Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Monday, September 14, 2026 22:30
VIEWED: 567684
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SIGNYM

Sunday, July 16, 2023 7:38 AM (P)

SECOND'S neverending fountain of BS.

-----------
"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

SIGNYM

Sunday, July 16, 2023 9:25 AM (P)

Quote:
Young Ukrainians Scared To Leave Their Homes As More And More Videos Emerge Of Forced Conscription
Saturday, Jul 15, 2023 - 04:00 AM

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News, https://rmx.news/ukraine/young-people-scared-to-leave-their-homes-as-m
ore-videos-emerge-of-ukrainian-youth-being-forced-into-military/

As Ukraine’s manpower on its frontlines starts to dwindle, military leaders are becoming increasingly desperate to locate new recruits to propel its counteroffensive against Russia forward; however, the number of young people volunteering for such a challenge has plummeted.

Recent videos of young Ukrainian men being conscripted across the country have circulated in popular encrypted messaging apps in Ukraine, and those fearful of being sent to the front are actively engaging in evasive and, in some instances, illegal tactics to avoid such a fate.

The brutal mobilization by Ukrainian military recruitment officers of young men has been occurring for a year and a half now, Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet reports.

“Many conscripted men are taken straight off the street by uniformed men,” it states. “Most recently in Subcarpathia, a surveillance camera recorded the overreach of the authorities as a man trying to go to a store was kidnapped from his bicycle in broad daylight.”

The man was abducted right on a street during the day by police and conscription officers in a small village in the Municipal District of Munkács, with his bicycle left in the road.

video links can be found in the article

-----------
"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

SECOND

Sunday, July 16, 2023 9:26 AM (P)

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

The historical echoes can’t be an accident. The KGB once taught new recruits to study the institution’s history, and the Russian security services clearly do the same: They are carrying out repressive policies that “worked” in the Soviet days, that kept people like Bohdan Klymchak and his brother behind bars. But that history also explains Ukraine’s response. Anyone who wonders why the Ukrainians keep fighting, why they keep asking for more weapons, why they become frustrated by slow-moving transatlantic diplomacy, why they seem angry or “unreasonable,” should remember this: The Gulag was supposed to belong to the past. Now it belongs to the present. If Ukrainians don’t want it to be part of their future, they will have to physically remove these camps—and the people who run them—from Ukrainian land. Until they have succeeded, no help will ever be enough.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/russia-gulag-ukraine
/674705/

Signym, the past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.

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

SIGNYM

Sunday, July 16, 2023 9:33 AM (P)

SECOND'S neverending recycling of BS.

-----------
"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

SECOND

Sunday, July 16, 2023 10:21 AM (P)

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

Signym, Trump dodged the draft, but his draft dodging was no problem for you. Unsurprising that catching Ukrainian draft dodgers is a problem for you. You must approve of Russia's all-volunteer army and disapprove of Ukraine's conscripted army.

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

SIGNYM

Sunday, July 16, 2023 12:43 PM (P)

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

SECOND: Signym, Trump ...

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

-----------
"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

SECOND

Sunday, July 16, 2023 5:56 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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

SECOND: Signym, Trump ...

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

Hitler/Mussolini. Putin/Trump. Pairs of evil leaders with vast numbers of followers. Funny how the followers of evil leaders can't see themselves as evil. Instead, they see themselves as seeking strong leadership and national purpose against illegal aliens and NATO.

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

SECOND

Sunday, July 16, 2023 5:56 PM (P)

NYT reported that unnamed US and European officials estimated that Russian forces destroyed up to 20 percent of Ukraine’s Western-provided weaponry in the first two weeks of the counteroffensive.[38] The NYT reported that officials stated that the rate of losses has dropped to 10 percent in the subsequent weeks due to a change in Ukrainian strategy.[39] The NYT reported that the Ukrainian military has changed tactics to focus on wearing down Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles instead of large-scale assaults, which is consistent with Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s statement on July 14 that increased Ukrainian indirect fire can both pin down Russian forces and minimize Ukrainian casualties.[40]

Russian authorities likely continue to forcibly integrate Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) dioceses into the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as part of a wider religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine. Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) Head Leonid Pasechnik announced on July 15 the incorporation of the Luhansk, Alchevsk, Severodonetsk, Starobilsk, and Rovenky UOC dioceses into the ROC.[47] The ROC has already seized the Berdyansk and Prymorsk dioceses in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast, and a Russian news aggregator claimed that the Russian Ministry of Justice recently registered the Donetsk City and Horlivka dioceses as part of the ROC.[48] The new round of forced integration of the UOC dioceses in occupied Luhansk Oblast followed a Ukrainian court ruling that the Head of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Metropolitan Pavel will go to a detention center instead of remaining under house arrest.[49] Russian sources attempted to portray the integration of UOC dioceses into the ROC as a response to claimed Ukrainian religious suppression of a Kremlin-run ROC. The ROC has explicit links to the Kremlin and has provided material and spiritual support to Russia during the war.[50] This explanation makes little sense, however, as the ROC clearly faces no threats from the Ukrainian government in Russian-occupied territory. The Ukrainian government is not engaging in religious suppression, moreover, but rather acting against religious elements it asserts are linked to the Kremlin’s war effort.[51] Russian authorities have conducted systematic religious persecution in occupied Ukraine since the start of the war, however.[52]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-15-2023

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

SIGNYM

Sunday, July 16, 2023 6:19 PM (P)

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!

-----------
"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

SECOND

Sunday, July 16, 2023 9:09 PM (P)

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!

The Russians have had many decades to destroy Stalin's reputation, but they won't because the median Russian is no better than Stalin. Opinion polls in Russia show support for murdering Ukrainians and stealing their land. The land will be emptied. Why not make it Russian?

Meanwhile, back in the good old USA, there are living Americans just as bad as today's Stalin-supporting Russians, but they have their own guy, who they will reelect to President: Trump described as 'most evil person I've ever met' by member of his own cabinet

Miles Taylor, who worked for the former President, wrote on Twitter Tuesday that one Trump cabinet official even went so far as to describe the former president as "evil."

"I’ll never forget an ex-Trump cabinet member telling me: 'He is truly the most evil person I have ever met,'" Taylor wrote. "We cannot make this mistake again." (But if Trump is on the ballot, they won't vote for Biden.)

Although Taylor did not identify this former cabinet official by name, he did follow up with a quote from former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, who offered a similarly withering assessment of the former president's character.

https://www.rawstory.com/miles-taylor-trump/

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

SIGNYM

Sunday, July 16, 2023 9:31 PM (P)

Are you saying your inclusion of Stalin in your list of all-time bad leaders -or not- depends on RUSSIAN opinion of Stalin? If not, what's your point?

BTW, you missed Mao and Pol Pot and GWB.

Seems like your list, SECOND, is based on your delusional hysteria of the moment. Facts are not in it.

Still a troll! and still funny!

-----------
"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

SECOND

Monday, July 17, 2023 2:50 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Are you saying your inclusion of Stalin in your list of all-time bad leaders -or not- depends on RUSSIAN opinion of Stalin? If not, what's your point?

BTW, you missed Mao and Pol Pot and GWB.

Seems like your list, SECOND, is based on your delusional hysteria of the moment. Facts are not in it.

Still a troll! and still funny!

Signym, why mention Mao, Pol Pot, and GWB, when they never invaded Ukraine?

Stalin and the Red Army invaded both Europe and Ukraine. The invasion never ended until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The median Russian never expressed the opinion that Stalin had committed a crime by keeping all that invaded territory. That is why those same Russians don't feel that Putin committed a crime by invading Ukraine and keeping that territory. (All the invaded countries, except Ukraine, joined NATO for reasons that the median Russians cannot comprehend because Russians think it was not a crime for the Red Army to stay until 1991.)

Will it take another collapse of Russia in 2024, as in 1991, to finally get the Russian Army out of Ukraine? Maybe. Or maybe just an ordinary collapse of an Army such as during Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in 1988.

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

SECOND

Monday, July 17, 2023 2:51 PM (P)

Changing Places: Europeans Grow More Assertive on Ukraine as Washington Shows Caution

by Yaroslav Trofimov

NATO summit highlighted divisions over Ukraine’s future in the alliance and how far the West should go in supplying weapons

VILNIUS, Lithuania—Last week’s NATO summit revealed a major realignment within the U.S.-led trans-Atlantic alliance.

European nations, once seen as less steadfast in their support for Kyiv and more vulnerable to Russian pressure, are determined to help Ukraine win an unambiguous victory. At the same time, the Biden administration, which orchestrated a unified Western response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion last year, is increasingly cautious—constrained by domestic politics and a fear of direct confrontation with Moscow.

In Europe, the once-gaping divisions between different capitals have narrowed sharply, as countries previously seen as soft on Russia, including France, Italy, Spain and to a lesser extent Germany, have all moved much closer to Ukraine’s fiercest supporters: Poland, the Baltic and the Nordic states.

“It took a while, but then it seeped through. Today a lot of leaders around Europe, including Germany, understand that they must help Ukraine defeat Putin if they want to defend their own security,” said Reinhard Bütikofer, a German member of the European Parliament. “They have well understood that Putin’s threat to Ukraine has significance far beyond Ukraine itself.”

The divergence between Washington and its European allies is increasingly evident on an array of issues, from Ukraine’s prospects of eventually joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to the military capabilities that Kyiv needs for its current offensive aiming to reclaim occupied territory, to the desirability of any peace settlement with the Kremlin in the near term.

“Biden’s mantra is that the unity of the alliance is the high priority,” said Slawomir Debski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a Warsaw think tank that advises Poland’s government. “The problem now is that it’s the Biden administration that is lagging behind Europe, and it’s the Biden administration that is creating trouble for the unity.”

Washington remains the biggest backer of Ukraine, and President Biden reiterated in Vilnius that America’s commitment won’t waver—warning that Putin is making a “bad bet” as he doubts the West’s staying power and unity.

Yet political winds are blowing in opposite directions on the two sides of the Atlantic. A sizable, and growing, minority of the U.S. Republican Party wants to end any support for Ukraine, and America’s role in the war is likely to become an issue in next year’s presidential election. A proposal to prohibit all security assistance to Ukraine garnered 70 Republican votes, or nearly one-third of all Republican House members, on Thursday.

Former President Donald Trump, who seeks to return to the White House next year, has accused Biden of risking World War III by supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions, a type of ammunition that Russia has been using in abundance, and boasted that he could end the conflict within 24 hours, without saying how.

Few major European leaders have similar electoral concerns in the near term. European economies have successfully weaned themselves off dependence on Russian energy, and even the once pro-Putin nationalist parties rarely openly support Moscow nowadays. Many key European leaders who pushed for talks between Kyiv and Moscow last year, most importantly French President Emmanuel Macron, have increasingly come to the view that no deal on Ukraine can be struck until Putin is routed on the battlefield or leaves power.

“There is a growing belief in Europe that the defeat of Russia needs to be super clear, while at least in some corners of the U.S. system there might be a sense that this needs to be a defeat that generates a negotiated outcome,” said Camille Grand, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Brussels who served until last year as NATO’s assis

SECOND

Wednesday, July 19, 2023 4:37 PM (P)

Ukraine Adopts Slow Approach to Counteroffensive: ‘Our Problem Everywhere Is the Sky’
James Marson

Updated July 18, 2023 12:00 am ET

ORIKHIV, Ukraine—Six weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Capt. Anatoliy Kharchenko and his reconnaissance company were supposed to be wreaking havoc miles behind Russian defensive lines pierced by Western-supplied armored vehicles.

Instead, after many of the vehicles got bogged down in minefields, Kharchenko and his men are training how to advance methodically on foot, moving from one line of trees to another, faced with the prospect of taking back their country one field at a time.

“We’ve got nothing to lose,” Kharchenko said. “Victory isn’t just important, but it’s the only option, otherwise we’ll all be dead.”

Ukraine’s counteroffensive, launched at the start of June, is aimed at retaking some of the nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory occupied by Moscow. The West provided dozens of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles and trained thousands of Ukrainian troops for the campaign.

The swift loss of several tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, many of them immobilized by mines or missiles launched from attack helicopters, jolted Ukraine and its Western backers. Ukraine hasn’t achieved a decisive breakthrough, although it has seized several villages.

Kyiv’s political and military leadership has complained that slow and insufficient deliveries of Western weaponry left it no choice but to assault Russian lines without adequate air defenses, leaving troops and vehicles vulnerable.

The Ukrainians are adapting and seeking to press forward in the south as well as around the eastern city of Bakhmut, Russia’s only significant gain in its winter-and-spring offensive. Advancing slowly and meticulously to preserve Western armor, the central aim remains reaching the Sea of Azov, cutting off Crimea and squeezing Russian forces out of the southern Kherson region.

Most of the Ukrainian brigades trained and equipped by the West remain in reserve, waiting to strike. Officers are seeking to preserve precious Western equipment, from tanks to shoulder-fired Stingers, while still pushing forward.

“We are probing with our fingers and working out where to direct our fist,” said Kharchenko.

The stocky former paratrooper and his company of some 100 men had been prepared to push through any gap created in Russian lines and dash south.

But the gap never appeared. On the third day of the counteroffensive, he drove to Mala Tokmachka to the southeast of Orikhiv to check out the route they were supposed to take. As artillery shells crashed around him, he began to withdraw when he saw a Ukrainian vehicle blown up and body parts of Ukrainian soldiers strewn over the road. He and his teammates dismounted to recover what they could.

Now, the task is even more daunting. After the destruction of the Kakhovka dam flooded the Dnipro River at the start of June, Russia moved some units that had been guarding the river’s eastern bank to bolster forces to the south of Orikhiv. They quickly dug in, expanding the lines of defense and reinforcing the edges of towns and roads.

Kharchenko and his men are training for a more gradual advance over the flat land of the south, where neat villages are dotted among open fields of sunflowers and wheat. They are using U.S.-made Bangalore torpedoes, metal poles with explosive charges, which they hope will help them clear mines and booby traps from lines of trees along the edges of fields so that they can advance and dig in.

One of his men questioned why they would seek to advance on foot given that the West provided armor for protection.

Kharchenko said they don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the Russians in the early days of the invasion, when Ukraine chewed up column after column of Russian armored vehicles.

Ukraine has been targeting ammunition stores and command posts with Himars rocket artillery and long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles. The Storm Shadows can strike farther but are expensive and in shorter supply, while the U.S. has so

SIGNYM

Thursday, July 20, 2023 2:21 AM (P)

IF

Quote:
Ukraine Adopts Slow Approach to Counteroffensive: ‘Our Problem Everywhere Is the Sky’

then why...

Quote:
US Pressuring Ukraine For 'Decisive Breakthrough' & More Aggressive Tactics: WaPo

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-pressuring-ukraine-decisive-brea
kthrough-more-aggressive-tactics-wapo
Original article at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/18/ukraine-co
unter-offensive-weapons-tactics/

???

Do SOME parts of the administration want Kiev to commit suicide faster, and get this constant drain of money, weapons, and stream of bad news over with ASAP so the Ukrainian clusterfuck can be memory-holed in time for campaign season?

I can't see any reason for wanting Kiev to repeat their clumsy "combined arms" offensive. All it did was get a lot of soldiers killed and Leopards and Bradleys destroyed. It didn't work last time and won't work this time.

Furthermore, sending even light infantry against well-constructed defenses may be saving their armored vehicles, but it's still getting a lot of soldiers killed. True, it negates Russia's artillery advantage... why shell a small group of foot soldiers? ...but Russia has plenty of anti-personnel weapons (which IMHO they're testing to see which weapons are most effective and cost-effective, ie TOS1 thermobaric bombs, anti-personnel mines, infantry, and now cluster munitions)

As I see it, Kiev really has only one option: insurgency warfare.

Given the political situation, the worst thing (for Russia) that Kiev can do is go on the defensive and make Russia go on the offensive.

I think Russia, for its part, would benefit from drawing this out all the way thru next summer, creating the greatest political and economic instability in the EU and USA.

This is not in our interest!

-----------
"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

THG

Thursday, July 20, 2023 3:23 AM (P)

Comrade signym, your sources suck.

T

SIGNYM

Thursday, July 20, 2023 4:30 AM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by THG: Comrade signym, your sources suck.

SECOND'S source, WSJ, sucks?
My source, Washington Post, sucks??

Good to know!
That means I can safely ignore them!

-----------
"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

SECOND

Thursday, July 20, 2023 5:53 PM (P)

Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to display his knowledge of Russian history at odd moments, this time appearing to warn against the possibility of revolution in Russia. Putin stated on July 19 that Russia already exceeded its “limit on revolutions in the last century” in response to the mention of the Mayevka tourism event that took place in May.[40] Mayevka was an illegal meeting of revolutionary-minded workers held outside of Moscow during the Tsarist period, but the word can also be associated with the arrival of spring.[41] Putin additionally stated that he hoped that the tourism Mayevka event would not “lead to a revolution.” Putin had previously made a seemingly unrelated and unprompted allusion to Russian history at a public engagement in October 2022 when he spoke about the causes of the 18th Century Pugachev Rebellion, observing that it began because the center appeared weak and because someone decided that he was tsar – an observation that has since appeared to have been apropos.[42]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-19-2023

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

SECOND

Thursday, July 20, 2023 8:10 PM (P)

Putin cut a deal to save his skin

The failed Wagner insurrection has put Russian President Vladimir Putin "under pressure'' and exposed the "inexorable decay" of his power, the head of British intelligence said Wednesday.

At a rare public address in Prague hosted by Politico, MI6 chief Richard Moore said Putin's support among the Russian elite is crumbling and pointed out the usually ruthless autocrat did not confront Prigozhin - a former ally who had betrayed him - and instead "cut a deal to save his skin.''

“Prigozhin started off that day as a traitor at breakfast, he had been pardoned by supper and then a few days later he was invited for tea,” Moore said. “So there are some things that even the chief of MI6 finds a little bit difficult to try and interpret, in terms of who’s in and who’s out.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/007-things-the-chief-of-mi6-told-polit
ico/

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

6IXSTRINGJACK

Thursday, July 20, 2023 9:03 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Putin cut a deal to save his skin

The failed Wagner insurrection has put Russian President Vladimir Putin "under pressure'' and exposed the "inexorable decay" of his power, the head of British intelligence said Wednesday.

At a rare public address in Prague hosted by Politico, MI6 chief Richard Moore said Putin's support among the Russian elite is crumbling and pointed out the usually ruthless autocrat did not confront Prigozhin - a former ally who had betrayed him - and instead "cut a deal to save his skin.''

“Prigozhin started off that day as a traitor at breakfast, he had been pardoned by supper and then a few days later he was invited for tea,” Moore said. “So there are some things that even the chief of MI6 finds a little bit difficult to try and interpret, in terms of who’s in and who’s out.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/007-things-the-chief-of-mi6-told-polit
ico/

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

lol

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

SIGNYM

Friday, July 21, 2023 6:33 AM (P)

and in real news...

russia refuses to extend grain deal. the deal, which allowed ukraine to use the port of odessa to export grain, had provisions in it, NONE of which, predictably, the west honored ('not agreement capable')

turkey to inspect ships for weapons to interdict weapons transfer to ukraine
shipping corridor not to be used for military purposes
reattach russian agricultural bank to SWIFT to make payment for russian grain 9
(for example, by african countries) easier
let russian ships be insured again by western insurance companies (lloyd'sof london, mostly)

since none of he provisions have been honored, despite russian extending the grain deal a few times in order to give kiev, turkey and the west 'more time', russia let the deal expire. despite un scy guiterrez' two-faced plea for yet another extension.

timed with the grain deal's expiration, russia rained hellfire on odessa two night in sucession, using a combination of drones and cruise missiles, ruining kiev's main export (the equivalent of the west blowing up nordstream, ruining germany's economy).

i've heard reports that russia has crafted a different grain deal with turkey, this time shipping grain out of crimea, setting aside grain for poorer nations (most urkainian grain went to the EU. So much for ending world hunger!!!) and arranging for payment through non-SWIFT systems.

*****

the attack on kerch bridge has not yet been responded to. some say it will most likely be an attack on 'command centers' in ukraine. 'command centers' aren't simply plces were commanders gove orders: they are what might most accurately be considered 'fusion centers' where satellite data, AWACS data, videos and photos from soldiers and civilians, drone data, humint etc are combined in real-time to form a picture of the war at any one moment, and perform a threat assessment (what are the threats, which of those threats is the most immediate, how can it be countered etc) these command centers exist ON BOTH SIDES. the urkrainian army and russian are are about equivalent. where ukraine's army falls down is in 'multi-domain superiority'

this is a long video whcih discusses NATO capabilities, strategy and tactics v russia in great detail, as well as taiwan, featuring scott ritter, former marine intelligence officer, and andrei martyanov, former russian naval commander. they don't always agree but they always have something interesting to say.

and, as always, simplicius the thinker
https://simplicius76.substack.com/archive

-----------
"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

SECOND

Friday, July 21, 2023 4:36 PM (P)

Military briefing: the mines stalling Ukraine’s advance

No obstacle has been as daunting for Ukraine’s counteroffensive as the fields of explosives laid by Russia

Christopher Miller in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions July 19 2023

Dmytro was marching through shrubbery at the front line east of the town of Lyman when his Ukrainian assault unit came under fire from Russian lines. He stepped aside to dodge the bullets. Then came the explosion.

Dmytro had triggered an anti-personnel mine. The blast dislocated his hips, fractured his pelvis, buried shrapnel deep in his left leg and nearly tore off his left ankle.

“We got him here just in time,” said doctor Viktor Stercheus, a doctor with the MOAS aid organisation, after riding with Dmytro and the Financial Times over rocket-cratered roads to Kramatorsk hospital. “He now has a 90 per cent chance of surviving and keeping his leg.”

Hundreds more treated by Stercheus and his colleagues have not been as fortunate. Six weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive to reclaim its eastern and southern regions from Russian occupiers, no military obstacle appears as daunting as Russia’s vast and dense minefields, which are destroying Nato-supplied armour, wounding soldiers and zapping morale.

“We can push with 10 brigades but it won’t work because the mines are everywhere, every half a meter there are mines,” said Sultan, a commander in the 78th regiment, a special forces unit, at a field hospital near the front line in Zaporizhzhia region. “They are everywhere.”

Ukraine’s advance has been painfully slow, and frontline soldiers in southern Zaporizhzhia region and eastern Donetsk region largely blame Russia’s minefields — a hidden threat that has become a psychological torment.

To recapture territory, troops must cross miles of open fields littered with thousands of mines: anti-tank, anti-personnel, improvised explosive devices and an array of booby traps.

Some are launched at random into fields from afar, so-called “distance mining”; others bounce in the air when triggered to spray shrapnel as far as possible. Small green plastic ones that soldiers call “butterfly” mines, a reference to their double-winged shape, are hard to de-mine and especially menacing, troops and doctors said.

Sultan, who preferred to be identified by his call sign, encountered his Russian mine as he sought cover in a thin tree line previously used by Russian soldiers. He pushed a branch out of his way and flicked a tripwire. The blast threw him on his back but the tree took most of the shrapnel. He suffered a concussion — his third — and was evacuated to a frontline hospital.

Russian forces, according to the officer, have noticed the Ukrainians’ tactic of capturing enemy positions and then using them to regroup and launch the next assault. Now booby traps are common.

Western armoured vehicles such as the American-made Bradley fighting vehicles and German Leopard 2 battle tanks have provided some protection. But mine strikes have put many vehicles out of commission, halting advances, and leaving the troops to trek on foot through minefields while under fire.

“These are real people in real machines that are out there really clearing real minefields and they’re really dying,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday. “So, when that happens, units tend to slow down and that’s rightly so, in order to survive, in order to get through these minefields.”

A harrowing drone video published by a Ukrainian journalist captured such a situation earlier this month. It showed Ukrainian soldiers in a rocket-cratered field stepping on anti-personnel mines one after the other, as they tried to evacuate a group of badly wounded men with a Bradley vehicle but became casualties themselves.

The failed assault turned into a rescue operation and lasted about three hours, soldiers with direct knowledge of it said.

“The mines are channelling the Ukrainian efforts, and they are severely limiting the Ukrainians’ manoeuvre space, which is usually not a great t

SIGNYM

Friday, July 21, 2023 4:43 PM (P)

mines are just one reason why i question the west's implaccable desire to ee a ukrainian 'offensive'. the only thing the offensive is doing is creating a lot od dead soldiers and amputees.

if the ukrainians had gone on the defensive instead, it would be russians having to thread their way thru minefields.

-----------
"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

SECOND

Friday, July 21, 2023 5:15 PM (P)

Russia’s Spies Say Putin Faces More Coups

Michael Weiss
20 July 2023
https://theins.ru/en/politics/263596

Yevgeny Prigozhin's coup attempt in June left everyone in the world stunned - except Russian intelligence officials, some of whom tacitly supported the catering magnate's efforts. In this exclusive for The Insider, sources in the FSB, GRU and Ministry of Internal Affairs explain why Vladimir Putin's security apparatus failed to stop Wagner from seizing a key military base and charging all the way to the gates of Moscow.

For Russian spies and soldiers, the biggest shock from last month’s abortive coup in Russia is that Yevegeny Prigozhin didn’t succeed in overthrowing a regime that they say curries little devotion. The Insider has spoken with several sources in Russia’s special services. Prigozhin, the rogue catering magnate turned mercenary financier, they insist, faced little resistance because he enjoys widespread support within the ranks of the very institutions meant to safeguard the state and Vladimir Putin.

To most outside observers, Prigozhin’s rebellion on June 23-24, which saw his Wagner forces come within 120 miles of Moscow, was a cause of astonishment and confusion. Astonishment because few saw it coming and even fewer could understand why it was mostly met by shrugs from the rank-and-file of the Russian army and the nation’s sprawling security apparatus. Confusion because Prigozhin, who came closest to challenging Putin’s 23-year reign, has not been shot or imprisoned – this at a time when merely posting truthful information about Russia’s faltering war in Ukraine can land an ordinary person fifteen years in jail.

In fact, Prigozhin has met at least once with Putin in St. Petersburg since his abortive coup. He still travels in and out of Russia on his private plane, suggesting his passport hasn’t even been confiscated. And now, after much speculation as to his whereabouts, he has turned up in a training camp in Belarus, just outside Minsk, evidently his new home in exile, along with some of his Wagner mercenaries.

The GRU: The Dog That Didn't Bark

One high-ranking source in the Main Directorate of the General Staff, the GRU, Russian military intelligence, previously warned The Insider that a coup attempt was possible in light of Russia’s flailing war in Ukraine; the only unexpected development was the timing and architect of this one.

“Everyone in the Ministry of Defense and in the government as a whole is already tired of this war and would like to stop it,” the source said. “You can feel the discontent , so I expected something similar could happen by autumn. The fact that Prigozhin turned out to be at the head of the rebellion is surprising, but he would never have done such a thing if he had not understood that there would be those in the GRU leadership who would support him.” This echoes statements anonymous Western intelligence officials have made in the past several weeks about the existence of a Russian fifth column.

During Prigozhin’s march on Moscow, the same GRU source told The Insider that he had no doubt it could end in Putin’s overthrow: “Ten thousand motivated people are stronger than a hundred thousand unmotivated people,” this officer said. “If you blow up the bridges on the Oka, then you can try to prevent the column from reaching Moscow. But otherwise there are no serious obstacles for the ‘musicians,’” this GRU officer added, referring to Wagner.

Nor has the meeting between Putin and Prigozhin, the man he had branded a “traitor,” made the Russian president any safer. “Now everyone is convinced of how easily and without a fight you can take power, so there may be many who want to,” the GRU officer said. “Everyone saw that, in fact, no one stood up for Putin. What until recently was considered by many to be absolutely impossible almost succeeded, and now many may want to repeat it again.”

There are generals in the Russian army, the source added, who gave a variety of excuses for not interfering in Prigozhin’s blitzkrieg, which began wit

SIGNYM

Friday, July 21, 2023 11:55 PM (P)

-----------
"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

SECOND

Saturday, July 22, 2023 10:57 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

-----------
"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

NATO’s infamous invasion of Palestine. Syria, Somalia, and Yemen have literally nothing to do with NATO, and Yugoslavia was committing a genocide that NATO ended. Yugoslavia is what really gets me. Did they prefer if the genocide continued? Then there is Libya, which was run by Gaddafi, a man gearing up for a genocide who was so insane, Russia and China ABSTAINED in the UN vote to permit NATO military intervention. What's the Commie list of mountains of dead? Russia, Poland, Ukraine,China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, also Afghanistan, Ethiopia.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughCommieSpam/comments/13df84o/povyou_dont
_know_history/

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

SECOND

Sunday, July 23, 2023 4:21 PM (P)

Konstantin Sivkov, who serves as the deputy president of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences, has put forth the idea of detonating nuclear weapons at the North Pole "if necessary" as a way to convey a message to the West, in a statement on Russian state-run TV.

During his speech, Sivkov called for the potential deployment of nuclear weapons and show-casing their presence at the North Pole as a demonstration, under certain circumstances.

"If the situation escalates to an extremely critical stage, we could consider demonstrating a detonation, say, at the North Pole,” he said.

“Similar to what we did with the [thermonuclear aerial bomb with a power of] 58 megatons on Novaya Zemlya, where the test went as planned, proving effective and sending a powerful educational message.”

Sivkov emphasized his desire for Russia to prioritize the "intensive mass-scale development of strategic nuclear weapons," arguing that such armament would provide protection "against any possible encroachments" on the Russian Federation.

He further advocated for Russia to adopt "unconventional forms of using nuclear weapons," specifically referring to "high-powered nuclear munitions capable of causing severe geo-physical consequences, such as supervolcano explosions."

"Therefore, the deployment of these nuclear weapons is, of course, necessary.”

“It’s a pivotal matter... I strongly believe that transitioning to intensive deployment is strategically imperative.”

Russian officials have repeatedly made nuclear threats against Ukraine and the rest of the world. Medvedev, the former President and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, has notably threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine on a number of occasions.

https://english.nv.ua/nation/retired-russian-colonel-calls-for-nuking-
north-pole-to-send-message-to-the-west-ukraine-news-50340925.html

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

SIGNYM

Sunday, July 23, 2023 9:29 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

SECOND: NATO’s infamous invasion of Palestine. Syria,

SYRIA

Quote:
Even without invoking Article 5, NATO has taken collective defense measures several times, including in Syria

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/27/1088683957/what-is-nato-ukraine-russia-
putin

Quote:
SECOND: Somalia

SOMALIA

Quote:
Operational support includes strategic air- and sealift, as well as planning support for the AU mission in Somalia.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_8191.htm

Quote:
SECOND: and Yemen

YEMEN

Quote:
the US, France and the UK part of the Saudi-led coalition ... blocked all ships from entering Yemen with [FOOD, MEDICAL] supplies

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Yemeni_civi
l_war_(2014-present)

Quote:
SECOND: have literally nothing to do with NATO, and Yugoslavia was committing a genocide that NATO ended. Yugoslavia is what really gets me. Did they prefer if the genocide continued?

YUGOSLAVIA

Quote:
In June 1991, Croatia and Slovenia ... “ethnic cleansing” –
... in March 1992... Srebenica the massacre constituted genocide [1995] Later... Macedonia and Montenegro seceded, as [well as] Kosovo. In each case, violence against civilians defined along identity-based lines existed... In 1999 Kosovo. In 1999, a multilateral force conducted a ten-week-long bombing campaign against Serbian forces, whom Western leaders feared were set to wage another campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo

https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/yugoslavia-former

So actually, if you knew history at all, you'd know the the dissolution of Yugoslavia which began in 1991, was accompanued throughout with various ethnic cleansings, and that the most infamous of those, Srebenica, occurred a full four years before NATO began bombing.

Quote:
SECOND: Then there is Libya, which was run by Gaddafi, a man gearing up for a genocide who was so insane,

Genocide?
Against who??? I'll bet you can't even name the supposed target group, can you?
LIBYA

Quote:
Russia and China ABSTAINED in the UN vote to permit NATO military intervention.

NATO's stated aim was to create a NO FLY zone, that is, to prevent a potential bombing campaign. as it turned out, NATO forces actively bombed Libyan troops and provided weapons to 'the rebels' who - again, as it turned out- were JIHADISTS who took over much of Libya and turned it into a hellhole, with open-air slave markets and everything.
WAY TO GO, NATO!!!
NATO, and NATO's big member states in various 'coalitions of the willing', have been busier than you thought, SECOND.

Quote:
SECOND: What's the Commie list of mountains of dead?

Whataboutism

What about 'commies'?

SECOND, we are not responsible for what Russia/ 'commies'/ jihadists do, bc we can't control them. In fact, we shouldn't try to take on the responsibility for controlling anyone but ourselves. And that's the one thing we can't seem to do: control ourselves. So why don't we start by controlling our debt, our trade deficit, our borders, our joblessness, our security agencies, and all of the other things that DC seems unwilling/unable to tackle?

-----------
"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

SIGNYM

Sunday, July 23, 2023 10:38 PM (P)

Quote:
Zelensky Blames Failing Counteroffensive On Lack Of Munitions From West, Delayed Training

So, Zelenskiy admits the offensive IS failing.
And now begins the blame shifting and finger pointing.
NATO/USA rebuttal in 3...2...1...

-----------
"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

SECOND

Monday, July 24, 2023 2:42 AM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

SECOND, we are not responsible for what Russia/ 'commies'/ jihadists do, bc we can't control them. In fact, we shouldn't try to take on the responsibility for controlling anyone but ourselves. And that's the one thing we can't seem to do: control ourselves. So why don't we start by controlling our debt, our trade deficit, our borders, our joblessness, our security agencies, and all of the other things that DC seems unwilling/unable to tackle?

What does "control" mean to you, Signym? Nuking Moscow was dinner table conversation during the Manhattan Project. 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.”
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

As for your other complaints, Signym, the Nation Debt for one example, there would not be a National Debt if somebody had nuked the Republicans who have stood in the way of collecting $1 trillion in taxes each year since IRS made its first estimate of how much cheating the wealthy do. And if the same somebody had nuked Moscow which has threatened to nuke the US since Stalin got his first nuke, the USA would not have spent more than $10 trillion on nukes to dissuade Moscow from going through with its threats.

Cutting IRS funding is a gift to America’s wealthiest tax evaders
Vanessa Williamson, January 26, 2023
Currently, the tax gap, which is the amount in taxes that are owed but not paid, comes to nearly $7 trillion over a decade. Three fifths of the tax gap is due to underreporting of income by the top 10% of taxpayers, and more than a quarter comes from the top 1%.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/cutting-irs-funding-is-a-gift-to-am
ericas-wealthiest-tax-evaders/

The United States has the world’s highest national debt with $30.1 trillion owed to creditors as of the first quarter of 2023.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/31/infographic-how-does-us-de
bt-rank-compared-world

That $10 trillion for nukes is not inflation adjusted. It could very well be worth $30 trillion if adjusted. The US government is very secretive about how much it has squandered on nukes, thanks to the Republicans. And Moscow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_States

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

SECOND

Monday, July 24, 2023 5:54 PM (P)

Russia’s Nuclear Option Hangs Over Ukraine and NATO

Some Western officials say Putin’s nuclear threats are all talk. Others are more wary.

By Robbie Gramer, July 11, 2023

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/11/nato-summit-russia-nuclear-ukrain
e-deterrence/

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has thrust the risk of a nuclear showdown between Moscow and the West back into the spotlight. While all allied countries agree the risk of Russia escalating the conflict in Ukraine remains low, there’s a growing gap between the United States and some other allies as to when and how that risk could increase, according to interviews with nearly a dozen current and former NATO officials and security experts.

The nuclear question is an existential one for the alliance, one that’s driven Washington’s calculations on what military aid to send to Ukraine and when, and it has also influenced the debate on when and how to allow Ukraine to join the military alliance as a full-fledged member.

Some U.S. and other NATO defense officials believe there could be an increased risk of Russia launching a limited nuclear strike with a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon to stave off a major battlefield defeat if its forces look to be on the verge of a rout, or if Ukraine appears poised to capture Crimea and large swaths of occupied territory in southern and eastern Ukraine. Others say that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling won’t go further than that, and bowing to such threats will only embolden Russia to use such “nuclear blackmail” in the future.

At the same time, Ukrainian and Western officials also fear that Russia could mount an attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to attempt to trigger a major radiological event, irrespective of whether it launches a nuclear strike—though it’s unclear how successful those efforts would be.

That debate over Russia’s threshold for going nuclear in Ukraine sharpened after Putin announced Russia would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus, the first time that Moscow will dispatch part of its nuclear arsenal outside of Russia’s borders since the end of the Cold War. Back in Moscow, meanwhile, prominent Russian scholars and officials are engaging in an unusually public debate about the merits of using tactical nuclear weapons if the war in Ukraine continues to drag on. Many NATO leaders dismissed the move of nuclear weapons to Belarus as posturing aimed at unnerving NATO. Other officials and experts warned that some NATO allies missed or dismissed signs of Russian military escalation before, most notably in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine last February, and needed to take these signals from Moscow more seriously.

Top Biden administration officials, meanwhile, say they take the nuclear threat very seriously but aren’t letting it bind U.S. support for Ukraine. “I think that there are two caricatures in the discourse about the threat of the use of tactical nuclear weapons,” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told a small group of reporters ahead of the NATO summit in Vilnius. “One caricature is the Biden administration is paralyzed by the nuclear threat and therefore won’t support Ukraine sufficiently. I think that is nonsense.”

“The other caricature is this nuclear threat is complete nonsense. Don’t worry about it at all. It’s to be completely discounted. That also is wrong,” Sullivan said. “It is a threat. It is a real threat. It’s one we need to take seriously. And it is one that does evolve with changing conditions on the battlefield.”

Other major voices in NATO say the prospect of Russia actually launching nuclear weapons, even lower-yield tactical nuclear weapons, remains too slim to factor into support for Ukraine. “I’m not concerned about the nuclear issue. I don’t think Putin dares to push the nuclear button,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former NATO secretary-general and Danish prime minister, said in an interview. “The response from the United States and its allies would be very harsh and the rest of the wor

THG

Monday, July 24, 2023 11:36 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

mines are just one reason why i question the west's implaccable desire to ee a ukrainian 'offensive'. the only thing the offensive is doing is creating a lot od dead soldiers and amputees.

if the ukrainians had gone on the defensive instead, it would be russians having to thread their way thru minefields.

What a dummy. Nobody falls for that. If Ukraine goes on the defensive Russia pays no price for occupying Ukrainian land. And they get to lay more mines and dig more trenches while reinforcing troop levels. Nope...

T

SIGNYM

Tuesday, July 25, 2023 1:01 AM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

mines are just one reason why i question the west's implaccable desire to ee a ukrainian 'offensive'. the only thing the offensive is doing is creating a lot od dead soldiers and amputees.
if the ukrainians had gone on the defensive instead, it would be russians having to thread their way thru minefields.

THUGR: What a dummy. Nobody falls for that. If Ukraine goes on the defensive Russia pays no price for occupying Ukrainian land. And they get to lay more mines and dig more trenches while reinforcing troop levels. Nope...

Did you see the video of Ukies getting their feet and lower legs blown off in a minefield heavily salted with anti-personnel mines, trying to drag or wriggle or squirm their way to the safety of a Bradley while their potential rescuers try - sometimes unsuccessfully - to avoid the very same mines?

It's not for the faint of stomach, and not a winning tactic. Suicide attacks only result in suicide. Ukraine needs to try something besides suicide, bc RIGHT NOW Ukrainians are paying a far heavier 'price' than Russians. Sometimes at 10:1. Not sustainable.

-----------
"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

SIGNYM

Tuesday, July 25, 2023 1:29 AM (P)

So meanwhile, in real news...

Ukrainian military has once again changed tactics, from the initial "combined arms" attack on the southern front (which lost 20-30 pct of its armored vehicles and appx 15,000 soldiers dead or wounded), to attacks with small units of infantry supported by artillery, and now (under the sting of USA criticism that Ukraine doesn't "know how' to run a combined arms offensive) the heavy weaponry is once again at the southern front. The one place that Ukraine has attacked over and over since June 5 is a small place called Rabotino (sp?) in southern Donbas, which is threatening to become another Bakhmut. AFAIK Ukraine eventually decided to move around Rabotino and has made its way appx a half kilometer to the south, but still in the gray zone. In other words, the southern front is essentially static.

Ukrainians are also making a push towards Bakhmut, without the heavy NATO weaponry dedicated to the southern front, but are apparently stuck there, too.

They (Ukrainians) still have very defensible positions in Marinka and Adiivka and Russia is having a hard time dislodging them. Russia appears to be slowly surrounding these positions.

Russians are slowly advancing in the north, towards Lyman.

Odessa was pounded five nights in a row with drones and various missiles (Onyx, KH101, Zircon, Iskander). The explanation that makes sense to me is that Odessa (and other "grain deal" ports) - with docks, warehouses, and rail and roadway networks, became a prime weapons-moving facility and storehouse for weapons, munitions, fuel, even foreign volunteers under the protection of that grain deal. Once the grain deal expired, it was open season on all of that materiel and personnel.
So far, only one civilian death has been confirmed.

But Ukraine is not entirely without a response: it says it destroyed three ammo dumps in Crimea using drones and/or missiles..

-----------
"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

SIGNYM

Tuesday, July 25, 2023 2:15 AM (P)

Another suicide attack by Ukraine on the southern front. Remember, this is a PRO Ukrainian channel.

Quote:
Summer Operation | Complete Defeat of NATO Armored Vehicles. Military Summary For 2023.07.24

-----------
"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

THG

Tuesday, July 25, 2023 2:40 AM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Another suicide attack by Ukraine on the southern front.

Remember, this is a PRO Ukrainian channel.

Quote:
Summer Operation | Complete Defeat of NATO Armored Vehicles. Military Summary For 2023.07.24

Wow pro Ukraine site. Then why do all their headlines show Russia winning. Nope, another Russian bullshit propaganda site.

T

SECOND

Tuesday, July 25, 2023 3:54 AM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Wow pro Ukraine site. Then why do all their headlines show Russia winning. Nope, another Russian bullshit propaganda site.

T

Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally told the soldiers that Japan and Germany were winning. So much winning! Why step on a landmine? If you don't get blown to pieces you will face the invincible soldiers of Japan (or Germany).

https://everything-everywhere.com/tokyo-rose-and-axis-sally/

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

SIGNYM

Tuesday, July 25, 2023 1:41 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Another suicide attack by Ukraine on the southern front.

Remember, this is a PRO Ukrainian channel.

Quote:
Summer Operation | Complete Defeat of NATO Armored Vehicles. Military Summary For 2023.07.24

THUGR: Wow pro Ukraine site. Then why do all their headlines show Russia winning. Nope, another Russian bullshit propaganda site.

Maybe bc RUSSIA IS WINNING???

Jeez, is it in your playbook that you have to be delusional in order to be a patriot?

Didn't you hear him in the first part of the video? He was spittin' mad that Russia struck sites right on the border with Polnd and none of the border states lifted a finger to help. Basically he was saying It wouldn't have cost them anything to fire off their air defense missiles. They could have said 'We saw missiles coming right a us and we defended ourselves' and Russia wouldn't have responded'. But in his view, Ukraine's border states are chickenshit (my word, not his.)

Every advance Ukraine makes is a victory. Every advance Russia makes is a defeat. His bias is OBVIOUS. But - unlike you- he doesn't let it get in the way of SEEING THE OBVIOUS.

You're such a fool, THUGR. And SECOND is all too willing to play you for one.

-----------
"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

SECOND

Tuesday, July 25, 2023 4:45 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Maybe bc RUSSIA IS WINNING???

Jeez, is it in your playbook that you have to be delusional in order to be a patriot?

Didn't you hear him in the first part of the video? He was spittin' mad that Russia struck sites right on the border with Polnd and none of the border states lifted a finger to help. Basically he was saying It wouldn't have cost them anything to fire off their air defense missiles. They could have said 'We saw missiles coming right a us and we defended ourselves' and Russia wouldn't have responded'. But in his view, Ukraine's border states are chickenshit (my word, not his.)

Every advance Ukraine makes is a victory. Every advance Russia makes is a defeat. His bias is OBVIOUS. But - unlike you- he doesn't let it get in the way of SEEING THE OBVIOUS.

You're such a fool, THUGR. And SECOND is all too willing to play you for one.

Signym, using your method to track the Final Score in War, when the Vietnam War was over the USA had won a gratifying victory because tens of millions of Vietnamese were dead but only tens of thousands of Americans. And all of Vietnam had been bombed into ruins but not one US city was bombed. Go Team USA!

By the way, Germany, Italy, and Japan were "winning" until the week before signing surrender documents, according to propagandists working for the Axis Powers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_powers

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

SECOND

Wednesday, July 26, 2023 4:29 AM (P)

The Dilemma Facing Every 17-Year-Old Boy in Ukraine

Should I stay or should I go? Given the possibility of being drafted into a brutal fight, young men in Ukraine are faced with a potentially life-or-death decision.

by Anna Neplii | July 23, 2023, 2:25 pm

For most young men, turning 18 brings with it some monumental and potentially life-changing decisions – work or university? Gap year or straight to campus? Follow your friends or venture out on your own?

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, 17-year-old Ukrainian boys have been faced with one much more difficult and fundamentally life-altering choice – to stay or not to stay?

Under Ukrainian martial law, which has been in place since February of last year, men aged 18 to 60 are prohibited from traveling abroad and are potentially subject to conscription into the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

The AFU have for the most part managed to fill ranks with volunteers and is currently far from the point of needing to conscript as many males as possible as soon as they turn 18, but with no immediate end to the war or martial law in sight, those coming of age face an uncertain future.

For some, like Ruslan, the prospect of being sent to war was enough to make him decide to leave Ukraine. “I left in February somewhat spontaneously,” he tells Kyiv Post. “The main reason was that I don’t want to fight and none of my relatives want me to either.

“I am a patriot of Ukraine, but I’m definitely not ready to die, especially at such a young age. I am ready to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine as soon as I earn enough money.”

While staying in Ukraine comes with the many obvious risks of living in a warzone, the prospect of moving abroad raises other, perhaps less lethal but no less valid, concerns for a young adult.

“I don’t want to leave my family, friends and go into uncertainty, where no one and nothing is waiting for me,” Dmytro says.

More at https://www.kyivpost.com/post/19760

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

SECOND

Wednesday, July 26, 2023 5:53 PM (P)

Putin is running out of options in Ukraine

Lawrence Freedman writes:

Governments start wars in pursuit of various objectives, from conquering territory to changing the regime of a hostile state to supporting a beleaguered ally. Once a war begins, the stakes are immediately raised. It is one of the paradoxes of war that even as its original objectives drift out of reach or are cast aside, the necessity of not being seen as the loser only grows in importance—such importance, in fact, that even if winning is no longer possible, governments will still persevere to show that they have not been beaten.

The problem with losing goes beyond the failure to achieve objectives or even having to explain the expenditures of blood and treasure for little gain: loss casts doubt on the wisdom and competence of the government. Failure in war can cause a government to fall. That is often why governments keep on fighting wars: an admission of defeat could make it harder to hold on to power.

All of these dynamics are evident in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin set as his objectives the “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine. By the first, he presumably meant regime change, in which case the war has clearly been a failure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s position is as strong as ever. As for demilitarization, Ukraine is on its way to becoming the most militarized country in Europe. Many of the Russian speakers in Ukraine on whose behalf Putin claimed to be acting now prefer to speak Ukrainian, while the Russian-speaking areas of the Donbas have been battered, deindustrialized, and depopulated because of this ruinous war.

Russian forces have failed to take complete control of any of the four oblasts, or administrative regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—that Putin claimed for Russia in September 2022. Much of the ground initially seized after the full-scale invasion has been relinquished, and more is being lost, albeit slowly, during the current Ukrainian offensive. Before February 2022, Russia could be confident that Ukraine would not be able to challenge the illegal annexation of Crimea, but now even Russia’s hold of the peninsula is no longer certain. Ukraine still hopes that its war aims—the liberation of all occupied land and the restoration of the borders created in 1991—can be achieved. Even if Ukraine’s current offensive falters, Russia lacks for now the combat power to seize the advantage and take more territory.

Putin is not close to achieving any of his war aims while the price of his gambit grows ever steeper. He may, of course, believe that at least some of his original objectives are still possible, or take some comfort from those analysts in the West who are convinced that the best Ukraine can hope for is a military stalemate. But the Russian leader has never shown himself to be satisfied with a stalemate. He wants a resolution in which he can be shown to be the clear victor. When asked about negotiation, including by sympathetic interlocutors, for example from Africa, he still demands that Ukraine recognize the annexations of the four oblasts, which would require Kyiv to hand over more territory to Moscow. That is clearly not going to happen.

More at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/putin-running-out-options-ukrai
ne

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

SECOND

Thursday, July 27, 2023 3:23 PM (P)

Russian soldiers in Ukraine have said the defense ministry is abandoning the bodies of fighters killed on the battlefield so it doesn't have to pay compensation to families.

On January 3, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree promising to pay 5 million rubles ($55,600) to the families of Russian soldiers killed in the war. Troops who are injured or experience trauma on the battlefield will receive 3 million rubles ($33,300), under legislation from March 2022.

Russian troops have voiced frustration over failures to pay compensation.

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-soldiers-killed-ukraine-bakhmut-compe
nsation-putin-war-1815514

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

SECOND

Thursday, July 27, 2023 3:34 PM (P)

Ukraine isn't killing enough Russians

Story by Colonel Richard Kemp

We learned this week that Russia has increased its upper age limits for reservist mobilization from 45 to 55, and in some cases even as high as 70. Having sustained huge numbers of casualties in the last 17 months, the shortage of fighting troops is also being tackled with plans to increase the age of compulsory conscription from 27 to 30, and laws to reduce the country’s perennial problem of draft dodging have been tightened.

All this shows that, despite the abject failure of its initial plans for the subjugation of Ukraine, the Kremlin is keen to give the appearance that it is not backing down. But it also reveals Moscow’s Achilles’ heel.

When the war began to go badly wrong for Russia, Putin unexpectedly needed many more men to feed his war machine but was desperate to avoid general mobilization for fear of backlash among the population. Even the partial mobilization of 300,000 in September triggered sporadic protests in several cities and led to an exodus of nearly 400,000 young men frightened of being called up to fight. That number may now be considerably higher.

Historically, high casualty rates have created instability in Russia and the Soviet Union. Death tolls in the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, and the war in Afghanistan contributed respectively to the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the fall of the USSR. Some of the other ingredients of such rebellions are also present today, including increasing economic hardship and incompetent military leadership that has seen several Russian generals dismissed and even arrested.

Casualties foment discontent at home and among the already demoralized troops on the front line – as well as eroding Russian physical fighting power. High enemy attrition rates might therefore be more effective for Ukraine in turning this conflict around than re-taking territory, important though that also is.

Although a wide range of numbers has been bandied around, casualty figures on both sides in this war have been impossible for outside observers to assess in any reliable way. But, despite Kyiv’s claims, the likelihood is that attrition rates have not so far been in its favor.

That means they have to find more efficient ways of killing Russian soldiers or delivering strategic victories which render numbers irrelevant (such as via large-scale encirclements) while preserving their own. Frontal attacks, fighting outnumbered and outgunned against heavily defended obstacle belts, are likely to have the opposite effect, which is why Kyiv has so far been holding back its most powerful armored brigades.

The most prolific killer in this war is artillery. Here, Russia has superiority, perhaps 10-1, in guns, shells, and missiles. The West, and in particular the US, has supplied Ukraine with enormous quantities, especially of 155mm shells, but with thousands fired every day, arsenals are running dry. The US has even shipped operational stocks held in Israel to Ukraine, and the recent decision to supply controversial cluster munitions is a further indication of grave shortages. Western defense industry has been unable to keep up with demand, and it is essential that even greater investment is now made to dramatically increase production.

Air power too is essential. It is not going to be possible for NATO to train pilots and supply F-16s in time to influence the current counter-offensive, but we are facing a long-term war of attrition and President Biden needs to stop prevaricating and make sure the planes that Ukraine so badly needs are got to them as quickly as possible.

The same goes for ATACMS long-range missiles. Biden’s fear has always been, despite Ukrainian guarantees, that these weapons might be used to fire at sovereign Russian territory. But that among other targets – is what they should be used for. Western fears of escalation were once perhaps understandable, but many of Moscow’s supposed red lines have been crossed long since without consequences and this war is now

SECOND

Thursday, July 27, 2023 7:17 PM (P)

Amid Odesa Attacks, Russia Deploys Standard Lie of Excluding Civilian and Cultural Targets:

“The planning of strikes with precision weapons against military and terrorist infrastructure facilities of the Kiev regime is carried out on the basis of information carefully checked and confirmed through several channels, knowingly excluding the civilian facilities, as well as cultural and historical heritage sites.”

That is false.

Russia’s July 23 strikes on Odesa destroyed and damaged 44 buildings and sites of cultural significance. Russia provided no evidence to back its claim that the civilian buildings struck in the attack were being used to “prepare terrorists acts.”

https://www.polygraph.info/a/fact-check-amid-odesa-attacks-russia-depl
oys-standard-lie-of-excluding-civiliand-and-cultural-targets/7198916.html

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

SECOND

Friday, July 28, 2023 4:00 PM (P)

One of the difficulties in covering the Russo-Ukraine War as a journalist is the tendency of so many in this profession to assemble facts in favor of whatever the prevailing narrative of the day is. Sixteen months ago, it was hard to find many people in prominent Washington think tanks or at major broadsheets who did not think Kyiv would fall in three days. When it didn’t, those wedded to the notion that Russia was a near-indomitable military power still found the conventional wisdom, built up over years of diligent study and perhaps the unconscious assimilation of Russian propaganda, hard to slough off. Just because Kyiv wasn’t sacked and the Russian army was driven out of the capital region, ran this line of thinking, didn’t mean Ukraine hadn’t exhausted its inventory of miracles. It could not claw back more territory. Then Kharkiv happened. A wondrous bait-and-switch operation, to be sure, but a one-off for that very reason. The Russians were learning, adapting and preparing, and the long-shot play to retake Kherson would prove it. Then Russia withdrew from half of that region in November as a “goodwill gesture.” And so on.

Having serially outperformed expectations, Ukraine finds itself in the unenviable position of having gone from scrappy underdog to victim of its own mythologized success. Six and a half weeks into a much-anticipated counteroffensive and there are no dramatic battlefield developments. A handful of settlements have been reclaimed in the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk, and that’s it. An absence of climax has begun to lead to impending anti-climax and the sort of doomcasting that characterized the preliminaries of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The counteroffensive into which Kyiv and its NATO partners have invested so much kit, manpower and money is already a busted flush, we are told. “Ukraine’s counter-offensive is failing, with no easy fixes,” ran one comment piece in The Daily Telegraph. This was preceded four days earlier by an even less sunny prognosis in the same newspaper, “Ukraine and the West are facing a devastating defeat.”

Ironically, such assessments stand in marked contrast to what Russians in the field are saying about the capability of their adversary. But to understand where Ukraine is headed, it’s first necessary to explain where it is.

Ukraine launched this operation in June hoping, but not expecting, a quick breakthrough of Russian defensive lines in the south. The objective, as several Western and Ukrainian officials told New Lines, is to press through all the way to the Sea of Azov, in Ukraine’s southeast, to sever Russia’s “land bridge” to occupied Crimea and isolate Russian forces on the left bank of the Dnipro, the remaining area of Kherson oblast that is still under Moscow’s control. This was never to be an easy or quick undertaking, as was well known before the counteroffensive got underway. Russian forces have spent more than a year building up enormous fortifications known collectively as the “Surovikin Line,” named for the former commander of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Gen. Sergey Surovikin, who has not been seen or heard from since the Wagner putsch last month and who, the Wall Street Journal reports, may be detained as a willing or passive accomplice in that affair.

More at https://newlinesmag.com/argument/russians-see-ukrainian-progress-where
-others-dont/

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

SECOND

Friday, July 28, 2023 6:07 PM (P)

Russian cybersecurity chief jailed for 14 years for treason

Did he do what he was accused of? No. What did he actually do? Same as others:

The tech businessman is the latest among many people, including scientists, soldiers, officials and a former journalist, to face the charge in recent years.

A year before his arrest, Sachkov ruffled feathers after he stood up at an event attended by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. In a televised speech, Sachkov accused authorities of allowing a prominent Russian criminal hacker to go about his business unimpeded, criticised the appointment of someone he said was a former spy to a body covering the export of advanced technologies, and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cybersecurity envoy of making toxic statements.

Sachkov’s former colleagues, who bought Group-IB’s Russian business and renamed it FACCT, said in a statement that his legal team would appeal his conviction and ask Putin to intervene. In a statement, the company wrote, “While he remains wrongfully imprisoned, we will continue to stand up against injustice and operate our business with the same mission in mind – to fight against cybercrime.”

At the time of his arrest, the firm was focused on investigating high-tech crimes and online fraud, including in Russia, with a global client base that included banks, energy companies, telecoms firms and Interpol.

More at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/26/russian-cybersecurity-chief-j
ailed-for-14-years-on-treason

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

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, July 28, 2023 8:12 PM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
One of the difficulties in covering the Russo-Ukraine War as a journalist is the tendency of so many in this profession to assemble facts in favor of whatever the prevailing narrative of the day is.

There you go.

You just cracked the code why AI is coming for your jobs next, buddy.

You get what you deserve.

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

SECOND

Saturday, July 29, 2023 3:33 PM (P)

Ukraine's Armed Forces to be in Crimea soon – Defense Intelligence Chief

Ukrainska Pravda — Saturday, 29 July 2023, 03:10

Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, has said that the Ukrainian military will soon be able to liberate Russian-occupied Crimea. Budanov did not name the exact date of the liberation of the peninsula. In September 2022, Kyrylo Budanov said that Ukraine would return to Crimea by the end of spring 2023.

More at https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/07/29/7413330/

The story I want to read would include a prediction about the collapse of the Crimea Bridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Bridge

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

SECOND

Sunday, July 30, 2023 5:30 AM (P)

Two super successful leaders praise each other for killing their neighbors and their own citizens while placing all blame on the USA, which they threatened to nuke:

Putin thanks North Korea for supporting Ukraine war as Pyongyang displays its nukes in parade

North Korea’s “firm support” for Russia’s war in Ukraine emboldens the two countries’ determination to cope with Western nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech to North Korean officials on Thursday, according to a report in North Korean state media.

Putin did not go into detail of the nature of Pyongyang’s support in what he called Russia’s “special military operation.” But US officials said last year that North Korea was selling millions of rockets and artillery shells to Russia for use on the battlefield in Ukraine.

“Solidarity with Russia on key international issues highlight our common interests,” Putin said in the speech, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The Russian leader’s remarks on his invasion of Ukraine were contained within a message of congratulations to North Korea on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice, known as Victory Day in the North, even though the grueling conflict ended in stalemate and the peninsula divided.

Putin specifically cited Soviet pilots, whom he claimed “carried out tens of thousands of combat flights” for contributing to “annihilating the enemy,” KCNA said.

“The historic experience of combative friendship has noble values, and is serving as a reliable foundation to further develop the connection between Russia and North Korea in the field of politics, economy and safety,” Putin said, according to KCNA.

Much more at https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/28/asia/putin-north-korea-ukraine-parade-i
ntl-hnk/index.html

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

SECOND

Monday, July 31, 2023 12:37 AM (P)

If Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Moscow’s invasion captures Russian territory, there would be no alternative to using strategic nuclear weapons, Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev warned on Sunday.

“There would simply be no other way out” of using nuclear weapons if the Ukrainian offensive succeeded in taking Russian territory, Medvedev, former Russian president and current National Security Council deputy chairman, said in a post on social media.

“Just imagine that the NATO-supported ukrobanderovtsy’s offensive turned out successful, and they took away a part of our land: Then we would have to, following the president’s degree of 02.06.2020, use the nuclear weapon,” Medvedev wrote, referring to followers of Stepan Bandera, a nationalist leader who waged a violent campaign for Ukrainian independence in the 1930s and 1940s.

“That’s why our enemies must worship our warriors. They are keeping global nuclear fire from flaring up,” Medvedev said, referring to Russian efforts to stop the Ukrainian offensive.

Medvedev has not been shy in using Russia’s nuclear arsenal to threaten Ukraine and its Western supporters. During Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed coup, Medvedev said the rebellion could lead to a nuclear war.

Before that, Medvedev had said that the war in Ukraine could be “brought to an end within a few days” by doing what “the Americans did in 1945 when they deployed nuclear weapons and bombed two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-dmitry-medvedev-ukraine-counter
offensive-russia-invasion-war-nuclear-weapons/

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

THG

Monday, July 31, 2023 4:21 AM (P)

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Two super successful leaders praise each other for killing their neighbors and their own citizens while placing all blame on the USA, which they threatened to nuke:

Careful, you're talking about sig and jacks two favorite guys.

T

SECOND

Monday, July 31, 2023 4:51 AM (P)

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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Monday, July 31, 2023 5:10 PM (P)

"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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Monday, July 31, 2023 5:18 PM (P)

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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

THG

Tuesday, August 1, 2023 4:12 AM (P)

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

SIGNYM

Tuesday, August 1, 2023 5:22 AM (P)

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

SECOND

Tuesday, August 1, 2023 4:58 PM (P)

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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Tuesday, August 1, 2023 7:34 PM (P)

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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SIGNYM

Wednesday, August 2, 2023 1:39 PM (P)

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

SECOND

Wednesday, August 2, 2023 6:08 PM (P)

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 the

SECOND

Wednesday, August 2, 2023 6:16 PM (P)

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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Thursday, August 3, 2023 1:32 AM (P)

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 o

SECOND

Thursday, August 3, 2023 4:27 PM (P)

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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Thursday, August 3, 2023 11:33 PM (P)

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 con

SIGNYM

Friday, August 4, 2023 12:57 AM (P)

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

THG

Friday, August 4, 2023 4:32 PM (P)

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

T

SECOND

Friday, August 4, 2023 11:13 PM (P)

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

SIGNYM

Saturday, August 5, 2023 7:06 AM (P)

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

SIGNYM

Saturday, August 5, 2023 7:23 AM (P)

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

SECOND

Saturday, August 5, 2023 5:24 PM (P)

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 increa

SIGNYM

Saturday, August 5, 2023 5:56 PM (P)

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

SECOND

Saturday, August 5, 2023 7:38 PM (P)

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

SECOND

Sunday, August 6, 2023 5:43 PM (P)

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

6IXSTRINGJACK

Sunday, August 6, 2023 8:53 PM (P)

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.

SECOND

Sunday, August 6, 2023 9:00 PM (P)

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

6IXSTRINGJACK

Sunday, August 6, 2023 10:15 PM (P)

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

SIGNYM

Monday, August 7, 2023 8:55 AM (P)

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

SIGNYM

Monday, August 7, 2023 9:17 AM (P)

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

SECOND

Monday, August 7, 2023 5:26 PM (P)

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 fight

SECOND

Monday, August 7, 2023 5:30 PM (P)

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

SIGNYM

Monday, August 7, 2023 9:41 PM (P)

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

6IXSTRINGJACK

Monday, August 7, 2023 9:42 PM (P)

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

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

SIGNYM

Monday, August 7, 2023 10:46 PM (P)

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

SIGNYM

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 8:26 AM (P)

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

6IXSTRINGJACK

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 11:02 AM (P)

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.

SECOND

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 5:24 PM (P)

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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SECOND

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 5:35 PM (P)

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

SIGNYM

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 6:26 PM (P)

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

SECOND

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 7:29 PM (P)

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

SECOND

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 8:42 PM (P)

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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

THG

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 9:37 PM (P)

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

6IXSTRINGJACK

Tuesday, August 8, 2023 10:32 PM (P)

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.

SECOND

Wednesday, August 9, 2023 2:47 AM (P)

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
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

SIGNYM

Wednesday, August 9, 2023 7:58 AM (P)

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

Let the blamestorming begin!

-----------
"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

SECOND

Wednesday, August 9, 2023 5:36 PM (P)

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

SECOND

Wednesday, August 9, 2023 5:38 PM (P)

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

SECOND

Thursday, August 10, 2023 5:02 AM (P)

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

SECOND

Thursday, August 10, 2023 4:26 PM (P)

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

SECOND

Friday, August 11, 2023 12:02 AM (P)

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

SECOND

Friday, August 11, 2023 6:35 PM (P)

Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, Pentagon spokesman: "Let's take a step back and admit that this is not an ideal situation. No one in their right mind would ever want Russia to invade Ukraine, but it did happen."

"The Ukrainians, despite everything, were able to push the Russians back to defensive positions, which is a miracle, given the state of the Ukrainian army at the time of the Russian invasion."

"So (these are) outstanding results in a less-than-ideal situation. In the future, we will continue to consult with them and provide them with training so that they can regain their sovereign territory and eventually win this struggle," the General concluded.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/pentagon-assesses-tactics-of-offe
nsive-of-ukrainian-armed-forces-they-perform-miracle-driving-russians-into-defence/ar-AA1f8BUo

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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