Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

How Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Became Putin’s Spiritual Guru

The strange story of a global literary hero who went on to inspire Russia’s war on Ukraine.

April 7, 2024, 7:00 AM

By Casey Michel, head of the Human Rights Foundation's Combating Kleptocracy Program and author of American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History.

In 1990, as the Soviet Union hurdled toward its final crackup, a renowned Russian writer sketched out a plan for a post-Soviet future. As this author outlined, Russia must toss off its Soviet shackles by voting out the reeling Communist Party and enacting a wholesale restructuring of the economy. Additionally, the author added, the Kremlin should let a range of Moscow’s former colonies go free, most especially in places like the Baltics, the Caucasus, and across much of Central Asia.

Other borders, however, would be up for grabs. Chunks of northern Kazakhstan—areas, according to the writer, that were never truly Kazakh—should revert to Russia. So, too, should Belarus, which was hardly a distinct nation from Russia. Most importantly, swaths of Ukraine remained rightfully Russian, from eastern Ukraine to Crimea and beyond—even up to and including Kyiv. All of these lands comprised traditional Russian holdings. And all of them, this writer proposed, should comprise a future “Russian Union”—not only returning millions of ethnic Russians suddenly outside the Russian Federation’s borders to their homeland, but restoring Moscow to its rightful place in the world.

At the time, these policy proposals generated little interest, or even concern, in the West. On the one hand, that oversight is understandable, given that the West was primarily focused on securing a stable Soviet disintegration. But on the other hand, the ignorance is almost shocking, given that the author of such a blueprint, bundled into a book called Rebuilding Russia, was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author and the “dominant writer of the 20th century,” as New Yorker editor David Remnick once described him.

While much of Solzhenitsyn’s work—not least Gulag Archipelago, as well as books like Cancer Ward and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—remains widely dissected and discussed, Rebuilding Russia is arguably his most overlooked read. And given how closely the Kremlin has hewed to Solzhenitsyn’s policy recommendations in Rebuilding Russia in the years since, that oversight is all the more unfortunate—not least because of what it tells us about what the Kremlin wants in Ukraine, and even beyond.

The book itself is relatively scant, with its English translation coming in at around 90 pages—more of a manifesto than a fully developed manuscript. But even in those pages, Solzhenitsyn reveals himself not only as a Russian nationalist, but as someone who dabbles in the kinds of conspiracies and mysticism that would later saturate Russian President Vladimir Putin. Like Putin, Solzhenitsyn approvingly cites Russian fascists like Ivan Ilyin, praising the “spiritual life of a nation.” He also claims that many of the smaller nations colonized by tsarist-era Russian forces “lived well” in the Russian Empire—wholly ignoring how Russian forces brutalized entire nations in northern Asia, stripping them of population and sovereignty alike, even to the point of genocide. He even wrote that countries like Kazakhstan were “stitched together … in a completely haphazard fashion”—downplaying Kazakhs’ historic claims not only to their modern country, but even to formerly Kazakh territory still considered part of the Russian Federation.

But it is in Ukraine—and in Solzhenitsyn’s calls for a Russian Union—that Solzhenitsyn’s revanchism shines through and provides insight into the forces propelling the Kremlin and designs to come. Like many other writers, including figures such as Alexander Pushkin and Joseph Brodsky, Solzhenitsyn drenched his writings on Ukraine in unabashed Russian chauvinism. In a talking point that other Russian nationalists would later pick up, Solzhenitsyn blamed both the “Mongol invasion” and “Polish colonization” for breaking apart Russians and Ukrainians (as well as Belarusians), dividing “our people” into “three branches.” Ignoring centuries of scholarship, Solzhenitsyn wrote, “All the talk of a separate Ukrainian people existing since something like the ninth century and possessing its own non-Russian language is a recently invented falsehood.” Previous attempts at Ukrainian independence were elite-driven, top-down affairs—done “without soliciting the opinion of the population at large”—while the more modern efforts to create a separate Ukrainian state were nothing more than campaigns “to lop Ukraine off from a living organism,” a “cruel partition” that would shred apart “the lives of millions of individuals and families.”

Instead of an independent Ukraine separating from the Russian Federation, Solzhenitsyn wrote, a new entity should rise. “There will remain nothing but an entity that might be called Rus, as it was designated in olden times … or else ‘Russia,’ a name used since the eighteenth century,” he wrote, “or—for an accurate reflection of the new circumstances—the ‘Russian Union.’”

Rather than writing for Western audiences, who’d previously praised his work exposing Soviet criminality, Solzhenitsyn put Rebuilding Russia together solely for Russian audiences. And they immediately lapped it up. With nearly 20 million copies printed, Russian readers devoured Solzhenitsyn’s calls to expand Russia’s borders and to restore the “spiritual and physical salvation of our own people.” Among those readers were soon-to-be Russian President Boris Yeltsin, for whom the book “had a big impact,” according to historian Vladislav Zubok, arguing as it did that Ukrainians and Russians were simply “one nation divided by geopolitical calamities and foreign conquest.”

So, too, did Solzhenitsyn’s policy proposals influence another future Russian president: Putin. While it’s unclear if Putin ever read Solzhenitsyn’s work, the current Kremlin chief was clearly a fan of Solzhenitsyn’s policy recommendations—and especially his nationalism.

It’s not difficult to see how Solzhenitsyn became, as one analyst wrote, Putin’s “spiritual guru.” Not only was Solzhenitsyn an “undoubted Russian nationalist,” as Robin Ashenden noted, but as the years passed following the publishing of Rebuilding Russia, Solzhenitsyn collapsed further and further into the kind of nationalist mania that would later drive Putin. By the mid-1990s, Solzhenitsyn began claiming that the Soviet collapse was propelled by the U.S.’s “common aim” to “use all means possible, no matter what the consequences, to weaken Russia.” (This, of course, ignores the fact that the George H.W. Bush administration not only tried to keep the Soviet Union together but actively pushed back against Ukrainian separatism.) Not long later, Solzhenitsyn sputtered that Ukraine’s democratic Orange Revolution was little more than a sign of NATO’s “plan to encircle Russia”—and that, in reality, “vast tracts of land, which have never been part of historical Ukraine,” were “forcibly incorporated into the modern Ukrainian state and into its policy of acquiring NATO membership at any cost.”

Years later, Solzhenitsyn’s comments are almost indistinguishable from Putin’s rhetoric about Ukraine. Like Solzhenitsyn, Putin views Ukrainian territories such as Crimea and so-called Novorossiya as rightfully Russian. Like Solzhenitsyn, Putin believes that ethnic Russians in Ukraine face the “fanatical suppression and persecution of the Russian language.” And like Solzhenitsyn, Putin believed Russia could “under no circumstances … renounce our unity” with ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

Small wonder, then, that by the 2000s Solzhenitsyn had come out as a fan of Putin’s policies. Praising Putin’s “resurrection of Russia,” Solzhenitsyn accepted a state prize for cultural achievements from the Kremlin and was “deployed as part of the Kremlin’s counterrevolutionary strategy.” The famed author had become “the unofficial leader of the Russian nationalist intelligentsia,” Tomiwa Owolade wrote.

All of it culminated in a direct meeting between Putin and Solzhenitsyn, shortly before the latter’s death in 2008. Sitting at a small table, flanked by shelves upon shelves of books, Putin spoke with the ailing writer “about [Russia’s] future.” It was, at least in part, a future Solzhenitsyn had once called for. As Putin outlined, many of the policies he was pursuing—including policies regarding Russia’s former colonies, now scattered across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus and Central Asia—were “to a large extent harmonious with Solzhenitsyn’s writings.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during the opening ceremony of a new monument to Solzhenitsyn in Moscow on Dec. 11, 2018. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

It’s too much to say that Putin has relied solely on Solzhenitsyn’s blueprints for his monomaniacal obsession with Ukraine and for unleashing the most devastating war Europe has seen in nearly a century. The roots of Russian nationalism run far deeper than any one writer and long predate the work of even Solzhenitsyn.

But it’s clear that Solzhenitsyn—an author of unparalleled stature, especially in a collapsing Soviet Union—structured the diffuse strands of Russian nationalism in a way that proved irresistible to future Russian leaders, and to future Russian revanchists. Calling for, and even excusing, Russian irredentism, Solzhenitsyn helped lay the groundwork in 1990 for the neo-imperialism to come—and for the continued, widespread Russian belief in the subordination and inherent falsehood of a modern, independent Ukraine.

Solzhenitsyn’s defenders will point to his passages in Rebuilding Russia that downplayed militarism as a means of expanding Russia’s borders. (“Of course, if the Ukrainian people should genuinely wish to separate, no one would dare to restrain them by force,” he wrote.) But even that defense is suspect; years after Ukrainians in places like Crimea and the Donbas clearly voted for independence from Moscow, Solzhenitsyn still refused to view these regions as rightfully Ukrainian. And given his continued support for Putin in his later years—even after the Russian president claimed that Ukraine was “not even a country”—that defense hardly remains credible.

What’s even more indefensible, however, is how the West ignored and downplayed Solzhenitsyn’s unrepentant nationalism in the post-Soviet period. Distracted by Solzhenitsyn’s anti-Soviet credentials, the West missed the imperial outlines the author had sketched—and how they infused the Kremlin in the years following. Instead of confronting Solzhenitsyn’s revanchism head-on, the West—just as it’s done with so many other Russian nationalists, even after Putin’s expanded invasion in 2022—preferred to look the other way, hoping the flames feeding such views would die out on their own.

But it’s been over three decades since Solzhenitsyn first called for his Russian Union, and those flames hardly show signs of extinguishing any time soon. If anything, Putin has only hurdled further and further into the abyss that Solzhenitsyn first laid out, with no signs of stopping. Which is why Solzhenitsyn’s playbook, and Putin’s willingness to follow, must be viewed for exactly what they are—an unmitigated threat to stability in Europe and to the idea of Ukrainian (or even Belarusian and Kazakh) nationhood itself. And while Solzhenitsyn never lived to see his Russian Union return, it’s not for Putin’s lack of trying—and it’s only thanks to the sacrifice of Ukrainians themselves that we haven’t, either.

Download Rebuilding Russia by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Rebuilding+Russia+Aleksandr+Solzheni
tsyn

Quote:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Rebuilding Russia (1990)

Time has finally run out for communism.
But its concrete edifice has not yet crumbled.
And we must take care not to be crushed beneath its rubble instead of gaining liberty.

AT THE END OF OUR ENDURANCE

Can there still be anyone among us who is unaware of our troubles, covered up though they are by mendacious statistics? For seventy years in labored pursuit of a purblind and malignant Marxist-Leninist utopia, we have lost a full third of our population—lives yielded up to the executioner or squandered in the ineptly, almost suicidally waged “Patriotic War.” We have forfeited our earlier abundance, destroyed the peasant class together with its settlements, deprived the raising of crops of its whole purpose and the soil of its ability to yield a harvest, while flooding the land with man-made seas and swamps. The environs of our cities are befouled by the effluents of our primitive industry, we have poisoned our rivers, lakes, and fish, and today we are obliterating our last resources of clean water, air, and soil, speeding the process by the addition of nuclear death, further supplemented by the storage of Western radioactive wastes for money. Depleting our natural wealth for the sake of grandiose future conquests under a crazed leadership, we have cut down our luxuriant forests and plundered our earth of its incomparable riches—the irreplaceable inheritance of our great-grandchildren—in order to sell them off abroad with uncaring hand. We have saddled our women with backbreaking, impossibly burdensome labor, torn them from their children, and have abandoned the children themselves to disease, brutishness, and a semblance of education. Our health care is utterly neglected, there are no medicines, and we have even forgotten the meaning of a proper diet. Millions lack housing, and a helplessness bred of the absence of personal rights permeates the entire country. And through-out all this we cling to only one thing: that we not be deprived of unlimited drunkenness.

Human beings are so constituted that we can put up with such ruination and madness even when they last a lifetime, but God forbid that anyone should dare to offend or slight our nationality! Should that occur, nothing can restrain us in our state of chronic submission: with furious courage we snatch up stones, clubs, spears, and guns and fall upon our neighbors, intent on murder and arson. Such is man: nothing has the capacity to convince us that our hunger, our poverty, our early deaths, the degeneration of our children—that any of these misfortunes can take precedence over national pride.

And that is why, in this attempt to propose some tentative steps toward our recovery and reconstruction, we are forced to begin, not with our unendurable wounds or debilitating suffering, but with a response to such questions as: How will the problem of the nationalities be approached? And within what geographical boundaries shall we heal our afflictions or die? And only thereafter shall we turn to the healing process itself.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, April 8, 2024 10:29 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Putin miscalculated on Finland’s border

If Russia wants to intimidate Finland by announcing it’ll avenge the country’s NATO accession with troops on the border, it needs to have plenty of troops at its disposal. And Russia simply doesn’t.

By Elisabeth Braw | April 8, 2024 4:00 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/vladimir-putin-russia-miscalculated-on
-finland-border/

Putin’s complaint was much like that of a bully or abusive partner claiming everything was fine until the other person went to the police or moved out. Indeed, one wonders whether the Kremlin’s top occupants have ever considered the effect their words and actions have on other countries, as it was, of course, Russia’s belligerence that prompted Finland to apply for NATO membership.

But the problem with constantly menacing others is that it requires considerable resources. If Russia wants to intimidate Finland by announcing it’ll avenge the country’s NATO accession with troops on the border, it needs to have plenty of troops at its disposal. And Russia simply doesn’t.

“The Russians won’t have the resources to build infrastructure, produce new heavy weaponry and recruit considerable numbers of forces to our border before the 2030s,” retired Major General Pekka Toveri, a former chief of Finnish military intelligence and recently elected member of the Finnish parliament, told me.

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Monday, April 8, 2024 1:38 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
'Dangerous Provocation': Kremlin Blasts Ukraine For Drone Strike On Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant

The International Atomic Energy Agency is once again sounding the alarm over the potential that disaster could strike the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine, which is the largest in Europe.

On Sunday, for the first time since 2022, Ukraine apparently sent a drone against the facility and it struck one of the plant's six nuclear reactors. While Kiev has firmly denied it was behind the attack, Moscow has denounced it as a "very dangerous provocation" from Ukraine forces. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denounced it as "a very dangerous practice with very bad negative consequences." He said it's but the latest example of Kiev's "terrorist activity."

"IAEA staff who are on site have had the opportunity to witness these attacks," Peskov added. Russian state-owned nuclear agency Rosatom reported casualties as a result of the strike, detailing that three people were wounded in the "unprecedented series of drone attacks."

MORE AT
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dangerous-provocation-kremlin-b
lasts-ukraine-drone-strike-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant

Oh, Budanov, Budanov ....

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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Tuesday, April 9, 2024 6:43 AM

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The West is failing to rise to the challenge of Russia’s threat

By Alexander J. Motyl | April 8, 2024, 10:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4580536-the-west-is-failing-
to-rise-to-the-challenge-of-russias-threat/

Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide recently told a Ukrainian journalist that “I think we should all be honest and say: Nobody does enough” to help Ukraine defeat Putin’s Russia. Eide had in mind the countries of NATO, which is currently celebrating the 75th anniversary of its founding on April 4, 1949.

Let’s look more closely at Eide’s statement. The logical proposition underpinning it is this: If you believe, as Eide and most NATO countries claim to, that Putin’s Russia is an existential threat to Europe, then you will do everything possible to counter that threat by helping Ukraine win.

Now consider the “contrapositive,” whereby the negation of the conclusion logically implies the negation of the premise: If, as Eide says, one is not doing everything possible to help Ukraine, then it follows that one does not consider Putin’s Russia to be an existential threat to Europe.

The conclusion is inescapable: NATO countries talk about the Russian threat, but their dilly-dallying, their insufficient support of Ukraine and their unwillingness to impose truly punitive sanctions all testify to the fact that they don’t really mean what they say.

In this respect, Hungary’s tinpot authoritarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and his counterpart in Slovakia, Robert Fico, are being honest. They openly support Putin because they share his totalitarian values and admire his hard-knuckled regime. Ditto for Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican base. Why worry about Ukraine and Russia if a Russian victory means only that “family values” will triumph and lucrative commercial relations with Russia can resume?

Some instances of Putinophilia are less explicable. Consider the well-known Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, who still believes that NATO wanted to accept Ukraine into its ranks and that the U.S. engineered a “coup” during the Revolution of Dignity of 2014. Not only is there absolutely no evidence to support his claims — if anything, NATO suffered from “Ukraine fatigue” and couldn’t even begin to imagine Ukrainian membership in anyone’s lifetime — but to reduce Ukrainian “people power” to a CIA plot is not only preposterous, but deeply insulting to the millions of Ukrainians who took to the streets and risked their lives in 2014. Small wonder, alas, that Sachs is a regular on some of the crudest Russian propaganda talk shows.

At this point, critics of Putin, like me, will jump into the fray and insist that Russia is a mortal threat, not just to Ukraine, but to all of Europe, the United States and indeed the world. We’ll also insist that this is so obviously, so manifestly the case that only a dolt would fail to recognize that Putin is the 21st century’s answer to Adolf Hitler. Our arguments are legion, and few have made the case for immediate assistance to Ukraine better than Yale University historian Timothy Snyder.

And yet, not only do the Orbáns and Ficos and their cheerleaders remain unpersuaded, but evidently so too do the Americans and most Europeans, including Eide’s Norway. The Baltic states definitely see the threat — their geographic proximity to Russia makes sure of that. French President Emmanuel Macron has recently seen the light and gone over to the side of Putin’s strongest critics, albeit rhetorically, but even Poland, which is one of Ukraine’s most steadfast allies, doesn’t seem to get that blocking its border to Ukrainian trucks and ruining Ukraine’s economy is no way to show its understanding of the Russian threat.

The U.S. is the biggest hypocrite. Except for a small group of Trump’s diehard supporters in Congress, the American political class claims to overwhelmingly support Ukraine and to comprehend the magnitude of the Russian threat. And yet, Washington has proven to be incapable of subordinating election politics and personal ambitions to the distinct possibility that a Ukrainian defeat would spell continued Russian expansion and World War III — and the deaths of thousands of Americans.

It’s hard not to conclude that most Western states just don’t really believe that Putin is Hitler. How is that possible?

It may be that policymakers and publics are just hoping that it’s all a bad dream and that all will be well when they wake up. Unfortunately, if Putin has his way, their sleep may prove to be permanent.

It may also be that democracy’s wheels turn slowly and that aid to Ukraine will come, eventually. But back in the 1940s, the United Kingdom and the United States evinced the requisite political will, adopted radical measures and managed to turn out phenomenal numbers of weapons in the shortest of times.

In other words, it may all come down to leadership, a point that Atlantic Council President Fred Kempe emphasizes in his columns. The West lacks a Winston Churchill or Franklin D. Roosevelt to mobilize their nations and meet the Russian threat squarely and unflinchingly.

The irony is that Putin is a serial bungler, a strategic nincompoop who could easily be outmaneuvered and outfoxed by a Western leader with the guts to try. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has, for all his faults, risen to the occasion and, despite his lack of political experience, managed to rally the nation and say no to Putin. So it’s possible for strong leaders to emerge even today. And Zelensky proves that one doesn’t have to be a heavyweight to punch like a heavyweight.

Unfortunately, President Joe Biden has failed to lead the world against Putin. Donald Trump has demonstrated that he can’t lead, period.

That may leave the fate of Ukraine and the West in Monsieur Macron’s hands. Can he rise to the occasion and become Charles de Gaulle?

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

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”

Download Alexander J. Motyl's books for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Alexander+Motyl

From a particularly relevant book http://library.lol/main/0F04F28B7CA826E9304475833E9BDABE :

Quote:
Introduction
Ksenya Kiebuzinski and Alexander Motyl

The Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre of 1941: A Sourcebook is both a scholarly undertaking and a personal quest. While we hope to fill an important lacuna in the literature on Soviet mass killings in Ukraine, we have in part been motivated to do so by the fact that both of us had relatives who were murdered in what we call the Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre of 1941. Although their tragic deaths may not endow us with perspicacity, they do endow an otherwise academic project with a clear moral dimension. The point of remembering Soviet atrocities, like the point of remembering all atrocities committed by criminal regimes, is not to dwell on the past, but to honor the dead and to hope that a better understanding of the mechanisms of mass murder will reduce the likelihood of its future occurrence. The horrible deaths experienced by our relatives, Father Ivan Kiebuz and Bohdan Hevko, are a reminder that all totalitarian regimes regard human life as expendable material in their fanatical pursuit of ideologically defined revolutionary goals.

The Soviet regime has been especially inhumane toward Ukraine and Ukrainians - a fact that concerns us as human beings, as scholars, and as persons of Ukrainian descent. According to a study published by the Moscow-based Institute of Demography,' Ukraine suffered close to 15 million ‘excess deaths’ between 1914 and 1948. Of that number, about 7.5 million were attributable to Soviet policies and 6.5 million to Nazi policies. According to Nicolas Werth, meanwhile, the Stalinist regime killed some 12 million of its people.2 When we consider that over half of them were Ukrainian (far in excess of Ukrainians’ share of the total Soviet population), it is hard not to register outrage at this monstrous system’s hostility to its people in general and Ukrainians in particular.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, April 9, 2024 7:09 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Russian missile ship Serpukhov on fire in Kaliningrad region, source says

Story by Uliana Bezpalko, Oleksandra Bashchenko

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-missile-ship-serpukhov-on
-fire-in-kaliningrad-region-source-says/ar-BB1lh4Zm

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, April 9, 2024 7:40 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
'Dangerous Provocation': Kremlin Blasts Ukraine For Drone Strike On Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant

MORE AT
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dangerous-provocation-kremlin-b
lasts-ukraine-drone-strike-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant

The Russians did the same at the Nova Kakhovka dam. Russia blamed Ukraine. Most experts agree that between Russia and Ukraine, it is more likely that Russia attacked the dam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Kakhovka_Dam#Responsi
bility

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, April 9, 2024 5:05 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
'Dangerous Provocation': Kremlin Blasts Ukraine For Drone Strike On Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant

MORE AT
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dangerous-provocation-kremlin-b
lasts-ukraine-drone-strike-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant

SECOND: The Russians did the same at the Nova Kakhovka dam.

Bullshit. That makes as much sense as Russia blowing up its own pipeline (which you accused Russia of a woman doing) or Russia shelling the Zaparozhiy Power Plant (which you ALSO accused Russia of doing.)

If Russia wanted to flood downstream, all they needed to do was open the gates, since they controlled the dam. Then, if Russia wanted to dry out the area downstream -say, to launch an offensive across the river - they could later dam the river again

They controlled the dam. How would they benefit from ruining it?

You're stupid.

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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Tuesday, April 9, 2024 5:41 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Bullshit.

They controlled the dam. How would they benefit from ruining it?

You're stupid.

The European Parliament announced on 15 June 2023 that it had adopted a resolution that condemned in the strongest possible terms Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka dam on 6 June, saying that this constituted a war crime. The Parliament also called for Ukraine to join NATO.[101] According to The New York Times, "a senior American military official" reported that the U.S. government "had ruled out an external attack on the dam, like a missile, bomb or some other projectile, and now assesses that the explosion came from one or more charges set inside it, most likely by Russian operatives."[9]

Russian government figures initially said the dam was undamaged, but later denied responsibility and blamed Ukraine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Kakhovka_Dam#Responsi
bility

Signym, Russians are comparatively poor because they are crazy, violent, drunk, and stupid. Signym, you can deny that all you want, but Russians are what they are and they need to change themselves. There are history books, i.e. The Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre of 1941, written about Russian murder rampages in Ukraine. Russians have not changed.
http://library.lol/main/0F04F28B7CA826E9304475833E9BDABE

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, April 9, 2024 6:20 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

You really expect me to accept the word of the European Parliament? That's called "Appeal to authority" and one of the things that people do when they can't come up with a single logical reason or piece of evidence for their stupid idea.

And then you follow one stupid idea with another equally stupid one.

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

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

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Tuesday, April 9, 2024 7:08 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You really expect me to accept the word of the European Parliament? That's called "Appeal to authority" and one of the things that people do when they can't come up with a single logical reason or piece of evidence for their stupid idea.

And then you follow one stupid idea with another equally stupid one.

In all construction jobs I have been associated with, there have been numerous screwballs just like Signym who argue with the boss, contradict all reasonable ideas, throw up obstacles, complain bitterly, threaten to sue, sabotage the work, etc. If such screwballs are allowed to remain on a job site, the project will fail because the screwballs are consciously being obnoxious, stupid, destructive assholes who can't even stop lying, let alone accomplish some useful work. On the best-managed projects, the screwballs like Signym will get immediately terminated. Off in Ukraine, Signym's Russian screwballs get permanently terminated, but not fast enough or with sufficient brutality for what they have done to Ukraine.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 9, 2024 11:42 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You really expect me to accept the word of the European Parliament? That's called "Appeal to authority" and one of the things that people do when they can't come up with a single logical reason or piece of evidence for their stupid idea.

And then you follow one stupid idea with another equally stupid one.

SECOND: In all construction jobs I have [pretended to be] associated with, there have been numerous screwballs just like Signym who argue with the boss, contradict all reasonable ideas, throw up obstacles, complain bitterly, threaten to sue, sabotage the work, etc.

And then you follow "appeal to authority" with extended name-calling!

But you still haven't come up with an explanation why Russians would destroy the dam they controlled (or why they would blow up their own pipeline or shell the nuclear power plant they controlled) when it was not only unnecessary but might impede their future war plans. And you haven't come up with any evidence either.

Son, I accept that there are certain theories and assumptions in chemistry and physics and engineering because they've been usefully applied repeatedly in the real world.

You have yet to move your ideas into the real world, and so far all of your assumptions about Russia have led you to a failure to comprehend.

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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Wednesday, April 10, 2024 6:25 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Russian Orthodox Church declares “Holy War” against Ukraine and West

By Brian Mefford | April 9, 2024

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russian-orthodox-ch
urch-declares-holy-war-against-ukraine-and-west/

Churches often issue decrees stating official positions on key issues, but rarely do these proclamations involve calls to violence or territorial ambitions. Russia is mentioned 53 times in the 3000-word document, underlining the very clear focus on the Russian state’s earthly interests. “From the spiritual and moral point of view, the Special Military Operation is a Holy War, in which Russia and its people are defending the single spiritual space of Holy Russia,” the document states, using the Kremlin’s preferred euphemism for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The decree goes on to stress Ukraine’s status as part of the wider “Russian World,” while underlining the need to extinguish Ukrainian statehood once and for all. Following the conclusion of the current war, it states, “the entire territory of modern Ukraine should enter Russia’s exclusive zone of influence. The possibility of a political regime hostile to Russia and its people existing on this territory must be completely excluded.”

Russian Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Kirill’s meaning could be summarized: “Kill them. Kill them all.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch_Kirill_of_Moscow#Ban_of_Jehova
h's_Witnesses

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Wednesday, April 10, 2024 6:32 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed on April 9 that US authorities are recruiting several hundred Mexican and Columbian citizens from US prisons to fight in Ukraine and that US officials plan to continue recruiting foreign citizens for the Ukrainian military.[115]

The Russian occupation regime in Crimea is systematically persecuting clergy and parishes affiliated with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) in occupied Crimea. Ukraine’s Permanent Presidential Representative in Crimea reported on April 9 that Russian occupation authorities dismantled the dome of the Cathedral of the Holy and Equal-to-the Apostles Prince Volodymyr and Princess Olga in occupied Simferopol on April 8.[101] This cathedral is the Cathedral of the Crimean Diocese of the OCU, and the Ukrainian government attempted to transfer rights for the diocese to the Ukrainian representative of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in October 2022 to protect the rights of OCU minorities in occupied Crimea.[102] Ukraine’s Permanent Presidential Representative in Crimea noted that between the first Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 and the full-scale invasion in 2022, the number of OCU religious communities in occupied Crimea, including parishes, missions, and monasteries, decreased from 49 to seven.[103] Russian occupation authorities have also reportedly illegally mobilized OCU clergy to fight in the Russian Armed Forces. ISW has previously written at length about Russia’s persecution of religious minorities in occupied Ukraine and assessed in 2023 that the Kremlin particularly views the OCU as schismatic from the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), seeking to eradicate it from occupied areas.[104]

The Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) militia also reported on April 9 that Luhansk Oblast occupation authorities are working to remove Ukrainian satellite dishes to remove access to Ukrainian language news and gain further control over the information space in occupied areas.[108] The removal of Ukrainian satellite dishes and their replacement with the “Russkiy Mir” television satellite will further allow Russian occupation authorities to disseminate anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian propaganda throughout occupied areas of Ukraine.[109]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-april-9-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Wednesday, April 10, 2024 6:39 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And then you follow "appeal to authority" with extended name-calling!

But you still haven't come up with an explanation why Russians would destroy the dam they controlled (or why they would blow up their own pipeline or shell the nuclear power plant they controlled) when it was not only unnecessary but might impede their future war plans. And you haven't come up with any evidence either.

Son, I accept that there are certain theories and assumptions in chemistry and physics and engineering because they've been usefully applied repeatedly in the real world.

You have yet to move your ideas into the real world, and so far all of your assumptions about Russia have led you to a failure to comprehend.

Signym, what the hell is wrong with you? Ukraine does NOT destroy its property, especially power plants and hydroelectric dams. But Russia does that. Why is this so hard for you to understand?

Other characteristics of screwballs like Signym who get terminated from construction projects:

Stiff neck and puffed up with self-pride, slow to learn, quick to misunderstand, self-righteousness, How dare you talk to me with that disrespectful tone?! The Russians have these faults in abundance. It is no surprise at the misfortunes that have happened to Russia in the last century when it is filled with such people.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Wednesday, April 10, 2024 8:51 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Ukraine's FPV Drones Are Destroying Russian Tanks

By Jack Detsch | April 9, 2024, 10:24 AM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/09/drones-russia-tanks-ukraine-war-f
pv-artillery/

More than two-thirds of the Russian tanks that Ukraine’s military has destroyed in recent months have been taken out using first-person-view (FPV) drones, a NATO official told Foreign Policy, an increasing sign of Kyiv’s reliance on the unpiloted aircraft as it awaits more artillery ammunition from the United States and other Western countries.

With much-needed funding and artillery rounds held up in Washington, the Ukrainian military has largely turned to FPV drones to carry out anti-tank attacks. Ukrainian troops operate the drones via a controller and are able to watch the machines’ “suicide” attacks on Russian vehicles through video feeds, which now play on a loop on Ukrainian social media channels on Telegram and other platforms.

In the third year of Russia’s full-scale invasion, FPV drones have become nearly ubiquitous on the Ukrainian battlefield. Many of them can carry 10 pounds of explosives or more, and after nearly 780 days of nonstop war, drone pilots on both sides have gotten plenty of practice.

“I used to shoot such ‘cinematic’ videos with the help of FPV-drones before the war,” Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Anton Ptushkin posted on X (formerly Twitter) last November. “Now we use FPV to defend our land.”

But for every success, there are nearly as many blooper reel-worthy incidents. These aren’t the $20 million-a-piece Predator drones that the United States uses to hunt terrorist targets in the Middle East. These are inexpensive off-the-shelf drones that go for $400. They have cheap cameras, making them more difficult to aim at night or in cloudy weather, and they often carry improvised munitions such as grenades or homebuilt bombs, which sometimes detonate midflight. Some are duds. In one video shared on Telegram, a Ukrainian FPV drone gets stuck in the front window of a Russian minivan and doesn’t explode. Others hit Russian quadcopters and tanks that have already been abandoned.

“What we’re seeing probably is a fraction of what’s actually happening,” said Samuel Bendett, an advisor at CNA and a member of the think tank’s Russia studies program. “FPV drones have a short range. So even if the Ukrainians lack enough long-range artillery, they can only use a few drones up to 10 kilometers [about 6 miles] because that’s the normal range.”

Analysts tracking the Ukrainian military believe the attacks are having mixed results. Rob Lee, a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia program who last traveled to Ukraine to embed last November, said the overall accuracy of FPV drones is less than 50 percent. It’s an experienced pilot who is going to score a “kill” of a tank—and the soldiers inside—with an FPV drone, not a newbie.

Even those drones that get through Russia’s increasingly sophisticated, if unchic, countermeasures—boxes of signals equipment strapped to tanks—might not deal a fatal blow. “You usually don’t kill a tank the first few times,” Lee said. “It can take 10 or more [FPV drones] to kill a tank.”

Still, Russia has a good reason to cover up its tanks with camouflage and jamming equipment, Lee said. It is running low on armored vehicles and tanks. If Ukraine keeps attriting at this rate and Russia keeps sending in more tanks to replace the destroyed ones at the rate it has been, the Kremlin could lose its numerical edge in tanks, which could make it more difficult for the Russians to carry out offensive operations in the future.

But Russia still has more troops. “The issue is that Russia’s getting a lot of manpower,” Lee added.

The all-out use of cheap drones indicates that the Ukrainians are turning to increasingly desperate measures to improvise weapons to fight back the Russian assault, which has moved farther west into the contested areas of Donetsk. Ukraine is using a network of microphones—similar to the one you might find on your iPhone—to sense incoming targets. The microphones are good enough to classify what type of munition is coming in, what direction it’s going, and what trajectory it’s on just by using acoustics.

And with limited air defense munitions, Ukrainian troops have rigged heavy machines with sensors to shoot down most of the Iranian-made Shahed suicide drones that are overflying their positions. The NATO official, speaking anonymously based on conditions set by the alliance, said Ukraine’s hit rate against Shahed drones with simple machine guns and small caliber weapons is about 80 percent. It’s not a complete fix, though: Ukrainian officials have spent recent days urging the United States to send more Patriot air defense systems.

And the FPV drones are not a match for artillery ammunition when it comes to keeping up a high rate of fire or for creating explosive effects. They can also be more expensive. “You cannot replace a 155 [mm] shell,” one Ukrainian official said. “It’s like replacing a Kalashnikov with a small gun.” And artillery is immune to electronic warfare. It’s just a bombshell that’s flying through the air.

The rapid pace of innovation for drones has made U.S. military leaders second-guess big, expensive drone programs. The future, officials think, will be cheap and attritable.

“I don’t think we could buy a drone and say it’s going to be in our formation for the next 20 years,” U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George said. “We can’t do that.”

It’s not clear how effective they will be in the long term. But like improvised explosive devices in the Iraq War, cheap drones have revolutionized the battlefield—for now.

“It’s possible that any vehicle, any system, any soldier that moves on the Ukrainian battlefield right now can be seen, observed, and ultimately hit with a [unmanned aerial vehicle],” said Bendett, the CNA advisor. “There’s no such thing as just moving around uncontested anymore.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Thursday, April 11, 2024 4:51 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

US European Command (EUCOM) Commander General Christopher Cavoli warned on April 10 that Russian forces currently have a five-to-one artillery advantage along the frontline – a statement consistent with Ukrainian officials’ reports – but that Russian forces could have a 10-to-1 artillery advantage “in a matter of weeks” if the United States continues to delay the provision of military aid to Ukraine.[7] Zelensky and senior Ukrainian military officials have recently warned that delays in Western military assistance have forced Ukraine to cede the battlefield initiative to Russia and that the Ukrainian military cannot plan a successful counteroffensive or defensive effort without knowing when and what kind of aid Ukraine will receive. ISW continues to assess that delays in Western military assistance have forced the Ukrainian military to husband materiel and that Ukrainian forces must make difficult decisions prioritizing certain aspects of its defense at the cost of lives and lost territory as well as at the expense of contesting the initiative to constrain Russian military capabilities or planning for future counteroffensive operations.[8]

Zelensky stated that there are no mitigations for insufficient air defense systems and indicated that Russian strikes are forcing Ukraine to reallocate already scarce air defense assets to defend Kharkiv City. Zelensky told BILD that drones cannot replace air defenses and that Ukraine needs air defenses to survive.[9]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-april-10-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Thursday, April 11, 2024 11:51 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Wow, this has turned into a VERY unpopular thread, hasn't it?

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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Friday, April 12, 2024 8:28 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, this has turned into a VERY unpopular thread, hasn't it?

I'm pretty sure you, Putin, Stalin, Hitler, Robert E Lee, George B. McClellan, and especially Trump don't or didn't understand how to win a war efficiently, which is why Russians and Confederates have died by the tens of millions in wars. An efficiently run war has heroes but they aren't the main focus, except in exciting war stories, of conducting a war successfully with the fewest causalities on the winning side.

Ukraine and Latvia signed a bilateral security agreement on April 11 providing for long-term Latvian assistance and security commitments to Ukraine.[20] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the agreement will provide annual aid to Ukraine valued at 0.25 percent of Latvia’s GDP from 2024 through 2026 and confirms Latvia’s 10-year commitment to aid Ukraine in reconstruction, the protection of critical infrastructure, de-mining, unmanned technology, and cyber security.[21] Latvia will also provide about 112 million euros (about $120 million) worth of military aid to Ukraine in 2024.[22]

Russian courts have commuted sentences in over half of all criminal cases against Russian veterans and active-duty servicemen due to military service in Ukraine.[52] Novaya Gazeta Europe reported that Russian authorities have brought criminal charges against at least 2,605 Russian veterans and active-duty servicemen since the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022. Criminal charges against Russian servicemen are roughly split evenly between violations of civil laws and military laws, and the majority of Russian military criminal charges are for leaving a military unit without permission and desertion. Novaya Gazeta Europe noted that Russian courts commuted sentences against Russian veterans and servicemen in roughly 57 percent of all criminal cases because of a defendant's military service. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on March 23 releasing individuals from criminal liability if they are called up for mobilization or sign a military service contract.[53]

The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) stated on April 11 that the Kremlin spent 58 billion rubles (about $621 million) to create propaganda in 2023.[56] The GUR stated that Russia used private organizations not formally related to the Russian government to create “patriotic content,” such as blogs, films, television series, and video games. The GUR stated that the organizations pledged to create positive public opinion about Russian President Vladimir Putin, justify Russia’s war in Ukraine, and influence Russian military personnel by glorifying their participation in the war.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-april-11-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Friday, April 12, 2024 10:24 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, this has turned into a VERY unpopular thread, hasn't it?

SECOND: I'm pretty sure you, Putin... Trump don't or didn't understand how to win a war efficiently...

Seems like your whole issue with Russians is that they DO know how to wage war efficiently, which means destroying the opposing army without taking huge losses yourself.

Seems like they learned from WWII after all.

One big lesson: don't fight on your own territory.

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

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
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Friday, April 12, 2024 11:55 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, this has turned into a VERY unpopular thread, hasn't it?

SECOND: I'm pretty sure you, Putin... Trump don't or didn't understand how to win a war efficiently...

Seems like your whole issue with Russians is that they DO know how to wage war efficiently, which means destroying the opposing army without taking huge losses yourself.

Seems like they learned from WWII after all.

One big lesson: don't fight on your own territory.

Finland defeated Russia twice during WWII. Hitler invaded Russia because of those defeats. With tens of millions of dead Russian soldiers, Russia did NOT know how to win WWII. Germany only had a few million dead soldiers and more than half were killed on the Western Front. The USA and UK only had hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers for comparison.

Even today, Russians love to bring up Hiroshima and Nagasaki but didn't learn the simple truth that the USA would have nuked Germany into surrender without any help from the Russians. Russians completely forgot the many millions of tons of weaponry sent to Russia from the USA during WWII. Russians completely forgot that the USA bombed German weapons factories. Without this help, all Russian soldiers would have been dead rather than tens of millions.

And the Ukraine War shows Russians still do NOT know how to win or else they would have won two years ago.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Friday, April 12, 2024 11:57 AM

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The Clock Is Ticking: Russia Has A One-Year Reserve Of Weapons

But Ukrainian troops need U.S. support to defeat increasingly fragile Russian formations

By David Axe | April 11, 2024

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/04/11/the-clock-is-ticking-
russia-has-a-one-year-reserve-of-weapons/?sh=10982a4c15e0

As Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its third year, three main dynamics are shaping the battlefield.

First: Russia is fully mobilized—politically, industrially and militarily. But this mobilization is depleting resources the Kremlin can’t renew. Most importantly, stocks of old Cold War-vintage weapons.

In other words, Russia is strong, but fragile.

Second: Ukraine is mobilizing, too, but it still relies on foreign aid to meet urgent financial and military needs—and Russia-friendly Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are withholding a decisive portion of that aid.

Third: Ukrainian tactics are superior to Russian tactics, helping Ukrainian formations to defeat much larger Russian formations. But tactics are irrelevant when and where Ukrainian forces simply run out of ammunition.

The interplay of these three dynamics explains the seeming contradictions that are evident every day along the 600-mile front line of the wider war. The Ukrainians defeat most Russian attacks, inflicting catastrophic casualties on increasingly under-equipped Russian assault groups.

But the Russians keep coming, and keep gaining ground. And the one person who can stop them—Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson—so far has refused to do so.

All Johnson has to do is bring to a vote an overwhelmingly popular bill that would send $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. Aid that would pay for the ammunition Ukrainian forces need to hold off Russian forces until the Russians finally deplete their reserves of old Cold War weapons.

In 26 months of hard fighting, the Russian military has lost 15,300 tanks, fighting vehicles, howitzers and other weapons in Ukraine, along with hundreds of thousands of troops. The Ukrainian military’s own losses are a third as heavy.

And yet the Russian force in Ukraine is bigger than ever. “The army is actually now larger—by 15 percent—than it was when it invaded Ukraine,” U.S. Army general Christopher Cavoli, NATO's top commander, told the House Armed Services Committee. “Over the past year, Russia increased its front-line troop strength from 360,000 to 470,000.”

That’s possible only because the Kremlin drafted more than 300,000 men starting in late 2022 in addition to increasing bonuses for volunteers. At the same time, Russian brigades have curtailed basic training for new recruits in order to speed fresh forces to the front.

But these unprepared new recruits don’t survive very long on the front line. Lately, between 800 and a thousand Russians have been dying every day in the wider war, according to the Ukrainian defense ministry.

Russian soldiers die as fast as they arrive in Ukraine. The Estonian defense ministry concluded, in one recent study, that killing 100,000 Russians this year would permanently damage, if not collapse, the Kremlin’s mobilization effort.

Ukraine is on track to kill 300,000 Russians this year. It isn’t sustainable.

Nor are Russia’s vehicle losses sustainable. Russian industry produces 500 or 600 new tanks and maybe a little more than a thousand new fighting vehicles every year. The Russian military loses more than a thousand tanks and close to 2,000 fighting vehicles every year—and the loss rate is increasing.

There’s a gap—one the Kremlin fills by pulling out of long-term storage tanks and fighting vehicles dating back to the 1970s, or even the ’60s or ’50s in some cases. But these old vehicles are a finite resource. Built during the Soviet Union’s industrial heyday, they cannot be replaced with new production.

Ominously for the Russians, the most recent projections anticipate that, as early as mid-2025, there won’t be any more old tanks and fighting vehicles left in storage. “Time is running out for Russia,” wrote Artur Rehi, an Estonian solder and analyst.

We’re already seeing evidence of a shortfall: Russian troops riding into battle in unarmored freight trucks and even open-top golf carts that the Kremlin purchased from a Chinese company.

It should go without saying that golf carts don’t last long in combat with, say, Ukraine’s angriest anti-tank missile teams and most skilled drone operators. It doesn’t matter if the Russian army in Ukraine has 300,000 or 400,000 people if those people utterly lack protection on the battlefield.

The fragility of Russia’s army might be more evident if Ukraine’s own army weren’t starving for ammo and, at times, incapable of shooting back. When Ukraine’s 2023 offensive petered out late last year after achieving modest gains, Russia seized the initiative—and went on the attack all along the front line.

The timing couldn’t have been worse for the Ukrainians. At almost exactly the same moment in mid-October, Speaker of the House Johnson refused to bring to a vote the $60 billion in fresh funding U.S. president Joe Biden had proposed for Ukraine.

Johnson is a close ally of former president Donald Trump, who was impeached in 2019 for attempting to coerce Ukrainian officials to support a smear campaign targeting Trump’s political opponents. Trump has since called on Ukraine to surrender portions of its territory to Russia.

Deprived of the hundreds of thousands of artillery shells and thousands of surface-to-air missiles that Biden had hoped to buy for them, Ukrainian forces have had to make hard choices: retreating from positions that, with enough firepower, they might have held.

A 2,000-person Ukrainian garrison quit the city of Avdiivka in mid-February after inflicting tens of thousands of casualties on the attacking Russians—and then running out of ammo. Now another 2,000-person Ukrainian garrison faces the same terrible dilemma in the canal district of Chasiv Yar.

At the same time, Ukraine’s best air defense batteries have fallen silent for a want of American-made missiles. Ukraine’s biggest cities—Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa—are increasingly defenseless as more Russian missiles and bombs pummel them.

Six hundred Ukrainian civilians, including children, died in air raids in March. A missile raid on Kyiv last night destroyed the city’s biggest power plant, casting thousands of homes, and vital weapons workshops, into darkness. “More air defense, and our assistance, is needed now,” Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, pleaded yesterday.

Ukrainian troops are losing ground, but they’re losing ground to legions of poorly-trained Russian troops riding in antique vehicles. They’re losing ground only because they’re running out of ammo. Ukrainians’ “ability to defend their terrain that they currently hold and their air space would fade rapidly—will fade rapidly—without ... continued U.S. support,” Cavoli said.

Conversely, with U.S. support, a rearmed Ukrainian military could protect its cities from Russian raids and, on the front line, achieve firepower superiority over a Russian military that’s fast running out of modern weapons.

The choice, tragically, isn’t the Ukrainians’ to make. It’s up to one man, an American. The leader of a thin Republican majority in one house of the U.S. Congress.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, for one, understands the politics and the stakes. “If Ukraine's partners act decisively, I am confident that we can defeat Russian terror before it spreads further,” Zelensky wrote today.

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here. Send me a secure tip.

Sources:

1. Gen. Christopher Cavoli: https://armedservices.house.gov/hearings/full-committee-hearing-us-mil
itary-posture-and-national-security-challenges-europe-0

2. Military Vishchun: https://www.vishchun.com/post/pidrakhunok_ta_analiz_tankovoho_potentsi
alu_moskovii_na_pochatku_2024

3. Artut Rehi: https://twitter.com/ArturRehi/status/1778365488784867504

4. Amb. Bridget Brink: https://twitter.com/USAmbKyiv/status/1778255572631957607

5. Oryx: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equ
ipment.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Friday, April 12, 2024 1:48 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, this has turned into a VERY unpopular thread, hasn't it?

SECOND: I'm pretty sure you, Putin... Trump don't or didn't understand how to win a war efficiently...

SIGNY: Seems like your whole issue with Russians is that they DO know how to wage war efficiently, which means destroying the opposing army without taking huge losses yourself.

Seems like they learned from WWII after all.
One big lesson: don't fight on your own territory.

SECOND: With tens of millions of dead Russian soldiers, Russia did NOT know how to win WWII.

But this is not WWII, is it?
And Russia is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Stalin.

Do try to keep up!

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

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

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Friday, April 12, 2024 2:14 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But this is not WWII, is it?
And Russia is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Stalin.

Do try to keep up!

Signym, Putin says this is a continuation of past wars, both hot and cold wars. You could claim he doesn't know Russia like you know it, but you'd be nutty.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/24/1233598356/putin-russia-ukraine-war-2-y
ear-anniversary

Solzhenitsyn described the real history of Russia: We have lost a full third of our population—lives yielded up to the executioner or squandered in the ineptly, almost suicidally waged “Patriotic War.”

Download Rebuilding Russia by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Rebuilding+Russia+Aleksandr+Solzheni
tsyn

Quote:
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in Rebuilding Russia (1990):

Time has finally run out for communism.
But its concrete edifice has not yet crumbled.
And we must take care not to be crushed beneath its rubble instead of gaining liberty.

AT THE END OF OUR ENDURANCE

Can there still be anyone among us who is unaware of our troubles, covered up though they are by mendacious statistics? For seventy years in labored pursuit of a purblind and malignant Marxist-Leninist utopia, we have lost a full third of our population—lives yielded up to the executioner or squandered in the ineptly, almost suicidally waged “Patriotic War.” We have forfeited our earlier abundance, destroyed the peasant class together with its settlements, deprived the raising of crops of its whole purpose and the soil of its ability to yield a harvest, while flooding the land with man-made seas and swamps. The environs of our cities are befouled by the effluents of our primitive industry, we have poisoned our rivers, lakes, and fish, and today we are obliterating our last resources of clean water, air, and soil, speeding the process by the addition of nuclear death, further supplemented by the storage of Western radioactive wastes for money. Depleting our natural wealth for the sake of grandiose future conquests under a crazed leadership, we have cut down our luxuriant forests and plundered our earth of its incomparable riches—the irreplaceable inheritance of our great-grandchildren—in order to sell them off abroad with uncaring hand. We have saddled our women with backbreaking, impossibly burdensome labor, torn them from their children, and have abandoned the children themselves to disease, brutishness, and a semblance of education. Our health care is utterly neglected, there are no medicines, and we have even forgotten the meaning of a proper diet. Millions lack housing, and a helplessness bred of the absence of personal rights permeates the entire country. And through-out all this we cling to only one thing: that we not be deprived of unlimited drunkenness.

Human beings are so constituted that we can put up with such ruination and madness even when they last a lifetime, but God forbid that anyone should dare to offend or slight our nationality! Should that occur, nothing can restrain us in our state of chronic submission: with furious courage we snatch up stones, clubs, spears, and guns and fall upon our neighbors, intent on murder and arson. Such is man: nothing has the capacity to convince us that our hunger, our poverty, our early deaths, the degeneration of our children—that any of these misfortunes can take precedence over national pride.

And that is why, in this attempt to propose some tentative steps toward our recovery and reconstruction, we are forced to begin, not with our unendurable wounds or debilitating suffering, but with a response to such questions as: How will the problem of the nationalities be approached? And within what geographical boundaries shall we heal our afflictions or die? And only thereafter shall we turn to the healing process itself.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, April 12, 2024 2:52 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But this is not WWII, is it?
And Russia is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Stalin.

Do try to keep up!

SECOND: Signym, Putin says this is a continuation of past wars, both hot and cold wars. You could claim he doesn't know Russia like you know it, but you'd be nutty.

There is WHY one wages war ... in Russia's case, a continuation of defense against continued western aggression...

And there is HOW one wages war.

I see you've conflated the two with your usual scrambled narrative.
You, personally, are a reflection of the bizarre mess that's overtaken current western political class.
They are leading us to failure, and you're urging them on.
Speaking of "ruination and madness".

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Saturday, April 13, 2024 7:54 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

There is WHY one wages war ... in Russia's case, a continuation of defense against continued western aggression...

And there is HOW one wages war.

I see you've conflated the two with your usual scrambled narrative.
You, personally, are a reflection of the bizarre mess that's overtaken current western political class.
They are leading us to failure, and you're urging them on.
Speaking of "ruination and madness".

Good heavens! You have absorbed Putin's viewpoint and made it your own. If you threw in a couple of references to Satan ruling over the West and the EU specifically run by Nazis, you be perfect, Signym.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, April 13, 2024 7:54 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

ISW continues to assess that the development of Ukraine’s defense industrial base (DIB) over time can allow Ukraine to sustain its defense against Russia and longer-term national security needs with significantly reduced foreign military assistance.[4] Ukrainian officials have expressed their intention to expand Ukraine’s DIB domestically and abroad since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov previously identified increased Ukrainian domestic production of weapons and military equipment as a priority for 2024.[5] US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller has stated that the short- and medium-term provision of Western air defenses to Ukraine will be a critical element of Ukraine’s ability to stand up its defense industry, which will, in turn, decrease Ukrainian dependence on Western aid and especially US aid to Ukraine in the long term.[6] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently emphasized that Ukraine cannot mitigate the lack of sufficient air defense systems and that only Western-provided air defense systems, namely Patriot systems, allow Ukraine to defend Ukraine against the intensified Russia strike campaign.[7] ISW continues to assess that the US will not need to send large security assistance packages to Ukraine indefinitely if Ukraine can sufficiently expand its defensive industrial capacity, but the West’s provision of air defense systems and missiles to Ukraine is crucial for Ukraine’s ability to defend its energy infrastructure and its developing defense industry against Russian strikes.[8]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-april-12-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, April 13, 2024 8:06 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Exclusive | Putin Told IAEA Russia Plans to Restart Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant

By Laurence Norman, Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson | April 12, 2024 12:35 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/putin-told-iaea-russia-plans-to-resta
rt-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-f2045f50

Russian President Vladimir Putin has told the United Nations atomic agency that the Kremlin plans to restart Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, currently under Russian occupation, further flaring the risks of an incident at Europe’s biggest nuclear station.

The 6-gigawatt plant is perched on a front line, artillery passing overhead, and encircled by Russian land mines. Its roof is manned by Russian soldiers in machine-gun nests, who regularly fire rounds at incoming self-detonating drones.

Just in the past week, several drones struck one of the plant’s six reactors, the roof of a training center, and a military vehicle parked outside a laboratory, causing one casualty. Russian security forces patrolling the complex have detained and, in many cases, tortured hundreds of its workers, to quell staff dissent.

In September 2022, such dangers prompted the plant’s Ukrainian director, Ihor Murashov, to shut down its last active reactor and join the thousands of nuclear technicians who fled to government-held territory.

But in recent months, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna received technical reports, written by a small team of inspectors it has posted to the plant, suggesting that Russia has been looking to bring Zaporizhzhia back online this year. Russia’s goal, said European diplomats familiar with those assessments, appears to be to bring at least one reactor back into operation. One of the diplomats said Russia may do this possibly in time for the 40th anniversary of the plant’s December 1984 connection to the Soviet Union’s electrical grid.

When IAEA chief, Rafael Grossi, traveled to the Russian resort of Sochi last month for meetings with Putin and the head of Moscow’s nuclear company Rosatom, Grossi asked if the plant would be restarted, according to people familiar with discussions. Putin said it definitely would. The Russian officials didn’t detail the plans or timeline.

Restarting a reactor at Zaporizhzhia would be a technical challenge and symbolic milestone for Russia, normalizing its seizure of a plant that provided about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity before 2022. The Wall Street Journal spoke to numerous people who have worked at the plant who doubt Russia has enough technicians to do so safely or successfully. It would also inject new jeopardy into a safety crisis already grave enough that the IAEA board held an emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss the recent drone attacks.

“Rolling the dice is not the way to do it in nuclear safety,” Grossi told the meeting. Ukraine and Russia traded accusations at the meeting on who was to blame for the attacks, each accusing the other.

Never before in the history of the tightly regulated nuclear industry has a hostile power captured and operated another country’s active power plant. The Zaporizhzhia station, among the last of the Soviet Union’s megaprojects, was a centerpiece of the empire’s prized nuclear technology.

After 1991, it was also, to Moscow’s frustration, gradually becoming westernized, running on European Union-funded computer systems and, in recent years, fuel provided by Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse Electric Co.

Russian tanks seized the plant in the early days of the war, one of the biggest trophies from an otherwise faltering invasion. Ukraine and its Western backers repeatedly demanded Russia return the plant to Ukrainian officials, but Russia deployed Rosatom technicians to oversee the station and agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, bundled suspected dissidents into a basement prison they called “the Hole.” Soldiers looted homes in the town of Enerhodar, where staff live, residents complained. Most of the plant’s 11,000 employees fled, leaving behind a skeleton crew of around 3,000.

Five of the plant’s six reactors are currently offline—a so-called cold shutdown. A sixth, in a hot shutdown, runs just warm enough to produce the steam a plant would need for basic safety processes.

Bringing even one reactor back online would mean raising the core temperature hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit, while a skeletal crew checks a labyrinth of pipes, pumps and valves for leaks. Experts question whether the inflow of water to the plant, following last year’s destruction of a nearby hydrodam, is sufficient to cool an active reactor.

Russia would need to truck in supplies ranging from diesel for backup generators to spare parts for pumps and turbines in the middle of what is likely to still be a broiling war—the IAEA is shipping in some items, but not all. The plant would have to establish several reliable sources of backup power, to sustain emergency operations if the reactor itself tripped offline.

Another problem is where the electricity would go. Many of the towns the plant was set up to feed are either held by Ukraine—which rejects sharing power with Russia—or have been depopulated during occupation. Power lines to and from the plant need repair. Russia could produce small, symbolic amounts of electricity, but that poses risks since reactors running at less than a third of their capacity tend to be less stable.

One way to prop up demand for the reactors would be to provide some of the power to free areas of Ukraine, an idea discussed between the agency and Russia in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the issue.

To accomplish all this, Moscow would need to deploy numerous technicians trained in the minute peculiarities of a plant that is no longer the Soviet-type station Russian workers are accustomed to, but now runs partly on Western control systems and American nuclear fuel. At present, control rooms are being operated with as few as a single individual, a U.S. Energy Department report said, citing reports it didn’t specify.

Just as surgeons require years of hands-on training under veteran doctors before conducting delicate operations, equipment officers at the Zaporizhzhia plant would need lengthy, direct training, the report said, in performing key tasks. Among the most challenging: bringing a unit online and operating safety systems such as performing an emergency shutdown if there are problems.

“You can’t just recruit these people off the street and tell them how to go run a power plant,” said Morgan D. Libby, a nuclear oversight officer at Rockville, Md.-based Excel Services Corp., who spent years working at plants in the former Soviet Union, including Zaporizhzhia, and remains in touch with former colleagues there. “I think they’re kidding themselves that they have sufficient numbers of people to run a unit.”

Russia believes this plant has a future and is cementing control over the facility and the city where its workers live.

In recent months, Moscow has shipped in thousands of new Russians to replenish Enerhodar, a town whose population of 52,000 dwindled to as low as 12,000 after the first year of the war. That includes officers from Rosatom, but also police officers, security forces, their families and teachers to school their children. Newcomers are encouraged to take any of the abundant empty flats abandoned by the tens of thousands of locals who have fled.

Enerhodar no longer has steady electricity or water, and locals chat on WhatsApp groups to share news of power outages or low voltage. Fresh produce that used to arrive from across Ukraine no longer reaches store shelves, and local farms produce little beyond milk and bread. All other food is trucked in sporadically from Russia.

Residents said they can now only enter or leave the town if they have a residence permit—from Feb. 1, only workers who have obtained a Russian passport can access the plant. Those who haven’t are deported, and often imprisoned first, and pressured to rat out other dissidents hiding inside the workforce.

“They beat people up,” said one technician who refused to accept a Russian passport. In turn, Russia deported him to Georgia, with orders to not return to occupied Ukraine for 30 years.

Like many of the Ukrainian plant workers interviewed for this article, he expressed doubt Russia can restart the plant: “There are too few staff…It is dangerous.”

Appeared in the April 13, 2024, print edition as 'Russia to Restart Nuclear Plant'.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, April 14, 2024 8:31 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

The Russian military command likely assesses that Ukrainian forces will be unable to defend against current and future Russian offensive operations due to delays in or the permanent end of US military assistance. Russian forces have recently periodically shifted their focus among offensive operations in the Lyman, Chasiv Yar, and Pokrovsk directions; Russian forces first prioritized the capture of Avdiivka in early 2024, alongside simultaneous but less intense operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, then leaned into the Lyman direction while slightly decreasing the tempo near Avdiivka, and now are intensifying efforts to seize Chasiv Yar in March-April 2024.[5] Though Russian forces likely lack the ability to conduct more than one simultaneous effective large-scale operational effort as they have throughout the war, Russian forces are now able to use multiple alternating offensive efforts to stretch Ukrainian defensive capabilities amid Ukrainian artillery and air defense shortages.[6] The current pattern of Russian offensive operations allows elements of units participating in less intensive efforts to rest and reconstitute while other units, presumably those that are more rested or those that have recently received reinforcements. They can then intensify efforts in another operational direction, forcing Ukrainian forces to reallocate their defensive resources across the theater and creating vulnerabilities that Russian forces can exploit. Russian forces are reportedly developing operational- and strategic-level reserves capable of sustaining ongoing offensive operations in Ukraine, likely to support an anticipated spring-summer offensive effort.[7] ISW continues to assess that these reserves are unlikely to be ready to act as a first-echelon penetration force or second-echelon exploitation force capable of conducting large-scale mechanized assaults in 2024 as long as Ukrainian forces have the wherewithal to resist them.[8] Russian forces would more likely use these reserves to restaff or reinforce existing formations and continue grinding, infantry-led assaults with occasional limited mechanized pushes in their direction of choice at key moments. If the United States does not resume providing aid to Ukraine and Ukrainian forces continue to lack essential artillery and air defense munitions in particular, however, even badly-trained and poorly-equipped Russian troops might be able to conduct successful offensive operations.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-april-13-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, April 15, 2024 12:28 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

All the money in the world ... whether it's $60 billion or $600 billion ... can't make munitions and weapons appear in time for Ukraine.

"The West" gave Ukraine all of the weapons and munitions it could safely spare, and sometimes more. MAYBE if our elites hadn't underestimated Russia so badly to begin with, and started Kiev out with an entire panoply of weapons and if Kiev had started out hard and fast instead of giving Russia time to gear up production?

But at this point, Russia is getting stronger and western militaries are flat-footed.

So, what is the $$ for?

My guess is "payoffs". There are a lot of transnationals that invested $$$ into project Ukraine, including Black Rock, Monsanto and one of the big pharmas. And that's not including the IMF and Ukrainian oligarchs. Considering how highly leveraged these investments are (were?) $60 billion ain't gonna be enough. Sooner or later they're gonna have to grab that $300+ billion in Russian assets. Not to "rebuild Ukraine" ... Ukraine isn't gonna see a penny of that ... but to keep those firms from imploding.

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

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

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Monday, April 15, 2024 1:29 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

There is WHY one wages war ... in Russia's case, a continuation of defense against continued western aggression...
And there is HOW one wages war.
I see you've conflated the two with your usual scrambled narrative.
You, personally, are a reflection of the bizarre mess that's overtaken current western political class.
They are leading us to failure, and you're urging them on.
Speaking of "ruination and madness".

SECOND Good heavens! You have absorbed Putin's viewpoint and made it your own. If you threw in a couple of references to Satan ruling over the West and the EU specifically run by Nazis, you be perfect, Signym.

Maybe Putin absorbed mine?

Or maybe we're both looking at the real world and seeing the same facts.

What was the Russian military doing from 1990 to 2014?

Meanwhile, what was NATO doing?

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

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

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Monday, April 15, 2024 6:36 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So, what is the $$ for?

My guess is "payoffs".

Garry Kasparov on GOP lawmakers repeating Russian propaganda

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, April 15, 2024 6:40 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Finally! The Russians sideline the idiots and bring in competent people who understand electric generation. If Russians had done this two years ago, and kept the competent people in charge despite the idiots wanting to do things differently by destroying maternity hospitals, orphanages, and shopping centers, Ukraine would be without electricity by now and Russia would be victorious. But the idiotic waste of weaponry continues: Russian double-tap strikes hit civilians then rescuers too https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68761490

Recent large-scale Russian strike packages using drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles against Ukraine have caused significant damage to Ukrainian energy infrastructure. All 15 ballistic missiles and seven of the 44 cruise missiles that Russian forces launched against Ukrainian energy facilities on the night of March 21 to 22 successfully penetrated Ukrainian air defenses.[9] Some of the missiles significantly damaged the Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP) in Zaporizhzhia City and took it completely offline, and it will take some time to repair the plant.[10] Three of seven ballistic missiles and eight of 30 cruise missiles that Russian forces launched against Ukrainian HPPs on the night of March 28 to 29 successfully penetrated Ukrainian air defenses, damaging HPPs and thermal power plants (TPPs) in central and western Ukraine.[11] All 18 ballistic missiles and six of the 24 cruise missiles that Russian forces launched against Ukrainian energy infrastructure on the night of April 10 to 11 successfully penetrated Ukrainian air defenses, of which five missiles completely destroyed the Trypilska TPP in Kyiv Oblast.[12] The Russian strikes against Ukrainian energy facilities on the night of April 10 to 11 also damaged energy facilities in Zaporizhia and Lviv oblasts.[13] The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on April 11 that Russian strikes, not including the April 10 to 11 strike series, have disrupted 80 percent of the generation capacity of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, which supplies about 20 percent of Ukraine’s power.[14]

Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk told CNN in an article published on April 14 that successful Russian strikes over the course of just a few days in the past few weeks have destroyed a year's worth of Ukrainian repairs to energy facilities following the winter 2022-2023 Russian strike campaign.[15] A Ukrainian source told CNN that Russian forces have changed their strike tactics to launch a large number of missiles and drones simultaneously against a limited number of targets. DTEK Head Maksym Timchenko stated that Russia began targeting Ukrainian energy generation infrastructure, instead of transmission systems, in late March 2024.[16] DTEK previously warned that more accurate and concentrated Russian strikes are inflicting greater damage against Ukrainian energy facilities than previous Russian attacks did.[17] Israel, the US, and their allies and partners should be cognizant of the risk that even small numbers of missiles penetrating defense umbrellas can cause nonlinear damage to modern societies if they hit the right targets.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-april-14-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, April 15, 2024 11:45 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So, what is the $$ for?

My guess is "payoffs".

SECOND: SECOND, on repeating deep state propaganda.

Since neither you nor the video were unable to ANSWER THE QUESTION, I fixed your post for you.
And I'll ask it again: What IS the money for???
Is there a secret stash of weapons we don't know about, just waiting for some big bucks to unlock it?
If there is, let us know.
And if not ...???

*****

Here's another question you failed to answer

What was the Russian military doing from 1990 to 2014?
Meanwhile, what was NATO doing?

These are foundational questions to our foreign policy, and Russia's. You avoid them like a plague, and you try to get others to avoid thinking about them too, by throwing up a shitstorm of propaganda that even YOU admit you don't think about.

And then you cavil that nobody but you understands "How the world works"?
Son, you're so confused NOBODY should use you as an example of how to think, much less be a human being.

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

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

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024 7:13 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And then you cavil that nobody but you understands "How the world works"?
Son, you're so confused NOBODY should use you as an example of how to think, much less be a human being.

I'm guessing you missed out on American schizophrenic motivation for fighting WWII. On one hand, there were Democrats who wanted to send ammo and aid to Europe to fight Nazis because Nazis deserve to die screaming. On the other hand, there were Republicans (and Southerners Democrats who were okay with slavery) who were certain what happened in Europe or Asia was none of America's business. But once Hitler declared War on America, the Republicans' and Southerners' true motives became obvious: get rich. Those two different motivations never went away. One kind of American (call them Democrats) wants to see evil Russians die screaming for what they have done. Another kind of American (call them Trumptards) has no idea what evil is and never will know which is why they vote for Trump (the Vietnam draft dodger and Putin supporter), but they do know what money is.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024 7:14 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys Are Paying Putin:

France talks tough on Ukraine while gobbling up more Russian gas

France has paid Russia over €600 million this year for liquefied natural gas, new data shows. That’s an EU-leading rise from last year.

In the first three months of this year, Russian liquefied natural gas deliveries to France grew more than to any other country in the EU compared to last year, according to data analyzed by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) think tank for POLITICO.

France insists its gas buys are necessary to keep supplies flowing to households across Europe and that it’s locked into a long-term agreement with Russia that is legally complex to escape.

The French disconnection

Within months of Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine in 2022, the EU presented a plan to end the bloc’s reliance on Moscow's fossil imports by 2027.

So far, it's largely been successful. Though some in the EU continue to buy nuclear fuel and some pipeline oil and gas from Russia, the bloc has slashed its dependence on Moscow's gas by around two-thirds and imposed a blanket ban on coal and oil imports by sea.

But similar efforts to cut out liquid natural gas, or LNG, have floundered. Although the fuel accounted for just five percent of the EU’s gas consumption last year, EU countries paid Moscow more than €8 billion for its exports, according to a new report from CREA out Thursday.

France is far from the only culprit. At least nine EU countries continue to buy Russian LNG, the shipping data showed. But Paris led the bloc in both absolute volumes imported in 2024 — 1.5 million tons in total — and the increase in purchases compared to the same period last year.

Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands — the three largest buyers of Moscow’s LNG after France — have all indicated they would support steps to reduce these purchases but argue that everyone has to act together or it will be pointless.

More at https://www.politico.eu/article/france-talk-tough-ukraine-while-gobble
-up-more-russia-gas/

I love the excuse that France is legally required to buy from Hitler during WWII and Putin during WW3. The other excuse is that unless everybody stops buying from Hitler and Putin, stopping will be pointless. It is easy to see how Hitler was able to conquer Europe. Putin will be able to do the same if he tries hard. It is very European to politely resist, but not go to extreme effort, especially if effort interferes with the cheese eating good life.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024 11:55 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

The US says it won't shoot down drones over Ukraine, despite doing the same to protect Israel

By Sinéad Baker | Apr 16, 2024, 5:55 AM CDT

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-says-wont-down-drones-over-ukraine-
did-for-israel-2024-4

• The US helped shoot down Iranian drones and missiles fired at Israel over the weekend.

• Ukraine's president said the response showed what could be done to protect his own country.

• But the White House said it wouldn't do the same for Ukraine, calling it a "different threat picture."

Israel said that Iran fired more than 300 drones and missiles at it on Saturday night. The US, UK, France, and Jordan said they helped to stop the barrage, including through the use of aircraft.

White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby was asked in a media briefing if the US could also help to shoot down drones over Ukraine.

Kirby responded: "I knew this question was coming too. Look, different conflicts. Different conflicts, different airspace, different threat picture."

He said that President Joe Biden "has been clear since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, the United States is not gonna be involved in that conflict in a combat role, and we haven't."

Russia has been firing drones and missiles across Ukraine as part of its full-scale invasion, often hitting and destroying energy infrastructure, as well as residential buildings, and killing civilians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the response to Iran's aerial attack on Israel "demonstrated how truly effective unity in defending against terror can be when it is based on sufficient political will."

"Together, they prevented terror from prevailing," he added. "And they are working together, and in coordination with others, to prevent further escalation."

Zelenskyy said that similar actions should be taken to protect Ukraine.

Many of Ukraine's allies, including the US, have said they are trying to help without escalating the conflict with Russia. But some world leaders have rebuffed this, saying Russia will escalate the war either way.

Zelenskyy said the response to the attack on Israel also showed that NATO members can protect non-member states, and could protect Ukraine, which is not part of the military alliance, in the same way.

"Israel is not a NATO member, so no action, such as triggering Article 5, was required," he said, referring to the alliance's collective defense clause.

"No one was dragged into the war," Zelenskyy added. "They simply contributed to the protection of human life."

Zelenskyy went on to say that "European skies could have received the same level of protection long ago if Ukraine had received similar full support from its partners in intercepting drones and missiles."

Ukraine is running critically low on air defense missiles, which means Russia's attacks are more likely to get through.

Republicans in Congress have stalled further aid for Ukraine over the past six months, preventing any new supplies coming from the US.

Kirby said the US had previously given Ukraine "the tools that they need to help defend their space. And unfortunately, we can't do that right now, because we don't have the National Security Supplemental funding that they so desperately need."

Experts previously told BI that Ukrainian shortages would likely allow Russia's air force to fly freely, which could have effects so devastating that it could bring about a quick end to the war.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024 12:58 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And then you cavil that nobody but you understands "How the world works"?
Son, you're so confused NOBODY should use you as an example of how to think, much less be a human being.

SECOND: BLAH BLAH BLAH about irrelevant stuff....

I noticed you trying to drag the thread off course with your usual shitstorm of pointless distractions.
But you still haven't answered the foundational questions

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So, what is the $$ for?
My guess is "payoffs".

SECOND: SECOND, on repeating deep state propaganda.

SIGNY: Since neither you nor the video were unable to ANSWER THE QUESTION, I fixed your post for you.
And I'll ask it again: What IS the money for???
Is there a secret stash of weapons we don't know about, just waiting for some big bucks to unlock it?
If there is, let us know.
And if not ...???

*****

Here's another question you failed to answer

What was the Russian military doing from 1990 to 2014?
Meanwhile, what was NATO doing?

These are foundational questions to our foreign policy, and Russia's. You avoid them like a plague, and you try to get others to avoid thinking about them too, by throwing up a shitstorm of propaganda that even YOU admit you don't think about.

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024 7:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And then you cavil that nobody but you understands "How the world works"?
Son, you're so confused NOBODY should use you as an example of how to think, much less be a human being.

SECOND: BLAH BLAH BLAH about irrelevant stuff....

I noticed you trying to drag the thread off course with your usual shitstorm of pointless distractions.
But you still haven't answered the foundational questions

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So, what is the $$ for?
My guess is "payoffs".

SECOND: SECOND, on repeating deep state propaganda.

SIGNY: Since neither you nor the video were unable to ANSWER THE QUESTION, I fixed your post for you.
And I'll ask it again: What IS the money for???
Is there a secret stash of weapons we don't know about, just waiting for some big bucks to unlock it?
If there is, let us know.
And if not ...???

*****

Here's another question you failed to answer

What was the Russian military doing from 1990 to 2014?
Meanwhile, what was NATO doing?

These are foundational questions to our foreign policy, and Russia's. You avoid them like a plague, and you try to get others to avoid thinking about them too, by throwing up a shitstorm of propaganda that even YOU admit you don't think about.

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

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

Russian war crimes comrade signym. And your denying it doesn't fool anyone. Your being alright with what Russia is and has been doing, makes you a piece of shit. Pretending it is not happening or declaring it is Ukraine doing it won't fly either. Nobody's that stupid.

T

New Russian Tactics: Glide Bombs and Double-Tap

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024 8:07 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Far Right’s Ties to Russia Sow Rising Alarm in Germany

By Erika Solomon | April 15, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/15/world/europe/germany-afd-russia.htm
l

As cases proliferate, opponents fear the Alternative for Germany party is becoming a tool of Russian influence operations to undermine support for Ukraine.

To enter a secret session of Germany’s Parliament, lawmakers must lock their phones and leave them outside. Inside, they are not even allowed to take notes. Yet to many politicians, these precautions against espionage now feel like a farce.

Because seated alongside them in those classified meetings are members of the Alternative for Germany, the far-right party known by its German abbreviation, AfD.

In the past few months alone, a leading AfD politician was accused of taking money from pro-Kremlin strategists. One of the party’s parliamentary aides was exposed as having links to a Russian intelligence operative. And some of its state lawmakers flew to Moscow to observe Russia’s stage-managed elections.

“To know with certainty that sitting there, while these sensitive issues are discussed, are lawmakers with proven connections to Moscow — it doesn’t just make me uncomfortable. It worries me,” said Erhard Grundl, a Green party member of the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

The AfD called such comments “baseless.”

While some accusations against the AfD may be attempts at point-scoring by political rivals, the security concerns are real. As evidence of the party’s links to Moscow accumulates, suspicions are being expressed across the spectrum of mainstream German politics.

“The AfD keeps acting like the long arm of the terrorist state Russia,” Roderich Kiesewetter, the deputy head of the Parliament’s intelligence committee and a member of the center-right Christian Democrats, wrote on social media.

(AfD is the strongest in former East Germany, once under Russian control. The East German voters have a propensity for a strongman rule. In the former East Berlin the AfD came in second after SPD with 20.5% of the vote.)

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024 11:41 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

THUGR: A) It's bullshit.
B) By ignoring the YEARS I asked about, you managed to (clumsily) avoid the question.

SECOND: Bullshit. Again.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024 12:05 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

THUGR: A) It's bullshit.
B) By ignoring the YEARS I asked about, you managed to (clumsily) avoid the question.

SECOND: Bullshit. Again.

So you know comrade signym. If you ask a question that is designed to change a topic or to just deflect away from facts that are posted, or waste someone's time, you should expect it to go unanswered.

That said, I have no idea what question you are talking about. And what I've posted about Russia's' behavior is pure fact. No bullshit about it.

T

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024 1:22 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024 5:34 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
THUGR: A) It's bullshit.
B) By ignoring the YEARS I asked about, you managed to (clumsily) avoid the question.

SECOND: Bullshit. Again.

Russia is sure to lose in Ukraine, reckons a Chinese expert on Russia

Feng Yujun says the war has strained Sino-Russian relations

https://archive.ph/xdfHe

Apr 11th 2024

THE WAR between Russia and Ukraine has been catastrophic for both countries. With neither side enjoying an overwhelming advantage and their political positions completely at odds, the fighting is unlikely to end soon. One thing is clear, though: the conflict is a post-cold-war watershed that will have a profound, lasting global impact.

Four main factors will influence the course of the war. The first is the level of resistance and national unity shown by Ukrainians, which has until now been extraordinary. The second is international support for Ukraine, which, though recently falling short of the country’s expectations, remains broad.

The third factor is the nature of modern warfare, a contest that turns on a combination of industrial might and command, control, communications and intelligence systems. One reason Russia has struggled in this war is that it is yet to recover from the dramatic deindustrialisation it suffered after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

The final factor is information. When it comes to decision-making, Vladimir Putin is trapped in an information cocoon, thanks to his having been in power so long. The Russian president and his national-security team lack access to accurate intelligence. The system they operate lacks an efficient mechanism for correcting errors. Their Ukrainian counterparts are more flexible and effective.

In combination, these four factors make Russia’s eventual defeat inevitable. In time it will be forced to withdraw from all occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea. Its nuclear capability is no guarantee of success. Didn’t a nuclear-armed America withdraw from Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan?

Though the war has been hugely costly for Ukraine, the strength and unity of its resistance has shattered the myth that Russia is militarily invincible. Ukraine may yet rise from the ashes. When the war ends, it can look forward to the possibility of joining the European Union and NATO.

The war is a turning-point for Russia. It has consigned Mr Putin’s regime to broad international isolation. He has also had to deal with difficult domestic political undercurrents, from the rebellion by the mercenaries of the Wagner Group and other pockets of the military—for instance in Belgorod—to ethnic tensions in several Russian regions and the recent terrorist attack in Moscow. These show that political risk in Russia is very high. Mr Putin may recently have been re-elected, but he faces all kinds of possible black-swan events.

Adding to the risks confronting Mr Putin, the war has convinced more and more former Soviet republics that Russia’s imperial ambition threatens their independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. Increasingly aware that a Russian victory is out of the question, these states are distancing themselves from Moscow in different ways, from forging economic-development policies that are less dependent on Russia to pursuing more balanced foreign policies. As a result, prospects for the Eurasian integration that Russia advocates have dimmed.

The war, meanwhile, has made Europe wake up to the enormous threat that Russia’s military aggression poses to the continent’s security and the international order, bringing post-cold-war EU-Russia detente to an end. Many European countries have given up their illusions about Mr Putin’s Russia.

At the same time, the war has jolted NATO out of what Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called its “brain-dead” state. With most NATO countries increasing their military spending, the alliance’s forward military deployment in eastern Europe has been greatly shored up. The addition of Sweden and Finland to NATO highlights Mr Putin’s inability to use the war to prevent the alliance’s expansion.

The war will also help to reshape the UN Security Council. It has highlighted the body’s inability to effectively assume its responsibility of maintaining world peace and regional security owing to the abuse of veto power by some permanent members. This has riled the international community, increasing the chances that reform of the Security Council will speed up. Germany, Japan, India and other countries are likely to become permanent members and the five current permanent members may lose their veto power. Without reform, the paralysis that has become the hallmark of the Security Council will lead the world to an even more dangerous place.

China’s relations with Russia are not fixed, and they have been affected by the events of the past two years. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has just visited Beijing, where he and his Chinese counterpart once again emphasised the close ties between their countries. But the trip appears to have been more diplomatic effort by Russia to show it is not alone than genuine love-in. Shrewd observers note that China’s stance towards Russia has reverted from the “no limits” stance of early 2022, before the war, to the traditional principles of “non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third parties”.

Although China has not joined Western sanctions against Russia, it has not systematically violated them. It is true that China imported more than 100m tonnes of Russian oil in 2023, but that is not a great deal more than it was buying annually before the war. If China stops importing Russian oil and instead buys from elsewhere, it will undoubtedly push up international oil prices, putting huge pressure on the world economy.

Since the war began China has conducted two rounds of diplomatic mediation. Success has proved elusive but no one should doubt China’s desire to end this cruel war through negotiations. That wish shows that China and Russia are very different countries. Russia is seeking to subvert the existing international and regional order by means of war, whereas China wants to resolve disputes peacefully.

With Russia still attacking Ukrainian military positions, critical infrastructure and cities, and possibly willing to escalate further, the chances of a Korea-style armistice look remote. In the absence of a fundamental change in Russia’s political system and ideology, the conflict could become frozen. That would only allow Russia to continue to launch new wars after a respite, putting the world in even greater danger.

Feng Yujun is a professor at Peking University.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024 5:42 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

America’s Stark Choice in Ukraine and the Cost of Letting Russia Win

By Fredrick W. Kagan | April 16, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/america%E2%80%99s-stark-
choice-ukraine-and-cost-letting-russia-win

The current US debate about providing additional military assistance to Ukraine is based in part on the assumption that the war will remain stalemated regardless of US actions. That assumption is false.[1] The Russians are breaking out of positional warfare and beginning to restore maneuver to the battlefield because of the delays in the provision of US military assistance to Ukraine. Ukraine cannot hold the present lines now without the rapid resumption of US assistance, particularly air defense and artillery that only the US can provide rapidly and at scale.[2] . . .

The bottom line is very clear. An independent Ukraine with a strong military and a pro-Western government will make a Russian attack on NATO much more difficult, risky, and costly for Moscow. An independent and strong Ukraine will thus help NATO deter such a Russian attack and defeat it if deterrence fails. A victorious Russia that succeeds in its aim of destroying Ukraine entirely, on the other hand, will pose a major conventional military threat to NATO in a relatively short period of time. It will be much harder to deter future Russian aggression and both more difficult and far more costly to defeat it if deterrence fails. The choice before the US today is thus stark, but the answer is clear. American interests now and in the future are served far better by resuming aid to Ukraine now than by allowing Russia to win.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024 12:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

THUGR: A) It's bullshit.
B) By ignoring the YEARS I asked about, you managed to (clumsily) avoid the question.

SECOND: Bullshit. Again.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024 2:58 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
America’s Stark Choice in Ukraine and the Cost of Letting Russia Win

By Fredrick W. Kagan | April 16, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/america%E2%80%99s-stark-
choice-ukraine-and-cost-letting-russia-win

The current US debate about providing additional military assistance to Ukraine is based in part on the assumption that the war will remain stalemated regardless of US actions. That assumption is false.[1] The Russians are breaking out of positional warfare and beginning to restore maneuver to the battlefield because of the delays in the provision of US military assistance to Ukraine. Ukraine cannot hold the present lines now without the rapid resumption of US assistance, particularly air defense and artillery that only the US can provide rapidly and at scale.[2] . . .

The bottom line is very clear. An independent Ukraine with a strong military and a pro-Western government will make a Russian attack on NATO much more difficult, risky, and costly for Moscow. An independent and strong Ukraine will thus help NATO deter such a Russian attack and defeat it if deterrence fails. A victorious Russia that succeeds in its aim of destroying Ukraine entirely, on the other hand, will pose a major conventional military threat to NATO in a relatively short period of time. It will be much harder to deter future Russian aggression and both more difficult and far more costly to defeat it if deterrence fails. The choice before the US today is thus stark, but the answer is clear. American interests now and in the future are served far better by resuming aid to Ukraine now than by allowing Russia to win.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Fuck NATO.

Shut it down.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024 6:31 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
A) It's bullshit.
B) By ignoring the YEARS I asked about, you managed to (clumsily) avoid the question.

THUGR: So you know comrade signym. If you ask a question that is designed to change a topic or to just deflect away from facts that are posted, or waste someone's time, you should expect it to go unanswered. ....

That said, I have no idea what question you are talking about.

So .... you DON'T KNOW what question I'm referring to, but you won't answer it anyway???

Quote:
And what I've posted about Russia's' behavior is pure fact

And this is where I call bullshit. I watch Military Summary Channel almost every day, twice a day. Dima is NOT pro- Russian - if anything he's pro-Ukrainian - but one thing he insists on is VIDEO EVIDENCE.

Russians will double tap Ukrainian soldiers all day long! They will bomb military positions and then drone -strike vehicles that are evacuating wounded or even just retreating soldiers.

But I have NEVER seen video evidence of civilians being double - tapped. And if Kiev had video evidence, don't you think they'd splash it all over Telegram and elsewhere?

Maybe one of the confusions is that AFU establishes military positions in civilian structures, using those old durable Soviet high rises for communication/ radar/ drone operators and anti- tank positions; hotels as control centers etc. Dima has always been careful to establish which kinds of positions are being struck. When they're civilian he says so. When they're occupied by military forces, he says so.

BTW, I don't condone attacks on civilians by either side. But I think it's entirely fair that Kiev attack Russian refineries, just as Russia attacks Ukrainian refineries (and power stations) because they support the war effort.

Also, FYI MOST of Ukraine's electricity is produced by nuclear power plants (NPPs), not Thermal or hydro power plants (TPPs, HPPs). IIRC peak demand before the war was about 10.5GW, NPPs produced about 7.5GW of the total.

Russia refuses to bomb NPPs. However, they CAN bomb the substations and lines that distribute that electricity, so altho the plants are still operational they don't do anybody any good.

Just reporting facts as I know them.
Feel free to correct me if you have evidence (not allegations) that I'm wrong.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024 11:16 PM

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Wednesday, April 17, 2024 11:17 PM