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

Putin's True Motive for Ukraine Invasion Revealed in Report

By Isabel van Brugen

Personal resentment and a desire for revenge were the driving factors behind Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February, an investigation has claimed.

Verstka, an independent Russian news outlet that was founded shortly after the conflict began, published a deep-dive report this week entitled "How Putin Came to Hate Ukraine," which cites former and current officials in the Russian and Ukrainian governments. Kremlin reporter Ilya Zhegulev wrote that loyal Putin ally Viktor Medvedchuk is at the center of the Russian leader's so-called "special military operation" in the neighboring country, and that he had already decided to attack Kyiv in February-March 2021.

Medvedchuk is a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian oligarch who was released by Kyiv in a prisoner swap with Russia in September 2022. The 68-year-old has close ties with Putin, who is believed to be the godfather of his youngest daughter. Medvedchuk was the former leader of a pro-Russian opposition party in Ukraine, and was detained in April 2022 by Ukraine's state security service, the SBU, after he fled house arrest while awaiting trial on treason charges. Kyiv has stripped him of his Ukrainian citizenship.

In 2021, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree sanctioning three television stations affiliated with Medvedchuk, stopping them from broadcasting. For Putin, this was "the final straw," Verstka wrote.

"In February 2021, a special operation was carried out, the purpose of which was to neutralize Medvedchuk," the news outlet said, noting that the sanctions applied to 112 Ukraine, NewsOne, ZIK and their owner, Medvedchuk associate Taras Kozak.

According to Ukraine's Anti-Corruption Action Center, although Kozak was the official owner of the television channels, their real beneficiary was Medvedchuk.

Zelensky said at the time that the television stations "carried out anti-Ukrainian propaganda" and "interfered with the process of the country's integration into the European Union."

These sanctions personally affected Medvedchuk, who, along with his wife, was listed in a March 2021 investigation by the Security Service of Ukraine on the financing of terrorism, Verstka wrote.

Three sources close to Putin confirmed that these developments were the final straw in Putin's decision to prepare to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "The Kremlin decided not to resort to the tools of 'soft power' anymore."

Putin was enraged by the "personal attack" on Medvedchuk, a longtime acquaintance of Putin told the independent media outlet.

Medvedchuk himself influenced the Russian president to invade Ukraine by regularly telling him about "pro-Russian sentiments in Ukraine."

"He talked about the loyalty of the territory, stupidly misleading Putin," a source close to the presidential administration said.

The Kremlin didn't question Medvedchuk's words, a source said.

"Instead of drawing conclusions about the adequacy of the information received, analyzing and seeing the obvious picture that they are not expected here, resentment and anger clouded their eyes."

Newsweek has contacted Russia's foreign ministry for comment via email.

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-motive-ukraine-invasion-viktor-medvedch
uk-1796774

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, July 31, 2023 7:10 AM

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

"Right now, we're in a situation where either we win in this war, or we cease to exist as a people and a nation," according to Pyotr Tolstoy, the deputy chairman of the lower house of Russia's Parliament.

"Either they destroy us or we destroy them," Tolstoy added during a broadcast with Russian state television host, Artyom Sheynin.

"Let me reiterate: the fate of our country is at stake," Tolstoy continued. "It's either us or them."

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-cease-exist-ukraine-war-state-tv-count
eroffensive-1816219

What a pleasant change from the habitual Russian threats to nuke the US, UK, EU, and Ukraine. The Russians are making progress in overcoming their anger issues and are now facing with greater maturity their existential fears of death and/or slavery to the West. The North Korean regime has the same psychological problems as the Russian regime but directs its anger at South Korea and Japan, not Ukraine and the UK. Two very similar countries, mentally, despite the vast differences in their cultures.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, July 31, 2023 7:18 AM

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

The lack of Russian milblogger reaction to a Ukrainian strike on the Chonhar bridge represents a notable inflection in Russian reporting on the war in Ukraine and may suggest that the Kremlin has directed Russian milbloggers to refrain from covering certain topics. The Ukrainian Armed Forces announced on July 29 that Ukrainian forces successfully struck the Chonhar bridge on the M-18 (Dzhankoi-Melitopol) highway between occupied Crimea and occupied Kherson Oblast.[1] ISW has not observed any Russian milblogger discussion about the Ukrainian strike or Russian milbloggers promoting Kherson Oblast occupation administration head Vladimir Saldo’s claim that Russian forces intercepted 12 Ukrainian Storm Shadow cruise missiles targeting the bridge.[2] The only other Russian source to comment on the strikes was a local Russian news Telegram channel, which amplified alleged claims from Russian tourists in the area about the bridge being closed to traffic.[3] Russian milbloggers responded to a Ukrainian strike on the Chonhar bridge on June 22 with widespread outrage and concern, and Russian milbloggers routinely comment on both successful and allegedly unsuccessful Ukrainian strikes on Russian logistics.[4] The Chonhar bridge is a notable bottleneck along a critical Russian ground line of communication (GLOC), and it is highly unlikely that Russian milbloggers would voluntarily ignore a successful or unsuccessful Ukrainian strike on the bridge. ISW has previously assessed that select Russian milbloggers may be shaping their coverage of the war in Ukraine in ways more favorable to Kremlin narratives out of fear of Kremlin punishment following the removal of prominent critical voices in the Russian information space, particularly pro-war critic Igor Girkin and Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin.[5] General fear of Kremlin punishment would not likely result in such near-universal lack of coverage of a dramatic event, however, and it is more likely that a specific Kremlin directive not to cover disruptions to critical GLOCs caused this lack of reporting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin disingenuously framed the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive as inhibiting prospects for negotiations. During a press conference at the Russia-Africa Summit on July 29, Putin accused Ukraine of launching a large-scale offensive so that Russia cannot discuss a ceasefire while its troops are defending against Ukrainian attacks.[6] Russian officials have previously weaponized the mention of negotiations in order to accuse Ukraine of being the party unwilling to enter into negotiations discussions, and Putin is likely using discussions of the Ukrainian counteroffensive to undermine reports of Ukrainian battlefield successes and accuse Ukraine of continued lack of interest in a potential negotiations process.[7] Russian forces have been conducting their own attacks in Luhansk and around Donetsk City almost continuously since before the Ukrainian counter-offensive began, moreover, a fact that Putin did not, naturally, mention. Putin also notably lauded the work of Central Military district Commander Lieutenant General Andrey Mordvichev for repelling Ukrainian attacks and securing advances, likely in Luhansk Oblast.[8]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-30-2023

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, July 31, 2023 6:12 PM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND'S neverending recycling of BS.

SECOND: Signym, Trump ...

SIGNY: TRUMP!
Your SECOND favorite topic!
You're so funny!

SECOND: Hitler/Mussolini. Putin/Trump.

HEY! Whatever happened to Stalin?
And Trump makes your list because... hmmm... Trump presided over the deaths of how many billions of people, again?

You're still funny!

NATO Planes Watched As Three Civilian Ships Ran Russia’s Naval Blockade Of Ukraine

A flock of NATO aircraft carefully monitored the ships as they sailed toward Izmail, a small Ukrainian port just across from Romania on the Danube River. The vessels presumably will load grain in Izmail then sail back into the Black Sea and onward to foreign ports.

The Israeli vessel with the ship-tracking handle Ams1, as well as the Greek vessel with the handle Sahin 2, sailed north from the Bosporus Strait, while the Turkish-Georgian Yilmaz Kaptan sailed west from northern Turkey.

Overhead, no fewer than four NATO warplanes patrolled: a U.S. Navy P-8 patrol plane, a U.S. Army Challenger with a surface-scanning radar, a U.S. Air Force RQ-4 drone and an E-3 early-warning plane from NATO. None of the planes routinely carries weapons, but NATO fighters—including Italian Eurofighters and Romanian F-16s—were nearby in Romania.

America calls Putins' bluff.

T

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Monday, July 31, 2023 7:22 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Russia is not "blockading" Ukrainian grain. If it was, Russia would have mined the sea lanes. And we KNOW Russia is good at laying mines.

Russia simply allowed the grain deal to expire, which opened up the Black Sea and Danube ports for destruction, since weapons, fuel, and ammo storage flourished under grain deal protection.

If it's a transhipment or storage point for war materiel, or a place where foreign volunteers gather, it'll be targeted. Grain ships are safe.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Tuesday, August 1, 2023 6:58 AM

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

Kremlin-appointed Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova confirmed on July 31 that Russia has transferred 4.8 million Ukrainians, including over 700,000 children, to the Russian Federation since the beginning of the war.[20] In a report on the activities “authorized by the President of the Russian Federation for children’s rights” in 2022, Lvova-Belova claimed that Russia has “received” 4.8 million Ukrainians since February 2022 and noted that the vast majority of the 700,000 children who arrived to Russia did not have parental or guardian supervision.[21] The report carefully frames these activities as humanitarian gestures of goodwill. International humanitarian law, however, defines the forced transfer of civilians to the territory of an occupying power as “deportation.” And the circumstances of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the situation in occupied territories are likely sufficiently coercive to mean that most “transfers” of Ukrainian civilians to Russia meet the threshold of forced deportation, which is prohibited under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, regardless of Russia’s claimed motive.[22] ISW continues to assess that Russian authorities are conducting a large-scale campaign to deport Ukrainians to the Russian Federation.[23]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-31-2023

For Russia to own Ukraine without the local population resisting the change, Putin must remove the Ukrainians. A secondary benefit for Russia is millions of Ukrainian workers who moved to Russia are dependent on Putin for food. Either work at nasty jobs in Russia or Putin starves you. Where did history see that story before? In the days of Stalin’s work camps.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, August 1, 2023 9:34 AM

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Russian Commander Threatens Drunken Troops With Death

By Jon Jackson On 7/31/23 at 4:39 PM EDT

In a recently released video, a Russian commander in Ukraine can be seen physically and verbally abusing troops he accuses of being drunk while engaging in combat.

The commander also says that the men are "dead anyway" in what could be interpreted as a threat to their lives amid the 17-month-old war with Ukraine.

Earlier this year, the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported in an intelligence update that increased use of alcohol by Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops in Ukraine had become an issue for the military.

On April 2, the MoD said a Russian Telegram news channel had recently covered how "there have been 'extremely high' numbers of incidents, crimes and deaths linked to alcohol consumption amongst the deployed Russian forces."

"Russian commanders likely identify pervasive alcohol abuse as particularly detrimental to combat effectiveness," the ministry said. "However, with heavy drinking pervasive across much of Russian society, it has long been seen as a tacitly accepted part of military life, even on combat operations."

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-commander-threatens-drunken-troops-de
ath-1816502

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Wednesday, August 2, 2023 3:39 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
But step back a few years in time. When the United States entered World War II, the U.S. and Russia became allies, and FDR and Stalin became fast friends in the effort to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan. It was “Roosevelt’s Road to Russia” that was completed in this alliance. During those days, there was no danger for scientists and others in having communist and Red connections but rather quite the reverse.

After the war, there was another switcheroo. President Harry Truman was facing party losses in Congress and cleverly triangulated by ramping up the Red Scare again. In 1948, the communists won an election in Greece, and this was highlighted in the United States as evidence of a growing imperialism under the influence of Moscow.

In the blink of an eye, Russia went from valiant ally to feared enemy. And this was a decade and a half after the United States went from feared enemy to valuable domestic influence. And this was only a decade and a half after Russia went from friend of the West to feared enemy. Yep, in the course of a half-century, the switch happened three times.

Did you ever wonder why George Orwell’s book “1984” was so named? It was a spin on 1948 when the Cold War began and within an instant the public mind flipped from celebrating to hating an entire nation. This is why in the book, international relations between Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia were in continued flux. With each change, the announcement went out that we’ve always been at war with whomever the ruling class wanted war with next.

Behind a paywall at Epoch Times, but free at

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/corruption-science-politics

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Wednesday, August 2, 2023 8:08 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:
But step back a few years in time. When the United States entered World War II, the U.S. and Russia became allies, and FDR and Stalin became fast friends in the effort to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan. It was “Roosevelt’s Road to Russia” that was completed in this alliance. During those days, there was no danger for scientists and others in having communist and Red connections but rather quite the reverse.

After the war, there was another switcheroo. President Harry Truman was facing party losses in Congress and cleverly triangulated by ramping up the Red Scare again. In 1948, the communists won an election in Greece, and this was highlighted in the United States as evidence of a growing imperialism under the influence of Moscow.

In the blink of an eye, Russia went from valiant ally to feared enemy. And this was a decade and a half after the United States went from feared enemy to valuable domestic influence. And this was only a decade and a half after Russia went from friend of the West to feared enemy. Yep, in the course of a half-century, the switch happened three times.

Did you ever wonder why George Orwell’s book “1984” was so named? It was a spin on 1948 when the Cold War began and within an instant the public mind flipped from celebrating to hating an entire nation. This is why in the book, international relations between Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia were in continued flux. With each change, the announcement went out that we’ve always been at war with whomever the ruling class wanted war with next.

Behind a paywall at Epoch Times, but free at

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/corruption-science-politics

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

1) Signym, the entire movie "Oppenheimer" pointed out, over and over, that what you and ZeroHedge wrote is false. The Manhattan Project was for nuking the Russians. The Russians knew that because of history:

Joseph Rotblat — the only scientist to resign from the Manhattan Project — got a nasty shock in May 1944 when, at a dinner, Groves said, “You realize, of course, that the main purpose of this project is to subdue the Russians.” Later, Groves testified that “there was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy.” It is hard to reconcile this bloodlessness with Matt Damon’s blithe face as Groves in Christopher Nolan’s film.

How complicit was Oppenheimer? David Hawkins, Oppenheimer’s aide and the Manhattan Project’s official historian, claims that Groves told Oppenheimer at the end of 1943 that the Nazis had abandoned their attempt to build a bomb — and Oppenheimer shrugged. Was the bomb just too “technically sweet” for Oppenheimer to resist?

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/22/23803380/j-robert-oppenhe
imer-film-movie-nuclear-weapons-manhattan-project-world-war-ii-christopher-nolan

2) Signym, I am technically wrong to accuse you of lying. What you and ZeroHedge wrote is more precisely described as "bullshit" rather than a "lie" about the movie Oppenheimer. The distinction is subtle but a philosopher described it using 1984 as the example.

Empire of Bullshit: Harry Frankfurt and 1984

During O’Brien’s torture of Winston, we see how amateurish Winston’s former work appears when compared with O’Brien’s commitment to the Party. Winston had assumed all along that truth mattered, which is why the Party had to suppress it, but O’Brien shows him that Party rule depends on playing another game altogether: replacing the earnest attempt at knowing reality with submission to the Party’s will. In this sense, O’Brien is Frankfurt’s perfect bullshit artist, since, as Frankfurt puts it, “His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”

At one point, O’Brien tells Winston, “I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature.” His purpose in denying gravity isn’t really to convince or persuade Winston of anything, since that would imply that he wants Winston to believe what he says. Belief aims at truth – to believe something is to try to get it right. O’Brien’s purpose is to get Winston to buy his bullshit. Party indoctrination is not indoctrination in the strict and literal sense, where the indoctrinated come to believe a doctrine. Big Brother’s victory over Winston comes when Winston gives up. When memories come to him, he sets them aside as false. Which ones are false? It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t believe anything, because he’s not even trying.

Newspeak, the official language of Oceania, incorporates bullshit as a regulative ideal. In the appendix, Orwell explains that, if all goes according to plan, native speakers of Newspeak will eventually have such an impoverished conceptual scheme that Shakespeare will be incoherent to them. What could “freedom” mean, if you only know it in the sense of freedom from sugar, fat, or gluten? Syme, an architect of Newspeak, foreshadows Winston’s fate when he tells him, “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” Party orthodoxy is empty – it is bullshit.

For Frankfurt, “bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are,” by virtue of its peculiar disconnect from truth, and Orwell shows us its empire-building potential. Fooling all of the people all of the time is a tall order – Winston Smith is a busy man. But the success of Big Brother’s regime does not depend crucially on tricking everyone. More important is passive obedience and widespread acquiescence to bullshit.

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2023/07/empire-of-bullshit-harry
-frankfurt-and-1984.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Wednesday, August 2, 2023 8:16 AM

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

Ukraine Removes Hammer and Sickle from Soviet-era Statue

Aug 1, 2023

Workers remove a hammer and sickle from a giant statue in Kyiv, Ukraine, as part of a campaign to remove Soviet symbols that has ramped up since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

The 62-meter-high steel figure of a woman holding a sword and shield bearing the USSR-linked symbols was unveiled in 1981 as a memorial to Soviet victory in World War II. But since Russia's invasion, Ukraine doubled down on the removal of references to Soviet history and Russian culture from geographical names, and a law on decolonization came into force this summer.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Wednesday, August 2, 2023 3:32 PM

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

Russia Is Returning to Its Totalitarian Past

by Alexey Kovalev, August 1, 2023
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/01/russia-putin-wagner-repression-au
thoritarian-totalitarian-arrests-ukraine-war/

A month after Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny, Russia is well along the path from ordinary authoritarian control to full-on totalitarian repression. As in old Soviet times, Moscow is awash with rumors of purges among the top military brass. Elsewhere, the machine of state repression is churning at an accelerating rate as the Russian authorities cast an ever-wider net for purported enemies within.

With many of the most vocal anti-war activists already dead, imprisoned, or exiled, the security services are now targeting even mild whiffs of dissent. Last week, they arrested the Marxist academic Boris Kagarlitsky and charged him with “promoting extremism.” His supposed crime: In a Telegram post written after Ukraine’s first attack on the Kerch Strait bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea in October 2022, Kagarlitsky called the strike “understandable” from a purely military standpoint. Even a neutral, objective assessment is now a crime.

Russians of all walks of life now face kangaroo courts and long sentences to prison or hard labor for something as trivial as a social media post. Nikita Tushkanov, a history teacher in Mikun, a town in Russia’s northern Komi Republic, was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in a labor camp for calling the bridge explosion “a birthday gift for Putler,” using a portmanteau of “Putin” and “Hitler” that has been popularized on social media. Private conversations are suspect, too, as former police officer Sergey Klokov found out when he was sentenced to seven years in prison for speaking to Ukrainian acquaintances on the phone about crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine.

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has long been an authoritarian state. But the persecution was focused mainly on opposition politicians and activists, from murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov to imprisoned anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny. Even after the adoption of strict new censorship laws at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, harsh prison sentences weren’t very common, and they were mostly used as exemplary punishments for high-profile dissenters. These included Ilya Yashin, an opposition politician who condemned the massacre committed by Russian soldiers in Bucha, Ukraine, in a series of social media posts. Meanwhile, ordinary Russians still had plenty of opportunities to speak their mind—among themselves, on social media, or with the occasional small-scale political protest.

But more recently, Russia’s totalitarian mask has come off, with less and less toleration for any kind of dissent. Not only is the persecution of dissenting opinions official now, with new laws explicitly banning any criticism of the so-called special military operation in Ukraine, but its scope has vastly widened. Victims include more and more ordinary Russians, and the infraction can be as small as posting an approving emoji on a social media post critical of the war. In another parallel to 20th-century European totalitarianism, children are now both snitches for the state and victims of repression: Some children have reported on their teachers and parents, while others have been denounced by their classmates or teachers. Some have been separated from parents arrested for their activism.

In another reversion to the communist past, Russian schools are being militarized. State media recently reported that children will soon begin basic military training, including piloting classes for unmanned aerial vehicles. There are even reports of forced labor at drone factories using press gangs of students from a local technical school in Alabuga, Tatarstan. State propaganda justifies and idealizes this kind of militarized childhood with references to World War II, when Soviet children aided the war effort by assembling artillery shells after school.

As in times of old, Russians are also being cut off from the outside world. A new law on military conscription makes it much harder for men up to age 30 to leave Russia. Interaction with independent media is being curtailed as well. Not content with driving Russia’s last critical journalists out of the country, the Kremlin recently declared TV Rain, an independent Russian news channel operating from exile in Latvia, “undesirable.” That makes it a crime for any Russian to post links to its content on social media, as is already the case with Meduza, Novaya Gazeta, and other media on the official list of banned organizations that keeps growing by the week.

Russia is also implementing Chinese-style internet controls as the state censorship agencies force ever more sophisticated filtering protocols on Russian internet service providers. That makes it increasingly difficult for Russians to use workarounds, such as virtual private networks, to access banned sites, including media and social networks outside the country. The prospect of completely isolating Russian users from the global internet—which struck Russians as a fever dream when Putin first floated the idea in 2014—is now a real possibility, pending a few real-life test runs.

As usual, repression is accompanied by scapegoating. Putin’s Russia has branded the LGBTQ+ community, already among the most marginalized, as public enemy number one. Not only is any kind of activism or self-organization illegal, but LGBTQ+ Russians’ very existence is restricted, too.

As the net tightens, not even the most fervent supporters of Russia’s war against Ukraine are safe. These include right-wing nationalists, who have been crowdfunding gear for the Russian army, calling for the harshest possible treatment of Ukraine, and complaining about the Russian military leadership as weak and indecisive. On July 21, Russian police arrested the most prominent of these voices, Igor “Strelkov” Girkin—a former Russian intelligence officer wanted by The Hague for war crimes —on charges of promoting extremism. Among other outbursts, Girkin had demanded on his Telegram channel that Russian army bureaucrats responsible for soldiers’ wage arrears be executed. The severity of the charges make it very likely that Girkin will spend the next few years behind bars. Until now, the Kremlin’s most ardently nationalistic supporters have felt relatively free to speak out and criticize the war effort as not being consequential or genocidal enough. Now, they suddenly find themselves on the wrong end of the stick.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Thursday, August 3, 2023 6:27 AM

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

Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s security council, told Ukrainian national television on Wednesday that Russian forces had ample time in months of occupation to prepare defences and lay extensive minefields. “The number of mines on the territory that our troops have retaken is utterly mad. On average, there are three, four, five mines per square metre,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/aug/03/russia-ukraine-war-
live-russia-deliberately-using-food-as-a-weapon-says-eu-massive-drone-attack-on-kyiv

What is the average of "three, four, five mines per square metre"? It is four!

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Thursday, August 3, 2023 1:33 PM

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

Five Ways the Ukraine War could become a Nuclear Conflict

Eighteen months into a war between Russia and Ukraine, the conflict has become nearly invisible to many Americans. News from the front is frequently reduced to a few sentences, and each new day’s reporting sounds like yesterday’s.

As Western nations have gradually crossed every “red line” laid down by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow’s repeated warnings about the possibility of nuclear weapons being used have ceased to elicit fear.

Thus, when Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev warned on June 30 that success of the current Ukrainian counter-offensive might provoke a “nuclear conflagration,” his comment was barely noticed. Some Western observers seem to have concluded such statements are a bluff, despite the frequency with which they are issued by senior Russian officials.

The Biden administration takes the warnings seriously, and has sought to find a middle ground between doing too little and doing too much in arming Kyiv. Nonetheless, there is inherent danger in supporting war on the doorstep of another nuclear power. Nobody in Washington can claim to understand with any precision what Putin’s inner circle is thinking, or how it might react to a variety of plausible developments.

Against that backdrop, here are five scenarios in which Moscow might decide to “go nuclear.” Since US planning scenarios typically anticipate that the nuclear threshold initially would be breached in a limited and local way, I will confine myself mainly to situations in which Russia employs tactical weapons—of which it has roughly 1,900.

1) Russian conventional forces falter on the battlefield. The performance of Russian forces in the war has been so poor that further battlefield reverses cannot be discounted. In addition to various disabilities noted to date, Moscow’s military now faces growing shortfalls in the availability of precision munitions, and the loss of Wagner Group mercenaries on the front line.

At some point, the limited use of lower-yield nuclear weapons might come to be viewed as the only available option for staving off defeat. Moscow has a variety of weapons stationed near Ukraine such as the Iskander missile that are capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear warheads, and failing in that it could fall back on its under-utilized air force.

Initial nuclear use would likely be confined to Ukraine, and designed mainly to shock Kyiv into submission. Putin has good reason to believe that any such application of force would result in a complete rethink of Western strategy for the conflict.

2) Ukraine threatens core Russian interests. Kyiv is gradually stepping up its attacks on targets inside Russia. If these operations were to begin having a significant impact on governmental or economic infrastructure, they could provoke a nuclear response pursuant to longstanding Russian nuclear doctrine.

The West does not have a fine understanding of how Putin & Co. define their nation’s core interests, and whatever views they currently harbor are subject to change as the fortunes of war shift. For instance, an invasion of the Crimean Peninsula might be deemed a threat to Russia’s core interests even though it was only annexed by Moscow nine years ago. The possibility of limited and local nuclear use is increased by the fact that Kyiv has no capacity to respond in kind.

3) Moscow misreads military signals. The worse the war goes for Moscow, the more Putin’s inner circle will retreat into a siege mentality where fear takes the place of calm deliberation. In such circumstances, it is plausible that ambiguous indications of military action rendered by a mediocre intelligence system could lead to a precipitous response.

It would not be the first time that Moscow misinterpreted intelligence. Anthony Barrett of the RAND Corporation reports that in 1983, a NATO military exercise called Able Archer was misconstrued by Russian leaders as cover for a nuclear attack.

That happened in the absence of an actual conflict. Today, with war raging daily near Russia’s border with Ukraine, the possibility of making mistakes is more elevated. After all, Moscow is within range of tactical aircraft that might operate out of Ukraine.

4) Central control of nuclear forces breaks down. It is a longstanding assumption of Western military planners that Moscow maintains a tight rein on its nuclear forces. However, the quality of technology and training of personnel in the nuclear command-and-control system may have deteriorated in much the same manner that other facets of the military establishment have.

That is particularly true of the theater or tactical nuclear systems that Russia deploys near Eastern Europe. Many of the systems are road-mobile, and thus must be entrusted to local commanders who might have their own ideas about how to respond in an emergency. If the Russians are sensible, such systems do not carry nuclear warheads unless they are under alert for imminent action; but Ukraine could constitute just such a situation.

Whatever the formal procedures are for releasing control of nuclear weapons to local commanders, the performance of Russia’s military in the war to date has been so uneven that there can be no ironclad guarantee against unauthorized use—or for that matter, accidental use in a military exercise.

5) Putin deposed by extreme nationalists. The Ukraine war has given voice to extreme nationalists in the Russian political culture who frequently invoke Russia’s nuclear arsenal in proposing paths to victory. President Putin has tried to tap into nationalist sentiment, but as the recent revolt of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin demonstrates, that is a dicey game.

What if Prigozhin, or players of his ilk, sought to seize some of Russia’s nuclear weapons? What is they conspired with military leaders to depose Putin and bring a more “decisive” style of leadership to Russia? At that point, all bets would be off and Western capitals might view Putin’s tenure in a different light.

Does this sound fanciful? Perhaps it is. But the simple fact is that the inner workings of the Russian political system are largely opaque to the West, and thus planners need to consider a range of perilous possibilities. If Moscow resorts to the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the White House will need a quick answer to the question, “now what?”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2023/08/02/five-ways-the-uk
raine-war-could-become-a-nuclear-conflict/

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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Thursday, August 3, 2023 2:57 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

And in REAL NEWS:

Kiev has tried three counteroffensives since June 5. Here we are, in August, andthey're still trying.

Counteroffensive #1, in the southern front, used the "combined arms" approach, with a lot of western tanks (mostly Leopard) and armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles (mostly Bradleys). What that got Kiev was appx 20% loss of armored vehicles and a lot of men killed and wounded as they got trapped in dense anti-tnak and anti-personnel minefields.

#2 was using smaller units (30-100 men) of light infantry backed by artillery. Once again, all it got was a lot of men killed and a lot of artillery pieces destroyed in counterbattery fire.

#3 ...Back to the "combined arms" approach so dearly beloved by DC State Dept neocons ... them being such military geniuses and all ... and once again, more armored vehicles and men lost.

Esimates are 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in July alone. And apparnetly Ukrainian soldiers have not even reached to first Russian defensiev line, called the Surovikin line.

#4 promises to be swarms of drones! But prolly not against Russian military targets but against Russian civilians, bc that it what Kiev is reduced to.

Too many attacks on Russian civilians will prolly invite more attacks on NATO-staffed command centers (more like data fusion centers). I believe there are two remaining. The question is when will Russia unleash an offensive of its own?

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Friday, August 4, 2023 6:32 AM

THG

Reuters) -A Russian warship was seriously damaged in an overnight Ukrainian naval drone attack on Russia's Black Sea navy base at Novorossiysk, two sources said on Friday, after Russia said it had fended off the attack.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-warship-damaged-in-ukrain
ian-attack-on-novorossiysk-naval-base-sources/ar-AA1eMo2a?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=289878ee0e0e4a3cad7db0a4029c3d47&ei=33

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Friday, August 4, 2023 1:13 PM

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

Russian state-controlled media has long and repeatedly embraced the grim notion of releasing a nuclear doomsday upon the world. There are times, it seems, when Moscow’s motto for the war in Ukraine is “Armageddon or bust.”

It is no longer a policy of escalating to de-escalate. Rather, as the West becomes inured to Russia’s failures on the conventional battlefield, a nuclear war keeps coming up as Russia’s veiled threat each time a new battlefield capability is provided to Ukraine. The threat is so persistent as to merit a new title for the old fable: “The Bear who Cried Wolf.”

Indeed, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev did it again last Sunday, declaring that the Kremlin would unleash a “global nuclear fire” if Ukraine were to prevail in its ongoing NATO-backed counteroffensive.

So, what is the purpose behind Putin’s tacit approval of Russian state-controlled media raising the specter of nuclear war?

In late May of this year, as one example, Vladimir Solovyov, Putin’s best-known propagandist, invoked Armageddon yet again on his Russia One nightly evening television show. According to Julia Davis, a Russian media expert and columnist for The Daily Beast, one of his guests characterized winning or losing the war in Ukraine in stark apocalyptic terms and as “a question of our destruction.”

The why is simple enough. Putin has two audiences. First, his propaganda machine needs to reassure Russians, increasingly bewildered by Moscow’s military setbacks in Ukraine. For them, nuclear weapons are like a teddy bear, a comforting reminder that they cannot ever lose.

Conversely Putin needs to convince the world that Mother Russia just might be crazy enough to trigger Armageddon. Hence the nearly endless parade of Mad Hatters on Russian state-controlled television and radio singing the virtues of Armageddon as a last resort, just as Medvedev did on Sunday. The fearmongering also has a grassroots component, in the form of Russian disinformation on social media.

What goes unsaid is that, if Russia wants to win, Putin cannot use his nuclear arsenal. That would be game over not only for the West, but for him as well.

With that in mind, Medvedev’s comment is only unique because he may be the first Russian official to publicly acknowledge that Kyiv’s counteroffensive is succeeding, and that “Russian territory” will be lost.

Putin is indeed planning Armageddon. It is probably not a nuclear Armageddon, but an ideological one. His designs and hopes for victory in Ukraine are predicated upon the West caving to his doomsday threats, in the process destroying our own liberty just so we can survive in a totalitarian-controlled world.

If that happens, it be our own self-inflicted Armageddon.

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4133192-putin-is-losing-
his-war-but-his-threats-of-armageddon-keep-working/

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, August 4, 2023 9:06 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
THE UKRAINIAN ARMY IS BREAKING

A defeated army and a broken one are two different things. An army merely defeated in battle can often make successful withdrawals, reform itself, and reconstitute its strength—as Rome did after its humiliation at Cannae, eventually destroying its great rival, Carthage. But when whole armies break, when they lose their will to fight, the whole nation can likewise break. That is what happened to the great empires in World War I. It is also the fate awaiting the Ukrainian army.

How does a nation at war get to a place where its fighters refuse to fight?. . . .

The first negative-feedback bellow is when a war that began full of high hopes seems suddenly unwinnable. Early victories are now old memories. More battles are lost than won, and the costs of battle keep rising to the very threshold of human endurance—and then rise again. The second is when external support from friends and allies begins to evaporate. This is an especially acute negative factor if allied support is the emotional foundation of the army’s belief in ultimate victory. Third and finally, those who initiated the war, those who promised a road paved with victory, and who vowed that the world would support the army until victory was won—no matter how long it takes—are increasingly seen as liars and deceivers. The army—the entire nation—has been betrayed by its leaders.

...

All this has descended on Ukraine in the past six weeks.

...

There have been no victories—not even bloody and debilitating wins like in the Fourth Battle of Karkhov—for nearly a year. Western leaders still profess that their support will continue. Yet the Western Alliance now admits it didn’t give Ukrainians nearly enough good stuff for even modest tactical gains in their ongoing, sacrificial offensive—and knew it going in. And increasingly, Ukrainian unit-level commanders are accusing higher leaders of simply using them as cannon-fodder to satisfy NATO overlords. Not just platoons, but larger units are surrendering to Russian forces. Morale is cratering. . . .

Yet in casualties-to-population terms, Ukrainian military losses, after more than 500 days of war, are approaching those sustained by Germany in World War I over more than 1,500 days. This is a catastrophic attrition rate, compounded by all three negative feedback loops that can break an army and a nation. Throughout the spring and summer, Ukrainian forces were thrown into battle and ground down. By autumn, the fighting army will have been spent—the tragic fate of Ukraine’s Best in 2023. By September, what is left will be twisting, and bending toward breaking, in the remorseless winds of war.

MORE AT https://compactmag.com/article/the-ukrainian-army-is-breaking

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Friday, August 4, 2023 9:23 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Cross posted from the "Russian losses" thread

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's war.

It would be impossible for Russia not to have any losses at all. So, hooray for the occasional successful Ukraine strike!

And now for some real news: A 2-month summary of The Great Counteroffensive, from someone who is pro-Ukrainian, lives near Ukraine, and obsessively follows every video, geo-located video, report, and social media post on the war.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, August 5, 2023 7:24 AM

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

How Memory Survives in Putin’s Russia

Russia’s dictator controls its past. But can history that avoids politics live on?
AUGUST 5, 2023, 7:00 AM

By Tanya Paperny, a writer, translator, and editor in Washington, D.C.

My great-grandmother has no headstone, no grave, not even a clear burial place. Tatiana Ivanovna Shatalova-Rabinovich was a socialist activist in imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, but Joseph Stalin’s ruthless regime labeled her a “counterrevolutionary” and sentenced her to death. In March 1938, Soviet police officers at a secret site just outside Moscow shot Tatiana and dumped her body into a trench with thousands of others.

Files about these mass graves were only declassified after the fall of the Soviet Union, so from the time of Tatiana’s wrongful arrest in 1938 until the 1990s, my family didn’t know where and when she was killed.

But at 37 Pokrovka St. in the heart of central Moscow, a metal plaque installed in 2016 reads:

HERE LIVED
TATIANA IVANOVNA
SHATALOVA-RABINOVICH
MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF
POLITICAL PRISONERS
BORN IN 1891
ARRESTED 1/29/1938
SHOT 3/7/1938
REHABILITATED IN 1956

This postcard-sized memorial affixed to Tatiana’s final residence, now a nondescript apartment building, is the only acknowledgment of my great-grandmother’s life and death.

The Last Address project (Posledniy Adres in Russian https://www.poslednyadres.ru/ ) memorializes victims of Soviet-era political repression through archival research and the installation of small plaques at the person’s last known residence. Over a thousand hang in cities and towns across Russia. There are even some in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, France and Germany.

The signs are an achievement in the way they restore histories that have been erased, suppressed, or revised. But, especially in Putin’s Russia, they are also a political achievement—a unique object lesson in how violence can be commemorated in totalitarian societies.

Last Address gets permission to install their modest memorials by speaking directly to commercial landlords, cooperative apartment boards, or private tenants. No one ever asks permission from government officials. In the case of my great-grandmother’s building, which also has signs for six other victims, a volunteer went door to door to secure approval from a majority of residents. It took V.L. (who requested anonymity for her safety) over a week to knock on all 101 apartments and almost a year to get permission from the building’s board members. (She has a personal connection to the project: Her grandfather was friends with activists in Tatiana’s building and was also arrested and shot during the purges.) Now the memory of these lives are enshrined publicly, embedded into the patchwork of daily city life.

Incredibly, the nearly 10-year-old organization and the vast majority of its signs have survived Putin’s near-total suppression of civil society. Parkhomenko told me over video chat: “We don’t get permission from the mayor, the minister, or the president. And this principle turned out to be correct—it explains why we exist thus far.” Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the vast majority of independent human rights organizations and media outlets have been liquidated, and yet Last Address persists. Other than Parkhomenko, who fled the country in April 2021 after the radio station where he worked was taken off the air, a team of about 15 people still work daily out of Last Address’s Moscow office. In June, Last Address had managed to install four new signs and host a Moscow walking tour.

But the approach of sidestepping the government has its consequences. As Elena Vinsens, who drafted the story about my great-grandmother, pointed out in an interview: “Without official permission, [signs] can always be taken down.” For the first eight or so years of the project, only a small number went missing, no more than 20 total. After all, they’re held in place by only four small screws. But the situation has worsened since the start of the occupation and the increasingly extremist tone in society. Parkhomenko estimated that of Moscow’s approximately 700 plaques, 10 percent have gone missing in the past year alone, and others have been painted over or defaced. Most recently, the plaque for poet Anna Akhmatova in Saint Petersburg has gone missing. He explains: “We think it’s […] people who have internalized Putin’s totalitarian ideas and see the signs as an insult to our government, our power, our people, our army.” One could compare these citizens to America’s current self-described “patriots.”

At this time, there do not appear to be any orders coming from above to inspire the vandalism, and no organizations have taken credit. Project coordinator Maria Sukalskaya saw the removals as a form of ideological protest by individuals who believe her organization is “disrespecting our government during a tough time for the country.” Last Address is undeterred: Staff will survey all signs this summer to repair damage and rust or restore ones that have been removed. Last Address organizers believe that even if signs disappear, the project successfully rescued someone from oblivion.

More at https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/05/memory-subversion-putin-russia-so
viet-union-stalin/

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, August 5, 2023 7:56 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Stalin was an evil man so let's punish Putin!

Troll.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, August 5, 2023 9:38 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:
Stalin was an evil man so let's punish Putin!

Troll.

Evil? It is all about competently working toward achievable goals. It was very achievable for Russians to become wealthy compared to Europeans. Too bad, but it didn't happen. Russians are poor compared to Europeans because Russian leaders were incompetent. Russia won't be making up for lost time since Russia is in a war with Europe, again, because Putin is incompetent. The Ukrainians won't surrender because they remember the 4 million Ukrainians killed by Russians the last time Russia invaded and Europeans won't stop sending ammo to the Ukrainians because they, too, remember the last time Russia invaded Europe.

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, August 6, 2023 7:43 AM

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

Anatoly Polkovnikov, a Ukrainian volunteer and the head of the Ukrainian Center for International Partnership NGO, told Newsweek that the Ukrainian cabinet's estimate of 35 years to completely demine Ukraine "looks realistic."

Expert estimates, Polkovnikov said, suggest "there are more than 1 million dangerous objects" spread over the affected area of Ukraine.

"Grenades and mines with trip wires are fairly standard," he said. "But we've started to see not just mines that have anti-lift devices, for example, either in-built or by design, but mines that have grenades placed under them, so when they're lifted and pulled the grenades go off.

"You've got anti-vehicle mines where, instead of a standard fuse that's designed to initiate under the weight of a vehicle, they're using an anti-personnel mine that a child can set off. You're seeing deliberate attempts to hinder clearance through such devices as well.

"With IEDs...we're seeing deliberate attempts to boobytrap everyday items, of buildings and villages where the Russians occupied. We saw this around Kyiv last year and in people who were too scared to go into their own homes. We saw it in Mykolaiv and Kharkiv when the Russians left, and I have no doubt we will continue to see such inhumane efforts in the future."

Newton said that during his recent visit to Mykolaiv—liberated in November 2022—there were "areas, on the one hand, where you've got very clearly defined lines, hundreds of anti-vehicle mines as far as the eye can see, either on or very near to the surface. And Kharkiv was quite similar in that respect; we found just over 6,500 anti-vehicle mines since April of this year. It's a staggering number."

"These mines on the surface are clearly defined and relatively straightforward to clear," he said. "Conversely, in those same areas, you've got areas where you've got tripwires, you've got anti-personnel mines, we're seeing PFM-1s—the so-called 'butterfly mines'—and you might have anti-vehicle mines thrown in there as well."

https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-faces-decades-long-battle-unexploded-
russian-mines-1817527

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, August 6, 2023 10:53 AM

CNN Poll: Majority of Americans oppose more US aid for Ukraine in war with Russia

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/cnn-poll-ukraine/index.html

Even CNN can't lie about this anymore.

Like I said from the beginning. Nobody gives a shit about Ukraine.

Get fucked, Democrats.

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Sunday, August 6, 2023 11:00 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 6ixStringJack:
CNN Poll: Majority of Americans oppose more US aid for Ukraine in war with Russia

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/cnn-poll-ukraine/index.html

Even CNN can't lie about this anymore.

Like I said from the beginning. Nobody gives a shit about Ukraine.

Get fucked, Democrats.

Polls indicated that Americans were opposed to entering WWII even while newspapers and radio covered Nazi Germany's Blitzkrieg, followed by the huge loss at Dunkirk, followed by the Battle of Britain, where the Nazis were burning down London. This opposition to stopping Hitler from conquering the world was centered in the states of Ohio and Indiana, where Trumptards have now taken over. 6ixStringJack, you and your ancestors are worthless assholes who lived the bitter and fruitless lives they deserved because they are cowards, crooks, drunks, and obese. Tell your retard 450-pound brother to eat as much as he wants so he can live the good life and you should smoke more cigarettes. Those warnings from Democrats that tobacco causes cancer and heart attack must be fake news just like FDR's warnings about Hitler taking over the world and Biden's warnings that Putin has the same goal.

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, August 6, 2023 12:15 PM

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Sunday, August 6, 2023 10:55 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
"Hundreds of thousands" of Russians are NOT dead. Most likely estimate is somewhere in the realm of 40,000-50,000.

However "hundreds of thousands" of Ukrainians ARE dead. Most likely estimate 250,000- 400,000 since Feb 2022. Their loss rate is catastrophic.

Western weapons are not suited for land wars with a near-peer. They're fragile and require far too much maintenance. For example, an M777 howitzer should only fire ten or twenty shells before requiring the "tube" to be changed bc it gets distorted and jams... and you don't want to be around when that thing explodes bc of a jammed shell.

The vaunted F-16's air intake is right under the nose of the plane, and doesn't have a "debris excluder". As a result, an F16 runway needs to be inspected before takeoff, a line of people literally walking within arm's reach of each other inspecting the runway surface for any pebble or bit of tire or clump of weed. Ukrainian runway would have to be completely rebuilt. Experts have called the F16 a "giant runway vacuum cleaner".

What I think is that RUSSIANS are testing...and improving... their weapons. IMHO that's why they use multiple missile types, artillery pieces, drones, bombs and helicopters in direct head-to-head comparisons. Their biggest advancement has been in drones, which they're now producing and using at prodigious rates, and their EW capabilities which they improve with every piece of captured western weaponry.

Americans love winners,and this isn't a winning war.

Xposted from another thread.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Sunday, August 6, 2023 11:17 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Yanno SECOND, and THUGR, it's too bad the USA promised Ukraine entry into NATO, and pushed and bribed Ukraine into gearing up for an attack on Donbas.

It was all set-piece, an excuse to sanction Russia and then topple its already -weakened government with a big military push from Ukraine. If Russia had waited for the attack that was coming, Ukraine (and complicitly the USA and EU) would be the aggressor and most of us would be singing a different tune. Nevermind that Ukraine constantly shelled Donetsk and massed somewhere in the realm of 80,000-100,000 troops on the Donbas border and that Zelenskiy agitated for nukes!

Anyway, Russia ... beyond all neocon imagining... is winning, and will win, this war. And will probably have close to a million trained men in their army by mid-2024 in anticipation of an escalation that winds up with direct NATO involvement.

What is our administration going to DO?

Well, if they were planning on an ACTUAL war with Russia, they would have started recruiting more heavily a long time ago, geared up weapons manufacturing, and started pre-positioning materiel already. A credible conventional military response is already out of the question.

Of course, I can't assume that our administration even knows what a credible military response is, seeing as they seem to run on wishful thinking and Rambo movies, so maybe they think that "something" "somewhere" could happen?

But assuming that they're smart enough to realize that a conventional military response will fail and shouldn't be attempted, I imagine they would then try to solve their (neocon, DNC/GOP establisment) POLITICAL problem, which is "how do we extricate ourselves from this mess without looking like a LOSER?"

Supposedly there are some desultory talks happening between the Kremlin and CFR/thinktanistan, but apparently our side has no idea how serious Russia is about this: they think they can bullshit and promise their way into getting Russia to give up military gains. But since we reneged on every treaty, agreement , contract, or promise with the Russians (the latest being the "grain deal") what POSSIBLE rationale would the Russians have for entering yet another agreement, and a disadvantageous one at that, likely to be weaseled out of by the west??

So my guess is this administration, with neither a military nor a negotiated face-saving solution in sight, will promise yet more weapons to Kiev, to keep the war going thru October, and then throw the Ukrainians under the bus. Nevermind that by then a half-million Ukrainian men - or more -will have been killed.

That's assuming that the USA controls the pace of the war. Which it doesn't.

So the big question is, what is RUSSIA going to do?

Well, Russia has some actual goals, and they include de-militarizing, de-Nazifying, and neutralizing Ukraine. IMO all that is within reach.

But Russia has further aims, and that is to restructure Europe's security architecture. At a minimum, that would mean removing USA/NATO missile installations from Poland and Romania. But that would mean FORCING NATO to the table.

Hmmm... tricky calculation, getting the to negotiate without forcing the USA to push The Button. Needs more thought!

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Monday, August 7, 2023 7:26 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:
Yanno SECOND, and THUGR, it's too bad the USA promised Ukraine entry into NATO, and pushed and bribed Ukraine into gearing up for an attack on Donbas.

It was all set-piece, an excuse to sanction Russia and then topple its already -weakened government with a big military push from Ukraine. If Russia had waited for the attack that was coming, Ukraine (and complicitly the USA and EU) would be the aggressor and most of us would be singing a different tune. Nevermind that Ukraine constantly shelled Donetsk and massed somewhere in the realm of 80,000-100,000 troops on the Donbas border and that Zelenskiy agitated for nukes!

Anyway, Russia ... beyond all neocon imagining... is winning, and will win, this war. And will probably have close to a million trained men in their army by mid-2024 in anticipation of an escalation that winds up with direct NATO involvement.

What is our administration going to DO?

Well, if they were planning on an ACTUAL war with Russia, they would have started recruiting more heavily a long time ago, geared up weapons manufacturing, and started pre-positioning materiel already. A credible conventional military response is already out of the question.

Of course, I can't assume that our administration even knows what a credible military response is, seeing as they seem to run on wishful thinking and Rambo movies, so maybe they think that "something" "somewhere" could happen?

But assuming that they're smart enough to realize that a conventional military response will fail and shouldn't be attempted, I imagine they would then try to solve their (neocon, DNC/GOP establisment) POLITICAL problem, which is "how do we extricate ourselves from this mess without looking like a LOSER?"

Supposedly there are some desultory talks happening between the Kremlin and CFR/thinktanistan, but apparently our side has no idea how serious Russia is about this: they think they can bullshit and promise their way into getting Russia to give up military gains. But since we reneged on every treaty, agreement , contract, or promise with the Russians (the latest being the "grain deal") what POSSIBLE rationale would the Russians have for entering yet another agreement, and a disadvantageous one at that, likely to be weaseled out of by the west??

So my guess is this administration, with neither a military nor a negotiated face-saving solution in sight, will promise yet more weapons to Kiev, to keep the war going thru October, and then throw the Ukrainians under the bus. Nevermind that by then a half-million Ukrainian men - or more -will have been killed.

That's assuming that the USA controls the pace of the war. Which it doesn't.

So the big question is, what is RUSSIA going to do?

Well, Russia has some actual goals, and they include de-militarizing, de-Nazifying, and neutralizing Ukraine. IMO all that is within reach.

But Russia has further aims, and that is to restructure Europe's security architecture. At a minimum, that would mean removing USA/NATO missile installations from Poland and Romania. But that would mean FORCING NATO to the table.

Hmmm... tricky calculation, getting the to negotiate without forcing the USA to push The Button. Needs more thought!

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

You could not be more Russian if you tried, Signym. I am not making predictions beyond that Russia will be poorer after this war ends than it is today while Ukraine will continue fighting Russia until the "next" Putin kills/retires/prevails over this Putin and then declares victory in Ukraine much like North Korea's various Kims claim they were victorious over South Korea and the USA. South Korea was in ruins, but 70 years after July 27, 1953 the "temporary" halt in fighting, South Korea is prospering compared to North Korea. Seventy years after a "temporary" halt in fighting between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine will be prospering compared to Russia.

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, August 7, 2023 7:30 AM

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

Putin's Forever War -- A New State Ideology

For Mr. Putin, the war has expanded in character, becoming the culmination of a civilizational war against the West. It may unfold in Ukraine, but Moscow’s enemies lie beyond.

The United States, Europe and NATO are now consistently identified as sources of “outright Satanism,” in the recent words of Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service.

Being ideological, the war is doubly intractable. “There are currently no grounds for an agreement,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told me. “We will continue the operation for the foreseeable future.”

Anti-Western invective has attained phantasmagorical proportions. It is part of an emergent state ideology that is setting a course for possibly decades of confrontation.

Thirty years after Russia — in the midst of the ardent liberal hopes of the 1990s — adopted a Constitution whose Article 13 said, “No ideology shall be proclaimed as State ideology,” Mr. Putin’s Russia is hurtling toward a new official ideology of conservative values.

The possibility of an amendment rescinding Article 13 has been raised by the justice minister, Konstantin Chuychenko, among others.

This anti-Western ideology is based around the Orthodox Church, the fatherland, the family and the “priority of the spiritual over the material,” as laid out in Mr. Putin’s decree on spiritual and moral values issued in November.

The enemy, it proclaims, is the United States and “other unfriendly foreign states,” intent on the cultivation of “selfishness, permissiveness, immorality, the denial of the ideals of patriotism” and “destruction of the traditional family through the promotion of nontraditional sexual relations.”

If the West was portrayed during the Cold War as the nightmarish home of ruthless capitalism, it is now, as Russia sees it, the home of sex changes, the rampages of drag queens, barbaric gender debates and an L.G.B.T.Q. takeover.

“For how long should Russia tolerate open warfare from the West using Ukrainian meat?” Sergei Karaganov, a well-connected Russian foreign policy expert, asked in an interview.

“There is a high risk of nuclear war, and it is increasing,” he said. “The war is a prolonged Cuban missile crisis, but this time with Western leaders who reject normal values of motherhood, parenthood, gender, love of country, faith, God.”

This scarcely veiled Russian nuclear threat is part of a relentless onslaught against the West.

By insisting, against all evidence, that Ukraine is a nation run by Fascists and Nazis, and by suggesting that the West wants Ukraine to be another home of gender-transitioning moral decay, Mr. Putin has successfully turned a war of aggression into a defensive war, essential to save Russia from those intent on ripping apart its physical and moral fabric.

“What we see is not the measured language of an establishment in power for decades,” said Mr. Baunov, the fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “It has the ardor of revolutionaries, and it emanates from a major world power with a nuclear arsenal.”

Putin, the Romantic

The vindictive fever churning inside the Russian leader came to a head on the eve of the war in Ukraine. The loss of Crimea, in particular, as the Soviet Union broke up was a festering wound because of the widespread Russian sentiment that it is a core part of the country’s history.

“Putin was obsessed with justice, as he saw it,” said Aleksei A. Venediktov, whose popular Echo of Moscow radio station was shut down soon after the war began. “He told me in 2014, ‘You might not like the annexation of Crimea, but it’s just.’”

Mr. Venediktov says he knows Mr. Putin well. He believes everyone, himself included, got the Russian leader wrong.

“We did not see the Putin who was on a historical mission of revenge,” he told me. “We thought he was a corrupt guy from a poor family who wanted yachts and palaces and girls and money. We did not see the K.G.B. officer who thought the loss of the Soviet Union was unjust. We thought he was a cynic. In fact, he was a romantic.”

Mr. Putin almost certainly has enough of his country, and enough cash, behind him to pursue the war for at least another 18 months to two years, three Western ambassadors to Russia told me in Moscow.

I asked Mr. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, if Russia sought more Ukrainian territory beyond the four provinces annexed.

“No,” he said. “We just want to control all the land we have now written into our Constitution as ours.”

On my last day in Moscow, I went to the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge beneath the Kremlin. A small shrine marks the spot where Boris Y. Nemtsov, a towering opposition figure, was gunned down on Feb. 27, 2015 — a flagrant political murder.

Somebody is always present at the shrine, watching over it, making sure there is a fresh bouquet of flowers. On this day, the task fell to Arkady Konikov, who told me: “Nemtsov was an honest politician, a very unusual thing. He was a brave man, a great man.”

The year before Mr. Nemtsov died, almost a decade ago, as the Russian-instigated fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine began, he wrote on his Facebook page: “Putin has declared war on Ukraine. This is a fratricidal war. Russia and Ukraine will pay a high price for the bloody insanity of this mentally unstable secret-police agent. Young men will die on both sides. There will be inconsolable mothers and sisters.”

More recently, just before Mr. Gorbachev’s death on Aug. 30, 2022, Mr. Muratov, the Novaya editor, visited his friend as he lay in a Moscow hospital. The condition of the Soviet leader who decided to set Russians free, and whose funeral Mr. Putin would not attend, was grave. He could not understand much.

There was a big TV in his room. On it, playing over and over, were images of bombings and explosions in Ukraine. As Mr. Muratov left the room, he heard Mr. Gorbachev say: “Who could be happy because of this?”

More at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/06/world/europe/putins-forever-war.htm
l

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, August 7, 2023 11:41 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yanno SECOND, and THUGR, it's too bad the USA promised Ukraine entry into NATO, and pushed and bribed Ukraine into gearing up for an attack on Donbas.

It was all set-piece, an excuse to sanction Russia and then topple its already -weakened government with a big military push from Ukraine. If Russia had waited for the attack that was coming, Ukraine (and complicitly the USA and EU) would be the aggressor and most of us would be singing a different tune. Nevermind that Ukraine constantly shelled Donetsk and massed somewhere in the realm of 80,000-100,000 troops on the Donbas border and that Zelenskiy agitated for nukes!

Anyway, Russia ... beyond all neocon imagining... is winning, and will win, this war. And will probably have close to a million trained men in their army by mid-2024 in anticipation of an escalation that winds up with direct NATO involvement.

What is our administration going to DO?

Well, if they were planning on an ACTUAL war with Russia, they would have started recruiting more heavily a long time ago, geared up weapons manufacturing, and started pre-positioning materiel already. A credible conventional military response is already out of the question.

Of course, I can't assume that our administration even knows what a credible military response is, seeing as they seem to run on wishful thinking and Rambo movies, so maybe they think that "something" "somewhere" could happen?

But assuming that they're smart enough to realize that a conventional military response will fail and shouldn't be attempted, I imagine they would then try to solve their (neocon, DNC/GOP establisment) POLITICAL problem, which is "how do we extricate ourselves from this mess without looking like a LOSER?"

Supposedly there are some desultory talks happening between the Kremlin and CFR/thinktanistan, but apparently our side has no idea how serious Russia is about this: they think they can bullshit and promise their way into getting Russia to give up military gains. But since we reneged on every treaty, agreement , contract, or promise with the Russians (the latest being the "grain deal") what POSSIBLE rationale would the Russians have for entering yet another agreement, and a disadvantageous one at that, likely to be weaseled out of by the west??

So my guess is this administration, with neither a military nor a negotiated face-saving solution in sight, will promise yet more weapons to Kiev, to keep the war going thru October, and then throw the Ukrainians under the bus. Nevermind that by then a half-million Ukrainian men - or more -will have been killed.

That's assuming that the USA controls the pace of the war. Which it doesn't.

So the big question is, what is RUSSIA going to do?

Well, Russia has some actual goals, and they include de-militarizing, de-Nazifying, and neutralizing Ukraine. IMO all that is within reach.

But Russia has further aims, and that is to restructure Europe's security architecture. At a minimum, that would mean removing USA/NATO missile installations from Poland and Romania. But that would mean FORCING NATO to the table.

Hmmm... tricky calculation, getting the to negotiate without forcing the USA to push The Button. Needs more thought!

SECOND: You could not be more Russian if you tried, Signym.

Why, thank you!

In order to understand OUR options, one must understand the OPPONENT.

That was the neocon's big mistake: they believed their own bullshit ("Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country") which sounded awfully clever but was, as it turns out, delusional.

NEOCONS HAVE NO GOOD OPTIONS. Their options are:

lose on the battlefield,
lose in negotiations,
try to string this along until after Oct 2024 (using all kinds of narratives: "the next offensive is coming", "Ukraine will fight an insurgency war" or whatever narratives they string together that makes it sound like this isn't The End)
create other distractions/regime change elsewhere: Taiwan, Syria, Thailand etc or
PUSH THE BUTTON.

That's because they failed to understand Russian, AND they failed to contingency plan. They were SO SURE of our military and financial might, and so sure of Russia's incapacities!

Now, having given the matter some thought, KNOWING SOME OF RUSSIA'S RECENT HISTORY REGARDING WAR, HAVING GOTTEN A VIEW OF THEIR CURRENT MILITARY AND ECONOMIC CAPABILIITES, AND TAKING SERIOUSLY THEIR SECURITY INTERESTS (WHICH I'M SURE RUSSIANS DO, EVEN IF OUR NEOCONS DON'T) MY GUESS IS THAT...

Russia will avoid direct confrontation with the USA as much as possible in Ukraine and Syria.

Russia has dealt with military conflicts a couple of different ways:

In Georgia (under Medvedev), Chechnya, and Kazakhstan they went for total kill. The opposition was stomped, hard. I think that the Russian MoD thought they had a fair chance of winning, altho in Chechnya is was a little touch-and-go. (BTW, I recall seeing a video of Putin, as a new leader of Russia, at a field mess tent in Chechnya with his field commanders. He asked that glasses be poured with vodka, and raised a toast to their dead comrades. Then he put his glass down and said "We will not drink this until the war is won". Unless you're willing to really look at Russia, you will NOT understand Russia! If our current crop of neocons has spent just 1/100 of the time I spent ... which is very little... trying to understand Russia they wouldn't make stupid mistakes.)

In Syria, they play soft: zones of deconfliction, limited.... VERY limited... tactical goals.

I think the difference is that, as I said, Putin doesn't want to come into open, UNCONTROLLED ESCALATION with the west. He's OK with keeping things on a low simmer instead of bringing things to a rolling (possibly nuclear) boil.

What I believe he will be satisfied with is fully controlling the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaparozhiy, Kharkiv, and Kherosn oblasts. And, of course, Crimea.

Not sure about Sumy, Chernihiv, and Odessa. Taking Sumy and Cherihiv would prevent the cross-border attacks into Russia proper, and taking Odessa would prevent the remainder of Ukraine from being able to ship weapons in by sea. But they might be more trouble than they're worth, and - taking a lesson from WWI- you don't want to create a destitute nation on your border.

The remainder of Ukraine will be governed by a friendly government (like W Germany was OUR friendly govt after WWII) and will be constitutionally neutral (non-NATO) like Austria. If I were Russia, I would even encourage it to be part of the EU: let the EU be stuck with the tar baby that it created!

Again, a guess.

More guesses:

But winning this much will also help Russia achieve its ultimate goal of reconfiguring Europe's security arrangement. There will be no negotiations with the CURRENT administrations of the USA and most EU/NATO nations. And, altho Presidents/ Prime Ministers come and go, the deep state has been a long time in the making and will take a long time to be weeded out, internally. In the meantime, Russia has de-fanged NATO by draining it of weapons and obsoleting the rest.

And furthermore, Russia and China are assiduously working to create a non-western 'multipolar' world with new trade, currency, and financial arrangements, attempting to eliminate the west's parasitic relations with poorer nations and cut off the west's financial dominance of the world. If the west becomes poorer (especially if the WEF implements its Great Reset, guaranteed to make most people much poorer!) there will political instability and the possibility of "regime change" here at home. Also, by (in essence) reverse sanctioning western economies, the west's ability to re-arm will be blunted.

Russia has IMHO about 10 years to reach a non-military solution to their European border security problem.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Monday, August 7, 2023 11:42 AM

"I don't like you, so you're Russian."

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Monday, August 7, 2023 12:46 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
"I don't like you, so you're Russian."

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

SECOND is thinking with his glands, again.

Anyway, this is a lot of guessing on my part. Since the MoD, Security Council, Foreign Ministry, and General Staff don't consult with me,

I'd be VERY curious to see if this holds up, even over the next year. I'll probably be dead in ten years, as (most likely) will SECOND, so neither of us will get to pick this part, but maybe someone else will.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Monday, August 7, 2023 10:26 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I see this topic keeps dropping in the ranks. I guess it's not popular anymore.

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Tuesday, August 8, 2023 1:02 AM

It never was.

1/3 of the posts on this topic are me saying that fuck Ukraine or nobody gives a shit about Ukraine.

More than half of them come from two deranged idiots parroting Legacy Media talking points.

Then there's your posts.

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Tuesday, August 8, 2023 7:24 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 6ixStringJack:
"I don't like you, so you're Russian."

The real problem is that Signym and 6ix are bullshitting. Neither of you writes truth or even tries passing off what is false as true, but all of what you write is bullshit. Both of you have diarrhea of the mouth -- free-flowing bullshit coming out of you.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
. . . while hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men die for your Democrat cult leaders.

Real Americans are finished with you and your kind.

You have written this many times before. The Ukrainians are fighting Russians today because in past invasions the Russians murdered 4 million Ukrainians. 6ix, it is too bad you can't understand why Ukrainians fight Russians, but the Ukrainians understand even if you can't.

Holodomor: https://education.holodomor.ca/teaching-materials/holodomor-denial-sil
ences/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, August 8, 2023 7:35 AM

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

Russian opposition media outlet Verstka suggested that the Russian Investigative Committee and its head, Alexander Bastrykin, are directly involved in the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and the forced placement of Ukrainian children into Russian military training programs.[9] Verstka reported that the Russian Investigative Committee “took patronage” over Ukrainian children living in children‘s homes throughout Russia, and sent its employees to 10 such homes with toys, clothes, and school supplies in order to coerce the children to enter the Russian cadet corps. Verstka reported that Bastrykin personally visited Ukrainian children in Russia and told them that Russian victory depend on the children and that the Russian Investigative Committee is there to support them. Verstka reported that the Investigative Committee previously advertised the cadet corps to Ukrainian children from Donbas and stated that 78 Ukrainian children entered educational institutions, including the cadet corps and academies affiliated with the Investigative Committee, between February 2022 and March 2023. Verstka reported that Bastrykin ordered the cadet corps in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Volgograd to prepare to receive Ukrainian children from occupied Donbas as early as February 25, 2022. Verstka highlighted statements from Ukrainian children who said they felt compelled to participate in the Russian cadet corps due to the educational opportunity. The coercion of Ukrainian children, who are legally unable to consent to their deportations and participation in such military-patriotic re-education programs, is likely part of an ongoing Russian campaign to eradicate the Ukrainian national identity and militarize youth who have been forcibly deported to Russia.

China's increasing misalignment with Russia on any settlement to end the war in Ukraine was reportedly evident at the talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on August 5-6. The Financial Times reported that the Chinese representatives at the meeting were “constructive” and “keen to show that [China] is not Russia.”[10] The Financial Times quoted one European diplomat present at the talks as saying that the “mere presence of China shows Russia is more and more isolated.”[11] The Chinese delegation reportedly indicated its willingness to attend the next meeting of a similar format that will likely also exclude Russia.[12] A Russian insider source alleged that Russia has rejected China's 12-point peace plan for the war in Ukraine from February 2023 (which the Chinese delegation re-introduced during the talks in Saudi Arabia) and that some Chinese elites are secretly expressing their dissatisfaction with the actions of the Russian leadership regarding a peaceful settlement of the war in Ukraine.[13] These reports from the talks in Saudi Arabia and insider allegations, if true, align with ISW’s previous assessments that China is not fully aligned with Russia on the issue of Ukraine and that Russia and China’s relationship is not a “no limits partnership” as the Kremlin desires.[14]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-7-2023

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, August 8, 2023 8:26 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Speaking of diarrhea of the mouth...
Why izzit that your posts always look like walls of gibberish? That contradict each other?

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Tuesday, August 8, 2023 9:29 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:
Speaking of diarrhea of the mouth...
Why izzit that your posts always look like walls of gibberish? That contradict each other?

The Russians murdered Ukrainians by the millions yet the Russians deny they are murderers and deny that the surviving victims are fighting back to keep from being robbed of their land and being murdered when they resist. Signym won't believe any of that is true because Signym is confused. Nothing I write contradicts itself. All of it contradicts you, Signym. The model of how Signym works is that when Signym sees/reads/hears what contradicts Signym, Signym gets offended and then vomits out bullshit and bile. Signym, you are not unique in this respect because every single Trumptard I know (the people who defend/excuse/vote for Trump) are exactly the same, and because of that, they don't prosper in the US. They handle their relative failure compared to people who oppose them by blaming their opposition (Democrats for one example, but it could be a spouse or a lawyer beating them in court or a bank foreclosing on them) for the Trumptard's failures. Russia blames NATO, the EU, the UK, and the USA for its failure to prosper.

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, August 8, 2023 10:42 AM

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

Russia Making Cadets Out of Children Kidnapped from Ukraine
By Brendan Cole On 8/8/23

A top Moscow official and his colleagues were directly involved in forcibly deporting Ukrainian children, who were then placed in Russian military training programs, it has been reported.

The independent Russian-language news outlet Vertska said that Alexander Bastrykin, who heads the Russian Investigative Committee in charge of examining serious crimes, helped coerce children into Russia's cadet corps.

In March, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine said there was evidence of the illegal transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia and that the forced deportation to areas under Moscow's control was a war crime.

The Commission's report said that grants of Russian citizenship and placing children in foster families were aimed at setting up a framework "in which some of the children may end up remaining permanently" in Russia.

In March, the reported removal of Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied territory to Russia itself triggered the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova.

Bastrykin personally visited Ukrainian children in Russia and told them that his committee would support them and that they were needed for Moscow's victory.

More at https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-deportation-russia-kidnapped-cadets-1
818186

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:37 AM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Speaking of diarrhea of the mouth...
Why izzit that your posts always look like walls of gibberish? That contradict each other?

Too funny. Why is it comrade your posts are void of facts. I suggest you work on that before trying to fix a nonexistent problem with TWO's posts.

T

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Tuesday, August 8, 2023 12:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Speaking of diarrhea of the mouth...
Why izzit that your posts always look like walls of gibberish? That contradict each other?

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

It's why Second loses every argument. He forgot what he posted 5 minutes ago, and forgot how he's making 2 or 3 arguments to get to his point even though those 2 or 3 arguments are all mutually exclusive to each other and amount to nothing but pure nonsense when one tries to reconcile them all.

It's that "By Any Means Necessary" that communists like his alt-account's Reaverfan's best buddy Vaush operates under that's to blame.

Well, that and the middling double digit IQ.

... and Ted weighing in on the subject is priceless. Ted is dumber than dog shit, and Second gives not a single fuck about him and shows that since he's never once stepped in at Ted's defense over all the years, but Ted clings to Second like a lost little puppy because without Second he'd be all alone with his dumbass opinions in the RWED.

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Tuesday, August 8, 2023 4:47 PM

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

Absurd Moments In Russian History -- Catherine the Great overthrows her foolish husband, Peter III

“Peter III was extremely capricious,” adds Hartley. “ … There was every chance he was going to be assassinated. I think Catherine realized that her own position and her own life [were] probably under threat, and so she acted.”

These tensions culminated in a July 9, 1762, coup. Catherine—flanked by Orlov and her growing cadre of supporters—arrived at the Winter Palace to make her official debut as Catherine II, sole ruler of Russia. As Simon Sebag Montefiore notes in The Romanovs: 1618–1918, Peter, then on holiday in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, was “oblivious” to his wife’s actions. But when he arrived at his palace and found it abandoned, he realized what had occurred. Declaring, “Didn’t I tell you she was capable of anything?” Peter proceeded “to weep and drink and dither.”

That same morning, two of the Orlov brothers arrested Peter and forced him to sign a statement of abdication. Eight days later, the dethroned tsar was dead, killed under still-uncertain circumstances alternatively characterized as murder, the inadvertent result of a drunken brawl and a total accident. The official cause of death was advertised as “hemorrhoidal colic”—an “absurd diagnosis” that soon became a popular euphemism for assassination, according to Montefiore.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-catherine-great-1809
74863/

Watch for news of Putin's “hemorrhoidal colic” if Ukraine continues to resist him.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, August 8, 2023 9:58 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Wow, way to go off-topic, SECOND!
Meanwhile, in Ukraine: cartoon about slow, paltry American assistance

Let the blamestorming begin!

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

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Wednesday, August 9, 2023 7:36 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:
Wow, way to go off-topic, SECOND!
Meanwhile, in Ukraine: cartoon about slow, paltry American assistance

Let the blamestorming begin!

The topic never changes. For centuries the Russians have been seeking wealth and fame by murdering other Russians (and Ukrainians). Catherine the Great was more successful at becoming wealthy and famous by murder than Putin has been, at least so far. If Ukraine capitulates, Putin will be known as The Great Putin, or Putin the Great.

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, August 9, 2023 7:38 AM

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

In recent weeks, an unsettling narrative has begun to take shape in some segments of the international information space. With Ukraine’s much hyped counteroffensive making minimal progress, a range of commentators have started suggesting the time has come to push Ukraine to the negotiating table rather than prolong the current stalemate.

Such arguments are dangerously misleading. In reality, the slow pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive progress should not come as a surprise. After all, Ukraine lacks modern aviation and long-range strike capabilities, while Russia has had many months to prepare formidable defenses across occupied Ukrainian territory, including complex fortifications and vast minefields.

The real question is whether the West is doing enough to support Ukraine’s military efforts. The blunt answer is no. Military aid provided since February 2022 has undeniably been crucial, but it is a far cry from what is needed for Ukraine to execute a successful operation against a well-armed and deeply entrenched enemy. No Western general would dream of attempting a similar offensive armed only with the weapons currently available to the Ukrainian military.

Delays in the delivery of military aid have already cost countless Ukrainian lives. If Ukraine had received modern battle tanks, long-range missiles, fighter jets, and Patriot missile defense systems during the early months of the fighting, the dynamics of the war would have been markedly different. If a significant portion of these weapons had been sent to Ukraine in 2021, the whole invasion could potentially have been averted. Instead, hundreds of thousands have been killed and entire cities have been reduced to rubble. In the face of this carnage, continued hesitation is inexcusable.

Calls to pressure Ukraine into some kind of negotiated settlement are equally unhelpful and reflect a fundamental misreading of Russia’s invasion. Time and again, Putin has made clear his intention to destroy Ukrainian statehood and erase Ukrainian national identity. As US Secretary of State Antony Blinken rightly observed in February 2023, Russia fights for conquest while Ukraine fights for freedom. If Russia stops fighting the war will end, but if Ukraine stops fighting it will cease to exist, he warned.

More at https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraines-slow-count
eroffensive-is-a-wake-up-call-for-the-west/

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, August 9, 2023 7:02 PM

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

Vladimir Putin's right-hand man Dmitri Medvedev issued a stark warning to Ukraine and its NATO allies vowing to "vanquish" Russia's enemies.

Russia's former president - and Putin's puppet - lashed out claiming that Moscow was already "almost openly fighting" NATO and warned that Russia was strong enough to take on the defensive alliance.

"The entire NATO system is almost openly fighting against us. We are strong enough to achieve all of the goals of the special military operation," Medvedev wrote on Telegram.

He continued: "Just like in August 2008, our enemies will be vanquished and Russia will secure peace on its own terms. Victory will be ours!"

In August 2008, while Medvedev was President of Russia, Moscow attacked neighboring Georgia in support of the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Moscow called the brief war a "peacekeeping" operation while today Medvedev branded it a "proxy war" with NATO.

He said that the war in Ukraine was also a proxy war between Russia and NATO in which the alliance was "trying to wipe Russia off the face of the earth".

The former Russian President and long-time Putin ally is known for his fiery rhetoric and has even called for Russia to use nuclear weapons against the West in certain hypothetical circumstances.

His comments come amid brutal fighting on the frontline and airstrikes against civilian targets by Moscow.

Yesterday, two Russian Iskander ballistic missiles struck the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk within about 30 minutes of each other.

The timing of the strikes is thought to have been deliberate to target emergency workers and rescuers at the scene, according to Ukrainian officials.

"When the State Emergency Service and rescuers arrive to save people, the second missile hits and so the number of victims increases," Serhii Dobriak, head of Pokrovsk City Military Administration, wrote on Telegram.

In recent weeks, following drone strikes on Moscow, Medvedev has called for more severe strikes against civilians in Ukraine.

Local officials said at least eight people were killed including a rescuer, five civilians and a serviceman while residential buildings, hotels and shops were damaged in the strike.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-s-right-hand-man-makes-chil
ling-ww3-threat-to-vanquish-nato-enemies/ar-AA1eWOh2

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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Thursday, August 10, 2023 6:26 AM

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

The West is slow-rolling the process of giving Ukraine F-16s because it is scared of antagonizing Putin, former NATO commander says.

Ukraine has been requesting F-16 planes for about a year, saying the fighter jets are essential if its to be able to defeat Russia, whose air force is bigger and better equipped.

Philip Breedlove, former Supreme Commander of the NATO Allied Forces in Europe, told Voice of America that Putin had succeeded in intimidating the West and delaying delivery of the fighter planes.

Breedlove, who was NATO chief from 2013-2017, said that several countries were willing to start training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s, but brakes had been put on the process in the US.

"There is restraint regarding quick action due to fears that Mr. Putin may cause certain important events. As I have said many times, the situation with the F-16s is just the case," Breedlove said.

"Mr. Putin's ground forces are failing him on the battlefield. But Putin's war of intimidation, his war to deter the West, is a resounding success. And this is what he works hard [on]. This intimidation led to deterrence, and slowed down things like sending the F-16s," he added.

Russia has repeatedly menaced the West with threats of nuclear attacks over its support for Ukraine.

Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, said that delaying sending the planes could prolong the conflict, and increase the risk of the US getting dragged in.

"Sending ATACMs and F-16s to Ukraine now is less risky for the US than letting the war endure for longer," he tweeted.

In July, at the NATO summit in Lithuania, Ukraine said a formal agreement had been reached to begin a training program for pilots flying F-16s, pending US approval. It is unclear when this will begin.

In recent weeks Ukraine has launched a ground offensive aimed at driving back Russian forces, but its made only incremental advances against well-fortified Russian positions.

Ukraine says F-16s could help turn the tide in the campaign, preventing superior Russian aircraft from attacking Ukraine's forces on the ground, TIME reported.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-west-is-slow-rolling-the-proc
ess-of-giving-ukraine-f-16s-because-it-is-scared-of-antagonizing-putin-former-nato-commander-says/ar-AA1f1epF

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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Thursday, August 10, 2023 2:02 PM

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

How Much Firepower Does Russia Have Left?

Kyiv claims to have "liquidated" 251,620 Russian personnel since February 2022. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment.

Russia's armed forces now have around 1.3 million troops, with a goal to expand this to 1.5 million by 2026. The active portion of Russia's Ground Forces is believed to comprise around 550,000 troops, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The strain of the war on the army is clear. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace said in February that 97 percent of the force was already deployed inside Ukraine, though remained unable to achieve a sizeable battlefield breakthrough.

Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst and visiting scholar at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Newsweek that the on-paper expansion of Russia's army does not equate to a more robust fighting force.

"Russia is trying to create an illusion of its readiness for the long-term war," he said. "Actually, it is making efforts to get a ceasefire for several years (before the next round of war) and to keep captured territories.

"At the same time, the Russian leadership fears defeat. It is not only a matter of political calculations but also a matter of ideology. In this way, the Kremlin is ready to sacrifice a lot of things and a lot of Russians to avoid the defeat."

Comparing Putin's regime to ISIS forces fighting in the Middle East, Luzin added: "They were not able to win, they were weakening every day. But they were irrationally ready to fight until the very end because of their ideology and fears. The Kremlin is the same."

"However, the Russian army is continuing its organizational and technical degradation; it is an inevitable process," Luzin added. "I don't know whether or not the collapse will happen, but the further degradation of Russia's army is inevitable.

"ISIS wasn't a regular army but resisted till the end. So, Russia may continue to fight even if its army will become irregular. Nevertheless, the longer Russia continues the war, the less opportunities for a sustainable political and economic future it has."

More at https://www.newsweek.com/firepower-russia-military-ukraine-war-1818596

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, August 11, 2023 8:35 AM