REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Thursday, January 30, 2025 08:21
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Saturday, December 28, 2024 8:10 AM

SECOND

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About 600,000 Russian troops currently deployed to fight against Ukraine – Ukrainian intelligence

By Ivan Diakonov | Saturday, 28 December 2024, 02:59

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/12/28/7491072/

Can Putin double that number to conquer all of Ukraine in 2025? Yes, if the past is any guidance.

Size
3,668,075 active (1991), peak 14,332,483 in 1945
4,129,506 reserve (1991), peak 17,383,291 in 1945

Motto(s)
Za nashu Sovetskuyu Rodinu!
"For our Soviet Motherland!"

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+was+the+largest+number+of+soldier
s+in+the+soviet+union+ww2

One difference between now and WWII: Hitler's announcement that the war in the east was one of 'annihilation' and Stalin's astute call to defend 'Mother Russia' rather than his own regime gave the ordinary Russian soldier - no matter how coerced or badly led - every reason to battle to the death.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/operation-barbarossa-and-germanys-failu
re-in-the-soviet-union

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Saturday, December 28, 2024 8:51 AM

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Photo Diary of a Dead North Korean

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/12/28/7491107/

Quote from the diary: "I was raised in the nurturing embrace of the Party, studying without concern for anything in the world. There is more unknown love than love that is known and accepted. I didn’t know how to react to the happiness I was surrounded by.

Defending the homeland is the sacred duty of every citizen, and the greatest duty is to protect the nation, which is where my happiness lies. I wear the military uniform of revolution to protect the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. I was honoured with the opportunity to be promoted to sergeant major in my company. However, I betrayed my beloved Party, which had placed its trust in me, and committed acts of ingratitude against the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

The sins I’ve committed are unforgivable, but my homeland has given me a chance for redemption, a fresh start in life.

Now, I have no choice but to regain the trust I once had. I will go to the front lines in this operation and obey the orders of Supreme Commander Kim Jong Un without question, even if it costs me my life. I will show the world the invincible courage and sacrifice of the Red Special Forces (Red Commanders) of Kim Jong Un.

When we win the war and return to our homeland, I will submit a petition to the Party."

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Sunday, December 29, 2024 7:31 AM

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Russian Officers Pulled Over For A Hasty Meeting. That’s When A Ukrainian HIMARS Opened Fire.

Three Russian captains reportedly died in the precision strike.

By David Axe | Dec 28, 2024, 09:00am EST

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/12/28/russian-officers-pull
ed-over-for-a-hasty-meeting-thats-when-a-ukrainian-himars-opened-fire/

A clutch of Russian officers reportedly gathered for a hasty meeting along a road near Tokmak just 15 miles south of the front line in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine on Friday. What should have been a quick conference between commanders turned into a bloodbath when Ukrainian intelligence detected the gathering—and a High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System opened fire.

According to the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate, five vehicles burned and three Russian captains died: one each from the intelligence, air-defense and infantry corps. It was the second HIMARS strike in three days targeting Russian officers near the front line of Russia’s 34-month wider war on Ukraine.

A Christmas Day bombardment of a headquarters in the city of Lgov, near the Ukrainian-held salient in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, may have killed or wounded leaders of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade. “This fiery impression is part of the campaign to weaken the capabilities of the enemy army,” the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications boasted.

It makes sense for Ukraine’s U.S.-made HIMARS, which fire precision-guided rockets as far as 57 miles, to target the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade. That unit has been at the bleeding edge of Russia’s costly counteroffensive aimed at eliminating the 250-square-mile Ukrainian salient in Kursk.

It’s less obvious why the Ukrainians would assign one of their precious HIMARS to blow up a trio of captains in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in southern Ukraine, a relative backwater now that the fighting has shifted east and north.

It’s possible Ukrainian planners are trying to prevent the Russians from organizing an offensive in Zaporizhzhia that, while unlikely to capture much ground given the paucity of Russian forces in the south, could nonetheless compel the Ukrainian general staff to divert sparse resources away from the east and north.

Note the pattern of Ukrainian raids in the south. In addition to striking that meeting of captains, the Ukrainian intelligence directorate and special operations command may have sent saboteurs to blow up a critical railroad through Tokmak on Dec. 15, reportedly destroying a fuel train in the process and disrupting Russian logistics in the area.

By targeting critical command and logistical infrastructure, Ukrainian forces could defeat a possible southern offensive by Russian forces before it even begins. Given good intelligence, it’s much easier to prevent an attack with a few precision strikes than to meet it soldier-for-soldier, tank-for-tank on the battlefield.

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Sunday, December 29, 2024 11:29 AM

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Plans for Russia's attack on NATO's eastern flank

10:23 AM EST, December 29, 2024

https://essanews.com/russias-secret-plans-buffer-zones-in-finland-and-
norway,7108534601812097a

NATO believes that Russia is aiming for the borders set by the Treaty of Turku from 1743. In such a case, its army will strive to reach the Kemijoki River, and the next target could be the Puumalansalmi Strait. Potential missiles could also be launched at Helsinki; however, the primary direction of attacks will be the Baltic countries: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

The newspaper's sources emphasize that Russian President Vladimir Putin's views on security reflect a desire to create a unified buffer zone in Europe from the Arctic region through the Baltic and Black Seas to the Mediterranean. During a propaganda press conference on December 19, the Kremlin chief stated that Russia has "sufficient forces and means to reclaim all its historical territories". In the past, Putin has referred to the Russian Empire of the 17th century as his ideal. NATO sources say these words should be taken literally.

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Sunday, December 29, 2024 11:52 AM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Nearly evrything that you source from Understanding War is wrong, SECOND.

Zelensky's term ended May 2024. Seven months ago. So why is he still in office? There is no Constitutional allowance (yes, Ukraine has a Constitution) for a President extending his own term of office by declaring martial law.

So technically, he isn't a legitimate President.

It's a question Ukrainians have not addressed bc, altho Zelensky is wildly unpopular, Ukrainians have a lot more to think about, like water, heat, electricity, and safety.

But if anyone wants to negotiate with Ukraine, it's going to have to be with a legitimate representative.



Why did Russia’s democracy break in the early 2000s? In the 1990s, after independent Russia emerged from the Soviet Union, the country had competitive elections to Parliament and the presidency that had substantial impact on public policy. Today the results of the country’s most important elections are known in advance, and genuine opposition politicians are jailed or prevented from running for office. The political system changed in the early 2000s, as the Russian government eliminated the independent political power of the country’s oligarchic business elite. In the 1990s oligarchs funded Russia’s political parties, providing a genuine if deeply flawed type of political competition. Russia’s politics in the 1990s failed to provide for stable living standards or responsive government, however, which many people blamed on the oligarchs. Putin came to power in 2000 promising to limit oligarchs’ political power. The tools he used—abusing his legal authority, centralizing control over the media, and drastically expanding the power of the security services—succeeded in limiting the oligarchs’ power, but also eliminated any space for political competition.

Russian democracy collapsed not under pressure from the political extremes but rather from the elite’s and the security services’ frustration with political competition. Many people, in the elite and the populace more broadly, believed that centralized authority would provide for more effective governance. There was hardly any ideological support for democracy per se, and the only groups that provided real political competition—the oligarchs—were self-interested and deeply unpopular. Putin’s campaign against the structures that provided for political competition was therefore broadly popular, even if the stagnation and corruption that Russia’s new political system have bred are not. The contrast between post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine is instructive: Russia used its security services to crack down on its oligarchs, eliminating most political competition in the process. In Ukraine, where the security services were always weaker, oligarchs have played a major role in politics, guaranteeing that they have shaped public policy—but also guaranteeing that no single force has monopolized control over the country’s politics.

Weimar Syndrome, Russian-Style?
Why did Russia’s democracy break in the early 2000s? In the 1990s, after independent Russia emerged from the Soviet Union, the country had competitive elections to Parliament and the presidency that had substantial impact on public policy. Today the results of the country’s most important elections are known in advance, and genuine opposition politicians are jailed or prevented from running for office. The political system changed in the early 2000s, as the Russian government eliminated the independent political power of the country’s oligarchic business elite. In the 1990s oligarchs funded Russia’s political parties, providing a genuine if deeply flawed type of political competition. Russia’s politics in the 1990s failed to provide for stable living standards or responsive government, however, which many people blamed on the oligarchs. Putin came to power in 2000 promising to limit oligarchs’ political power. The tools he used—abusing his legal authority, centralizing control over the media, and drastically expanding the power of the security services—succeeded in limiting the oligarchs’ power, but also eliminated any space for political competition.

When Yegor Gaidar, the first prime minister of independent Russia, looked back on his country’s politics in the fifteen years after it emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet system, he saw little cause for optimism. Gaidar had designed President Boris Yeltsin’s program to cast off Soviet-style state Socialism. While in office, he believed that Russia was building a European-style liberal democracy. A decade and a half later, long after he had been ejected from power, Russian politics was on a different trajectory. By 2006, when Gaidar published his book Collapse of an Empire, Russia was clearly no longer Soviet. But nor was it democratic, by any definition of the word. Russia had built a functioning, independent state, which looked very different from its Soviet predecessor. But though the country had cast off state Socialism, Russia’s political elite no longer aspired to a competitive political system. Nor, it seemed, did many Russian citizens. Coming to power in 2000, President Vladimir Putin ended open political competition, consolidated control over the media, and harassed opposition voices.

Gaidar sensed this shift in Russian politics and believed he knew the malaise from which Russia suffered: Weimar syndrome. Like Weimar Germany, Gaidar argued, post-Soviet Russia suffered from postimperial nostalgia. Most Russians looked back fondly on the days of Leonid Brezhnev, a growing number showing sympathy even for Stalin. “There was a fifteen-year gap between the collapse of the German Empire and Hitler’s rise to power and fifteen years between the collapse of the USSR and Russia in 2006–07,” Gaidar wrote that year, sensing that this was not a coincidence.1 “Few remember,” he continued, “that the imperial state regalia and symbols were restored in Germany eight years after the empire’s collapse, in 1926, and in Russia, after nine years, in 2000. Not many more know that an important Nazi economic promise was to restore the bank deposits lost by the German middle class during the hyperinflation of 1922–1923,” mirroring the false promises made by many Russian politicians.2

Russian democracy collapsed not under pressure from the political extremes but rather from the elite’s and the security services’ frustration with political competition. Many people, in the elite and the populace more broadly, believed that centralized authority would provide for more effective governance. There was hardly any ideological support for democracy per se, and the only groups that provided real political competition—the oligarchs—were self-interested and deeply unpopular. Putin’s campaign against the structures that provided for political competition was therefore broadly popular, even if the stagnation and corruption that Russia’s new political system have bred are not. The contrast between post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine is instructive: Russia used its security services to crack down on its oligarchs, eliminating most political competition in the process. In Ukraine, where the security services were always weaker, oligarchs have played a major role in politics, guaranteeing that they have shaped public policy—but also guaranteeing that no single force has monopolized control over the country’s politics.

Gaidar was far from alone in sensing an impending Weimar-style authoritarian shift. Many Russian intellectuals, from journalist Yevgenia Albats to academics Irina Starodubrovskaya and Vladimir Mau, drew similar comparisons.3 Foreign observers also asked whether Russia was headed along a similar path. Academic journals in the 1990s were full of debate about similarities between pre-Nazi Germany and post-Communist Russia.4Economists noted that both 1990s Russia and 1920s Germany experienced devastating hyperinflation that not only destroyed household savings but also undermined the popularity of democratic politics.5 Political scientists pointed out that both Weimar Germany and 1990s Russia had fragmented political parties, weak institutions, and large numbers of people who lamented the collapse of their countries’ empires.

What is “Weimar syndrome”? In the 1990s, analysts who feared that Russia faced a Weimar-style slide into authoritarianism pointed toward the large chunk of votes received by overtly nationalist politicians. In 1993, the lead vote-winner in parliamentary elections was a party led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant, anti-Semitic populist who advocated extending Russian rule to the boundaries of the old Soviet state—and even beyond. Zhirinovsky lamented the “zionization” of Europe and foresaw that “Islam—whether yellow or black—is rolling over Christian Europe.”6 He saw only one solution: “Russia can be saved only with an authoritarian regime.”7 “What is needed is a strict, centralized authority.”8 Zhirinovsky’s party won the largest share of votes in the 1993 Duma elections, sparking fears that he would bring to power the authoritarian methods he thought necessary to govern Russia.

Zhirinovsky remains a fixture on the Russian political scene today, but he was outmaneuvered in the mid-1990s by Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who rebranded Communism by melding it with Russian nationalism, religious conservatism, and reinvigorated sympathy for Stalin. “Two basic values lie at the foundation of the Russian idea,” Communist leader Zyuganov explained in the early 1990s: “Russian spirituality, which is inconceivable without an Orthodox Christian outlook and a realization of one’s true purpose on Earth, and Russian statehood and great-power status.”9 “West European–style social democracy stands no chance in Russia,” Zyuganov declared on a different occasion.10

He was not wrong. Against Russia’s right-wing Communists and the openly fascist Liberal Democratic Party of Zhirinovsky stood Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s president throughout the 1990s. Unlike his two main opponents, Yeltsin vocally supported democracy in Russia. In practice, though, he was far from a flawless democrat. He inherited a deep recession, a collapse in the government’s administrative capacity, and a separatist dispute in Chechnya. Yet when a clash with Parliament over the scope of presidential authority reached a stalemate in 1993, he ordered the military to shell Parliament and force fresh legislative elections.

At no point in post-Soviet Russia has civil society or the population at large played a major role in politics beyond participation in elections. There was a moment in the final years of the Soviet Union when civil society groups called neformaly organized in Moscow and other large cities and tried to implement politics.11 But the shock of the Soviet collapse—and the social and economic upheaval that accompanied it—removed much of the impulse behind them. The post-Soviet Russian government and Parliament were barely influenced by such groups. More influential were regional elites and business managers, who had been in power during the late Soviet period and who largely remained in power in post-Soviet Russia.12 These elites had ascended to power via a nondemocratic system and had no reason to support political competition unless they had a specific personal interest to do so. The “democratic” political coalitions that had mobilized in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the late Soviet period are better described as anti-Soviet rather than pro-democracy. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so too did these coalitions. A small share of the population—part of the intelligentsia in Moscow and other large cities, for example—remained ideologically committed to democracy as a form of politics. But most of society, and even much of the intelligentsia, had no particular attachment to democratic institutions such as free elections, independent courts, or competitive politics. A belief in the need for a strong hand, by contrast, had been promoted by the Soviet government and had deep roots in Russian political culture. The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the first Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin, were more commonly criticized for being too weak than for being too authoritarian.

When Yeltsin talked about democracy, moreover, it was never clear what he meant. Certainly Yeltsin-style democracy meant something different from the Soviet system. Returning to the Soviet era was never popular, even though Russians missed the social benefits the Soviet state provided. To Yeltsin, building democracy appeared to mean something like building a European-style society, wealthier and more “modern” than Russia’s. His goal, he said, was to “jump from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into a cloudless, prosperous, and civilized future.”13 Because the prosperous West had elections and other democratic institutions, Russia needed them, too. Many Russians at the time believed there was a link between democracy, modernity, and prosperity. But the social instability of the 1990s in Russia discredited the idea that political competition would necessarily produce prosperity. Absent that, support for democracy per se was weak. The Soviet media and educational system had spent decades insisting that democracy was a fraud and that citizens’ preferences did not matter. Russia’s deeply flawed political system of the 1990s, in which average citizens were very weakly represented, appeared to many Russians to prove the Soviet critique correct.

Postimperial nostalgia, a weak party system, hyperinflation, unemployment, anti-Semitism, nationalism, and a violent struggle for executive power: the first decade of independent Russia replicated the ills of Weimar politics. It is easy to understand, therefore, why many analysts lived through the 1990s in constant anticipation of a coup, a revolution, a Reichstag fire, or a fascist electoral victory.

Yet Russian democracy did not end in a flash or a fire. It limped on for nearly a decade after Yeltsin’s storming of Parliament, only to be snuffed out by the next generation of political elites. And rather than being overturned in a coup or a rebellion, Russian democracy was degraded steadily over time, via bogus court proceedings and a takeover of the media. Russian democracy did not end with the victory of nationalist parties. In elections today, Putin continues to face the nationalists of the 1990s, and he is far more popular than they, even though he presents himself as a moderate alternative. The Kremlin has used victorious wars—most notably, the annexation of Crimea in 2014—to bolster its popularity. But this nationalist shift in Kremlin politics followed rather than preceded the collapse of Russia’s democracy, coming a decade after Putin consolidated power. The Russian government’s use of alleged “fifth-columnists” to justify repression, a trend that intensified around the annexation of Crimea, also came well after Russia’s democratic breakdown.

To understand why Russia’s democracy broke, therefore, Weimar Germany provides a useful foil. Russians and foreigners in the 1990s feared that the country’s democracy would be imperiled by a fascist putsch, facilitated by a far-right electoral victory, inspired by economic discontent, and justified by citing enemies at home and abroad. In fact, Russia’s democracy was broken by a coalition of the center that was less ethnically nationalist than the country at large. Russian democracy broke at a time when Russia’s economy was booming and when the country enjoyed relatively amiable relations with neighbors and other great powers. Russia’s democracy survived the “Weimar moment” of the 1990s, in other words, and broke at exactly the point that it should have consolidated.

Why did this happen? This chapter will first examine different metrics and definitions of Russian democracy, noting that even in the 1990s, Russia’s political system was deeply flawed and can be considered democratic only under the loosest definition. Yet it was at least competitive, in a way it has not been since. There was a notable slump in political competition and media diversity in the early 2000s, following Putin’s consolidation of power. Second, the chapter will examine three explanations of why political competition in Russia disappeared: structural hangovers from the Soviet period, the centralization of power in the 1990s under President Yeltsin, and the policies implemented by Russia’s president after 2000, Putin. Third, the chapter examines the crucial years between 1999 and 2003, when Russian political competition ended and when control over the media was centralized.

Finally, the chapter will contrast Russia’s experience with its neighbor Ukraine. Like Russia, Ukraine had a tumultuous and semi-democratic 1990s; like Russia, Ukrainian democracy was dominated by oligarchs and only occasionally responsive to popular demands. But in the mid-2000s, the two countries’ paths diverged. Democratic competition in Russia ended during its 2003 parliamentary and 2004 presidential elections, neither of which was genuinely competitive. Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election was also deeply flawed, because the first iteration of the election was rigged in favor of the incumbent’s preferred successor. Yet because, unlike in Russia, the Ukrainian state had not crushed all competition, the rigged election sparked mass protests that succeeded in demanding a new, clean vote that brought the rival candidate to power. Russia’s 2004 presidential election was rather different: Putin was reelected to a second term with 71% of the vote, in an election devoid of debate, substantive media coverage, or genuine competition. The end of political competition in Russia, in turn, left no check on the government’s power when the Kremlin decided to begin restricting rights more broadly.

When Did Russian Democracy Break?
Weimar Syndrome, Russian-Style?
The structure of Russian politics is different today than it was in 2000, when Putin was first elected president. Russia’s Constitution today has no provisions that are incompatible with democratic governance. The country has political parties, a variety of candidates, and elections in which the votes are usually (though not always) tallied broadly accurately.14 If you don’t look closely—and Russia’s government does not encourage anyone to do so—you could mistake the formal institutions of Russian politics for those of a democracy.

When Yegor Gaidar, the first prime minister of independent Russia, looked back on his country’s politics in the fifteen years after it emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet system, he saw little cause for optimism. Gaidar had designed President Boris Yeltsin’s program to cast off Soviet-style state Socialism. While in office, he believed that Russia was building a European-style liberal democracy. A decade and a half later, long after he had been ejected from power, Russian politics was on a different trajectory. By 2006, when Gaidar published his book Collapse of an Empire, Russia was clearly no longer Soviet. But nor was it democratic, by any definition of the word. Russia had built a functioning, independent state, which looked very different from its Soviet predecessor. But though the country had cast off state Socialism, Russia’s political elite no longer aspired to a competitive political system. Nor, it seemed, did many Russian citizens. Coming to power in 2000, President Vladimir Putin ended open political competition, consolidated control over the media, and harassed opposition voices.

If you do look closely, however, you see that political institutions don’t work in the same way as do similar institutions in democratic systems. The winner of Russian presidential elections, for example, is known in advance. The country’s four major political parties compete for parliamentary seats, but they almost never criticize Putin.15 The parties run candidates for president, but only with the aim of winning second place. The state-controlled media covers presidential and parliamentary elections diligently but ensures that candidates with critical ideas get no airtime. Any politician who opposes Putin and has a chance of winning a medium-size following is harassed by the legal system and prevented from competing.

Gaidar sensed this shift in Russian politics and believed he knew the malaise from which Russia suffered: Weimar syndrome. Like Weimar Germany, Gaidar argued, post-Soviet Russia suffered from postimperial nostalgia. Most Russians looked back fondly on the days of Leonid Brezhnev, a growing number showing sympathy even for Stalin. “There was a fifteen-year gap between the collapse of the German Empire and Hitler’s rise to power and fifteen years between the collapse of the USSR and Russia in 2006–07,” Gaidar wrote that year, sensing that this was not a coincidence.1 “Few remember,” he continued, “that the imperial state regalia and symbols were restored in Germany eight years after the empire’s collapse, in 1926, and in Russia, after nine years, in 2000. Not many more know that an important Nazi economic promise was to restore the bank deposits lost by the German middle class during the hyperinflation of 1922–1923,” mirroring the false promises made by many Russian politicians.2

Gaidar was far from alone in sensing an impending Weimar-style authoritarian shift. Many Russian intellectuals, from journalist Yevgenia Albats to academics Irina Starodubrovskaya and Vladimir Mau, drew similar comparisons.3 Foreign observers also asked whether Russia was headed along a similar path. Academic journals in the 1990s were full of debate about similarities between pre-Nazi Germany and post-Communist Russia.4Economists noted that both 1990s Russia and 1920s Germany experienced devastating hyperinflation that not only destroyed household savings but also undermined the popularity of democratic politics.5 Political scientists pointed out that both Weimar Germany and 1990s Russia had fragmented political parties, weak institutions, and large numbers of people who lamented the collapse of their countries’ empires.

In the 1990s, before the Putin era, politics worked differently. To be sure, Russia’s government in the 1990s was far from a model of democracy. It was unrepresentative, unresponsive, and at times authoritarian. It had deep and enduring flaws. Its only real political party was the Communist Party, which retained Soviet-era authoritarian instincts. Legislators sold their votes to the highest bidder, while judges sold court decisions and journalists sold favorable news coverage. A small class of oligarchs played an outsized role. There were few independent organizations, whether NGOs or labor unions, to mediate between the population and the government. By many tests of democratic governance, Russia in the 1990s would have failed. Yet there is one test that it would have passed: Russian electoral politics were competitive and unpredictable—a sharp contrast from today’s Russia, in which all important political questions are decided before elections occur. In the 1990s, the winner of elections was not known in advance, and the government often lost. I will define democracy as a form of government that includes three aspects:

• Regular, free, fair, and competitive elections.

• Broad-based participation in political processes.

• Protection of individual and minority group political rights.

What is “Weimar syndrome”? In the 1990s, analysts who feared that Russia faced a Weimar-style slide into authoritarianism pointed toward the large chunk of votes received by overtly nationalist politicians. In 1993, the lead vote-winner in parliamentary elections was a party led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant, anti-Semitic populist who advocated extending Russian rule to the boundaries of the old Soviet state—and even beyond. Zhirinovsky lamented the “zionization” of Europe and foresaw that “Islam—whether yellow or black—is rolling over Christian Europe.”6 He saw only one solution: “Russia can be saved only with an authoritarian regime.”7 “What is needed is a strict, centralized authority.”8 Zhirinovsky’s party won the largest share of votes in the 1993 Duma elections, sparking fears that he would bring to power the authoritarian methods he thought necessary to govern Russia.

Zhirinovsky remains a fixture on the Russian political scene today, but he was outmaneuvered in the mid-1990s by Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who rebranded Communism by melding it with Russian nationalism, religious conservatism, and reinvigorated sympathy for Stalin. “Two basic values lie at the foundation of the Russian idea,” Communist leader Zyuganov explained in the early 1990s: “Russian spirituality, which is inconceivable without an Orthodox Christian outlook and a realization of one’s true purpose on Earth, and Russian statehood and great-power status.”9 “West European–style social democracy stands no chance in Russia,” Zyuganov declared on a different occasion.10

By each of these metrics, Russia was at best a partial democracy in the 1990s. It is substantially less of a democracy today.

Modern Russia has had only a handful of competitive elections for Parliament or the presidency. There have been none since current President Putin and his team consolidated control. Over the past two decades, not a single Russian election could have realistically caused a turnover in power. In today’s Russia, elections serve multiple political purposes. They are most important as a tool for Moscow to test the competence of local elites, who are judged in part based on voter turnout.16 What elections have not done is offer voters a real choice. Instead, voters are given a fake choice, between President Putin (or, briefly, Dmitry Medvedev) and candidates from large parties that do not seek to oust Putin (e.g., the Communists, the far-right Liberal Democrats) or from small parties that will win at most several percentage points of the vote. Genuine opposition candidates who threaten to win a sizable vote share, such as Alexei Navalny, are not allowed to run. In addition to not offering voters a real choice, Kremlin-backed candidates have access to state resources to support their campaigns, while opposition candidates are all but barred from TV.

He was not wrong. Against Russia’s right-wing Communists and the openly fascist Liberal Democratic Party of Zhirinovsky stood Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s president throughout the 1990s. Unlike his two main opponents, Yeltsin vocally supported democracy in Russia. In practice, though, he was far from a flawless democrat. He inherited a deep recession, a collapse in the government’s administrative capacity, and a separatist dispute in Chechnya. Yet when a clash with Parliament over the scope of presidential authority reached a stalemate in 1993, he ordered the military to shell Parliament and force fresh legislative elections.

Russian elections were not always so stale. The vote that brought Yeltsin to power in 1991 was a surprise victory against the establishment candidate, Nikolai Ryzhkov.17 The 1996 presidential election, in which Yeltsin faced Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov, surprised everyone—Yeltsin included—when Yeltsin won reelection. True, these elections were marred by widespread allegations of illegal campaign tactics, notably of businesses and oligarchs violating campaign finance laws and buying votes. Yet the votes were probably counted roughly accurately, and in providing voters a clear, policy-relevant choice between Yeltsin and Zyuganov, the election passed a low bar of basic democratic practice.18 In Russia’s 1996 presidential election, for example, voters were given a choice, crude though it was, between retaining Yeltsin and his advocacy of private property or opting for the Communist Zyuganov, who promised to roll back capitalism.19 The result was unpredictable and had meaningful ramifications for government policy.20 By contrast, Russia’s most recent presidential vote, in 2018, had no policy ramifications, and candidates made no effort to stake out positions different from Putin’s, especially on issues that mattered. In the 1990s, in other words, Russia had a deeply flawed political system, with limited popular participation in governance, few independent institutions, yet nevertheless competitive and unpredictable elections. Today’s Russia has all the flaws of the 1990s, but it has dispensed with the competition.

At no point in post-Soviet Russia has civil society or the population at large played a major role in politics beyond participation in elections. There was a moment in the final years of the Soviet Union when civil society groups called neformaly organized in Moscow and other large cities and tried to implement politics.11 But the shock of the Soviet collapse—and the social and economic upheaval that accompanied it—removed much of the impulse behind them. The post-Soviet Russian government and Parliament were barely influenced by such groups. More influential were regional elites and business managers, who had been in power during the late Soviet period and who largely remained in power in post-Soviet Russia.12 These elites had ascended to power via a nondemocratic system and had no reason to support political competition unless they had a specific personal interest to do so. The “democratic” political coalitions that had mobilized in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the late Soviet period are better described as anti-Soviet rather than pro-democracy. When the Soviet Union collapsed, so too did these coalitions. A small share of the population—part of the intelligentsia in Moscow and other large cities, for example—remained ideologically committed to democracy as a form of politics. But most of society, and even much of the intelligentsia, had no particular attachment to democratic institutions such as free elections, independent courts, or competitive politics. A belief in the need for a strong hand, by contrast, had been promoted by the Soviet government and had deep roots in Russian political culture. The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the first Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin, were more commonly criticized for being too weak than for being too authoritarian.

When Yeltsin talked about democracy, moreover, it was never clear what he meant. Certainly Yeltsin-style democracy meant something different from the Soviet system. Returning to the Soviet era was never popular, even though Russians missed the social benefits the Soviet state provided. To Yeltsin, building democracy appeared to mean something like building a European-style society, wealthier and more “modern” than Russia’s. His goal, he said, was to “jump from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into a cloudless, prosperous, and civilized future.”13 Because the prosperous West had elections and other democratic institutions, Russia needed them, too. Many Russians at the time believed there was a link between democracy, modernity, and prosperity. But the social instability of the 1990s in Russia discredited the idea that political competition would necessarily produce prosperity. Absent that, support for democracy per se was weak. The Soviet media and educational system had spent decades insisting that democracy was a fraud and that citizens’ preferences did not matter. Russia’s deeply flawed political system of the 1990s, in which average citizens were very weakly represented, appeared to many Russians to prove the Soviet critique correct.

Postimperial nostalgia, a weak party system, hyperinflation, unemployment, anti-Semitism, nationalism, and a violent struggle for executive power: the first decade of independent Russia replicated the ills of Weimar politics. It is easy to understand, therefore, why many analysts lived through the 1990s in constant anticipation of a coup, a revolution, a Reichstag fire, or a fascist electoral victory.

Yet Russian democracy did not end in a flash or a fire. It limped on for nearly a decade after Yeltsin’s storming of Parliament, only to be snuffed out by the next generation of political elites. And rather than being overturned in a coup or a rebellion, Russian democracy was degraded steadily over time, via bogus court proceedings and a takeover of the media. Russian democracy did not end with the victory of nationalist parties. In elections today, Putin continues to face the nationalists of the 1990s, and he is far more popular than they, even though he presents himself as a moderate alternative. The Kremlin has used victorious wars—most notably, the annexation of Crimea in 2014—to bolster its popularity. But this nationalist shift in Kremlin politics followed rather than preceded the collapse of Russia’s democracy, coming a decade after Putin consolidated power. The Russian government’s use of alleged “fifth-columnists” to justify repression, a trend that intensified around the annexation of Crimea, also came well after Russia’s democratic breakdown.

To understand why Russia’s democracy broke, therefore, Weimar Germany provides a useful foil. Russians and foreigners in the 1990s feared that the country’s democracy would be imperiled by a fascist putsch, facilitated by a far-right electoral victory, inspired by economic discontent, and justified by citing enemies at home and abroad. In fact, Russia’s democracy was broken by a coalition of the center that was less ethnically nationalist than the country at large. Russian democracy broke at a time when Russia’s economy was booming and when the country enjoyed relatively amiable relations with neighbors and other great powers. Russia’s democracy survived the “Weimar moment” of the 1990s, in other words, and broke at exactly the point that it should have consolidated.

Why did this happen? This chapter will first examine different metrics and definitions of Russian democracy, noting that even in the 1990s, Russia’s political system was deeply flawed and can be considered democratic only under the loosest definition. Yet it was at least competitive, in a way it has not been since. There was a notable slump in political competition and media diversity in the early 2000s, following Putin’s consolidation of power. Second, the chapter will examine three explanations of why political competition in Russia disappeared: structural hangovers from the Soviet period, the centralization of power in the 1990s under President Yeltsin, and the policies implemented by Russia’s president after 2000, Putin. Third, the chapter examines the crucial years between 1999 and 2003, when Russian political competition ended and when control over the media was centralized.

Finally, the chapter will contrast Russia’s experience with its neighbor Ukraine. Like Russia, Ukraine had a tumultuous and semi-democratic 1990s; like Russia, Ukrainian democracy was dominated by oligarchs and only occasionally responsive to popular demands. But in the mid-2000s, the two countries’ paths diverged. Democratic competition in Russia ended during its 2003 parliamentary and 2004 presidential elections, neither of which was genuinely competitive. Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election was also deeply flawed, because the first iteration of the election was rigged in favor of the incumbent’s preferred successor. Yet because, unlike in Russia, the Ukrainian state had not crushed all competition, the rigged election sparked mass protests that succeeded in demanding a new, clean vote that brought the rival candidate to power. Russia’s 2004 presidential election was rather different: Putin was reelected to a second term with 71% of the vote, in an election devoid of debate, substantive media coverage, or genuine competition. The end of political competition in Russia, in turn, left no check on the government’s power when the Kremlin decided to begin restricting rights more broadly.

Three Explanations of Why Russia’s Democracy Failed
When Did Russian Democracy Break?
Why did Russia abandon electoral competition? Scholars have put forth three major explanations. The first focuses on structural forces that delegitimized democracy, reducing Russians’ willingness to defend it and increasing the number of people who saw no value in democracy. As Russia first abandoned Soviet authoritarianism in the early 1990s and forged new political institutions, multiple factors delegitimized competitive politics. First, the period of democratization was also a period of deep economic crisis, marked by social dislocation and falling living standards.21 Though this crisis was mostly a holdover from the final years of the Soviet Union, the population blamed economic pain on the new political system. In addition, the emergence of competitive politics coincided with a collapse in central state capacity and a rise in the influence of mafias and oligarchs. The Russian public blamed this shift, too, on the country’s new democratic institutions. Finally, democratization in the late 1980s and early 1990s coincided with the collapse of the Soviet/Russian Empire, causing nationalistically inclined Russians to associate democracy with geopolitical weakness. All these factors reduced the popularity of democracy.

The structure of Russian politics is different today than it was in 2000, when Putin was first elected president. Russia’s Constitution today has no provisions that are incompatible with democratic governance. The country has political parties, a variety of candidates, and elections in which the votes are usually (though not always) tallied broadly accurately.14 If you don’t look closely—and Russia’s government does not encourage anyone to do so—you could mistake the formal institutions of Russian politics for those of a democracy.

If you do look closely, however, you see that political institutions don’t work in the same way as do similar institutions in democratic systems. The winner of Russian presidential elections, for example, is known in advance. The country’s four major political parties compete for parliamentary seats, but they almost never criticize Putin.15 The parties run candidates for president, but only with the aim of winning second place. The state-controlled media covers presidential and parliamentary elections diligently but ensures that candidates with critical ideas get no airtime. Any politician who opposes Putin and has a chance of winning a medium-size following is harassed by the legal system and prevented from competing.

A second explanation for the failure of Russia’s democracy focuses on the decisions of Russia’s first president, Yeltsin. Some scholars argue that Russia’s competitive politics would have been preserved if only Yeltsin’s instincts were more democratic. For example, at a moment of constitutional crisis in 1993, Yeltsin ordered the military to storm Parliament and pushed through a new constitution by force, which set a precedent for resolving constitutional disputes violently and which substantially expanded presidential power. Second, during the 1996 presidential election, Yeltsin relied on illegal donations from oligarchs to fund his reelection campaign. Had Yeltsin not centralized power in 1993, and had he run a cleaner campaign in 1996 (a campaign that might have resulted in his defeat), many scholars argue, Russia would have entered the 2000s with a tradition of rotating presidential power via elections and with a stronger Parliament that would have been able to check executive branch excesses.22

A third explanation focuses on the decision and policies of Yeltsin’s successor, Putin. Even if the circumstances of Russia’s democratization in the early 1990s were not favorable for developing deep democratic roots, and even if Yeltsin was a mediocre steward of the country’s democratic institutions, Russia could have retained competitive electoral politics were it not for a slow-motion coup under President Putin. Upon becoming president, Putin centralized authority by extralegal means, accumulating far more power than Yeltsin ever had. He began by taking down news outlets owned by oligarchs who criticized him, such as Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, exiling both oligarchs on trumped-up charges.23 Then Putin jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, again on bogus charges, sending a message that unauthorized political action would be punished.24 Yeltsin’s main rivals were elected to Parliament; Putin’s, by contrast, were jailed.

In the 1990s, before the Putin era, politics worked differently. To be sure, Russia’s government in the 1990s was far from a model of democracy. It was unrepresentative, unresponsive, and at times authoritarian. It had deep and enduring flaws. Its only real political party was the Communist Party, which retained Soviet-era authoritarian instincts. Legislators sold their votes to the highest bidder, while judges sold court decisions and journalists sold favorable news coverage. A small class of oligarchs played an outsized role. There were few independent organizations, whether NGOs or labor unions, to mediate between the population and the government. By many tests of democratic governance, Russia in the 1990s would have failed. Yet there is one test that it would have passed: Russian electoral politics were competitive and unpredictable—a sharp contrast from today’s Russia, in which all important political questions are decided before elections occur. In the 1990s, the winner of elections was not known in advance, and the government often lost. I will define democracy as a form of government that includes three aspects:

Putin had the power to take these steps because he mobilized security service networks in government and in the business world, drawing on his background in the KGB.25 The number of current and former security services personnel in top Russian government positions increased markedly in Putin’s early years.26With the support of the security services, Putin defanged the media and ended electoral competition. Yeltsin’s allies lost every parliamentary election they contested during his presidential term. Putin’s party, by contrast, won majorities in every parliamentary vote.

• Regular, free, fair, and competitive elections.

• Broad-based participation in political processes.

• Protection of individual and minority group political rights.

By each of these metrics, Russia was at best a partial democracy in the 1990s. It is substantially less of a democracy today.

Modern Russia has had only a handful of competitive elections for Parliament or the presidency. There have been none since current President Putin and his team consolidated control. Over the past two decades, not a single Russian election could have realistically caused a turnover in power. In today’s Russia, elections serve multiple political purposes. They are most important as a tool for Moscow to test the competence of local elites, who are judged in part based on voter turnout.16 What elections have not done is offer voters a real choice. Instead, voters are given a fake choice, between President Putin (or, briefly, Dmitry Medvedev) and candidates from large parties that do not seek to oust Putin (e.g., the Communists, the far-right Liberal Democrats) or from small parties that will win at most several percentage points of the vote. Genuine opposition candidates who threaten to win a sizable vote share, such as Alexei Navalny, are not allowed to run. In addition to not offering voters a real choice, Kremlin-backed candidates have access to state resources to support their campaigns, while opposition candidates are all but barred from TV.

Russian elections were not always so stale. The vote that brought Yeltsin to power in 1991 was a surprise victory against the establishment candidate, Nikolai Ryzhkov.17 The 1996 presidential election, in which Yeltsin faced Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov, surprised everyone—Yeltsin included—when Yeltsin won reelection. True, these elections were marred by widespread allegations of illegal campaign tactics, notably of businesses and oligarchs violating campaign finance laws and buying votes. Yet the votes were probably counted roughly accurately, and in providing voters a clear, policy-relevant choice between Yeltsin and Zyuganov, the election passed a low bar of basic democratic practice.18 In Russia’s 1996 presidential election, for example, voters were given a choice, crude though it was, between retaining Yeltsin and his advocacy of private property or opting for the Communist Zyuganov, who promised to roll back capitalism.19 The result was unpredictable and had meaningful ramifications for government policy.20 By contrast, Russia’s most recent presidential vote, in 2018, had no policy ramifications, and candidates made no effort to stake out positions different from Putin’s, especially on issues that mattered. In the 1990s, in other words, Russia had a deeply flawed political system, with limited popular participation in governance, few independent institutions, yet nevertheless competitive and unpredictable elections. Today’s Russia has all the flaws of the 1990s, but it has dispensed with the competition.

Contrasting Russia’s 1999 and 2003 Parliamentary Elections
Three Explanations of Why Russia’s Democracy Failed
Why did Russia abandon electoral competition? Scholars have put forth three major explanations. The first focuses on structural forces that delegitimized democracy, reducing Russians’ willingness to defend it and increasing the number of people who saw no value in democracy. As Russia first abandoned Soviet authoritarianism in the early 1990s and forged new political institutions, multiple factors delegitimized competitive politics. First, the period of democratization was also a period of deep economic crisis, marked by social dislocation and falling living standards.21 Though this crisis was mostly a holdover from the final years of the Soviet Union, the population blamed economic pain on the new political system. In addition, the emergence of competitive politics coincided with a collapse in central state capacity and a rise in the influence of mafias and oligarchs. The Russian public blamed this shift, too, on the country’s new democratic institutions. Finally, democratization in the late 1980s and early 1990s coincided with the collapse of the Soviet/Russian Empire, causing nationalistically inclined Russians to associate democracy with geopolitical weakness. All these factors reduced the popularity of democracy.

How do we know that the Soviet legacy, the economic collapse, and Yeltsin’s centralization of power were not the key factors in undermining Russian democracy? One reason is that the last parliamentary election of Yeltsin’s time in office was the cleanest and most competitive that independent Russia ever had. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has monitored each of independent Russia’s presidential and parliamentary elections, studying whether the media environment was fair, incumbents and challengers had a level playing field, and votes were counted accurately. The OSCE monitors described the 1999 parliamentary elections—the last elections before Putin took power—as “a benchmark in the [Russian] Federation’s advancement toward representative democracy.”27 The subsequent parliamentary vote, in 2003, was assessed rather differently by OSCE monitors: votes were counted accurately, but “the election failed to meet a number of OSCE commitments for democratic elections, most notably those pertaining to: unimpeded access to the media on a non-discriminatory basis, a clear separation between the State and political parties, and guarantees to enable political parties to compete on the basis of equal treatment.”28

This difference in electoral quality was visible in election results. Voters responded to a lack of competition in 2003 by voting “against all”—or by not voting at all. Turnout was lower in 2003, at 55%, compared to 61% in 1999.29 In 2003, 4.7% of voters chose “against all,” compared to 3.3% in 1999.30 The biggest change, however, was the distribution of parliamentary seats. In 1999, given real competition, the opposition Communist Party won the largest vote share, with 24% of the vote by party list.31 The Fatherland–All Russia Party, led by Yeltsin’s rival Yevgeny Primakov, won 13%. Parties that were sympathetic to Yeltsin, including Unity and the Union of Rightist Forces, won 23% and 8%, respectively. Per Russian electoral law, half of parliamentary seats were distributed by party-list and half by single-mandate districts. In the districts, many candidates ran as independents, so neither the opposition nor the pro-presidential parties had a majority in Parliament. Yet the opposition held the largest bloc, and with 40% of seats had a strong voice in parliamentary affairs.32

A second explanation for the failure of Russia’s democracy focuses on the decisions of Russia’s first president, Yeltsin. Some scholars argue that Russia’s competitive politics would have been preserved if only Yeltsin’s instincts were more democratic. For example, at a moment of constitutional crisis in 1993, Yeltsin ordered the military to storm Parliament and pushed through a new constitution by force, which set a precedent for resolving constitutional disputes violently and which substantially expanded presidential power. Second, during the 1996 presidential election, Yeltsin relied on illegal donations from oligarchs to fund his reelection campaign. Had Yeltsin not centralized power in 1993, and had he run a cleaner campaign in 1996 (a campaign that might have resulted in his defeat), many scholars argue, Russia would have entered the 2000s with a tradition of rotating presidential power via elections and with a stronger Parliament that would have been able to check executive branch excesses.22

A third explanation focuses on the decision and policies of Yeltsin’s successor, Putin. Even if the circumstances of Russia’s democratization in the early 1990s were not favorable for developing deep democratic roots, and even if Yeltsin was a mediocre steward of the country’s democratic institutions, Russia could have retained competitive electoral politics were it not for a slow-motion coup under President Putin. Upon becoming president, Putin centralized authority by extralegal means, accumulating far more power than Yeltsin ever had. He began by taking down news outlets owned by oligarchs who criticized him, such as Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, exiling both

https://academic.oup.com/book/56192/chapter/443484057


When you finish this comrade signym, I'll send you the rest. Try to learn something, won't you?

T

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Sunday, December 29, 2024 2:40 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 THG:

https://academic.oup.com/book/56192/chapter/443484057

When you finish this comrade signym, I'll send you the rest. Try to learn something, won't you?

T
The final paragraph:
Quote:
In contrast to Russia, Ukraine’s oligarchs remained politically influential. In the process, they have provided funding and administrative support to different political parties, guaranteeing electoral competition of a sort. At key moments when Ukraine was on the verge of sliding into single-party authoritarianism, as in 2004 and 2013, competing oligarchs provided support for street protests and opposition parties, without which these popular movements would likely have failed. Ukraine’s political system, despite flaws, is far more competitive than Russia’s. Russia, by contrast, has marginalized its oligarchs but sunk into authoritarian rule that might continue for the remainder of Putin’s life. In the early 2000s, Russia and Ukraine faced a similar, unappealing choice: unchecked oligarchs or unchecked central authority. It is better to have no oligarchs in politics. But it is worse to have only one.

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

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Sunday, December 29, 2024 5:22 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


154 pages of bullshit is what this thread is.

Wasted space on one of Haken's hard drives.

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

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

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Sunday, December 29, 2024 6:24 PM

THG


Thanks for finishing my above post SECOND.

T

2024 Exposed: What My Predictions Foretold!






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Sunday, December 29, 2024 6:59 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
In contrast to Russia, Ukraine’s oligarchs remained politically influential.
This is another way of saying that Ukraine is ruled by oligarchs, but Russia is not.

How is that a bad thing?


*****

NONE of this... sour grapes, narrative- revision, hope-ium and cope-ium, history rewriting ... obliterates the facts on the ground: Russia is winning the war. And its winning not against "Ukraine" but against the entire collective west, i.e. NATO.

FYI fingerprinting and blamestorming are reaching a fever pitch.

-----------
"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, December 29, 2024 7:34 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


The worst part about the brainless useful tools like Ted is how fucking smug about everything they are.

Who could blame Ted for wanting to be told that he's right about everything, no matter how wrong everything he thinks ends up being when time exposes his "thoughts" for the programmed propaganda it was.

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

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

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Monday, December 30, 2024 8:10 AM

SECOND

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


Putin signed on December 28 a new Strategy for Countering Extremism in Russia.[7] Putin signed Russia's last iteration of such strategy in 2020. The 2024 strategy includes mentions of "Russophobia" for the first time, which the document defines as the "unfriendly, biased, and hostile" attitudes and "discriminatory actions" towards Russian citizens, language, and culture by states that are unfriendly to Russia. The 2024 document, unlike the 2020 version, also lists Ukraine as a main source of extremism and accuses Ukraine of disseminating neo-Nazi ideas. The documents states that Russia needs to "eliminate" the source of extremist threats that come from Ukraine.

Putin claimed in February 2022 when he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Russia was pursuing the "denazification" of Ukraine – an attempt to justify the removal of the legitimate, democratically elected government of Ukraine.[8] Putin has made similar statements recently reiterating his refusal to consider compromises on his late 2021 and early 2022 demands.[9]

The document's mentions of "Russophobia" and "discrimination" against Russian citizens, language, and culture also align with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's recent talking point that such alleged discrimination by the current Ukrainian authorities is a "root cause" of Russia's war against Ukraine that any future negotiations must address.[10]

The Kremlin will likely exploit this new strategy document to justify its calls for the removal of the Ukrainian government as "anti-extremist" measures.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-december-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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Tuesday, December 31, 2024 5:59 AM

SECOND

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


Putin’s top propagandists highlight yet more similarities between Putin and Trump and explain how the President-elect is already helping the Kremlin.

By Julia Davis | Dec. 30 2024 11:58AM EST

https://www.thedailybeast.com/kremlin-insiders-reveal-how-trump-is-alr
eady-secretly-helping-putin/

President-elect Donald Trump’s social media posts about annexing Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal startled America’s allies and delighted foreign foes. In Russia, the statements were interpreted to mean that Trump isn’t really opposed to foreign wars of conquest after all.

To them, Trump’s tirades revealed that—just like Russian President Vladimir Putin—Trump would be delighted to invade any country that couldn’t fight back. He would expect accolades and a lavish victory parade after seizing foreign territories, just like the fallout from Russia stealing Crimea in 2014.

Trump infamously described the annexation of Crimea as a “genius” and “savvy” move.

Putin tried to repeat the trick and take the rest of Ukraine in three days in 2022, and the Kremlin insiders believe Trump only disapproves of the war because it turned out to be lengthy and costly.

Russia’s premier propagandists and experts already believe that Trump can be persuaded to go along with Moscow’s wish list if Putin gets to influence him, tête-à-tête personally. They are vehemently opposed to the idea of negotiating with retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s Ukraine envoy. The dream scenario that they envision would include legitimizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and recognizing Moscow’s territorial demands.

In the meantime, Trump’s stated intentions towards Greenland, Canada, and Panama are being celebrated as implicit validation for Russia’s current and future land grabs. During Sunday’s broadcast of Vesti Nedeli (The Weekly News), host Dmitry Kiselyov devoted an entire segment to America’s planned expansion under Trump. He pointed out, “Trump isn’t joking. He is determined to expand American territorial possessions. Personally, I am convinced that he will succeed.” Kiselyov predicted, “Trump will grab strategically important parts of the world for America. It isn’t funny. What is funny is to see whether anyone in the Old World will try to sanction the United States in response to its territorial expansion. This is when we will find out how principled the lovers of sanctions truly are.”

He added, “Think about it. If Trump gets away with all of this, inspired by his success, he might look at the rest of the globe, focus on vulnerable spots, and keep going. Where will he stop? Doesn’t it mean that others can do the same?”

Last Thursday, pundits on the state TV show The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov spent most of the broadcast rejoicing about the way the world will change during Trump’s presidency. Host Vladimir Solovyov said, “Trump politely announced that the U.S. will be expanding its borders.”

State Duma member Andrey Lugovoy, notorious for his involvement in the deadly poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, noted, “It feels like we spent the last four years in Biden’s madhouse and now we’re gradually transitioning to Trump’s circus.” He speculated that the incoming president will resort to the madman theory as his political strategy, akin to the foreign policy of former U.S. President Richard Nixon. Lugovoy said that no one knows whether Trump is joking when he is making statements about Greenland, Panama, and Canada.

Host Vladimir Solovyov vehemently disagreed. He said, “These are awesome statements! No, he is not joking... of course he isn’t joking! Do you think I’m kidding when I say that Finland, Warsaw, the Baltics, Moldova, and Tallinn should come back home? Do you think I’m joking? No! They should all rejoin the Russian Empire. Followed by Alaska, by the way. Give it back.”

Solovyov added, “The way he is rationalizing it is tremendous. We should follow his example and quietly take everything back.” Echoing the statements of Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s top propagandist argued that Russia should now take more than the four Ukrainian regions it has already constitutionally decreed to be Russian.

Lugovoy stated, “My friends, Trump’s insane statements show that there should not be any ceasefire. Why would we need a ceasefire when we’re confidently moving forward?”

Solovyov surmised, “I believe that what Trump is doing benefits us greatly. Trump is totally destroying any illusions that anyone might have still had about the summit of democracies, about respecting opinions of NATO allies. It’s like he’s saying, “Who are all of you? You’re all nobodies! I will talk to Putin and Xi Jinping... He is a great guy, an awesome guy!”

Professor Dmitry Evstafiev said, “Trump did something fantastic for Russia and for the whole world... He clearly answered a question, “Leadership or hegemony?” and chose hegemony. With his approach of geographical enlargement, he buried the entire collective West. There is no collective West, and it will never be united again.”

America expert Dmitry Drobnitsky emphasized, “Based on the team Trump is bringing along and who he is himself, it’s clear that he is certainly not a builder of a new world order. He is a destroyer. He will tear down the old world order.” Solovyov added, “By taking Canada, Trump is basically saying, “Russians, you can take the Baltics.””

Military expert Mikhail Khodaryonok noted, “After the statement of President-elect Donald Trump about Canada, Greenland, and Panama, in my opinion, we can now consider special military operations as the norm for resolving arguments between countries. The silence of European leaders clearly confirms this.”

Political scientist Dmitry Kulikov added the era of nation-states is over and that the world will return to the era of empires. He confidently said, “The new world is dawning.” Solovyov agreed, “This is the era of the strong.”

Russian experts endorse Trump's ideas



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

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Tuesday, December 31, 2024 6:03 AM

SECOND

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


Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated Russia's demand that Ukraine renounce its right to sovereignty and territorial integrity as a precondition to start peace talks, indicating that Russia is not interested in good faith negotiations. Lavrov stated in an interview with Kremlin newswire TASS published on December 30 that Russia will not participate in any negotiations to end its war in Ukraine unless Ukraine renounces its right and objective of liberating its territory up to its internationally recognized 1991 borders.[1] Lavrov added that Russia considers Ukraine's objective of liberating its territory to its internationally recognized 1991 borders an "ultimatum." The Kremlin is likely attempting to impose unrealistic demands on Ukraine that violate international law to stymie legitimate good faith negotiations. Russia is also likely attempting to force the West into coercing Ukraine into acknowledging and accepting territorial concessions that will benefit Russia in the long term. Lavrov and other Russian officials have previously dismissed Ukraine's right to sovereignty and territorial integrity as a legitimate negotiating position.[2] ISW continues to assess that Russia is not interested in good faith negotiations with Ukraine and will continue to pursue Ukraine's total capitulation.[3]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-december-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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Tuesday, December 31, 2024 6:55 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Nobody cares about Russia dude.

Grow up.

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

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

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Tuesday, December 31, 2024 7:39 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:
Nobody cares about Russia dude.

Grow up.

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

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
6ix, I'd have the same amount of respect for you if you insisted that the world is flat and Ukraine is an imaginary country beyond the edge of Earth . . .

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

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Tuesday, December 31, 2024 4:01 PM

SECOND

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


Russia Faces Exodus As Millions Could Be Poised To Leave Country

By Brendan Cole | Dec 31, 2024 at 3:12 PM EST

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-putin-migration-2007822

According to OECD figures from 2019 when Russia's population was over 146 million, around seven percent of the population are illegal migrants (10 million), potentially putting many at risk of deportation under Putin's order.

Putin's decree, signed on Monday, comes into force on New Year's Day and states that migrants who are in the country illegally must leave the country or settle their legal status by April 30.

They can obtain legal status by signing a military contract which could make them available to fight against Ukraine.

It is unclear if the decree will be enforced.

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

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Tuesday, December 31, 2024 4:15 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


a War that did blow up in Putin's Face

a stalemate of sorts, hundreds of thousands dead on both sides, Ukraine cities destoryed and slowly but slowly Ukraine running out of people


but a War that Democrats and Republics and NATO and the EU would fund and give aid to Ukraine

Biden unveils final $2.5B security aid package for Ukraine
https://ground.news/article/biden-unveils-final-25b-security-aid-packa
ge-for-ukraine

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Tuesday, December 31, 2024 4:48 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 JAYNEZTOWN:
a War that did blow up in Putin's Face

a stalemate of sorts, hundreds of thousands dead on both sides, Ukraine cities destoryed and slowly but slowly Ukraine running out of people


but a War that Democrats and Republics and NATO and the EU would fund and give aid to Ukraine

Biden unveils final $2.5B security aid package for Ukraine
https://ground.news/article/biden-unveils-final-25b-security-aid-packa
ge-for-ukraine
On one hand, the Ukrainians fight because Russians will kill millions of them and enslave the rest if Russia wins. On the other hand, every country supporting Ukraine does it for less urgent reasons such as Ukraine is an excellent testing ground to learn which weapons are useful and which are a waste of money. Since the USA spends hundreds of billions per year on new weapons, spending tens of billions testing the weapons in Ukraine is not excessive spending.

For the countries that were attacked by Russia in the 20th Century, there might also be very tangible reasons to support Ukraine such as Russia can attack them in the 21st Century once Ukraine falls. Until Russia attacked Ukraine, it was claiming it wouldn't, which is why countries don't believe Russia won't attack them.

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

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Wednesday, January 1, 2025 6:00 AM

SECOND

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


Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated on December 30 that Russian forces suffered 427,000 casualties in 2024.[1] ISW has observed geolocated evidence to assess that Russian forces advanced 4,168 square kilometers in 2024, indicating that Russian forces have suffered approximately 102 casualties per square kilometer of Ukrainian territory seized. ISW previously observed that Russian forces gained 2,356 square kilometers in exchange for an estimated 125,800 casualties during a period of intensified Russian offensive operations in September, October, and November 2024.[2] Russian forces made 56.5 percent of their 2024 territorial gains during the September through November 2024 period. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev claimed on December 24 that 440,000 recruits signed military service contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) in 2024, suggesting that Russia is likely recruiting just enough military personnel to replace its recently high casualty rates one for one.[3]

Russian advances have slowed in December 2024, however. ISW has observed geolocated evidence to assess that Russian forces gained 593 square kilometers or 18.1 square kilometers per day in December 2024, while the number of daily Russian casualties in December 2024 remained similar to the estimated daily casualty rate in November 2024. The Ukrainian General Staff reported a daily Russian personnel casualty average of 1,585 in December 2024, marking a fourth all-time high of Russia's daily casualty rate following reports that Russia's average daily Russian personnel casualty reached a new all-time high of 1,523 casualties per day in November 2024.[4] Russian forces were advancing at the notably higher rate of 27.96 square kilometers per day in November 2024.[5] Syrskyi stated on December 30 that Russian forces have suffered 1,700 casualties per day over the past week (since December 23), indicating the Russian forces may have suffered an even higher casualty rate in the last few weeks of 2024 even as Russian advances slowed.[6] The Russian military command likely tolerated record levels of personnel casualties from September through November 2024 to facilitate larger territorial gains, but it remains unclear if the Russian military command will be willing to sustain such casualties if Russian forces' rate of advance continues to decline as Russian forces continue to advance on more heavily defended settlements such as Pokrovsk.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-december-31-2024

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

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Wednesday, January 1, 2025 9:31 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Thanks to SECOND'S diligent scouring of the MSM, I can keep up with the propaganda narrativein one easy place.

*****

Kurokhova has been fully liberated by Russia.

Dima's Military Sunmary Channel shows one last line of fortifications west of the current line of contact. But in the Kurakhova area, there are none. If the map is correct, this is a major gap that Russia can exploit to more easily expand to the west.



Russia has changed tactics. Earlier, they either played "rope a dope" in areas deemed unimportant (Robatyne, Krynky) or assaulted locations head on (Mariupol, Avdeevka, Bakhmut). Now, rather than assaulting fortified areas head on, they seem to be using "pincer" movements with great succcess to cut off supply and evacuation routes (Vugledar, Velyka Novasilka, Kurakhova, Pakrovsk*, Kupiansk, Sudzha). To my inexpert eye, the two exceptions are Chasov Yar which they are tackling directly; and one area near Sieversk, which seems too difficult to crack, owing to a combination of forests and dense fortifications.

Given their new tactic, by avoiding concentrations of Uki troops, and by controlling roadways, I imagine Russia's casualties going down rather than up.


*****

Back to Russia's new hypersonic missile, the Oreshnik. I think the confusion about its warhead is being clarified, bc initial thought on the strike on Ukraine's hardened missile factory was that it contained dummy warheads.

Au contraire.

Apparently, when any projectile strikes a hardened target, the energy transferred is more than mv^2. That's owing to breaking of metal lattice bonds. The thought led to thevscifi weapon speculated decades ago: solid tungsten rods dropped from space, so-calked 'rods from god'.

It appears the Oreshnik is equipped with similar, up to now a theoretical/scifi tungsten/aluminum compound compound that penetrates most hardened structures (owing to its speed) but doesnt 'explode' until it hits something more solid. So that hardened missile factory got holes punched in its roof but was blown to pieces inside. Some say.

-----------
"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, January 1, 2025 11:08 AM

THG


T

One Ship Inspection Could Unravel Global Maritime Shipping






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Wednesday, January 1, 2025 2:01 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:
Thanks to SECOND'S diligent scouring of the MSM, I can keep up with the propaganda narrativein one easy place.
New Year's Greetings from President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy

31 December 2024 - 23:40

Dear People!

Behind me stands Mother Ukraine. Ukraine that stands firmly on its feet, does not bow its head, looks ahead, believes in its future and victory over all the evil that Russia has brought us. Ukraine that is capable of achieving a just peace – having a shield and a sword.

More at https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/novorichne-privitannya-prezidenta
-ukrayini-volodimira-zelens-95297

The speech ends thusly:

Dear Ukrainians!

May 2025 be our year. The year of Ukraine. We know that peace will not be given to us as a gift. But we will do everything to stop Russia and end the war. This is what each of us wishes for.

Behind all of us stands Mother Ukraine. And she deserves to live in peace. I wish this to all of us. And as the President of Ukraine, as well as a citizen, I will do everything to achieve it in the coming year. Knowing that I will not be alone. I know that you stand shoulder to shoulder with me – millions of Ukrainians. Strong. Free. Beautiful. Independent.

Happy New Year, dear people!

Happy New Year, Ukraine!

Glory to Ukraine!



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

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Wednesday, January 1, 2025 3:01 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I don't know where Zelensky is living, but it's not in Ukraine.


-----------
"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, January 1, 2025 3:30 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Glory to Ukraine!




How much glory without our $300 Billion?

If Joe Biden* wasn't fleecing the American People of their wealth and laundering the money through child rapist Zelesnky, Ukrainians would all be playing Tetris and singing the State Anthem of the Russian Federation.

Fuck Ukraine.



If they want to keep poking the Russian bear going forward, they can pay Raytheon to fight their wars for them with their own tax dollars. SPOILER ALERT: There won't be any money left for healthcare or any other social services in the country when they do this.


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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, January 2, 2025 1:12 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Oh,and then there's Volodomir’s not extending the gas transit contract with Russia. A couple of things will happen:

Gas deliveries to Europe thru Ukraine will end. Nordstream was partially blown up, then shut down. Poland shut down its gas pipeline a year(?) ago. That basically left Ukraine and Southstream (via Turkey) delivering to southern and central Europe. Ukraine ending the gas transit contract will affect Austria, Slovakia and Hungary the most, but inevitably gas prices will rise across all of Europe and fan inflation.

Gas deliveries TO UKRAINE will end. Ukraine has been diverting gas that was supposed to be delivered elsewhere for it's own use ..a not insubstantial amount!

Ukraine and the EU think they can, and are bring pressured to, buy LNG from the USA at substantially higher prices, and less certain delivery.

Ukraine has been committing suicide for a number of years now, if nothing else bc they never got their oligarchs under control. The EU has been actively committing suicide since 2022 and it doesn't look like they're about to stop


-----------
"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, January 2, 2025 2:36 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


If we haven't already reached the point, you're going to have Ukranians begging for the war to be over. It isn't even their fucking war. Those that thought it was were just propagandized to believe it was.

Anybody in that country still invested in this war is playing out a sunk cost fallacy.



Now they're going to start getting pressure from all the Eastern European nations to end this war too.

And once America stops funding it and the Ukranian citizens have to start giving child rapist Zelensky the shirts off their backs to keep funding it after everything he has put them through they're going to eat him alive.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, January 2, 2025 6:12 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine’s Newest Leopard 2 Brigade Began Disintegrating Before It Reached The Front Line

The 155th Mechanized Brigade’s troops and tanks may have been more useful as reinforcements for existing units.

By David Axe | Jan 1, 2025, 7:45pm EST

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/01/01/ukraines-newest-leopa
rd-2-brigade-began-disintegrating-before-it-reached-the-front-line/

A pair of Russian field armies, together overseeing 70,000 troops in dozens of regiments and brigades, is bearing down on Pokrovsk, a fortress city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

Bracing for the coming assault, the culmination of a Russian offensive that began more than a year ago, the Ukrainians are reinforcing Pokrovsk. But one of the reinforcing units, the newly formed 155th Mechanized Brigade—one of the few Ukrainian brigades with German-made Leopard 2 tanks and French-made Caesar howitzers—began disintegrating before it even arrived in the besieged city last week.

The brigade was supposed to have more than 5,800 troops, making it much larger than most of the Ukrainian ground forces’ roughly 100 other combat brigades. But around 1,700 of those 5,800 troops went absent without leave from the brigade at some point during its nine-month work-up in western Ukraine, Poland and France. As recently as November, nearly 500 soldiers were reportedly still AWOL.

“The issue is in organizational and leadership failure,” according to Tatarigami, the founder of the Frontelligence Insight analysis group in Ukraine. Under Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky, military leaders including commander-in-chief Gen. Oleksandr Stanislavovych Syrskyi have prioritized forming new novice brigades—at least 14 of them—over replenishing existing veteran brigades that, after 34 months of hard fighting, might be down to half or less of their original strength.

But the new brigades are dysfunctional—with uneven leadership, missing equipment and entire battalions of undertrained, ambivalently led new recruits who have a bad habit of abandoning their brigade at the first opportunity. Rolling into battle outside Pokrovsk in recent days, the 155th Mechanized Brigade suffered heavy casualties, reportedly even losing some of its tanks and other armored vehicles.

Those troops and tanks would have stood a better chance fighting under experienced brigades, according to Lt. Col. Bohdan Krotevych, chief of staff of the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov Brigade. “Can it be idiocy to create new brigades and equip them with such equipment, having incomplete existing ones?” Krotevych asked.

It’s not necessarily idiocy—it’s politics. Under pressure to demonstrate to Ukraine’s ficklest allies that Ukraine still has reserves of strength and the capacity to keep fighting, Zelensky and his top generals have done the showy thing: formed new brigades. They’ve done it even though it might make more military sense to replenish older brigades with fresh troops and equipment.

“The country's top political and military leadership actually played with the 155th [Mechanized] Brigade, without even trying to systematically prepare and train the brigade, and without giving the brigade commanders time to create a combat-ready team themselves,” Ukrainian war correspondent Yuriy Butusov wrote.

Ironically, the 155th Mechanized Brigade’s disastrous first days in combat compelled Ukrainian leaders to do with the brigade’s surviving troops and equipment what Tatarigami and Krotevych insisted they should have done from the outset: assign these forces to well-established brigades in the Pokrovsk area.

But that won’t bring back the people and tanks the 155th Mechanized Brigade lost last 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, January 2, 2025 6:14 AM

SECOND

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


Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has reacted ironically to the end of Russian gas transit through Ukraine.

"Putin spent billions building Nordstream to circumvent Ukraine and blackmail Eastern Europe with the threat of cutting off gas supplies. Today Ukraine cut off his ability to export gas direct to the EU. Whoever digs a hole for others [will fall into it himself]...," the Polish foreign minister tweeted.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/01/1/7491642/

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

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Thursday, January 2, 2025 6:41 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
It’s not necessarily idiocy—it’s politics. Under pressure to demonstrate to Ukraine’s ficklest allies that Ukraine still has reserves of strength and the capacity to keep fighting, Zelensky and his top generals have done the showy thing: formed new brigades. They’ve done it even though it might make more military sense to replenish older brigades with fresh troops and equipment.

“The country's top political and military leadership actually played with the 155th [Mechanized] Brigade, without even trying to systematically prepare and train the brigade, and without giving the brigade commanders time to create a combat-ready team themselves,” Ukrainian war correspondent Yuriy Butusov wrote.

Ironically, the 155th Mechanized Brigade’s disastrous first days in combat compelled Ukrainian leaders to do with the brigade’s surviving troops and equipment what Tatarigami and Krotevych insisted they should have done from the outset: assign these forces to well-established brigades in the Pokrovsk area.

But that won’t bring back the people and tanks the 155th Mechanized Brigade lost last week.


This is what happens when you let this guy LARP as a general...




How many Ukrainian men that didn't have to die are dead now?

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, January 2, 2025 9:49 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 6ixStringJack:

How many Ukrainian men that didn't have to die are dead now?

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
The previous Russian invasions of Ukraine left millions of dead Ukrainians. A few thousand Ukrainians are dying now to prevent millions dying in the future. For one historic example, but it is not the only time Russians killed millions of Ukranians: The Holodomor, also known as the Ukrainian Famine, was a human-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

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

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Thursday, January 2, 2025 12:27 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
The previous Russian invasions of Ukraine left millions of dead Ukrainians. A few thousand Ukrainians are dying now to prevent millions dying in the future.


First of all. It's not "a few thousand" dead Ukrainians, it's in the realm of 500,000 to a million.

Secondly. Are you trying to convince us that up to a million Ukrainians are dead in order to fight a historical event? That makes as much sense as "the north" launching an attack on "the south" in order to re-fight the Civil War bc they were slavers "back then"?

Son, Stalin has been dead for 70 years already. I know you keep trying to redo history ... fighting the ghosts of Stalin and tsars long dead ... but that was then. Trying to redo history is just another one of your many distractions from reality.

Fighting Stalin is not our goal. Up the to a milllion Ukrainians are dead, and millions made refugees, bc a cabal of neocons spent billions of dollars regime-changing Ukraine and picking a fight with Russia via Ukraine. All in order to regime-change Russia and steal its assets. AGAIN. And right now, Ukrainians are paying the price of being a LOSING proxy.

They really should have taken Kissinger seriously. (I stand by my interpretation of Kissinger's statement.)


-----------
"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, January 2, 2025 3:30 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
The previous Russian invasions of Ukraine left millions of dead Ukrainians. A few thousand Ukrainians are dying now to prevent millions dying in the future.


First of all. It's not "a few thousand" dead Ukrainians, it's in the realm of 500,000 to a million.

Secondly. Are you trying to convince us that up to a million Ukrainians are dead in order to fight a historical event? That makes as much sense as "the north" launching an attack on "the south" in order to re-fight the Civil War bc they were slavers "back then"?

Son, Stalin has been dead for 70 years already. I know you keep trying to redo history ... fighting the ghosts of Stalin and tsars long dead ... but that was then. Trying to redo history is just another one of your many distractions from reality.

Fighting Stalin is not our goal. Up the to a milllion Ukrainians are dead, and millions made refugees, bc a cabal of neocons spent billions of dollars regime-changing Ukraine and picking a fight with Russia via Ukraine. All in order to regime-change Russia and steal its assets. AGAIN. And right now, Ukrainians are paying the price of being a LOSING proxy.

They really should have taken Kissinger seriously. (I stand by my interpretation of Kissinger's statement.)


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


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

You might want to rewrite the above paragraphs using actual numbers from Ukraine for dead and wounded: Kyiv reveals total Ukraine casualties in Putin’s war for first time
Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 370,000 wounded.
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-volodymyr-zelenskyy-announces-
its-total-military-casualties-first-time/

The people who should actually flee fighting are the Russians, not the Ukrainians.

Signym, write an explanation for why Russians fight in Ukraine. It would center around the money Russian soldiers are promised when they enlist and when they die. Russians would not have to be paid outrageously high bonuses if they were fighting for something more than money.

How much money are Russian soldiers promised when they enlist and when they die.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+money+are+Russian+soldiers+pr
omised+when+they+enlist+and+when+they+die.

In late November, Russia passed a law enabling the cancellation of debts for soldiers who began service after 1 December 2024. This initiative covers loans up to approximately $94,400 (10,000,000 rubles) and extends to soldiers’ spouses as well.

This measure adds to the existing “Loan Repayment Holidays” program for Russian military personnel. According to Russia’s Mediazona, 411,000 applications for mortgage and personal loan repayment have been filed since October 2022.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/11/19/russian-lawmakers-approve-de
bt-relief-bill-for-new-army-recruits-a87069

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

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Thursday, January 2, 2025 9:11 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


You are retarded.

None of these concepts that you talk about every day are things you can even grasp in that 75 digit IQ brain of yours. And you're far too lousy an actor to pull it off in any believable way.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, January 2, 2025 10:31 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
You might want to rewrite the above paragraphs using actual numbers from Ukraine for dead and wounded: Kyiv reveals total Ukraine casualties in Putin’s war for first time Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed


OMFG!!!!



Kiyv reveals bullshit. Do you ... honestly/ seriously... believe Kieve would "reveal" its actual killed and wounded casualties???

Well, you either think they're incredibly stupid (doing that in a wartime situation and all) or unbelievably honest. Or that WE'RE unbelievably gullible.

You!

You're just too much!!!



-----------
"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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Friday, January 3, 2025 12:09 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


We are in a culture now where you do one of two things...

1) You believe everything your side tells you and nothing the other side says.

or

2) You don't believe anything that anybody is saying at any time.


I know Number One is super destructive for our country in both the short-term and the long-term, but I'm not very convinced that Number 2 is any better.



It's pretty fucked up that this simple phrase no longer pertains to Aliens as it originally did in the 90's and now it applies to every news story and/or every single thing a politician, bureaucrat, or so-called "expert" says or does.





This truly is



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, January 3, 2025 6:37 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:
Quote:
You might want to rewrite the above paragraphs using actual numbers from Ukraine for dead and wounded: Kyiv reveals total Ukraine casualties in Putin’s war for first time Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed


OMFG!!!!



Kiyv reveals bullshit. Do you ... honestly/ seriously... believe Kieve would "reveal" its actual killed and wounded casualties???

Well, you either think they're incredibly stupid (doing that in a wartime situation and all) or unbelievably honest. Or that WE'RE unbelievably gullible.

You!

You're just too much!!!

I am never sure why Americans who are doing poorly get confused about what is true and false. Does bitterness and random bursts of anger cause confusion? Or does confusion cause bitterness and bursts?

Signym, to diseased individuals like you and 6ix, and I do mean physically diseased as a health fact rather than an insult, everything is a lie. Does your immediate physical suffering cause your attitude? Or are you protecting yourself from future disappointment from a dull future and fear of an early grave? I see it all over the Trumptard world, where these sad people call everything a lie, except for what they want to be true. Those lies the Trumptards want to believe.

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

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Friday, January 3, 2025 6:44 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:
We are in a culture now where you do one of two things...

1) You believe everything your side tells you and nothing the other side says.

or

2) You don't believe anything that anybody is saying at any time.


I know Number One is super destructive for our country in both the short-term and the long-term, but I'm not very convinced that Number 2 is any better.
I believe everything Trump says. All of it is true. It is the same with Putin. All of it is true. When Trump says he wants Greenland and remove all illegal aliens, I believe him. When Putin says he wants all of Ukraine and to nuke the West, I believe him. But they are simply expressing their wants and needs. When it comes time to get what they want, Trump and Putin screw it up with insufficient planning.

I get peevish waiting for silly old fat Trump and goofy-looking old Putin to stop talking endlessly while wasting precious time/resources/manpower and finally get around to doing the careful work necessary to make their dreams come true.

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

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Friday, January 3, 2025 6:44 AM

SECOND

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


Documentaries like 'Intercepted' and 'Songs of Slow Burning Earth' grapple with the Russian occupation of Ukraine beyond mere displays of desolation.

By Debanjan Dhar | 3 January 2025 7:29 am

https://www.outlookindia.com/art-entertainment/sculpting-in-time

Oksana Karpovych’s Intercepted (2024) pushes into and grapples with the psyche of on-ground Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine. The film opens north of Kyiv, before heading south and east, ostensibly mirroring the trajectory of the invasion as it unfurled. Karpovych was working as a producer for Al Jazeera in the country when Russia invaded Ukraine. Ukrainian security forces intercepted the radio transmissions among the on-ground Russian soldiers. These included calls they made to their families back home. Soon, these were publicly released. Karpovych scoured through 30 hours of audio clips and set out with a minimal crew, capturing the desolation seeping through the war-torn land. The film assembles calls intercepted from March to November 2022, placing them against a visual and geographical tour of Ukraine.

The dissonance between sound and image weaves something profoundly disturbing. As the calls are transposed against seemingly mundane scenes of Ukrainians getting through the day, there’s a deep sense of alienation and emotional purgation at play. It is as if our healthy, empathetic response to immense cruelty is being tested and our capacity to endure a barrage of violence every day is being assessed.

There are no overt embodiments of violence in the film. Rather, a spectre hangs over its milieu. It’s in the marks on the places—a residual sense of the carnage that has billowed through every corner of the country. Houses look like they have been hurriedly vacated.

In the calls, what registers especially is a tussle between the Russian entitlement to their horrific deeds and the gradual fraying of their souls. Soldiers seek reassurance from the women in their families—mothers and wives—to insist on the righteousness of their occupation. None of the men sounds zealous or charged about duty. They have hurled themselves into the deep end of things so as to hasten about an end to duty and return home. They liken their mission to foraging in the dark. But since they committed to it, there’s no turning back. To angle for retreat or escape amounts to reneging, risking being slain by one’s own men.

In interviews, Karpovych emphasises, “War is also a lot about silence and waiting, and this horrible sense of time being suspended.” Much of the violence perpetrated by the forces is just to expedite the homecoming, the soldiers imply.

However, it’s not clear to them what they are liberating. Why did they capture Ukraine? What “cause” are they, anyway, fighting for, they ask, defeat and cynical amusement bosoming the question. They are aware that people don’t matter to Putin. “It’s all about conquest of land,” one asserts, while his wife exhorts him against such gloom and resignation. Often, the cold logic of those waiting at home for their loved ones to return from the battlefield cuts deeper than sites of ravage. Soldiers’ wives and mothers spur them on to steal as many things as possible—make-up, sneakers, laptops and vitamins: “Take everything.”

How does the artillery of the State propaganda get so entrenched in the minds of citizens’ inhumanity, signed off under protectionism? When a soldier’s disillusionment rings through, their partner feels the moral imperative to remind them of the necessity of their acts, even if it’s brutal. A mother shot at while on a walk with her kids is also rationalised. “A mother is the enemy, too,” a soldier’s wife underlines with gentle matter-of-factness. The documentary, however, is cautious and sceptical in dovetailing measures of compassion among the Russians for the Ukrainians. There’s extreme loathing and envy at the seeming material plenitude the Ukrainians may have been vested with as opposed to them. The Russian forces, of course, drew heavy conscriptions from poverty-stricken areas. Their initial sense of duty funnelled from this rage and bitterness. Nevertheless, it can’t run the entire course.

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

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Friday, January 3, 2025 8:16 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
You might want to rewrite the above paragraphs using actual numbers from Ukraine for dead and wounded: Kyiv reveals total Ukraine casualties in Putin’s war for first time Zelenskyy said 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed...

SIGNY: OMFG!!!!

Kiyv reveals bullshit. Do you ... honestly/ seriously... believe Kieve would "reveal" its actual killed and wounded casualties???
Well, you either think they're incredibly stupid (doing that in a wartime situation and all) or unbelievably honest. Or that WE'RE unbelievably gullible.
You!
You're just too much!!!


SECOND: I am never sure why Americans who are doing poorly get confused about what is true and false.


A) I'm not doing poorly.
B) I'm not confused. It would be stupid to the point of treason for Zelensky to reveal Kiev's actual casualty rate. But at least the Kremlin doesn't bullshit about its war dead. They have the good sense to just STFU instead of telling laughable whoppers.
Quote:
SECOND: Does bitterness and random bursts of anger cause confusion? Or does confusion cause bitterness and bursts?
C) I'm not bitter. I'm not angry. You must be posting about somebody else. You, perhaps.
Quote:
SECOND: To diseased individuals ... everything is a lie. Does immediate physical suffering cause that attitude? Or are you protecting yourself from future disappointment from a dull future and fear of an early grave? [To them] everything a lie, except for what they want to be true.
Now THAT is what I call projection! With just minor rewrite to generalize your statement, it all belongs to you.

I must have touched a nerve. Or two.


Well, I'm getting on with my life. I suggest you get help and get on with yours bc you've been attempting to rewrite the past as long as you've been posting here. Even your signature is an attempt to rewrite the past.

Dood. It is what it is. Accept it. If you don't like it, move on and try to change yourself and your future behavior. Yanno, it's a new year and all that. Try not to waste it. It might be your last.

-----------
"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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Friday, January 3, 2025 8:24 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Back on topic ...

-----------
"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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Friday, January 3, 2025 5:23 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
The "strange defeat" of the West: reality and realism

I have already written on several occasions about the lack of realism with which the West usually approaches the ongoing crisis in and around Ukraine, and the almost cloying dissociation from the real world it displays in its words and actions. However, as the situation deteriorates and Russian forces advance everywhere, there is no evidence that the West is any more grounded in reality in its understanding, and it is highly likely that it will learn nothing and continue to live in its alternative construction of reality until it is forcibly expelled.

It is true that some bold avant-garde thinkers in the West are beginning to question the need for negotiations, albeit on Western terms. They are beginning to accept that perhaps some of the Ukrainian territory of 1991 will have to be considered lost, even if only in the short term. Perhaps, they wonder, a Korean-style demilitarised zone will be established, guaranteed by neutral troops, until Ukraine can be rebuilt to resume the offensive. And then they look at the map of Russian advances, look at the size and power of the two armies, look at the size and readiness of NATO forces, and sink into despair.

But not really: forget that last sentence. They do not look, and if they did, they would not be able to understand what they see anyway. The “debate” (if you can call it that) in the West largely excludes the reality of life. It takes place at a high normative level, where certain facts and truths are simply assumed. The why of this and the consequences are the subject of the first part of this essay and then, since these topics are inherently complex, I will explain how to understand them as simply as possible.

Truffles and fanatics

Let us begin with some practical considerations of sociology and political psychology. The first is that politics is a classic example of the sunk cost phenomenon. The longer one persists in a course of action, however stupid, the less likely one is to change it. Changing course will be interpreted as an admission of error, and admitting error is the first step to losing power. In this case, the old defence (“personally, I've always had my doubts...”) does not hold up, given the gratuitously psychopathic terms in which Western leaders have spoken about Russia.

The second is the absence of an articulate alternative (“So, Prime Minister, what do you think we should do?”). The very fact that you do not understand the dynamics of a crisis means that you are powerless to propose a reasonable solution. It is better to stay on a sinking ship in the hope of being rescued than to jump blindly into the water. Maybe a miracle will happen.

The third is related to group dynamics, in this case the dynamics of nations. In a situation of fear and uncertainty like the one we are experiencing, solidarity ends up being seen as an end in itself, and no one wants to be accused of “weakening the West” or “strengthening Russia”. If one has to make a mistake, one might as well do it in the company of as many people as possible. There are huge obstacles to being the first to suggest that the situation could be rather bleak, and in any case, what do we propose instead? The chances of some thirty countries being able to agree on a different approach to the current one are practically nil, especially since the US, which could lead by example, is politically paralysed until perhaps next spring.

The fourth problem is isolation and groupthink. Everyone in your government, everyone you talk to in other governments, all the journalists and experts you meet tell you the same thing: Putin cannot win, Russia is suffering huge losses, we have to rebuild Ukraine, Putin is afraid of NATO, and so on. Everywhere you turn, you receive the same messages, and your staff writes the same messages for you to pass on to others. How can you not accept that all this is true? These factors are what we might call permanent political factors, common to any crisis. But there are also a number of specific factors at work in this particular crisis that seem obvious to me, but which I have not heard much about. Let us look at some of them.

MORE AT https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/the-strange-defeat-of-the-west-reali
ty?r=25fc37

This lack of realism doesn't apply only to Ukraine. It applies to many of our problems and policies since 1990.

-----------
"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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Friday, January 3, 2025 5:42 PM

SECOND

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


Ukraine receives Russian inquiries about 50,000 missing soldiers

“Many missing Russians are scattered across our fields; dogs carry their remains. Their identification is of no interest to Russia.”

By Viktor Nazarenko | Fri, January 03, 2025 - 15:05

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/ukraine-receives-russian-inquiries-abo
ut-1735909371.html

Russians have submitted inquiries regarding 50,000 missing occupiers in the "I Want to Find" project. This number could be higher, the Head of the Secretariat of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Bohdan Okhrimenko, reports.

Okhrimenko explained that there was previously a hotline within the "I Want to Live" project, and later, a separate project, "I Want to Find," was created.

"Today, we can state that the number of missing persons for whom we have received requests exceeds 50,000 Russians. And these are only the ones who are not afraid to reach out to us," said Okhrimenko.

The Head of the Secretariat of the Coordination Headquarters noted that according to recent reports, approximately 48,000 Russians were missing.

"According to our estimates, there are over 100,000 missing Russians in total, not counting those we already know have died. Many missing Russians are scattered across our fields; dogs carry their remains. Their identification is of no interest to Russia," Okhrimenko added.

Russian military losses

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, since the beginning of the full-scale war, Russia has lost over 793,000 soldiers. Just in the past day, Ukrainian forces eliminated 1,080 invaders.

Ukraine's Ministry of Defense also reported that in 2024, Russia suffered record military losses, totaling more than 430,000 soldiers, which is equivalent to nearly 36 motorized infantry divisions.

The highest enemy losses last year were recorded in December. The previous record was in November.

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

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Friday, January 3, 2025 5:46 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine...


154 pages since Feb 24, 2022. 95% bullshit, propaganda, and personal insults, thanks mostly to SECOND. If posts had been limited to real news or realistic analysis, this thread would be only 8 pages long.

-----------
"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, January 4, 2025 5:16 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:

If posts had been limited to real news or realistic analysis, this thread would be only 8 pages long.
Really? With your reputation of claiming news is fake? That analysis demonstrating Russia military is incompetently run is fake? That there is a connection between Russia's generalized incompetence and Russia's relative poverty compared to the EU is fake?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky outlined the conditions that must be met to push Russia to agree to a "just peace." Zelensky stated on January 2 that achieving a "just peace" in future negotiations – a concept Zelensky highlighted in his December 31 New Year’s address – requires a strong Ukrainian military, security guarantees from Western allies, and Ukraine's future membership in NATO and the European Union (EU) in order to deter Russia from renewed aggression against Ukraine.[1] Zelensky stated that Ukraine cannot achieve a just peace with a small military, such as "40,000 or 50,000 soldiers" – a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin's initial demand during the Istanbul peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in Spring 2022 that Ukraine demilitarize and only maintain a force of roughly 50,000 personnel.[2] Putin and other Kremlin officials have repeatedly demanded conditions for ending the war that amount to Ukraine's complete capitulation, including the removal of the legitimate Ukrainian government and Ukraine's demilitarization.[3] These demands have not changed since 2021.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-january-3-2025

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

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Saturday, January 4, 2025 5:18 AM

SECOND

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


Zelensky reiterated on January 2 that the Ukrainian constitution and Ukrainian law prohibit Ukraine from holding presidential and parliamentary elections during periods of martial law.[7] Zelensky stated that Ukrainian authorities will be able to consider lifting martial law when the "hot phase" of the war comes to an end and when Ukraine is in a "strong position" with a "strong army, a strong package of weapons, [and] security guarantees." Ukraine's law, "On the legal regime of martial law," originally passed in 2000, states that Ukrainian authorities can end martial law "provided that the threat of attack or danger to the state independence of Ukraine and its territorial integrity has been eliminated."[8] Kremlin officials, including Putin, have repeatedly used deliberate misreadings of Ukraine's law and constitution to claim that Zelensky is an illegitimate president of Ukraine after Ukraine, adhering to the law and constitution, did not hold elections under martial law in 2024.[9] The Ukrainian government legally cannot abolish martial law while Russia continues to attack Ukraine.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-january-3-2025

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

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Saturday, January 4, 2025 5:48 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Good to know your hero is doing exactly what you've claimed Donald Trump would do and I don't hear any bitching out of you about it.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Saturday, January 4, 2025 5:51 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Hey Sigs. You have any information about when the Ukrainian constitution was crafted and by whom?

If I were a gambling man, I'd wager it was either written from scratch or very heavily revised sometime during 2014 or afterward.

And I'll bet you'd play the shortest game of 6 Degrees to Kevin Bacon ever linking the author(s) with Hunter Biden.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Saturday, January 4, 2025 10:22 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:
Hey Sigs. You have any information about when the Ukrainian constitution was crafted and by whom?

If I were a gambling man, I'd wager it was either written from scratch or very heavily revised sometime during 2014 or afterward.

And I'll bet you'd play the shortest game of 6 Degrees to Kevin Bacon ever linking the author(s) with Hunter Biden.
Try https://www.google.com/search?q=Ukraine+constitution+wiki

Constitution of the Ukrainian People's Republic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Ukrainian_People%27s
_Republic
The Central Council of Ukraine approved a constitutional document on April 29, 1918, but it was never promulgated because Russians proceeded to kill everyone involved.

Then there is the more recent document:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Ukraine
The Russians tried to kill everyone involved with that Constitution, but the Russians have not yet succeeded.

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

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Saturday, January 4, 2025 4:22 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


I'll wait for Sigs to reply, thanks.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Sunday, January 5, 2025 5:06 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:
I'll wait for Sigs to reply, thanks.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Ask google the question: Is Putin correct when he states that the President of Ukraine is illegitimate?
https://www.google.com/search?q=Is+Putin+correct+when+he+states+that+t
he+President+of+Ukraine+is+illegitimate

Google says No. Signym and Putin will say Yes. Choose whichever answer you please. That's how Trumptards go through life, aligning their facts with their prejudices. I have seen Trumptards slaughtered when their facts don't match reality. Their final words are depressing: "Why me?" The Universal answer is: "Because you fooled yourself into believing that (fill in the blank) was true."

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

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