipitous population collapse even before the war, thanks to a combination of plummeting birth rates and out-migration. Its population declined from 51.5 million when it became independent in 1991 to just 37 million in 2019. Add to that the more than 6 million people who fled the country after the outbreak of war, those currently in the military, those killed or seriously wounded in the war, and those who’ve turned to black market employment in order to avoid conscription, and it’s no surprise that Ukraine’s civilian economy is facing serious labor shortages.

The war has presented Ukrainian leaders with an agonizing choice that goes even beyond the brutal prospect of sending thousands of young people to their deaths: Fighting for their national survival today might require decimating the nation’s already grim demographic future.

Not so long ago, some theorists were predicting a “geriatric peace”: societies with fewer available soldiers as well as older — therefore, presumably, less aggressive — populations might simply be less likely to start wars.

But the recent actions of Russia — where population decline is only slightly slower than in Ukraine — provide a powerful counterexample to that theory, not to mention the rising tensions and territorial conflicts in fast graying East Asia. The calculations of aggressive leaders like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping might just as easily be explained by what international relations theorists call “power transition theory”: the idea that governments will try to lock in military gains before their power starts to decline.

In other words, looking at decades of population decline to come, China’s Xi might decide that now is the moment to act in Taiwan, while he still has the troops to take 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, June 19, 2024 6:08 AM

SECOND

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


The Russian government is charging Ukrainian servicemen and military officials with crimes in absentia as part of its efforts to enforce Russian federal law outside of its jurisdiction and insinuate that Ukraine should not exist as an independent state. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) placed former Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Pyotr Mekhed and former Deputy Chief of the Ukrainian General Staff Viktor Bokiy on Russia's wanted list on June 18 and charged the men with unspecified war crimes in absentia.[17] The Russian Investigative Committee ruled on June 17 to detain a Ukrainian commander in absentia on charges that the commander helped down a Russian A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft in February 2024 — a legitimate act of war and a normal event for two warring states.[18] The Russian MVD previously absurdly placed multiple officials from most NATO member countries on its western flank on Russia’s wanted list for violating various Russian laws while the officials were in their respective countries where Russian law has no jurisdiction.[19] Russian officials similarly temporarily placed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavlyuk, and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on its wanted list for allegedly violating Russian law while those officials were not in Russia.[20] ISW continues to assess that Russia's decision to place Western officials on its wanted list for violating Russian federal laws outside of Russia is part of its effort to violate the sovereignty of NATO member states and justify possible future Russian aggression against NATO.[21] The Kremlin's prosecution of Ukrainian military personnel and political leadership who are engaged in a fully lawful, defensive war against an invasion by a foreign power in a manner akin to domestic terrorists highlights Russia's enduring belief that the Ukrainian state does not and should not exist as a political entity separate from Russia.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-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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Wednesday, June 19, 2024 3:17 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:

At some point, I'll find a list of attendees, but it probably includes such "powerhouses" like Vanuatu and Andorra.
News flash! North Korea’s Kim declares ‘full support’ for Russian war in Ukraine. Kim said the two countries had a “fiery friendship,” and that the deal was their “strongest ever treaty,” putting the relationship at the level of an alliance. He vowed full support for Russia's war in Ukraine.
https://apnews.com/article/vladimir-putin-kim-jong-un-russia-north-kor
ea-summit-ukraine-a6b8d2c12de7ee2ab6716d4747c9850e

Signym, without a doubt Kim's support for Putin more than cancels the EU support for Putin's multitude of enemies. The future is overwhelmingly favorable for Putin, now that Kim is on his side.

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

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