Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Monday, September 14, 2026 11:51
VIEWED: 566143
PAGE 46 of 111
Zelenskiy Signs Law Banning Pro-Russian Political Parties In Ukraine [May 2022]
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-law-bans-pro-russia-parties-zelenskiy-
signs/31849737.html
Ukraine bans activities of religious groups [A Orthodox Christian Church] with [religious] ties to Russia, fearing their collaboration in war
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-12-02/ukraine-bans-rel
igious-organizations-links-russia
Rada Passes Media Regulation Law, Drawing Criticism From Press Freedom Groups - New York Times [Dec 2022]
https://ukranews.com/en/news/902368-rada-passes-media-regulation-law-d
rawing-criticism-from-press-freedom-groups-new-york-times
Reports: Ukraine bans all male citizens ages 18 to 60 from leaving the country [Feb 2022]
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/02/25/russia-invasion-u
kraine-bans-male-citizens-leaving/6936471001/
Teenagers in Ukraine [draft law] to be banned from traveling abroad on their own: the lawyer explained the details
2023-08-10T15:26:06.687Z
Highlights: The Verkhovna Rada registered draft law No. 9480, which provides for a ban on independent border crossing for teenagers. Currently, all children aged 16 to 18 do not need accompaniment or special permits to leave Ukraine.
https://www.txtreport.com/news/2023-08-10-teenagers-in-ukraine-want-to
-be-banned-from-traveling-abroad-on-their-own--the-lawyer-explained-the-details.SJwqbtGnn.html
Zelensky Fires All Heads of Ukraine's Military Recruitment Amid Bribery Probe [Aug 2023]
Zelensky made the announcement in a video post to official social media accounts:
The president posted a video and text statement regarding the mass removal of local military officials on his official Telegram channel on Friday. The announcement comes amid a national investigation into military commissariats that has already produced 112 criminal cases against local commissars.
https://t.me/V_Zelenskiy_official/7321
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Video Shows Russian T-90 Tank Destroyed by Drone After Falling Off a Cliff
By Isabel van Brugen On 8/11/23 at 9:16 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/video-russian-tank-destroyed-drone-attack-ukr
aine-counteroffensive-donetsk-1819152
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Russian Military Told to Stage Videos to Exaggerate Success: Report
By Jon Jackson On 8/11/23 at 1:48 PM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-military-told-stage-videos-exaggerate
-success-ukraine-1819237
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Oh, wow, SECOND, one Russian tank?? From Newspeak??
Keep flailing away, dood!
Ukraine Map Shows Russians Nearing Kupyansk as Locals Evacuated in Kharkiv
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-war-kupyansk-map-evacuated-1818873
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Quote:Ukraine vs Russia is the battle of dumb vs dumber. Neither side is competent but only one side has threatened to nuke the USA. 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.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, wow, SECOND, one Russian tank?? From Newspeak??
Keep flailing away, dood!
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4133192-putin-is-losing-
his-war-but-his-threats-of-armageddon-keep-working
Russian Commander Threatens Drunken Troops With Death
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-commander-threatens-drunken-troops-de
ath-1816502
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And...?
What's your point?
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Quote:If Russia had not spent the last 100 years threatening and actually killing everybody who gets in its way, nobody would care when Russia took over Ukraine, not even the Ukrainians. But Russia has been threatening to nuke the world since it got its first nukes, which is why the EU and the US send ammo to Ukraine.
Originally posted by SignyM:
And...?
What's your point?
Russia is poor compared to the EU because Russia has always done a very poor job of running itself. Russia passed along that trait to North Korea, which does an even poorer job of running itself in comparison to South Korea, a vastly wealthier country.
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Quote:Russia has not spent the last 100 years invading and killing. Learn history and stop spouting hogwash.
Originally posted by second:Quote:If Russia had not spent the last 100 years threatening and actually killing everybody who gets in its way, nobody would care when Russia took over Ukraine, not even the Ukrainians. But Russia has been threatening to nuke the world since it got its first nukes, which is why the EU and the US send ammo to Ukraine.
Originally posted by SignyM:
And...?
What's your point?
Russia is poor compared to the EU because Russia has always done a very poor job of running itself. Russia passed along that trait to North Korea, which does an even poorer job of running itself in comparison to South Korea, a vastly wealthier country.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Russia has not spent the last 100 years invading and killing. Learn history and stop spouting hogwash.
Russia killed 62 million of its own citizens.
From the book Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
Download the free book from http://libgen.is/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B073RQ94KF/
1 61,911,000 Victims: Utopianism Empowered, 1917-1987
2 3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period, 1917-1922
3 2,200,000 Victims: The NEP Period 1923-1928
4 11,440,000 Victims: The Collectivization Period, 1929-1935
5 4,345,000 Victims: The Great Terror Period 1936-1938
6 5,104,000 Victims: Pre-World War II Period 1939-June 1941
7 13,053,000 Victims: World War II Period, June 1941-1945
8 15,613,000 Victims: Postwar and Stalin’s Twilight Period, 1945-1953
9 6,872,000 Victims: Post-Stalin Period, 1954-1987
Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
Download the free book from http://libgen.is/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B073RQ94KF/
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Been thru this with you, SECOND. Not a single other source verifies the favorite lie that you keep posting.
Yanno, once upon a time you used to be able to maintain a normal discussion. Thanks to JAYNZE's necroposting, I found an example here:
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=61953&p=6
Now, you just lie your ass off, contradict yourself from one post to the next (literally), defame, and in general spew nonsense. I think you've either been replaced by a bot, and not a very smart one. Or you've gone way, way, waaaay off the deep end.
Better get a checkup, SECOND, especially for frontotemporal dementia. Or alcoholism.
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Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:Major Soviet Paper Says 20 Million Died As Victims of Stalin
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Been thru this with you, SECOND. Not a single other source verifies the favorite lie that you keep posting.
Yanno, once upon a time you used to be able to maintain a normal discussion. Thanks to JAYNZE's necroposting, I found an example here:
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=61953&p=6
Now, you just lie your ass off, contradict yourself from one post to the next (literally), defame, and in general spew nonsense. I think you've either been replaced by a bot, and not a very smart one. Or you've gone way, way, waaaay off the deep end.
Better get a checkup, SECOND, especially for frontotemporal dementia. Or alcoholism.
Feb. 4, 1989
A Soviet weekly newspaper today published the most detailed accounting of Stalin's victims yet presented to a mass audience here, indicating that about 20 million died in labor camps, forced collectivization, famine and executions.
The estimates, by the historian Roy Medvedev, were printed in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti, which has a circulation of more than 20 million.
The estimated number of deaths is about equal to the number of Soviet soldiers and civilians believed killed in World War II.
Mr. Medvedev's grim arithmetic was reported in a less detailed version last November in Moscow News, a limited-circulation weekly, which sells about 200,000 copies in Russian, but today's article marked the first time the numbers have been disclosed to a nationwide audience.
In all, Mr. Medvedev calculated about 40 million victims of Stalin's repressions, including those arrested, driven from their land or blacklisted.
Although the bookkeeping of Stalin's terror is an inexact and contentious science, Mr. Medvedev's estimates are generally in line with Western calculations that have long been disparaged by more official Soviet historians.
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet-paper-says-20-mi
llion-died-as-victims-of-stalin.html
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Quote:Cannibal Island: In 1933, Nearly 5,000 Died In One Of Stalin's Most Horrific Labor Camps
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Been thru this with you, SECOND. Not a single other source verifies the favorite lie that you keep posting.
Yanno, once upon a time you used to be able to maintain a normal discussion. Thanks to JAYNZE's necroposting, I found an example here:
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=61953&p=6
Now, you just lie your ass off, contradict yourself from one post to the next (literally), defame, and in general spew nonsense. I think you've either been replaced by a bot, and not a very smart one. Or you've gone way, way, waaaay off the deep end.
Better get a checkup, SECOND, especially for frontotemporal dementia. Or alcoholism.
TOMSK, Russia – Every year, a small group of locals travels the 550 kilometers northwest from this Siberian city to Nazinsky Island, in the middle of the Ob River, to place a wreath at the foot of a wooden cross. It is a gesture of remembrance for the victims of the horrific events that unfolded there in the summer of 1933.
"Every year in June, we place a wreath at the cross that was placed on the island in 1993," Valeria Shtatolkin told RFE/RL. "But this year, we couldn't go. The water was too high, and the island is almost entirely flooded."
Their dedication to the pilgrimage is part of an effort to remind fellow Russians of an experiment in social engineering and self-sufficiency that went tragically wrong for many of the "settlers" lured by Soviet authorities under Josef Stalin -- whose brutal excesses have frequently been downplayed under Russia's current leadership in favor of a more forgiving historical interpretation of Stalin's three-decade rule.
https://www.rferl.org/a/cannibal-island-in-1933-nearly-5-000-died-in-o
ne-of-stalin-s-most-horrific-labor-camps/29341167.html
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Suicide in Soviet Gulags
David Lester, Karolina E. Krysinska, in Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Third Edition), 2022
The Soviet system of labor and concentration camps or the Gulag (GULAG—Glavnoie Upravlenie LAGerei; Main Camp Administration) was organized just after the Russian Revolution in 1918 and lasted into the early 1980s. It spread over almost the whole territory of the Soviet Union and between 1929 and 1953 about 18 million Soviet citizens passed through the Gulag camps. Although no official statistics are available on the number of Gulag prisoners who attempted or died by suicide, there are anecdotal accounts of suicide in the memoirs of camp survivors. For instance, according to Applebaum (2003), in the 1930s, it became relatively common for prisoners in Kolyma to walk quickly and purposefully toward the “death zone” (the no-man's land beside the camp fence) and to stand there to be shot. Another popular method was an escape attempt that provoked the guards to shoot the prisoner.
There are similarities between Muselmänner (or “Muslims”) in the Nazi concentration camps (dying prisoners suffering from diseases of starvation and vitamin deficiency) and Gulag inmates called dokhodyagi (“goners”) who were “quite literally insane with hunger” (Applebaum, 2003, p. 310). There have been suggestions that Muselmänner and dokhodyagi were people who have given up the will to live and so could be regarded as concealed or passive suicides. Nonetheless, it seems more likely that these camp prisoners maintained a desire to survive against all odds, such as fighting for food. It is also possible that the extreme apathy and indifference might have prevented suicides among those Muselmänner or dokhodyagi camp prisoners who wanted to die.
There have been frequent reports of self-mutilation or faked illness among the Gulag inmates which, in many cases, was a desperate attempt to save one's life by escaping slave work. According to the head of the sanitary department of the Gulag in 1939, the most frequent of methods of self-mutilation included “hacking off fingers and extremities, freezing the extremities, artificial irritation and reopening of wound, rashes, scratches, and other actions preventing prompt healing, chemical burns of the skin and underlying tissues, injuries, traumas, etc” (Khlevniuk, 2004, p. 221). These acts were seen by the Gulag authorities as acts of sabotage and were severely punished, with the punishment ranging from an extra camp sentence to death.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/gulag
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It’s one thing to put a total number to the people who died under Communist rule, just in Russia and the Soviet Union. That figure was something around 66 million. A number like that doesn’t seem as attention-grabbing, however, as the fact that in 1929 and 1930 at least 15 million peasants were marched out onto the tundra and taiga — areas that get so cold trees don’t grow there — and allowed to die. “This wave poured forth, sank down into the permafrost, and even our most active minds recall hardly a thing about it. It is as if it had not even scarred the Russian conscience,” Solzhenitsyn explains.
Solzhenitsyn and the Gulag Archipelago
https://www.gasconadecountyrepublican.com/stories/solzhenitsyn-and-the
-gulag-archipelago,35259
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And those figures don't match yours. Simple arithmetic is beyond you?
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Quote:One guy wrote an entire book and estimated, conservatively, 62 million Russians were murdered by other Russians. (The actual number 61,911,000 is by R. J. Rummel, but 62 million is close enough for me.)
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And those figures don't match yours. Simple arithmetic is beyond you?
This other guy says 66 million: It’s one thing to put a total number to the people who died under Communist rule, just in Russia and the Soviet Union. That figure was something around 66 million. A number like that doesn’t seem as attention-grabbing, however, as the fact that in 1929 and 1930 at least 15 million peasants were marched out onto the tundra and taiga — areas that get so cold trees don’t grow there — and allowed to die. “This wave poured forth, sank down into the permafrost, and even our most active minds recall hardly a thing about it. It is as if it had not even scarred the Russian conscience,” Solzhenitsyn explains.
Solzhenitsyn and the Gulag Archipelago
https://www.gasconadecountyrepublican.com/stories/solzhenitsyn-and-the
-gulag-archipelago,35259
Signym, does your number remain at zero Russians murdered by Russians? Russia is poor now because of those millions and more millions who were murdered in the past. The smarter Russians left Russia to avoid being murdered today, in the here and now. The dumber Russians were left behind to run Russia and they are doing poorly at the job. Recently, some more smart Russians left the dumber Russians behind and in charge of the economy:
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine that started in late February 2022, more than 300,000 Russian citizens and residents are estimated to have left Russia by mid-March 2022, at least 500,000 by the end of August 2022, and an additional 400,000 by early October, for a total of approximately 900,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_emigration_following_the_Russian
_invasion_of_Ukraine
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Quote:archived https://archive.li/1evHw from WaPo.
Slow counteroffensive darkens mood in Ukraine
Quote:reposted from WSJ https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraines-lack-of-weaponry-and-tra
WSJ: Western Officials Knew Ukraine Didn’t Have Enough Weapons and Training for Counteroffensive
ining-risks-stalemate-in-fight-with-russia/ar-AA1edW4t
Soon, Ukraine's limiting factor won't be weapons, it'll be trained soldiers. Apparently Ukraine has kept just one army corps out of the fight (from an original nine) and is preparing for a general mobilization ... i.e. anyone who can walk and hold a gun ... but without proper training these men will be just more meat into a meat grinder.
which brings us to Poland. Altho the Polish population is split on whether to involve itself in Ukraine, Polish President Duda has his eye teeth on Lvov.
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Quote:Ukrainians are depressed that Russians have tortured and murdered millions of Ukrainians and destroyed trillions of dollars in Ukrainian property while the Ukrainians have destroyed very little Russian property, but that does not mean the Ukrainians will surrender since vindictive Russians will do even worse to Ukraine after a surrender. All of Russian history is known to Ukrainians even if Russians don't know their own history of savagery. Russians raped and murdered millions of German civilians after Germany surrendered.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:archived https://archive.li/1evHw from WaPo.
Slow counteroffensive darkens mood in UkraineQuote:reposted from WSJ https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraines-lack-of-weaponry-and-tra
WSJ: Western Officials Knew Ukraine Didn’t Have Enough Weapons and Training for Counteroffensive
ining-risks-stalemate-in-fight-with-russia/ar-AA1edW4t
Soon, Ukraine's limiting factor won't be weapons, it'll be trained soldiers. Apparently Ukraine has kept just one army corps out of the fight (from an original nine) and is preparing for a general mobilization ... i.e. anyone who can walk and hold a gun ... but without proper training these men will be just more meat into a meat grinder.
which brings us to Poland. Altho the Polish population is split on whether to involve itself in Ukraine, Polish President Duda has his eye teeth on Lvov.
https://www.google.com/search?q=german+civilians+deported+by+russia
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Ruble touches 99 to the US dollar, continuing the Russian currency’s monthslong fall
August 11, 2023
The Russian ruble, which has been steadily losing exchange value in a long fall since the beginning of the year, hit 99 to the dollar in Friday trading, its lowest level since the early weeks of the Ukraine war.
In January, the ruble traded at about 66 to the dollar but lost about a third of its value in subsequent months amid continuing concern about the Russian economy.
After Western countries imposed wide sanctions in the wake of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the ruble plunged to as low as 130 against the dollar, but the Russian Central Bank enacted capital controls that stabilized its value. By last summer, it was in the 50-60 range to the dollar.
International sanctions cut off a significant part of imports to Russia, which Central Bank deputy director Alexei Zabotkin said has contributed to the ruble’s fall.
“Activation of domestic demand also contributes to an increase in demand for imports, which, with limited exports, results in a weakening of the ruble, which also puts pressure on prices,” he said at a news conference on Friday.
Zabotkin dismissed speculation that capital flight from Russia was contributing to the ruble’s fall.
“The hypotheses that the exchange rate changes are associated with some significant capital transactions are not very substantiated at the moment,” he said.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ruble-dollar-trading-10d20c122b01a78
dcb95a548529eb2eb
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It’s time to start taking the potential disintegration of Russia seriously.
A number of analysts see the shattering of the Russian Federation as a possible aftermath of Vladimir Putin’s catastrophic war in Ukraine.
Although the world would be better off with a much weakened Russia, its fall may not go smoothly.
The Jamestown Foundation’s Janusz Bugajski would probably agree with this assessment: “as a rump state, under intense international sanctions and shorn of its resource base in Siberia, [Russia] will have severely reduced capabilities to attack neighbors.”
As a result, “NATO’s eastern front will become more secure; while Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova will regain their occupied territories and petition for European Union and NATO integration without fear of Russia’s reaction.” Moreover, “countries in Central Asia will also feel increasingly liberated.”
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius holds a gloomier view: “A fragmenting, demoralized Russia is a devil’s playground. … Russia’s internal disarray poses a severe dilemma for Putin, but it’s very dangerous for the West, too.”
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Tatiana Stanovaya occupies a middle ground, while leaning toward Ignatius. She writes that, on the one hand, “the Kremlin will be wrestling simultaneously with…a deepening crisis of Putin’s leadership, a growing lack of political accountability, increasingly ineffective responses by the authorities to new challenges, an intensifying fragmentation among elites, and a society that is growing more antiestablishment.”
On the other hand, although “the world will have to contend with a more dangerous and unpredictable Russia,” it’s likely that “this inward turn could lead to a more pragmatic approach to the war against Ukraine.”
Bugajski’s optimism derives from his focus on a post-disintegration Russia, one that is a rump state under international scrutiny, lacking the economic and military resources it would need to pursue an imperialist agenda. Ignatius’s pessimism, like that of Stanovaya, derives from their focus on the process of Russia’s disintegration, which, even in the best imaginable circumstances, would be very messy. Both Ignatius implicitly and Stanovaya explicitly worry about a less predictable Russia, which would presumably be more dangerous.
So, who is right?
More at https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4149633-what-if-russia-liter
ally-splits-apart/
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Quote:
There are at least 10 000 graves that I found in the Lviv Oblast, there will be more, because I only checked out the main cemeteries. New graves are also being prepared everywhere.
I can not visit every cemetery or city, because of safety and i need to sustain myself financially, so I need to keep my business going at the same time.
The Ukrainian losses will be somewhere around the 200,000 mark, excluding the missing. That’s my estimate. Almost every person I speak to, knows someone who died, and in turn knows someone else who knows another person that died. The conversations usually go like this… “The man from the second floor of my apartment died, and my cousin from XXXXX lost her son, 3 others from her son’s class also died…”
We will perhaps never know the truth or real losses, and also not on the Russian side.
Interestingly enough, in one week, I also saw over 200 men and more than 30 women with missing limbs or in wheelchairs. These are people that were at the same place as me, at a particular time…so you can conclude yourself how many of those there are.
So let's look at the data points we have showing Ukrainian KIA in the 200-400,000 range.
- Population surveys
- Obituary counts on social media
- Cemetery construction
- Amputation disclosures
- Older, inadvertent official disclosures
- Endless conscription but no army growth
It's all completely internally consistent, pointing to the same approximate number of casualties in the 2-400k range. This is exactly what you would expect if that was in fact the case - all these secondary indicators are consistent with each other and there is no countervailing data besides the obvious lies of Ukrainian officials.
Given that Mediazona's count of Russian KIA in the 30,000 range has recently been validated by another inadvertent disclosure on their side (of some 8,500 WIA returned to duty, total, in the entire VDV for the entire SMO) this also points to an absolutely brutal fact: for every Russian soldier killed in this war, somewhere between seven and thirteen Ukrainian soldiers die. That's apocalyptic for the Ukrainian Army and a disgrace for their Western advisors.
This also, by the way, aligns perfectly with the Ukrainian MoD's claims for -Russian- casualties. This suggests strongly that the Ukrainian MoD's infamously implausibly running count of Russian losses is, astonishingly, actually an accurate report of their own losses - ArmChairWarrior
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-81323-afu-struggles-for-sym
bolic
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Quote:In other words, Ukraine is losing.
Bolton: Biden's policy towards Ukraine only delaying Kyiv's inevitable defeat to Russia:
Peskov, Putin's spox, said that Russia only wants to occupy the regions that it has already incorporated into Russia (in other words, Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea, Zaparozhiy, and Kherson. But not Karkhiv, Odessa, or any regions further west )
Still, I think that Russia may need to force Ukraine to unconditional surrender if it wants to achieve its security goals so it may push towards Kiev in order to cause a collapse of the Ukrainian government.
We'll see.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:In other words, Ukraine is losing.
Bolton: Biden's policy towards Ukraine only delaying Kyiv's inevitable defeat to Russia:
Peskov, Putin's spox, said that Russia only wants to occupy the regions that it has already incorporated into Russia (in other words, Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea, Zaparozhiy, and Kherson. But not Karkhiv, Odessa, or any regions further west )
Still, I think that Russia may need to force Ukraine to unconditional surrender if it wants to achieve its security goals so it may push towards Kiev in order to cause a collapse of the Ukrainian government.
We'll see.
Ukraine Gains in Small Donetsk Village Have Major Frontline Implications
The southern axis of Ukraine's grinding counteroffensive reportedly secured another key gain over the weekend, with unconfirmed reports emerging that Russian troops were pushed out of their defensive positions in the Donetsk Oblast town of Urozhaine, a small village north of Moscow's formidable defensive line and on the road to occupied Mariupol
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-gains-in-small-donetsk-vi
llage-have-major-frontline-implications/ar-AA1ffM2y?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=a13d8cff7df44e36b531d08cc07753e0&ei=30
T
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Russia’s ‘General Armageddon’ removed from military leadership, under house arrest - Tuesday, August 15, 2023
Sergei Surovikin can’t leave his apartment and has been told to stay silent until he’s forgotten
Surovikin had been removed from his role as commander of the Kremlin’s forces in Ukraine.
Sobolev also hinted that Surovikin could ultimately make a comeback, telling the Russian news site that the general could be useful to the army at a later point, if he isn’t found to have committed serious violations.
https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-general-armageddon-sergei-surov
ikin-removed-military-leadership-under-house-arrest-reports/
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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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:In other words, Ukraine is losing.
Bolton: Biden's policy towards Ukraine only delaying Kyiv's inevitable defeat to Russia:
What were Bolton's actual words, where he said that?
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:In other words, Ukraine is losing.
Bolton: Biden's policy towards Ukraine only delaying Kyiv's inevitable defeat to Russia:
K2PO: What were Bolton's actual words, where he said that?
*****
QUOTE:
Quote:
"Ukraine’s offensive failures and Russia’s defensive successes"
Russia is succeeding and Ukraine is failing. Sounds like defeat to me!
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:In other words, Ukraine is losing.
Bolton: Biden's policy towards Ukraine only delaying Kyiv's inevitable defeat to Russia:
Peskov, Putin's spox, said that Russia only wants to occupy the regions that it has already incorporated into Russia (in other words, Donetsk, Luhansk, Crimea, Zaparozhiy, and Kherson. But not Karkhiv, Odessa, or any regions further west )
Still, I think that Russia may need to force Ukraine to unconditional surrender if it wants to achieve its security goals so it may push towards Kiev in order to cause a collapse of the Ukrainian government.
We'll see.
THUGR:Quote:
Ukraine Gains in Small Donetsk Village Have Major Frontline Implications
The southern axis of Ukraine's grinding counteroffensive reportedly secured another key gain over the weekend, with unconfirmed reports emerging that Russian troops were pushed out of their defensive positions in the Donetsk Oblast town of Urozhaine, a small village north of Moscow's formidable defensive line and on the road to occupied Mariupol
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-gains-in-small-donetsk-vi
llage-have-major-frontline-implications/ar-AA1ffM2y?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=a13d8cff7df44e36b531d08cc07753e0&ei=30
Oh, thank goodness Kiev has something to show for 40,000+ dead in two months! If they keep winning like that, the war will be over by November!
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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In the following article, Daniel L. Davis explains the Ukrainian military failures. I agree with Davis, but Davis does not mention the biggest failure: failing to close the Kersh Strait Bridge to Crimea. Ukraine has had many years to develop a plan, then buy or build what is needed to bring down that bridge, but the bridge still stands despite several rushed and poorly executed attempts. That is the dumbest mistake (and the most significant) Ukraine made but it has made many others. It is hard to decide which side is dumber. Russia? Or Ukraine?
Ukraine’s last-gasp offensive has failed, and no amount of spin will change the outcome.
Double Disaster at Bakhmut for Ukraine and Russia
Bakhmut was a medium-sized town of about 70,000. It had some tactical significance for whoever possessed it, but by itself cannot be considered critical at even an operational level. Ukraine had held the town, but by early March, Wagner reached the eastern outskirts of the city. The military necessity for Ukraine at that time was to withdraw from Bakhmut to the next defended line to the west.
From this new position, Ukraine’s ability to defend would have been stronger and Russia’s task to attack the new Ukrainian lines more difficult because the Ukraine side would have had the high ground and open fields of fire through which Russia would have to advance, making any assault extremely difficult and costly in terms of men and equipment. But by staying in Bakhmut, the task for the Russians was much easier. Now, Russia could move to within literal meters of the Ukrainian positions within Bakhmut without being seen. The Bakhmut defenders were at a disadvantage from that point forward.
However, Zelensky chose to press the fight anyway. For months, senior U.S. leaders warned the Ukrainian president the battle was unwinnable and to move to other defensive positions. Not only did he refuse to withdraw to a superior fighting position, he ordered his men not to give up so much as a single building, forcing them to fight to the death. Month after month, Zelensky sent brigade after brigade to reinforce Bakhmut in an effort to reverse the tide.
Not only was it painfully obvious that military fundamentals made clear there was little rational hope of stopping Wagner’s drive to capture Bakhmut, but many of those brigades Zelensky sent in futile aid to help Bakhmut were also urgently needed in the upcoming spring and summer offensive. Two days after Bakhmut’s fall, Zelensky was still defiant, claiming the city had not fallen. In 2022, Zelensky’s tenacity and unwillingness to compromise resulted in blunting Russia’s invasion and then inflicting two major operational defeats.
But those successes bred hubris that in May 2023 led him to make very costly mistakes with strategic implications: not only did Ukraine spend irreplaceable resources on defending a strategically inconsequential city, but they also lost critically important brigades for their long-shot offensive that was to come. Unfortunately, once the offensive was launched in June, the mistakes continued.
Inadequate and Improper Training Paved the Way to Failure
Over many months prior to the offensive, many Western publications hailed the “advanced training” the Ukrainian Armed Forces were getting from a number of NATO countries. Concurrently, a number of Ukrainian brigades were also outfitted with modern NATO combat vehicles such as the Challenger and Leopard tanks, U.S. artillery systems, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and Strykers. The combination of NATO technology with NATO training was expected to produce a quality offensive capacity that would penetrate Russian defenses and drive a wedge to the Azov coast, splitting the occupying forces in half.
Foreign Affairs, on the day the offensive started, published an analysis titled “Ukraine’s Hidden Advantage: How European Trainers Have Transformed Kyiv’s Army and Changed the War.” And yet as has been painfully observed now after almost three months of the operation, European and NATO training did not transform the
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Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive has—so far—proved underwhelming, his troops winning back slivers of land in the south and east of the country at high cost. The Ukrainians are reportedly inflicting withering losses on the Russian defenders, but six weeks into the operation, Moscow's multi-layered defensive network is yet to break.
Zelensky faces an impossible choice: to go all-in and risk a costly failure or to cut Ukraine's losses and accept a politically damaging defeat.
The lack of progress has intensified the strategic debate at the highest levels of the Ukrainian government, sources with knowledge of the discussions have told Newsweek, setting some within the president's office against the military command.
Some in the former group want to consolidate Kyiv's limited successes and prepare for an expected fall-winter Russian offensive. But figures in the latter—including commander-in-chief General Valery Zaluzhnyi—want to push on, with Ukrainian military officials decrying criticism as impatience rooted in misunderstanding.
https://www.newsweek.com/zelensky-pivotal-ukraine-counteroffensive-cal
l-threatens-divide-leadership-1819564
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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Quote:Oh, not hard at all: USA neocons, who conned Ukraine into being their dupes
Originally posted by second:
In the following article, Daniel L. Davis explains the Ukrainian military failures. I agree with Davis, but Davis does not mention the biggest failure: failing to close the Kersh Strait Bridge to Crimea. Ukraine has had many years to develop a plan, then buy or build what is needed to bring down that bridge, but the bridge still stands despite several rushed and poorly executed attempts. That is the dumbest mistake (and the most significant) Ukraine made but it has made many others. It is hard to decide which side is dumber. Russia? Or Ukraine?
Quote:And actualy, taking Bakhmut was NOT Russia's plan. This was all on Progozhin. Russian MoD would have been content to let Zelensky pour tide after tide of meat into the grinder. Russia had developed a defensive line well to the east of Bakhmut, and now they have to defend a city that doesn't have proper defenses set up, and is less defensible than their planned positions. If Surovikin is in trouble for anything, it's letting Prigozhin take charge of the military tactics in Bakhmut. Like Ukraine, that has strategic consequences for Russia, forcing them to fight for a spot they had no interest in.
Ukraine’s last-gasp offensive has failed, and no amount of spin will change the outcome.
Double Disaster at Bakhmut for Ukraine and Russia
Bakhmut was a medium-sized town of about 70,000. It had some tactical significance for whoever possessed it, but by itself cannot be considered critical at even an operational level. Ukraine had held the town, but by early March, Wagner reached the eastern outskirts of the city. The military necessity for Ukraine at that time was to withdraw from Bakhmut to the next defended line to the west.
From this new position, Ukraine’s ability to defend would have been stronger and Russia’s task to attack the new Ukrainian lines more difficult because the Ukraine side would have had the high ground and open fields of fire through which Russia would have to advance, making any assault extremely difficult and costly in terms of men and equipment. But by staying in Bakhmut, the task for the Russians was much easier. Now, Russia could move to within literal meters of the Ukrainian positions within Bakhmut without being seen. The Bakhmut defenders were at a disadvantage from that point forward.
However, Zelensky chose to press the fight anyway. For months, senior U.S. leaders warned the Ukrainian president the battle was unwinnable and to move to other defensive positions. Not only did he refuse to withdraw to a superior fighting position, he ordered his men not to give up so much as a single building, forcing them to fight to the death. Month after month, Zelensky sent brigade after brigade to reinforce Bakhmut in an effort to reverse the tide.
Not only was it painfully obvious that military fundamentals made clear there was little rational hope of stopping Wagner’s drive to capture Bakhmut,
Quote:But the Ukrainian army never really engaged Russian forces, they were merely dealing with those covering Russian retreats.
but many of those brigades Zelensky sent in futile aid to help Bakhmut were also urgently needed in the upcoming spring and summer offensive. Two days after Bakhmut’s fall, Zelensky was still defiant, claiming the city had not fallen. In 2022, Zelensky’s tenacity and unwillingness to compromise resulted in blunting Russia’s invasion and then inflicting two major operational defeats.
Quote:
But those [meaningless] successes bred hubris that in May 2023 led him to make very costly mistakes with strategic implications: not only did Ukraine spend irreplaceable resources on defending a strategically inconsequential city, but they also lost critically important brigades for their long-shot offensive that was to come. Unfortunately, once the offensive was launched in June, the mistakes continued.
Inadequate and Improper Training Paved the Way to FailurNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I love when you write Russian propaganda. Unashamed, you reveal your inner nature. All around me, I see Trumptards revealing themselves by surrendering to their urges and fears. For one example out of many: "Woe is me. I can't lose weight easily so I'm going in the opposite direction and eating to make me happy while it makes me fatter. No one can blame me since it is not my fault I'm this way. My metabolism is to blame." You Trumptards don't know what to do in large matters or small. The path for you is always the one with low effort and low stress, to give up. Let others struggle and you will watch and give wrong advice and speak long and passionately about what you will never understand. To know is too much effort and stress for you. So much simpler to not know and to do little.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And they had no "Plan B". They STILL don't have a "plan B". Our military was never prepared to fight a land war against a near-peer, and should have advised the WH and State Dept so. But the generals were apparently thinking about their retirement packages and, except for a few muted protests about this or that weapons systems, never gave the WH and neocons a straight assessment of the military situation in Ukraine.
There are no options left FOR US except nukes, which Bolton is apparently willing to try out. So now everyone is kicking Ukraine under the bus, when they should be focusing on the origins of the war: squarely with USA neocons/neolibs and Soros' ultimate plan for EU nations to self-annihilate. Which, they've obligingly done.
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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What ‘Oppenheimer' and Ukraine Teach Us About War
by Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/15/opinion/war-tech-oppenheimer.html
If you’ve seen the movie “Oppenheimer,” which you should — trust me, it’s gripping even though it’s three hours long and you know how the story ends — you probably noticed several appearances by the physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, who is portrayed in some ways as Oppenheimer’s voice of conscience. I was a bit puzzled when I watched, because I happened to know that Rabi wasn’t a resident at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. But the film was historically accurate: Rabi did visit Los Alamos on occasion, and was present for the Trinity bomb test.
Why wasn’t Rabi at Los Alamos? The film highlights his ethical qualms. But the truth is that he was involved in another secret project applying cutting-edge science to the war effort, M.I.T.’s Radiation Laboratory, which basically worked on advanced radar. The Rad Lab arguably had an even bigger impact on the course of the war than the Manhattan Project, because it turned microwave technology, originally developed in Britain, into a radar system that German submarines couldn’t detect. This was a major factor in the Allies’ 1943 victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, which secured the sea lanes to Britain; this in turn set the stage first for the decisive defeat of the Luftwaffe in early 1944, and then for D-Day.
There were other crucial scientific efforts too, like the group at Johns Hopkins that developed the proximity fuse, which made antiaircraft guns far more effective because they could bring down a plane without scoring a direct hit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
All of this was made possible not just by America’s economic might but also by its cultural and social openness. At one point in the movie Oppenheimer says that the only reason we might beat the Germans to the bomb is Nazi antisemitism; indeed, America’s war effort was crucially aided by our willingness to take in and make use of the scientific talents of refugees.
If you’re a history buff like me, you find this stuff fascinating in its own right. But it’s also relevant, even now, to American politics — and to the war in Ukraine.
Many people on the U.S. right seem to equate national greatness with military prowess and believe that military prowess is associated with macho posturing. The epitome of this attitude was Ted Cruz’s infamous ad contrasting tough-looking Russian recruits with U.S. recruiting ads that celebrated diversity, and declaring that we were made weak by having a “woke, emasculated” military. And you still hear that sort of thing despite the catastrophic and very recent failures of Russia’s un-woke, un-emasculated army.
This is all, of course, deeply stupid. Wars still require almost unimaginable courage and endurance on the part of combatants. But they haven’t been won by sheer brawn for a long time. They are instead won largely by production capacity — and intellectual creativity.
I’ve read many books about World War II. The book that did the most to change how I thought about the conflict was “How the War Was Won,” by the military historian Phillips P. O’Brien, which begins with this memorable sentence: “There were no decisive battles in World War II.” O’Brien shows that even the bloodiest, most stupendous battles, like the battle of Kursk in 1943, destroyed at most a few weeks’ worth of the losing side’s war production. What decided the war was Allied success in dominating first the seas, then the air — success that depended crucially on intellectuals like Rabi, who didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a warrior, or Alan Turing, who led the code-breaking efforts at Bletchley Park but whose gayness would have made him an outcast in the right-wing vision of what America should be.
O’Brien was, as it happens, one of the few prominent military analysts who disagreed with the consensus that Russia would quickly and easily conquer Ukraine, and has been a frequent and insightful commentator on the course of the ongoing war.
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Once upon a time I thought Paul Krugman was smart. Maybe he was. But's he's reduced himself to an inane blatherer of DNC/ neocon/ 'woke' orthodoxy.
Quote:Which means...? How does "radar -detecting submarines" even fit togther?
Originally posted by second:
What ‘Oppenheimer' and Ukraine Teach Us About War
by Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/15/opinion/war-tech-oppenheimer.html
If you’ve seen the movie “Oppenheimer,” which you should — trust me, it’s gripping even though it’s three hours long and you know how the story ends — you probably noticed several appearances by the physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, who is portrayed in some ways as Oppenheimer’s voice of conscience. I was a bit puzzled when I watched, because I happened to know that Rabi wasn’t a resident at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. But the film was historically accurate: Rabi did visit Los Alamos on occasion, and was present for the Trinity bomb test.
Why wasn’t Rabi at Los Alamos? The film highlights his ethical qualms. But the truth is that he was involved in another secret project applying cutting-edge science to the war effort, M.I.T.’s Radiation Laboratory, which basically worked on advanced radar. The Rad Lab arguably had an even bigger impact on the course of the war than the Manhattan Project, because it turned microwave technology, originally developed in Britain, into a radar system that German submarines couldn’t detect.
Quote:Yeah, I'd still like to read an explanation for that. The sea lanes were secured by Navy ships convoying cargo ships. At some point, I presume that the Navy ships got the new-fangled microwave radar. But radar doesn't operate underwater, so it wouln't help ships detect subs, and it wouldn't help subs detect ships. So what does radar have to do with submarines? I thought subs operated on SONAR, and ships are NOISY and can be detected passively just by listening.
This was a major factor in the Allies’ 1943 victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, which secured the sea lanes to Britain; this in turn set the stage first for the decisive defeat of the Luftwaffe in early 1944, and then for D-Day.
Quote:And all of this is to say .. what? Where is he going with this??
There were other crucial scientific efforts too, like the group at Johns Hopkins that developed the proximity fuse, which made antiaircraft guns far more effective because they could bring down a plane without scoring a direct hit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
Quote:OH, I SEE! It leads to the prerequisite virtue signalling!
All of this was made possible not just by America’s economic might but also by its cultural and social openness.
Quote:And later, AFTER the war, our willingness to provide top Nazi scientists with passports so they could continue to do their work here!
At one point in the movie Oppenheimer says that the only reason we might beat the Germans to the bomb is Nazi antisemitism; indeed, America’s war effort was crucially aided by our willingness to take in and make use of the scientific talents of refugees.
Maybe somewhere in there is Paul's unstated rationalization for supporting Nazis in Ukraine. Because of "openness".
Quote:He's conflating our soft-bellied military recruits ... yanno, those who are supposed to make up the bulk of our FIGHTING force ... with the civilian scientists and engineers w
If you’re a history buff like me, you find this stuff fascinating in its own right. But it’s also relevant, even now, to American politics — and to the war in Ukraine.
Many people on the U.S. right seem to equate national greatness with military prowess and believe that military prowess is associated with macho posturing. The epitome of this attitude was Ted Cruz’s infamous ad contrasting tough-looking Russian recruits with U.S. recruiting ads that celebrated diversity, and declaring that we were made weak by having a “woke, emasculated” military.
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Quote:Germany had battleships and U-boat radio antennas that could not hide from radar. And German U-boats couldn't hide from High-frequency direction-finding. Those top-secret messages that were being decoded by the British code breakers were also the location beacons for the British sub-hunters:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Once upon a time I thought Paul Krugman was smart. Maybe he was. But's he's reduced himself to an inane blatherer of DNC/ neocon/ 'woke' orthodoxy.Quote:Yeah, I'd still like to read an explanation for that. The sea lanes were secured by Navy ships convoying cargo ships. At some point, I presume that the Navy ships got the new-fangled microwave radar. But radar doesn't operate underwater, so it wouln't help ships detect subs, and it wouldn't help subs detect ships. So what does radar have to do with submarines? I thought subs operated on SONAR, and ships are NOISY and can be detected passively just by listening.
This was a major factor in the Allies’ 1943 victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, which secured the sea lanes to Britain; this in turn set the stage first for the decisive defeat of the Luftwaffe in early 1944, and then for D-Day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic#High-frequency_di
rection-finding
The Germans, being who they were, didn't believe their coded messages could be read and didn't believe their radio antennas could be located and didn't believe they could lose a war since the German fighting spirit was invincible because Germans are real men, not like those British shopkeepers who can't fight. It turns out that the British realized they were either all dead or prisoners if they didn't become effective and competent warriors so the shopkeepers became what the UK needed. The Ukrainians are now in the same situation as the British once were. Either the Ukrainians become warriors or they die in the Russian prison Putin is constructing.
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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A Russian-backed general admitted his troops "cannot win" against Ukraine and suggested freezing the current front line.
In a lengthy Telegram post on Thursday, Alexander Khodakovsky, who leads the Vostok Battalion fighting in southern Ukraine, predicted a stalemate between the two sides.
"Can we bring down Ukraine militarily? Now and in the near future, no," Khodakovsky said, according to a translation by the Kyiv Post.
"When I talk to myself about our destiny in this war, I mean that we will not crawl forward, like the [Ukrainians], turning everything into [destroyed] Bakhmuts in our path. And, I do not foresee the easy occupation of cities," he added.
Khodakovsky went on to say that he believes the war is entering a phase "of neither peace nor war."
https://www.businessinsider.in/international/news/russian-backed-gener
al-admits-his-troops-cannot-win-against-ukraine-and-suggests-freezing-the-front-line-where-it-is/articleshow/102835591.cms
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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Quote:I suppose that's AN explanation, but it still doesn't make sense.
Originally posted by second:Quote:Germany had battleships and U-boat radio antennas that could not hide from radar. And German U-boats couldn't hide from High-frequency direction-finding. Those top-secret messages that were being decoded by the British code breakers were also the location beacons for the British sub-hunters:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Once upon a time I thought Paul Krugman was smart. Maybe he was. But's he's reduced himself to an inane blatherer of DNC/ neocon/ 'woke' orthodoxy.Quote:Yeah, I'd still like to read an explanation for that. The sea lanes were secured by Navy ships convoying cargo ships. At some point, I presume that the Navy ships got the new-fangled microwave radar. But radar doesn't operate underwater, so it wouln't help ships detect subs, and it wouldn't help subs detect ships. So what does radar have to do with submarines? I thought subs operated on SONAR, and ships are NOISY and can be detected passively just by listening.
This was a major factor in the Allies’ 1943 victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, which secured the sea lanes to Britain; this in turn set the stage first for the decisive defeat of the Luftwaffe in early 1944, and then for D-Day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic#High-frequency_di
rection-finding
The Germans, being who they were, didn't believe their coded messages could be read and didn't believe their radio antennas could be located and didn't believe they could lose a war since the German fighting spirit was invincible because Germans are real men, not like those British shopkeepers who can't fight. It turns out that the British realized they were either all dead or prisoners if they didn't become effective and competent warriors so the shopkeepers became what the UK needed. The Ukrainians are now in the same situation as the British once were. Either the Ukrainians become warriors or they die in the Russian prison Putin is constructing.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
The original artticle says... "The Rad Lab arguably had an even bigger impact on the course of the war than the Manhattan Project, because it turned microwave technology, originally developed in Britain, into a radar system that German submarines couldn’t detect."
So what? German U -boats couldn't detect radar, but they could still detect SHIPS, bc ships are NOISY. And low frequencies carry well in water, whereas early radar couln't see over-the-horizon (which IIRC is 3 miles). Were they that stupid that, having detected a ship nearby (by sound), they would continue to loiter on the surface long enough for a ship to trundle its way over to their position and start dropping depth charges?
BTW I find it improbable that early radar could detect a radio antenna strictly as a piece of metal. Even current radar has a limit of detection for small objects. I suppose you're referring to radar being able to detect German U-boat radio TRANSMISSIONS, since they both operate in the radio frequency range. But, having detected a transmission, I assume that the best way to actually pick up the radio transmission signal would be radio antenna, since they're more efficient.
Not to belabor the point further, but something seems to be missing from the explanation. I can't fill in the pieces bc the only thing I know about WWII submarine technology is from WWII movies.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:You could quadruple your knowledge by reading two paragraphs:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Not to belabor the point further, but something seems to be missing from the explanation. I can't fill in the pieces bc the only thing I know about WWII submarine technology is from WWII movies.
Leigh Light
Detection by radar-equipped aircraft could suppress U-boat activity over a wide area, but an aircraft attack could only be successful with good visibility. U-boats were relatively safe from aircraft at night for two reasons: 1) radar then in use could not detect them at less than 1 mile (1.6 km); 2) flares deployed to illuminate any attack gave adequate warning for evasive manoeuvres. The introduction of the Leigh Light by the British in January 1942 solved the second problem, thereby becoming a significant factor in the Battle for the Atlantic. Developed by RAF officer H. Leigh, it was a powerful and controllable searchlight mounted primarily to Wellington bombers and B-24 Liberators. These aircraft first made contact with enemy submarines using air-to-surface-vessel (ASV) radar. Then, about a 1 mile (1.6 km) from the target, the Leigh Light would be switched on. It immediately and accurately illuminated the enemy, giving U-boat commanders less than 25 seconds to react before they were attacked with depth charges. The first confirmed kill using this technology was U-502 on July 5, 1942.[67]
The Leigh Light enabled the British to attack enemy subs on the surface at night, forcing German and Italian commanders to remain underwater especially when coming into port at sub bases in the Bay of Biscay.[67] U-boat commanders who survived such attacks reported a particular fear of this weapon system since aircraft could not be seen at night, and the noise of an approaching aircraft was inaudible above the din of the sub's engines. Subsequently, the common practice of surfacing at night to recharge batteries and refresh air was mostly abandoned as it was safer to perform these tasks during daylight hours when enemy planes could be spotted. A drop in Allied shipping losses from 600,000 to 200,000 tons per month was attributed to this device.[68]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Atlantic#Leigh_Light
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Quote:
Alexander Khodakovsky, commander of the “Vostok” battalion defending near Urozhaine, complained that Russian forces are not deploying additional reserves and artillery battalions to the area.[3] Khodakovsky claimed that the “Vostok” battalion is fighting for Urozhaine with all available forces but that the forces operating in the area are exhausted and suffering losses.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-14-2023 quoting a report from the neocon Institute for the Study of War
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Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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So it was detection of U-boats by AIRCRAFT.
You could have skipped the bit about the new searchlight.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Seeing as how western medai likes to take literal snippets of lengthy speehces or posts, and extrapolate one word or phrase beyond credibility, this is Khodakovsky's whole Telegram post, machine-translated..
Quote:
Can we topple Ukraine militarily? Not now and in the short term. When I talk to myself about our victory in this war, I do not mean that we will crawl, like them, forward, turning everything into bakhmuts in our path. And I don't envisage an easy occupation of cities.... We will enter the phase that is most disadvantageous to Ukraine in its "independent" state: the phase of neither peace nor war. We could find ourselves in this phase if, instead of the NWO, we recognized the territories and officially took them under guardianship. But that would be a very different twist on history....
In our reality, which has already taken place, things will come to a "truce". We began to have certain processes in the economy caused by the increased workload, but on the whole we withstood and caught the balance. We are balancing - not without it - but we are walking a tightrope. Remember the crisis of the eighth year, which was called the crisis of the banking system? Then only one bank collapsed, launching the domino principle, and we experienced a lot of bad things in a fairly short period of time. Now there is systematic pressure, but although we are warming up, we are holding on.
With Ukraine, everything will be different. If in Russia we do not allow the internal situation to shake up, then with all our sores, our survivability is very high. Ukraine, on the other hand, is a completely different "physics". Both economically and politically is a construct that cannot survive on its own. Therefore, the project of independent Ukraine was not realized, turning into a project: "under whom to lie down." Unfortunately, the elites focused on Western money defeated the elites who wanted to milk Russia. Now the West gives mainly what can only bring destruction. When you read about the next help, you see there is not money that can be sawn, but iron that needs to be disposed of. You won't make much money on this. Therefore, at the exit from the upcoming phase, we will most likely face a global redistribution of Ukraine.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:In other words, Ukraine is losing.
Bolton: Biden's policy towards Ukraine only delaying Kyiv's inevitable defeat to Russia:
K2PO: What were Bolton's actual words, where he said that?
*****
QUOTE:
Quote:
"Ukraine’s offensive failures and Russia’s defensive successes"
Russia is succeeding and Ukraine is failing. Sounds like defeat to me!
Putin's right-hand man threatens nuclear apocalypse and 'direct confrontation' with NATO
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-s-right-hand-man-threatens-
nuclear-apocalypse-and-direct-confrontation-with-nato/ar-AA1ftYYZ?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=486af8369b3c4301a14c4560edcb9d77&ei=100
Sounds desperate to me comrade.
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Putin's right-hand man threatens nuclear apocalypse and 'direct confrontation' with NATO
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/putin-s-right-hand-man-threatens-
nuclear-apocalypse-and-direct-confrontation-with-nato/ar-AA1ftYYZ?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=486af8369b3c4301a14c4560edcb9d77&ei=100
So I'm gonna ask the same question that K2PO asked: What were his (Lavrov's) exact words? Bc, like SECOND's M$M blather, your sources like to misquote/ extrapolate/ spin beyond all credibility.
So, from the article you yourself linked
Quote:
said in an interview for the state-owned magazine The International Affairs, published on the Foreign Ministry website: "The possession of nuclear arms is today the only possible response to some of the significant external threats to the security of our country."
Putin's right-hand man also warned NATO allies are risking "a situation of direct armed confrontation of nuclear powers".
He further warned: "We believe such a development should be prevented. That's why we have to remind about the existence of high military and political risks and send sobering signals to our opponents."
This is just a reiteration of Russia's nuclear posture. AND A WARNING that if the west continues on its escalation path, NATO forces and Russian forces will be fighting DIRECTLY against each other. For example, Ukraine gets F-16s, but its runways aren't fit for F-16s. So they take off from Poland or Romania. Does Russia then bomb Polish or Romanian runways to interdict? If so, what then?
The MSN headline sounds desperate to me comrade.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:Day or night, British ships and aircraft located U-boats with radar and high-frequency direction-finding (both newly invented or vastly improved), but that only gets the British within about a mile of the U-boat. The last few feet are guided by sight, either day or night. At night, the Brits needed the Leigh Lights. Signym, once again you fail to grasp even the simplest facts about killing people efficiently, without squandering ammo. Both the Russians and Ukrainians waste hundreds of artillery shells per kill because neither knows what they are doing. Both are about as inefficient as possible without killing themselves accidentally more frequently than their enemies. The Ukrainian War is truly the battle of Dumb vs Dumber.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So it was detection of U-boats by AIRCRAFT.
You could have skipped the bit about the new searchlight.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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No, I got that point,that's why you didn't have to beat it to death
But I think you don't get the point about war
War isn't about killing "people" unless you're waging a genocidal war where you plan to replace the people living there (eg the American west), or you're fighting against a guerilla force supported by the local population).
AFAIK conventional wars are about killing enemy soldiers and destroying enemy weaponry enough to cripple their military action.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Is Rabotyna going to become another Bakhmut? Listening to Military Summary Channel, the names comes up over and over again as a series of costly failures by the Ukrainian military to take this small, abandoned hamlet.
Where Ukraine is making progress is Uruzhonoya (sp?). Based on the pre-positioning of tank battalions in the area, Dima is expecting that Kiev will aim for a broad-front victory in the area in time for Ukrainian independence day.
Elsewhere AFAIK Kiev is at an expensive standstill or losing ground.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
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Quote:I assume you are unaware that the Allies in WWII targeted civilians, killing far more of them than soldiers. Nuking Japan was the ultimate example of efficiently killing civilians to motivate surrender by the authorities. Russia went to the next level by killing two million German civilians AFTER the authorities surrendered. Russians deny they did what they did, which is absurd behavior but the same as what Russians are doing in Ukraine.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
No, I got that point,that's why you didn't have to beat it to death
But I think you don't get the point about war
War isn't about killing "people" unless you're waging a genocidal war where you plan to replace the people living there (eg the American west), or you're fighting against a guerilla force supported by the local population).
AFAIK conventional wars are about killing enemy soldiers and destroying enemy weaponry enough to cripple their military action.
Russians killing civilians, today: "Horrified by news of today’s daytime attack on the historic center of Chernihiv. Innocent men, women, and children enjoying a beautiful Saturday - a holiday in Ukraine - should never end up killed or wounded."
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/08/19/7416268/
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I was aware. I've mentioned Dresden more than once. Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unimportant. There was also the bombing of London that was supposed to demoralize the Brits, but didn't.
Bu targeting civilian centers is a WAR CRIME. Are you supporting war crimes?
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
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Quote:It is self-evident that humans have not yet learned an adequate moral code. A moral code is not for scoring bonus points with God or getting a high letter grade from 21st Century moral philosophers, none of whom can create that code. If I told you what a moral code is for, I'd become just another in a long line of failed philosophers confused about even the definition of failure.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I was aware. I've mentioned Dresden more than once. Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were militarily unimportant. There was also the bombing of London that was supposed to demoralize the Brits, but didn't.
Bu targeting civilian centers is a WAR CRIME. Are you supporting war crimes?
A list of 21st Century moral philosophers.
https://www.google.com/search?q=a+list+of+21st+century+moral+philosoph
ers
In the distant future, when an adequate moral code is finally agreed upon by humans, I'd expect nothing Russia did in Ukraine will be judged as moral. If there are Russians in the future, I expect they still won't care about that moral code because whatever terrible things they do are always moral in their own judgment, Q.E.D.
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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SECOND is an idiot. QED.
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Quote:There is the little thing the Russians have about threatening to nuke the world if Russians don't get what they want in Ukraine. Then there is the second thing about Russians murdering 4 million Ukrainians. And Russians murdering 64 million Russians. And then Russians have amnesia about all the murders they committed. I really love that Russians claim they are moral people since North Korea loves Russia and copies the threat to nuke the world if North Korea doesn't get what it wants. Moral Philosopher Derek Parfit edges toward condemning Russia' and North Korea's behavior of murdering people by the millions:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND is an idiot. QED.
Inconclusive Conclusions from On What Matters, Volume Three by Derek Parfit:
What now matters most is how we respond to various risks to the survival of humanity. We are creating some of these risks, and we are discovering how we could respond to these and other risks. If we reduce these risks, and humanity survives the next few centuries, our descendants or successors could end these risks by spreading through this galaxy.
Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or suprahumans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea.
If we are the only rational beings in the Universe, as some recent evidence suggests, it matters even more whether we shall have descendants or successors during the billions of years in which that would be possible. Some of our successors might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would have given us all, including those who suffered most, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.
https://uchv.princeton.edu/news/remembering-derek-parfit
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Ukraine Theater Hit by Missile With Deaths, Dozens of Injured Reported
The missile struck the roof of the Taras Shevchenko Chernihiv Regional Academic Music and Drama Theatre as people were on their way to church to celebrate a religious holiday.
Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.
https://www.newsweek.com/chernihiv-ukraine-theater-missile-strike-upda
te-1821072
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20.08.2023 00:27
Ukraine has recorded 100,666 war crimes committed by Russian invaders since the full-scale invasion began.
Yurii Bielousov, the head of the Department for Combating Crimes in Armed Conflict of the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, said this during a discussion entitled "Genocide as a crime. How to punish the guilty?" according to an Ukrinform correspondent.
"Our task is to record as much as possible everything that is happening in our country - every shelling attack, murder, case of deportation of our children, sex crimes, so that we do not lose evidence. To date, we have already recorded 100,666 war crimes since the full-scale invasion began," Bielousov said.
Ukrainian MP Mustafa Dzhemilev added that the current Russian policy on the occupied Crimean peninsula, like 240 years ago, is aimed at displacing the indigenous people and settling the territory with Russians.
"According to our estimates, at least one million Russian citizens were settled there," he said.
More at https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3750253-ukraine-records-over-1000
00-war-crimes-committed-by-russian-invaders.html
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Quote:SECOND is also a liar, with no moral code.
Originally posted by SIGNYM
SECOND is an idiot. QED.
SECOND: There is the little thing the Russians have about threatening to nuke the world if Russians don't get what they want in Ukraine.
QED.
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Quote:Signym, history is so boring, but even Stalin threatened to nuke the world. Never has a Russian skipped the chance to remind the world of Russian nukes. What makes the threats believable is that Russians killed 4 million Ukrainians and 64 million Russians. Russians deny anybody died. "How dare you accuse us?" is a typical Russian reply when the murder rampage is mentioned.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:SECOND is also a liar, with no moral code.
Originally posted by SIGNYM
SECOND is an idiot. QED.
SECOND: There is the little thing the Russians have about threatening to nuke the world if Russians don't get what they want in Ukraine.
QED.
Medvedev says Russia could use nuclear weapon if Ukraine’s fightback succeeds in latest threat
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/31/europe/medvedev-russia-nuclear-weapons-
intl-hnk/index.html
Putin says Russia put nuclear bombs in Belarus as warning to West
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-russia-positions-nucle
ar-bombs-belarus-warning-west-2023-06-16/
A top Russian security official warned Thursday about the rising threat of a nuclear war and blasted a German minister for threatening Russian President Vladimir Putin with arrest, saying that such action would amount to a declaration of war and trigger a Russian strike on Germany.
https://apnews.com/article/medvedev-nuclear-putin-arrest-warrant-germa
ny-ukraine-6dcde92e06f41a7c5cb7386f7939df33
A Kremlin insider warned Thursday that Russia could start a nuclear war if it lost its conventional war in Ukraine.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s security council and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, made the threat in a post on the Telegram messaging app.
“The loss by a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of a nuclear war,” Medvedev wrote in a post criticizing Western powers ahead of a Friday meeting in Germany to discuss further military support for Ukraine.
https://nypost.com/2023/01/19/russia-threatens-nuclear-war-if-it-loses
-in-ukraine/
Russian President Vladimir Putin warns that he won’t hesitate to use nuclear weapons to ward off Ukraine’s attempt to reclaim control of Moscow-occupied areas that the Kremlin is about to annex.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-real-are-putins-nuclear-threats
-to-ukraine
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Russia’s population nightmare is going to get even worse
War in Ukraine has aggravated a crisis that long predates the conflict
A DEMOGRAPHIC TRAGEDY is unfolding in Russia. Over the past three years the country has lost around 2m more people than it would ordinarily have done, as a result of war, disease and exodus. The life expectancy of Russian males aged 15 fell by almost five years, to the same level as in Haiti. The number of Russians born in April 2022 was no higher than it had been in the months of Hitler’s occupation. And because so many men of fighting age are dead or in exile, women now outnumber men by at least 10m.
War is not the sole—or even the main—cause of these troubles, but it has made them all worse. According to Western estimates, 175,000-250,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the past year (Russia’s figures are lower). Somewhere between 500,000 and 1m mostly young, educated people have evaded the meat-grinder by fleeing abroad. Even if Russia had no other demographic problems, losing so many in such a short time would be painful. As it is, the losses of war are placing more burdens on a shrinking, ailing population. Russia may be entering a doom loop of demographic decline.
The roots of Russia’s crisis go back 30 years. The country reached peak population in 1994, with 149m people. The total has since zig-zagged downwards. It was 145m in 2021 (that figure, from the UN, excludes the 2.4m people of Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014 and incorporated into its national accounts). According to UN projections, the total could be just 120m in 50 years, if current patterns persist. That would make Russia the 15th-most-populous country in the world, down from sixth in 1995. According to Alexei Raksha, an independent demographer who used to work for the state statistics service, if you look just at peacetime years, the number of births registered in April 2022 was the lowest since the 18th century. April was a particularly cruel month, but it was a revealing glimpse of a chronic problem.
Population decline is not unique to Russia: most post-communist states have seen dips, though not like this. Their declines have been slow but also manageable. Russia’s population in recent decades has seen a precipitous slump, then a partial recovery (thanks to a period of high immigration from parts of the ex-Soviet Union and more generous child allowances after 2007), followed by a renewed fall.
According to the state statistics agency, in 2020 and 2021 combined the country’s population declined by 1.3m; deaths outstripped births by 1.7m. (The UN also shows a fall, but it is shallower.) The decline was largest among ethnic Russians, whose number, the census of 2021 said, fell by 5.4m in 2010-21. Their share of the population fell from 78% to 72%. So much for Mr Putin’s boast to be expanding the Russki mir (Russian world).
All this began before the war and reflects Russia’s appalling covid pandemic. The official death toll from the disease was 388,091, which would be relatively low; but The Economist estimates total excess deaths in 2020-23 at between 1.2m and 1.6m. That would be comparable to the number in China and the United States, which have much larger populations. Russia may have had the largest covid death toll in the world after India, and the highest mortality rate of all, with 850-1,100 deaths per 100,000 people.
If you add pandemic mortality to the casualties of war and the flight from mobilisation, Russia lost between 1.9m and 2.8m people in 2020-23 on top of its normal demographic deterioration. That would be even worse than during the disastrous early 2000s, when the population was falling by roughly half a million a year.
What might that mean for Russia’s future? Demography is not always destiny; and Russia did for a while begin to reverse its decline in the mid-2010s. The impact of population change is often complex, as Russia’s military mobilisation shows. The decline in the number of ethnic Russians of call-up age (which is being raised from 18-27 to 21-30) wil
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How two new munitions could affect the war in Ukraine
GLSDB and ATACMS have long strike ranges that Ukraine badly wants
FIRST IT WAS tanks. Then it was fighter jets. Then cluster bombs. Since Russia invaded in February 2022, Ukraine has secured a range of hardware that Western allies were at first reluctant to give. Two items that remain on its wish-list are a pair of weapons for long-range precision bombing: the clunkily named GLSDB (or Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb) and ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System, pronounced “attack-ems”). America has promised to send Ukraine the GLSDB, but they have yet to arrive. Ukraine has also asked for the ATACMS, but its request has not been granted. What are these weapons capable of, and how might they affect Ukraine’s flagging counter-offensive?
Start with the GLSDB. The system consists of a rocket from which a glider bomb with pop-out wings detaches at altitude. Its 113kg fragmentation warhead can “hit within the radius of a car tyre” as far as 150km away, according to Saab, the Swedish defence contractor that, along with Boeing, an American firm, produces the munition. The GLSDB is fired from mobile launchers such as HIMARS, an American system that Ukraine received last year. The rockets Ukraine is currently firing from these launchers have a maximum range of 84km, a little over half that of the GLSDB. In addition to greater reach, the new munition has a programmable fuse with options that include aerial blast (meaning that it would detonate in the air in order, for example, to kill more infantry) and delayed detonation (which would occur, say, after penetrating a concrete structure).
GLSDBs can manoeuvre in flight, so they can hit targets in different areas without repositioning the launcher. Saab claims that the munition can knock out targets on a hillside’s “reverse slope” that cannot be struck by direct fire. The GLSDB’s GPS guidance is backed up by onboard inertial navigation, which is immune to jamming. That is important now that Russian electronic warfare is causing problems with the guidance of some Ukrainian weapons.
The ATACMS also launches from a mobile rocket launcher. It is older than the GLSDB, having been first used by America’s army in the Gulf war of 1991. Despite also using GPS and inertial navigation, the ATACMS is not quite as accurate as the GLSDB. But its 227kg fragmentation warheads are twice as heavy, meaning that they can do more damage. And it can fly 300km, double the GLSDB’s range.
Of the two, the ATACMS would probably be of more help to Ukraine, which badly needs weapons that can carry out long-range strikes. Its few crewed warplanes are vulnerable to Russia’s air defences, making deep forays highly risky. Russian forces have moved many of their ammunition dumps farther back from the front, following early losses, to render them inaccessible to many weapons. The ATACMS would allow Ukraine to hammer targets across all of the territory Russia occupies, including Crimea, the peninsula seized in 2014. It could be used to hit Russian supply lines, including the rail-and-road Kerch Bridge that links Crimea to Russia and which has been struck twice by unknown means.
Of course, even the shorter-range GLSDBs would be a welcome addition to Ukraine’s firepower. But it is not clear when its army will get them. America said in February that it would provide the munition, but on June 22nd a Pentagon official told Congress that the first delivery would not arrive before autumn. One worry is that supplies appear to be limited. America’s plans to supply GLSDBs to Ukraine will reportedly delay delivery of the weapon to Taiwan. ATACMS would be important in any war with North Korea. But even if supplies were plentiful, the White House is also concerned about escalation. Ukraine promises it would not fire American weapons into Russia. Joe Biden, America’s president, is not yet convinced. When asked on July 12th, he played down the issue: “They already have the equivalent of ATACMS now.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20230819233404/https://www.eco
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Putin’s War Is Unleashing a Crisis Back Home in Russia
Pulled out of the brutal prison system and thrown straight into frontline battles where ex-convicts are treated as little more than cannon fodder by Russian generals or Wagner commanders, huge numbers have died on the battlefield. Those who survive are horrifically traumatized.
Several of them have already been accused of gruesome crimes on their return to civilian life. Ivan Rossomakhin, 28, was reportedly accused of murder during an eight-day break back home in the Kirov region after joining the Wagner Group from prison where he had been sentenced to 14 years for murder.
Locals said he had been stumbling around the village, with a pitchfork and ax, making wild threats, “I’ll kill everyone! I’ll cut up a whole family!” No one was able to stop him before he allegedly killed a woman.
Another convicted killer who was released to go fight in Ukraine has been arrested in connection with the murder of six civilians after he served his stint in the war. Igor Sofonov, 37, was reportedly released from prison to join Storm Z, which is the defense ministry’s state-backed version of the Wagner ex-prisoner brigades.
His six alleged victims were found in two burning buildings in the village of Derevyannoye.
Much more at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-putin-s-war-is-unleashing-a-c
risis-back-home-in-russia/ar-AA1fuYiU
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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If you want to know what's happening in minute detail, updated twice a day, I once again recommend Military Summary Channel which you can find on YouTube by searching under that name.
Here is the latest update:
From what I gather from various sources, Ukraine has committed it's last reserve battalion, the 82nd, to advance in the Rabotino area. The 82nd is an elite rapid strike force, all-NATO armed and trained. Less heavy weaponry, mostly MRAPs and IFVs to close the distance to Russian defenses as fast as possible. Backed, at this point, by a couple of tank battalions. They have advanced into the northern end of Rabotino.
A sideways comment: Russia rarely acknowledges losses. They tend to provide videos of their destruction of Ukrainian weaponry. But if you find that they are actively striking areas that they had previously occupied, you can deduce that Ukraine has moved into that position. Meanwhile Russia is advancing in the north.
According to MSC, Ukraine dropped cluster munitions on Dontesk City and killed some civilians.
Also according to MSC, Russia struck a civilian building in which Russia claims a meeting/expo of drone manufacturers attended by Ukrainian and NATO officers, and many officers and tech people were killed. Ukraine claims it was just a civilian centers.
Starting Sept 1, posting videos from the frontline will be illegal in Russia. Dima:s interpretation is that it is to hide Russian prep for an offensive.
*****
So thinking ahead, "everyone" seems to think a Russian offensive is coming, the only questions are - when, where, and how big?
IMHO the offensive, assuming there is one, will be designed to collapse the Ukrainian army quickly, and force a surrender.
In order to do that, the Ukrainian army must be ground down as much as possible. This is where the General Staff has a huge advantage over us onlookers. I'll bet they have a pretty good idea of where Ukraine is going to reach a critical shortage first. Long-range missiles? Air defenses? Armored vehicles? Shells? Men? Fuel? Intel?
Not reported in Western press is that Russia has been striking all the way to Lvov, hitting NATO command centers (and commanders and advisors) and concentrations of volunteer forces. Russia has also been attriting ammo and fuel depots, western weapons, air defenses, and drone centers.
Another thing to consider is the west's delivery of NUCLEAR CAPABLE F-16s. Russians don't probably give a fig about Abrams tanks. They're likely to be much more sensitive about long range missiles and extremely sensitive about nuclear capable jets. IF the west is serious about giving Ukraine F-16 capability, they will have already realized that Ukraine will never be able to launch and fly, and the west will have to use NATO runways and NATO pilots, which would be a huge escalation.
OTOH, it's possible that the west is stalling delivery in the hopes that by then Zelenskiy will have lost the war and they won't have to make good on their promises. It's hard to know what the west will do bc every time they say they won't provide this or that weapon, that's exactly what they wind up doing.
So IMHO Russia isn't going to give the west a chance to follow thru. Advancing in the autumn mud night not be practical, but once the ground freezes over might be opportune.
So... Where? Needs more thought.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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BIG SERGE: Götterdämmerung in the East
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/gotterdammerung-in-the-east
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Why Russia's War in Ukraine Could Run for Years
Story by Marcus Walker
Russia’s war on Ukraine is in danger of becoming a protracted struggle that lasts several more years. The reason isn’t just that the front-line combat is a slow-moving slog, but also that none of the main actors have political goals that are both clear and attainable.
Ukraine’s central war aim—restoring its territorial integrity—is the clearest, but appears a distant prospect given the limits of Western support. The U.S. and key European allies such as Germany want to prevent Russia from winning, but fear the costs and risks of helping Ukraine to full victory. Some Western officials are sketching out grand bargains to end the war, but they fit neither Kyiv’s nor Moscow’s goals.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declared aims are the most elastic, ranging from ambitious imperial schemes to more limited land grabs, and shifting with Russia’s military fortunes. His long-term objective of bringing Ukraine back under Moscow’s sway looks unrealistic now, but Ukrainians believe he would treat smaller gains as mere steppingstones, rendering treacherous any peace based on concessions.
President Biden has said the goal of U.S. aid is to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position for eventual peace negotiations, without saying under what conditions it should negotiate. Earlier this year, Washington, Berlin and others hoped a chance for talks would open up this fall, if Kyiv’s counteroffensive made significant progress against Russian occupation forces in Ukraine’s south and east.
But throughout the war, strengthening Ukraine with decisive firepower has clashed with another, overriding Western priority: to avoid uncontrolled escalation that leads to a direct war with Russia or to Putin using nuclear weapons.
The speed limit on aid for Ukraine has been evident in the West’s months-long debates over whether to supply tanks, planes and long-range missiles. Ukrainian troops’ limited weaponry, including air power and air defenses, has contributed to their heavy losses throughout the war, and to their painfully slow progress this summer against Russia’s fortified lines in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions. U.S. intelligence assessments are now pessimistic about whether Ukrainian forces can break through Russian defenses and reach the coast, a key strategic aim for Kyiv.
A drawback of the U.S.’s incremental approach to military aid: Without a battlefield breakthrough, Kyiv doesn’t want to negotiate peace—and Moscow doesn’t have to.
“By structuring our approach around the goal of no escalation, around what we don’t want to happen, the U.S. has set itself up for a drawn-out conflict,” said Alina Polyakova, president of the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington. “You end up in a strange middle ground where you’re not necessarily able to accomplish that second goal of putting Ukraine in a position of strength that makes negotiations possible.”
The muddle over Western aims was illustrated this past week when a senior official of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization spoke publicly about an idea that European diplomats have been debating: that Ukraine give up Russian-occupied territory in return for joining NATO to protect what’s left. The suggestion drew an angry dismissal from Ukraine, which says its borders aren’t for bartering. The NATO official apologized, reverting to the West’s public line that only Ukraine can define acceptable peace terms.
In private, many Western officials don’t think the U.S. and its allies can leave it to Kyiv alone to define the goal. Ukraine’s maximalist aims, they fear, guarantee an endless war. They would like to offer Ukraine carrots to accept the de facto loss of some territory, such as NATO or European Union membership or promises of long-term military and economic aid.
The thinking stems from an eagerness to contain a conflict whose shock waves have been felt across the global economy, uncertainty about how long Western voters will support the current levels of aid for Kyiv and d
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Quote:Big Serge overlooked the biggest part of the story:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
BIG SERGE: Götterdämmerung in the East
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/gotterdammerung-in-the-east
The Soviet people were under attack from two directions: the Nazi military machine and the Soviet Communist Party. The imprisonment and killing of enemies of the people by the party not only continued during the war, but was intensified. A large number of the Soviet World War II dead were killed by Stalin, not Hitler — probably 10,000,000 more. Had Ripley written a “Believe It or Not” of incredible tales of murder and death, the two-front war suffered by Soviet citizens and foreigners subject to Soviet occupation surely would provide prominent entries.
As the Red Army retreated before Nazi invasion forces, the NKVD often tried to deport prisoners east before the Nazis arrived. In some cases prisoners were beaten and shot in death marches along the roads or, if evacuation were impossible or too difficult, prisoners were shot en masse in the prisons,15 whether pickpockets, crooks, black marketeers, or political prisoners. For example, they were shot as prisons were evacuated in Tallin, Smolensk, Kiev, Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, and Orel; in Tartu at least 192 prisoners were killed.16 Upon the approach of German forces, all in Minsk’s prison were killed. It held about 10,000 inmates, although constructed for 1,000.17 All prisoners doing forced labor at a mining complex near Nalchik were machine gunned to death. At the Olginskaya camp, more than 2,000 of those sentenced for over four years were shot.18 And in the Ukraine:
In the majority of prisons NKVD troops shot all inmates who had been sentenced to more than three years. In some towns the NKVD burned prisons with all their inmates. According to Ukrainian sources, 10,000 prisoners were shot in Lvov, Zolochevo, Rovno, Dubno, Lutsk, and other cities.19
In all, perhaps 80,000 Ukrainians were massacred during the Red Army retreat.20
Now, one’s mind can soon become dulled by all the figures being given here; one can read about 80,000 Ukrainians murdered but not absorb this magnitude. But consider: more Ukrainians were apparently murdered in this retreat than all the Englishmen killed (70,000) by all the Nazi bombs dropped on England during the war;21 it is more than all the American Marine and Navy battle-dead in all theaters of action in World War II (56,683);22 it is virtually equal to all the American battle dead in the Korean and Vietnam wars together (80,950).23
From the book Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
Download the free book from https://libgen.unblockit.vegas/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
https://libgen.is/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B073RQ94KF/
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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You keep quoting the same guy over and over, and I keep telling you his estimates are suspect and disputed by historians.
Quote:
Among them, Soviet specialists Michael Ellman and J. Arch Getty have criticized the estimates for relying on émigré sources, hearsay, and rumor as evidence,[56] and cautioned that historians should instead utilize archive material.[57] Such scholars distinguish between historians who base their research on archive materials, and those whose estimates are based on witnesses evidence and other data that is unreliable.[58] Soviet specialist Stephen G. Wheatcroft says that historians relied on Solzhenitsyn to support their higher estimates but research in the state archives vindicated the lower estimates, and that the popular press has continued to include serious errors that should not be cited, or relied on, in academia.[59] Rummel was also another widely used and cited source[60] but not reliable about estimates.[54]
https://archive.org/details/rummel-r.-j.-death-by-government-1994
Rummel had a point to make and bone to pick. He was attempting to prove that "democracies" [not sure how he defines that] kill fewer people than communist nations [again, not sure how he defines THAT. "communism" per se has never existed and still doesn't exist.]
He wasn't a careful historian, but was interested in "psycho-social" aspects of society, so rather than pick thru dry dusty papers and numbers, or visitng sites and exhuming skeletons (or using the data that someone else developed) he used stories that people told.
Well, YOU tell a lot of stories, most of them false. Stories are just stories unless backed by evidence.
*****
But why do you keep dragging the thread off-topic? I mean, we've read about Big Bad Russia from Time Immemorial a couple hundred times by now, and when you're not blathering about that you're blathering about TRUMP! and TRUMPTARDS!
Reality a bit too much for you?
Military Summary Channel (pro-Ukrainian military blogger)
The Duran (Greek/British and Cypriot/American analysis)
Simplicious the Thinker
https://simplicius76.substack.com/
The New Atlas (American ex-Marine tech spec living in Thailand)
Also Scott Ritter (Marine and USA/UN weapons inspector)
Larry Johnson (ex CIA, and security analyst)
and others
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Well, now I think I've heard it all.
Western politicians are casting about for a way to scrape that tar-baby off. I think they truly ...TRULY... believed that Russia would collapse and regime change would fall into their laps!
Escalation... well, the west is running out, or has run out, of weapons it can conveniently give Russia, and further military escalation risks WWIII. Some neocons are on-board with that!
And apparently (some) western ex-diplomats (CFR members) have been trying to interest Russia in a "territory for NATO membership", whereby Russia get to keep what it has and rump Ukraine gets to be in NATO. Two problem with that: Zelenskiy won't agree and Russua- having been burned on Nordstream, the Minsk deals, and the negotiations on Turkey that BoJo torpedoed, won't have any part of it.
So here comes the incredible part: How about Kiev declaring a unilateral cease fire and then quickly becoming part of NATO? It seems like a bluff to me, but I imagine Russia's response could be to simply roll into Kiev, Odessa and so forth unopposed, and take over without firing another shot.
The finger pointing and blame-shifting is amusing.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:Between Trump and Putin, the topic is the same: the inability of most Trumptards and Russians to think their way out of a problem. As if living inside a novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_and_Punishment , Russians handled their problems by murdering tens of millions. Signym handles that by accusing Rummel of inflating the numbers of dead Russians. None of the numbers are Rummel's estimates of dead Russians. These numbers are Russians' estimates, all gathered into one place. But you just waive it away as nothing when these murder sprees by Russians are the most important characteristic of the entire nation. That, plus the constant and unending threats to nuke the world.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
But why do you keep dragging the thread off-topic? I mean, we've read about Big Bad Russia from Time Immemorial a couple hundred times by now, and when you're not blathering about that you're blathering about TRUMP! and TRUMPTARDS!
Reality a bit too much for you?
Back in the USA, the Trumptards handle their problems no better than the Russians handle theirs, but without murder sprees. The Trumptards blame all their problems on Democrats. Trumptards should blame themselves, but they won't because they refuse basic facts (much like Signym won't accept the basic fact of Russia's 64 million murders and counting):
Why Do Republicans Get Offended When Told Basic Facts?
• Over the last fifty years, every Republican President has seen a recession, while we have had only one recession begin under a Democrat, a short six month recession under Carter.
• Over the last forty years every Republican President has created a deficit at least double the previous record. Over that same time, every Democratic President (including already Biden) has cut the deficit by half or more.
• The last three Democratic Presidents (including Biden) have all seen unemployment effectively cut in half. The last two Republicans both saw it effectively double.
• Over the last fifty years, despite holding the Presidency for only 22 years compared to Republicans holding it 28, stock market return has been just over 100% under Republicans and just shy of 1,000% under Democrats. Over 42 million jobs have been created under Democrats compared to only 24 million under Republicans. Income growth averaged 2.2% under Democrats compared to 0.6% under Republicans. GDP growth averaged 4.1% under Democrats compared to 2.7% under Republicans.
• Going back to Truman, four of the five Presidents who have seen the largest increase in domestic oil production were Democrats (with Trump scoring the number five spot and Obama placing first). Only six Presidents over that time have seen domestic oil production fall, and five of them were Republicans.
• Since 1980, The abortion rate held steady under Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43. It fell under both Clinton and Obama, and under Trump rose for the first time since the 1970’s.
• Since the Nixon Administration, 338 members of Presidential administrations have been indicted on criminal charges. Three of these were in Democratic administrations, 335 were in Republican administrations.
• In the last century, only two Presidents have lost jobs during their administrations, both Republicans (Hoover and Trump)
• Over the last 80 years, five of the six Presidents with the highest job creation were Democrats, with only Reagan making the list. (Current rankings are Clinton, Reagan, Biden, Obama, Johnson, and Carter, with Biden likely to move into second place before the end of his first term.)
• Ten of the eleven safest states in the Union are blue or lean blue with Utah the only red state. Fifteen of the sixteen least safe states are red, with Georgia being the only non-red state in that mix (and until recently we would have considered Georgia a red state). (Scores based on a combination of personal safety, road safety, financial safety, and emergency preparedness.)
• Four of the five states with the highest poverty rate are deep red
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Russia's Desperate Mine Defenses May Backfire
Speaking with Newsweek from Kyiv, Kramer concurred that Russia's mine-laying approach in the south appears to have prioritized volume.
"Their minelaying is extremely haphazard, and it could cause problems for them," he said. "The problem with all these minefields is that the Russians don't do mine maps. In the West, in the U.S., whenever we lay out a minefield there has to be an extensive map that's given to everybody, especially friendly forces.
"You always have lanes in there so you can get through them, so friendlies can get through," Kramer said. But on the Russian side, "there's no mine-mapping whatsoever."
Kramer recalled images sent back from the front by Ukrainian troops he had been working with.
"They showed me several pictures of a wooded area, I would say a 10-meter [107-foot] square area," he said. "There must have been 10 or 15 anti-personnel mines just thrown on the ground, all over the place, right next to each other. They put them in trees too, they'll hide some so you get complacent, and you expect you've seen all the mines, and then there's some hidden. They're just going crazy with the mines."
Russian mine-laying, Kramer said, chimes with the broader low-tech, casualty-intensive military approach in Ukraine to date.
"They do the same thing with indirect fire," he said. "They fire on their own people if there's an attack on them by the Ukrainians. They don't care. The way they approach human life, they just don't care compared the Ukrainians. It could cause them some problems down the road, but I really don't think they care."
More at https://www.newsweek.com/russia-mine-defenses-could-backfire-south-ukr
aine-1821294
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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*YAWN!*
Ukraine will prove to you how 'smart' Biden* is.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:This is what fools say when they have no real purpose or direction for their life: "We must keep doing what we have always done." And here is Russia showing it has no real purpose or direction other than to continue as it always has: War in Ukraine could last ‘decades,’ ex-Russian leader says. No end in sight, Dmitry Medvedev reckons. “As long as there is such power [in Kyiv], there will be, say, three years of cease-fire, two years of conflict, and then everything will happen again,” he added.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
*YAWN!*
Ukraine will prove to you how 'smart' Biden* is.
https://www.politico.eu/article/war-ukraine-could-last-decades-russia-
dmitry-medvedev/
Despite what you say, Signym, America is doing excellent, but the most worthless people, the Trumptards in America and the Russians who haven't left Russia for better lives aren't doing well. And Biden doesn't care how the idiotic Trumptards ruin themselves because they never learn and have proved they can't. Biden does not care that the Russians left behind in Russia aren't doing well compared to the ones that leave. If the stay-behind Russians want to fight on forever rather than get real goals and purposes in life, go right ahead and ruin yourselves.
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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Quote:And that is exactly what Biden* is doing. And what YOU are doing!
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
*YAWN!*
Ukraine will prove to you how 'smart' Biden* is.
SECOND: This is what fools say when they have no real purpose or direction for their life: "We must keep doing what we have always done."
Russia has changed.
Biden*, and YOU.... have not.
Reality really is too much for you!
PS: Ukraine will prove how 'smart' you are.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:I'm not misinterpreting that you think Russia is living another thrilling chapter in its colorful history . . . by murdering Ukrainians and stealing their land. That leaves Biden as pure evil. He shall be vanquished at the polls in 2024 for providing ammo to Ukrainians and for signing the Inflation Reduction Act. The heroic Russians that die because Biden gave Ukrainians weapons made in America will always be remembered as martyrs. Long live the Reign of Putin, the destroyer of Ukraine! Long live Trump who will save America's soul from demonic Biden, the attempted destroyer of fossil fuel!
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:And that is exactly what Biden* is doing. And what YOU are doing!
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
*YAWN!*
Ukraine will prove to you how 'smart' Biden* is.
SECOND: This is what fools say when they have no real purpose or direction for their life: "We must keep doing what we have always done."
Russia has changed.
Biden*, and YOU.... have not.
Reality really is too much for you!
PS: Ukraine will prove how 'smart' you are.
In case you are unfamiliar with Evil Biden's Inflation Reduction Act
https://www.whitehouse.gov/cleanenergy/inflation-reduction-act-guidebo
ok/
On August 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, marking the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in the nation’s history. With the stroke of his pen, the President redefined American leadership in confronting the existential threat of the climate crisis and set forth a new era of American innovation and ingenuity to lower consumer costs and drive the global clean energy economy forward.
Clean Energy
Investing in America – CleanEnergy.gov
Clean Energy Updates
Inflation Reduction Act Guidebook
Clean Energy Tax Provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act
EV Acceleration Challenge
Funding for Tribes in the Inflation Reduction Act
Open Funding Opportunities
Direct Pay
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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Russia Will Win By Nuking . . . Russia!
Putin's Cheerleaders Argue Over Nuclear Strikes on Ukraine
By Isabel Van Brugen on 8/22/23 AT 7:53 AM EDT
In a heated argument on state TV, Kremlin propagandists clashed over the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons in President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine.
During a broadcast on TV channel Russia-1, Vladimir Solovyov, one of the best-known figures in Kremlin-backed media, suggested Moscow use nuclear weapons, prompting Andrey Sidorov, a professor at Moscow State University to question the capability of the Russian army.
An excerpt of the discussion was posted on Monday by the Daily Beast's Julia Davis, who wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "Meanwhile in Russia: propagandist Vladimir Solovyov erupted in his typical nuclear tirade, but was stunned and mentally glitched when his guest asked an unexpectedly honest question: 'Is our Army unable to win with conventional weapons?'"
The use of nuclear weapons has been discussed frequently throughout the war in Ukraine. The Russian president himself said in a televised address to the nation in September 2022 that he would be prepared to use such weapons to defend Russian territory.
"Why are we still dancing around? I think we should strike. As soon as they officially deliver [F-16s], we conduct a strike with tactical nuclear weapons," suggested Solovyov. "They're convinced we won't do it. This is why it should be done."
Sidorov, deputy dean of world politics at Moscow State University, quickly disagreed, saying that he views nuclear weapons positively "as long as they aren't used."
"Then what are they for? Keep them at home? Use them to make sauerkraut?" Solovyov hit back, to which Sidorov said "yes."
The professor questioned Solovyov's logic, pushing the Kremlin line that parts of Ukraine belong to Russia. In 2014, Russia illegally annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea. Putin also claimed to have annexed four Ukrainian regions in the fall of 2022—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia is not fully in control of any of them and foreign governments, including the United States, said the move was illegitimate.
"The first question is, where to use [a nuclear weapon] in Ukraine? If these are Western Russian lands, would we be striking our own? Ruining our own territories?" said Sidorov.
Solovyov responded by calling the professor "a pacifist in disguise."
"For God's sake, this is our territory!" Sidorov said, and asked whether Russia is capable of victory on the battlefield using normal weapons.
"When we discuss using nuclear weapons, I start to question: is our army unable to win using conventional weapons? It can only do it with nuclear weapons?" the professor said.
Solovyov appeared stunned at Sidorov's remarks.
"Hold on, hold on, hold on a minute!" he said, clutching his head and closing his eyes.
Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-state-tv-host-russia-ukraine-nuclear-we
apons-1821567
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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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:And that is exactly what Biden* is doing. And what YOU are doing!
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
*YAWN!*
Ukraine will prove to you how 'smart' Biden* is.
SECOND: This is what fools say when they have no real purpose or direction for their life: "We must keep doing what we have always done."
Russia has changed.
Biden*, and YOU.... have not.
Reality really is too much for you!
PS: Ukraine will prove how 'smart' you are.
Ukraine blows up five jets ‘deep within Russian territory’
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-blows-up-five-jets-deep-w
ithin-russian-territory/ar-AA1fD9CF?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=ef7eb2a1f5c44471807d0be87346b166&ei=20
T
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If it's not on military summary channel I don't believe it. And even then, given their pro-Ukrainian bias (and their willingness to report unverfied Ukrainian successes) not even necessarily then either.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:You will like this news. The Ukrainians don't know any better than the Russians about successful military strategies:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
If it's not on military summary channel I don't believe it.
Ukraine’s Forces and Firepower Are Misallocated, U.S. Officials Say
Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff
American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south.
Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive is struggling to break through entrenched Russian defenses in large part because it has too many troops, including some of its best combat units, in the wrong places, American and other Western officials say.
The main goal of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by severing the so-called land bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. But instead of focusing on that, Ukrainian commanders have divided troops and firepower roughly equally between the east and the south, the U.S. officials said.
As a result, more Ukrainian forces are near Bakhmut and other cities in the east than are near Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south, both far more strategically significant fronts, officials say.
American planners have advised Ukraine to concentrate on the front driving toward Melitopol, Kyiv’s top priority, and on punching through Russian minefields and other defenses, even if the Ukrainians lose more soldiers and equipment in the process.
Only with a change of tactics and a dramatic move can the tempo of the counteroffensive change, said one U.S. official, who like the other half a dozen Western officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Another U.S. official said the Ukrainians were too spread out and needed to consolidate their combat power in one place.
Nearly three months into the counteroffensive, the Ukrainians may be taking the advice to heart, especially as casualties continue to mount and Russia still holds an edge in troops and equipment.
In a video teleconference on Aug. 10, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; his British counterpart, Adm. Sir Tony Radakin; and Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander in Europe, urged Ukraine’s most senior military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, to focus on one main front. And, according to two officials briefed on the call, General Zaluzhnyi agreed.
Admiral Radakin’s role has been especially important and not widely appreciated until now, the officials said. General Milley speaks to General Zaluzhnyi every week or so about strategy and Ukrainian military needs. But the Biden administration has prohibited senior U.S. officers from visiting Ukraine for security reasons and to avoid increasing tensions with Moscow. Britain, however, has imposed no such constraints, and Admiral Radakin, a polished officer who served three tours in Iraq, has developed close ties with his Ukrainian counterpart during multiple trips to the country.
American officials say there are indications that Ukraine has started to shift some of its more seasoned combat forces from the east to the south. But even the most experienced units have been reconstituted a number of times after taking heavy casualties. These units rely on a shrinking cadre of senior commanders. Some platoons are mostly staffed by soldiers who have been wounded and returned to fight.
Ukraine has penetrated at least one layer of Russian defenses in the south in recent days and is increasing the pressure, U.S. and Ukrainian officials said. It is close to taking control of Robotyne, a village in the south that is near the next line of Russian defenses. Taking the village, American officials said, would be a good sign.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian military did not respond to text messages or phone calls on Tuesday.
But some analysts say the progress may be too little too late. The fighting is taking plac
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SECOND: I don't even need to read your articles. Just by tracking headlines I can tell you that
The "counteroffensive" isn't meeting America's objectives (regime change in Russia, Crimea)
The "counteroffensive" isn't meeting Kiev's objective (Donbas)
The Biden* administration hasn't figured out a way to win, negotiate, or call a ceasefire by summer 2024
The CIA is saying "we told you so"
Milley is saying "I told you so" (which he did, but he has also said that victory is possible)
This is the Biden* administration throwing Zelenskiy under the bus
And Zelenskiy throwing Zaluzhny and possibly Reznikov under the bus
The only thing left to figure out is "What will Russia do?" bc Russia is controlling the war. Unless the neocons, in their desperation (and there are still crazies in State Dept and WH) resort to nukes or open NATO involvement, in which case all hell breaks loose.
*****
OK, scanning into your article a bit: I'm puzzled by the neocons' projected timing. They seem to think that Ukraine will advance thru the mud of the fall rainy season, and psuse for the winter, when the ground is frozen and trundling heavy weapons around is possible? And they also seem to think that RUSSIA will pause for the winter, and give Ukraine a chance to re-arm?
Isn't this bass-akwards from what we've been told before? That the spring thaw and autumn rains make moving across the landscape impossible? That the best time for an offensive is in the summer or early fall, when the trees are in full leaf and the ground is relatively dry, and the second-best time for an offensive is the winter, when the ground is frozen?
This whole concept of a winter "pause" ... isn't that just wishful thinking on the neocons' part? Bc I can't imagine why Russia would need to pause, altho I can see that Ukraine might run out of ... everything ... by then.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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OK, a point-by-point rebuttal
Quote:Bc America's objective has been, and always will be, Crimea and control of the Black Sea. Nevermind what Ukrainians want. Since we're supplying the weapons and money they need to fight for OUR objectives.
You will like this news. The Ukrainians don't know any better than the Russians about successful military strategies:
Ukraine’s Forces and Firepower Are Misallocated, U.S. Officials Say
Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff
American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south.
Quote:True. About half of Ukraine's army is still near Bakhmut.
Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive is struggling to break through entrenched Russian defenses in large part because it has too many troops, including some of its best combat units, in the wrong places, American and other Western officials say.TheNATO's main goal of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by severing the so-called land bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. But instead of focusing on that, Ukrainian commanders have divided troops and firepower roughly equally between the east and the south, the U.S. officials said.
As a result, more Ukrainian forces are near Bakhmut and other cities in the east than are near Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south, both far more strategically significant fronts, officials say.
Quote:Er... there must be an optimum concentration of forces in there somewhere. Because TOO concentrated ... as in the mad "combined arms" rush in early June... only paints a big giant bulls-eye on your forces. But too scattered, and you don't have enough firepower to count. I see Ukraine see-sawing between the supposed "combined arms offensive" American model that led to mass killing and destruction of weapons, and "penny packet" attacks that don't go anywhere. Between might and speed (82nd brigade).
American planners have advised Ukraine to concentrate on the front driving toward Melitopol,Kyiv’sNATO's top priority, and on punching through Russian minefields and other defenses, even if the Ukrainians lose more soldiers and equipment in the process.
Only with a change of tactics and a dramatic move can the tempo of the counteroffensive change, said one U.S. official, who like the other half a dozen Western officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Another U.S. official said the Ukrainians were too spread out and needed to consolidate their combat power in one place.
But, yanno, it's quite possible that there is NO successful configuration on Ukraine's part. If you're outranged and outgunned in every dimension, it doesn't matter HOW you arrange your forces.
Quote:Unless .... and even if ... neocons resort to nuke, chemical warfare, biowarfare, or anything beyond conventional warfare, I suspect Russia will ALWAYS hold an edge in troops and equipment.
Nearly three months into the counteroffensive, the Ukrainians may be taking the advice to heart, especially as casualties continue to mount and Russia still holds an edge in troops and equipment.
BTW, SECOND - if Russia had planned all along to nuke everything, do you think they would have equipped themselves so diligently to fight a conventional war?
Quote:
In a video teleconference on Aug. 10, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; his British counterpart, Adm. Sir Tony Radakin; and Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander in Europe, urged Ukraine’s most senior military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, to focus on one main front. And, according to two officials briefed on the call, General Zaluzhnyi agreed.
Admiral Radakin’s role has been especNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
A while back I watched a TV show with a plot point that featured a government agency bringing down an airplane just to kill a single person on board. Has fiction turned into real life today near Moscow?
Reuters has reported that the Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a private jet that crashed north of Moscow on Wednesday, the TASS news agency reported, citing Rosaviatsia, Russia’s aviation authority.
....The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but Prigozhin’s longstanding feud with the military and the armed uprising he led in June would give ample motive to the Russian state for revenge. Media channels linked to Wagner quickly suggested that a Russian air defence missile had shot down the plane.
....The plane has been under US sanctions since 2019 because of its connection to Prigozhin. The Wagner chief has been reported to have used the plane, including shortly after his failed mutiny, when the plane departed from St Petersburg to Belarus on the morning of 27 June.
The air defense missile theory is just a rumor at this point, but who knows? It's hardly unthinkable that Vladimir Putin would do something like this. It's the kind of thing that happens when you launch a military coup in Russia, even if you call it off and apologize afterward. All ten people aboard the plane were killed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/aug/23/russia-ukraine-war-
live-updates-drones-downed-moscow
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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I saw video, the jet was coming straight down, like a stone, trailing a vapor cloud or white smoke. No forward momentum at all. Almost as if the elevators were screwed up and the jet was diving.
Very strange. I'm sure it means something but I don't know what. More claims and counter claims will follow, and maybe in the hash there will be some info.
*****
Ukraine has dedicated itself to capturing Rabotino, and has been trying sucks June 5. They threw the 82nd and a couple of infantry brigades into the fray, and will probably take Rabotino by tomorrow, Ukraine independence day.
That takes the sting away from Ukraine planning a cemetary for 600,000 and announcing a 200,000 mobilization. (Most people say the real goal is 400,000 but he doesn't want people running away to other countries.)
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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One in Five of Russian Air Force Losses During War Self-Inflicted
By Ellie Cook, 8/23/23
Between February 24, 2022, when Moscow's troops crossed over into Ukraine, and August 17, 2023, 21.7 percent—or one in five—of Russia's verified manned aircraft losses, which includes jets, helicopters and transport aircraft, were blamed on Russian system malfunctions, pilot errors, friendly fire or other accidents not related to direct combat against Ukraine.
High Russian aircraft losses during training or non-combat missions can be chalked up to several factors, experts suggest, not least Russia's oversights in maintaining its aircraft, investing time in training pilots to a high standard and being rigorous about safety procedures.
As of August 17, 2023, at least 48 units were lost independent of Ukrainian operations. These include seven Su-25 jets, four MiG-31 supersonic interceptors and three of Russia's prized scout-attack Ka-52 "Alligator" helicopters.
At least 48 of the 221 verified manned aviation losses were not-combat related, or were otherwise self-inflicted, which amounts to around 21.7 percent, or approximately one in five. That includes 26.7 percent of all fighter jets and other types of planes lost in the period in question, and 17.5 percent of the helicopter losses.
While these numbers are by no means exhaustive, with further unreported losses, both combat and non-combat, likely to emerge (and some may never be revealed), they still offer a damning assessment of the current state of Russia's air force.
Why Do Russian Aircraft Keep Crashing?
Accidents during training are normal and expected, but a competent air force will try to minimize these often-fatal accidents, said Frederik Mertens, a strategic analyst with the Hague Center for Strategic Studies (HCSS). "Russia lacks experienced pilots," he told Newsweek.
Poor basic training pre-dated Moscow's war effort. In February 2022, Russia had many more jets than truly experienced pilots, with the less experienced contingent having around half the flying time usually designated for pilots in NATO air forces, Mertens said. Training aircraft before the war also left much to be desired.
The intensity of the air operations and the scale of Russian losses have forced Moscow to deploy its instructors on combat missions.
"This both limits the time these pilot trainers have to train other pilots and exposes your trainers to losses," Mertens said.
This has a knock-on effect. The Russian air force needs to recruit more pilots, but there are fewer instructors to teach them.
The problems also extend to the aircraft, which Mertens said were poorly maintained, and have questionable safety precautions. On top of scant training, this adds to the reasons why Russian self-inflicted losses are a significant proportion of their downed aircraft.
More at https://www.newsweek.com/russia-air-force-fighter-jets-helicopters-ukr
aine-war-1820623
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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Prigozhin’s Death Heralds Even More Spectacular Violence
by Anne Applebaum, Updated at 8:20 p.m. ET on August 23, 2023
What will others in the Russian president’s circle do now?
Vladimir Putin’s Russia has long been a land of mysterious deaths. In 1998, soon after he had been appointed head of the security services, Galina Starovoitova, a parliamentarian who believed in bringing democracy to Russia, was gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment building in St. Petersburg. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had learned too much about the Chechen wars that Putin used to propel himself to power, met the same fate in the stairwell of her apartment building in Moscow. In 2015, Boris Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of Putin’s presidency, was killed by an assassin only steps away from the Kremlin. Other critics barely survived. In 2020, Alexei Navalny, organizer of the only truly national anti-Putin political movement, fell critically ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow after being poisoned.
All of these victims were Putin’s formal opponents, people who spoke or wrote in opposition to the kleptocracy he built. Since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a different class of victims—members of the Russian business elite who were perhaps insufficiently loyal or insufficiently keen on the war—have also begun to die in strange circumstances. In the year and a half that has passed since February 2022, two gas-industry executives were found dead with suicide notes. Three Russian executives were killed, alongside their wives and children, in what appeared to be murder-suicides. The body of the owner of a resort in Sochi was discovered at the bottom of a cliff. Another executive was found floating in a pool in St. Petersburg. Others have fallen out of windows or down staircases in Moscow, India, the French Riviera, and Washington, D.C.
Still, even on the very long list of people who have been shot, hanged, poisoned, or subjected to lethal accidents because they somehow got in Putin’s way, Yevgeny Prigozhin stands out. Prigozhin’s private plane mysteriously fell from the sky this afternoon, following an explosion of what seems to be either a bomb or a rocket. Russian authorities reported that Prigozhin was on the passenger list, although Western intelligence agencies could not immediately confirm he had boarded the plane. Either way, someone took down the plane, and that someone could only have acted on Putin’s orders, or at least in anticipation of such orders (Will no one rid me of this turbulent mercenary?). But Prigozhin wasn’t an opponent of Putin; he helped create Putin. He wasn’t a critic of Putin’s kleptocracy; he built the Wagner mercenary group, which supported African and Middle Eastern dictators and exploited diamond mines on behalf of Moscow too. He also ran the Internet Research Agency, the organization that used hacking, leaking, and social media to help elect Donald Trump.
Prigozhin was no opponent of the current war either. His men, and the convicts they recruited, fought the long, bitter battle of Bakhmut, achieving the only significant Russian victory in Ukraine so far this year. Thousands of Russian soldiers, maybe tens of thousands, died in that struggle, thanks to military tactics so wasteful of human life that they are described by the Russians themselves as the “meat grinder.” Along the way, Prigozhin did begin to have some doubts about how the war was being fought, and maybe about the true motives of some of those leading the battle. As a result, he dared to challenge the Russian army leadership, and thus the Russian president, in a bizarre and largely unopposed march into the military headquarters of the city of Rostov-on-Don, and then nearly all the way to Moscow, exactly 60 days ago.
So, yes, this is another mysterious death, but it is a new kind of mysterious death. With this plane crash, the violence on the periphery of Russia’s empire has now migrated to its very heart. Putin’s rule has always been maintained by a heady combination of opportunism, bribery, an
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Ukraine used 3% of US defense budget to destroy half of Russian army — Lindsey Graham
August 23, 2023, 04:35 PM
"This is the best investment for American security ever; Ukraine is a fantastic partner — we have not seen such a partner since Churchill," the senator said.
The Washington Post reported that the total amount of aid provided by Washington to Ukraine now exceeds $66 billion.
https://english.nv.ua/nation/ukraine-used-3-of-us-defense-budget-to-de
stroy-half-of-russian-army-war-news-50348574.html
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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Putin’s adviser says U.S. is using brainwashing to make gay Ukrainian super-soldiers
The Ukraine's Armed Forces will become "zombified and unified through gay sex, along with cult members ready to sacrifice themselves," he said.
By Daniel Villarreal Sunday, August 20, 2023
An adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Ukraine’s military will become “unified through gay sex” like the Greek Spartans.
While the comment may seem bizarre, it’s just the latest example of Russian authorities using anti-LGBTQ+ nationalist sentiment to justify its unprovoked war against Ukraine.
“Military theorists and historians know which army in Greece was the strongest, remember? The Spartans! They were united by a homosexual brotherhood. They were all homos. These were the politics of their leadership. I think they are planning the same for Ukraine’s Armed Forces,” Sergei Markov, a former adviser to Putin, said while appearing on Russian TV, Newsweek reported.
Markov said the U.S. and Ukraine will use “neuro-linguistic programming” and other brainwashing techniques to turn Ukrainian soldiers gay against their will. In reality, there’s no evidence that psychological methods can change a person’s sexual orientation.
“They have an artificial political science fascism created by American and British political technologists. They will turn them into zombies, into cult members. I think they will force some to become homosexuals,” Markov claimed.
“These renewed troops of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, zombified and unified through gay sex, along with cult members ready to sacrifice themselves. This is what they’re preparing for us in the spring 2025,” he added.
There is some historical evidence to suggest that the Spartans of Ancient Greece may have encouraged homosexual activity as a way to encourage soldiers to stay in the military and fight for their partners’ lives. The evidence also suggests that Spartan soldiers were expected to age out of such activities after completing a certain stage of their military training.
The most famous gay military force in Ancient Greece was actually not Spartan but the Sacred Band of Thebes, an elite military force deliberately comprised of 150 gay or bisexual couples that defeated the Spartans and murdered both Spartan kings in a single campaign.
Regardless, Markov’s comments may be less interested in historical accuracy and more interested in inspiring anti-LGBTQ+ disgust in Russian viewers against Ukraine and its ally, the United States.
In an October 2022 speech, Putin said that the war against Ukraine was necessary because the U.S. wants to push gender “perversions” on Russian schoolchildren.
“[Western countries] spit on the natural right of billions of people, most of humanity, to freedom and justice, to determine their own future on their own. Now they have completely moved to a radical denial of moral norms, religion, and family,” Putin said.
Putin has claimed that the U.S. has used the North American Treaty Organization (NATO), the Western alliance seeking to limit Russia’s military expansion, in order to “contain Russia.” He has complained that Ukraine’s possible entry into NATO would “undermine Russia’s security” by installing NATO’s military at Russia’s borders.
NATO has said that it won’t send any troops to Ukraine. However, it has said it will increase its military presence along the eastern border of its member states closest to Russia in case Putin attempts to expand his conquest.
It has been over 540 days since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/08/putins-adviser-says-u-s-is-using-b
rainwashing-to-make-gay-ukrainian-super-soldiers/
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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Masked men claiming to belong to the Wagner group have warned the Kremlin to “get ready for us” after the reported death of their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. (Assassins who warn their target are like deer hunters who fire a warning shot before aiming at the deer. Neither will bring home the kill.)
Mr Prigozhin’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation ever since he mounted a short-lived mutiny against Russia's military leadership in late June. President Putin and the Kremlin have yet to comment on the crash.
For weeks, a question had hung over the Kremlin: how was it that the leader of a mercenary group had been able to lead his troops in a short-lived mutiny against the Russian top brass and still be swanning around the country – and indeed the world – with impunity? This, despite dire warnings from President Putin at the start of the mutiny that this was treachery, that the country was threatened with civil war and that no one responsible would go unpunished.
On Thursday, two months to the day from this act of rebellion, that question appeared to find its answer. One of two private planes flying in convoy from Moscow to St. Petersburg crashed in the region of Tver. Among the 10 people listed as being on board were Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, and his deputy, Dmitry Utkin. Prigozhin had led the mutiny; Utkin was the founder of the Wagner group and is said to have named it after his call-sign when he was a member of Russia’s special forces in the Chechen wars.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/russia-putin-prigozhin-plane-cras
h-killed-b2398611.html
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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The Wall Street Journal
U.S., Ukraine Clash Over Counteroffensive Strategy
Story by Michael R. Gordon, Gordon Lubold, James Marson, Vivian Salama
U.S. and Ukrainian officials have been engaged in an intense behind-the-scenes debate for weeks over the strategy and tactics for reviving Kyiv’s slow-moving counteroffensive.
American military officials have been urging the Ukrainians to return to the combined arms training they received at allied bases in Europe by concentrating their forces to try to bust through Russia defenses and push to the Sea of Azov.
Kyiv has made some adjustments in recent weeks, but the two sides are still at odds about how to turn the tables on the Russians in the limited time they have before winter sets in.
“You don’t understand the nature of this conflict,” Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the commander of the Ukrainian armed forces, the Ukrainian commander, responded in one interaction with the Americans, a U.S. official recounted. “This is not counterinsurgency. This is Kursk,” the commander added, referring to the major World War II battle between Germany and the Soviet Union.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian commander didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The American advice is based on the calculation that the surge of equipment the U.S. has funneled to Ukraine—more than $43 billion in weaponry has been committed over the years—is enough for this offensive and is unlikely to be repeated at anywhere near the same level in 2024.
“We built up this mountain of steel for the counteroffensive. We can’t do that again,” one former U.S. official said. “It doesn’t exist.”
It isn’t too late for Ukraine to make gains, according to U.S. officials.
Ukrainian commanders also say that time hasn’t yet run out on their counteroffensive, and Zaluzhny has told U.S. officials his forces are on the cusp of a breakthrough.
Yet deep divisions over the strategy linger. The U.S. for the past several weeks has urged the Ukrainians to mass their forces and concentrate in an area north of Tokmak in the south to push through the first line of Russian defenses, generally acknowledged as the toughest line to break.
While there are differing views within the U.S. government, one official said that Washington has conveyed “serious frustration” with Ukraine’s strategy, particularly President Volodymyr Zelensky’s focus on Bakhmut, which some Ukrainian officers see as useful to build morale and create a buffer zone in the east.
After U.S. officials cautioned against dissipating their efforts, the Ukrainians adjusted their strategy and went on the defensive in the eastern part of Zaporizhzhia. That change has enabled the Ukrainians to conserve their forces for the main attack elsewhere and limit their expenditure of artillery.
But U.S. officials say the Ukrainians are still spread too thin for a concentrated push south with numerous brigades deployed in the east and are still not combining the use of artillery, mechanized units and mine-clearing efforts.
Holding casualties to a minimum is needed to preserve their longer-term fighting potential, the Ukrainians say. But U.S. officials say the Ukrainians’ small-unit attacks on narrow fronts slow the offensive and give the Russians more opportunity to respond, including with mines that are dispensed through artillery strikes and units armed with rocket-propelled grenades.
The current state of play has sparked worries that Ukraine’s fight against Russia might be entering a stalemate, a contention President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has denied.
“No, we do not assess that the conflict is a stalemate,” Sullivan told reporters Tuesday. The battlefield, he said, is changing every day.
At the heart of the debate between Washington and Kyiv is the U.S.-provided combined arms training the Ukrainians have received in recent months that was intended to prepare them for their offensive in the south.
The U.S. and its partners have trained more than 70,000 Ukrainian soldiers
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I see SECOND is spewing official lies like there's no tomorrow.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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The jet was a Wagner business jet, and the three top Wagner guys, including Prigozhin, were onboard.
There is better video of the falling Wagner jet, and pictures of the pieces on the ground. Aside from the fact that the wreckage shows no sign at all of anti-aircraft shrapnel, nobody has reported pieces of an anti-aircraft missile having fallen to the ground.
You will have to follow the link, but it is a chart of the jet's vertical ascent and airspeed. The pilot manages a normal ascent, but he keeps gassing the jets in an unsteady fashion, almost as if he was compensating for some onboard problem.
Not an expert, but this could have been a mechanical failure.
EDITED TO ADD:
Or it might have been sabotage. No evidence of having been "shot out of the sky".
AFA possible suspects, it seems Prigozhin was on a lot of people's shit lists including Putin"s. But it's unlikely that Putin has anything to.do.wiyh it bc he was busy convincing leaders and potential members at the BRICS summit that Russia is stable and the "mutiny" was meaningless, so why bring Prigozhin to world attention, again?
"Dima", of Military Summary Channel, is convinced it was the Ukrainian GRU, and that the purpose was to further demoralize Russian troops, who are already demoralized from fighting defense all the time.
A Russian commentator is convinced it was an internal power struggle within Wagner.
Some say it was vengeance on the part of some of a convict's family for throwing so.many into the fray at Bakhmut with little training and getting so.many killed.
The CIA itself has been mentioned as a possibility: They get to interrupt any plans Wagner had for Niger/ Africa, embarrass Putin with BRICS attendees, and stir up more trouble between Wagner and the Russian MoD. What's not to like?
Even France might have an interest in seeing Prigozhin gone bc if it's interests in Niger.
Analysis courtesy of Alexander Mercouris of The Duran.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,
fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4dc782ed-5d3b-49f5-b830-c00a9cba97ec_591x1164.jpeg
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Well, I guess Zelenskiy didn't get to claim Rabotyno for Ukrainian Independence Day (today), like he wanted.
Rabotyno is the area of that giant early June clusterfuck of a "combined arms" attack where dozens of Leopard 2s and Bradleys got caught in minefields and taken out by drone and artillery. In fact, so many Bradleys were destroyed in a field before Rabotino that the field is colloquially named "Bradley Square".
Ukraine has been trying to advance on this area ever since, losing thousands of men in the process, and deployed their last remaining elite unit- the 82nd Brigade, along with the 43rd tank brigade, to take the village..
Apparently this is such a critical objective for the USA that Ukrainians will keep on it no matter how many men and weapons they lose. It threatens to become another Bakhmut.
And this area of the front is where Ukraine is shown the MOST progress, so far.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The jet was a Wagner business jet, and the three top Wagner guys, including Prigozhin, were onboard.
Prigozhin wasn't on that plane. The only thing he was on was the flight manifest.
--------------------------------------------------
How you do anything is how you do everything.
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Quote:Ukraine vs. Russia is Dumb vs. Dumber.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, I guess Zelenskiy didn't get to claim Rabotyno for Ukrainian Independence Day (today), like he wanted.
Rabotyno is the area of that giant early June clusterfuck of a "combined arms" attack where dozens of Leopard 2s and Bradleys got caught in minefields and taken out by drone and artillery. In fact, so many Bradleys were destroyed in a field before Rabotino that the field is colloquially named "Bradley Square".
Ukraine has been trying to advance on this area ever since, losing thousands of men in the process, and deployed their last remaining elite unit- the 82nd Brigade, along with the 43rd tank brigade, to take the village..
Apparently this is such a critical objective for the USA that Ukrainians will keep on it no matter how many men and weapons they lose. It threatens to become another Bakhmut.
And this area of the front is where Ukraine is shown the MOST progress, so far.
A Russian helicopter crew freaked out, tried to run, and was killed after realizing their captain had defected to Ukraine, official says. If the Russian crew was not dumber than dirt, they would have surrendered. If the crew had an ounce of sense, they couldn't have been hijacked by their captain and flown to Cuba, I mean, Ukraine.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-russian-helicopter-crew-freaked
-out-tried-to-run-and-was-killed-after-realizing-their-captain-had-defected-to-ukraine-official-says/ar-AA1fIDzW
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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Quote:Remember this about Prigozhin? Russia's Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said on Sunday that a former mercenary who was filmed being executed by a sledgehammer blow to the head after changing sides in the Ukraine war was a traitor.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Prigozhin wasn't on that plane. The only thing he was on was the flight manifest.
--------------------------------------------------
How you do anything is how you do everything.
Asked to comment on the execution video, Prigozhin said in remarks released by his spokeswoman that the video should be called "A dog receives a dog's death".
"Nuzhin betrayed his people, betrayed his comrades, betrayed consciously," said Prigozhin, who has been sanctioned by the United States and European Union for his role in Wagner. "Nuzhin was a traitor."
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sledgehammer-execution-russian-me
rcenary-who-defected-ukraine-shown-video-2022-11-13/
If Prigozhin is dead, he got exactly what he deserved, according to Prigozhin's "moral" code.
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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Russians have emigrated in huge numbers since the war in Ukraine
The exodus adds to Vladimir Putin’s economic woes
Aug 23rd 2023
THE FIRST exodus came at the start of the war: up to 300,000 Russians fled the country in the first few months of their president’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A second wave set off when Vladimir Putin announced a “partial mobilisation” in September, and desperate young men rushed to border crossings to avoid the draft. Establishing the precise scale of emigration prompted by the war is tricky. The Kremlin has, unsurprisingly, not published data on the matter. And independent estimates have varied from 500,000 to 1m. But a new analysis has narrowed that range (see chart).
Re: Russia, an analysis and policy network, has examined various estimates and available data from countries that have accepted large numbers of Russian émigrés. They found that between 817,000 and 922,000 people have left Russia since February 2022. The largest recipient countries were Kazakhstan and Serbia, each with 150,000 emigrants. But Russians have moved all over the world, including between 30,000 and 40,000 who went to America, according to the estimates.
There are uncertainties about the data. Russians may travel through several transit countries before settling. Others return home having struggled to establish a life abroad, often citing difficulties securing work. Some returnees suggest they will try to emigrate again once their financial circumstances allow it.
Emigration from Mr Putin’s Russia is not new. In the first 19 years of his rule 1.6m-2m people left the country (though the rate had been declining since the turbulent decade after 1989). The rate increased significantly around 2012, when Mr Putin returned to the Russian presidency in an election marked by fraud and protests (see chart). Yet the invasion of Ukraine has caused the single largest exodus prompted by political upheaval since the 1920s.
Also significant is the profile of those who are able to move. In general, Russia’s wartime émigrés have relatively high levels of income, social capital and education. That is bad news for Russia, both economically and socially. Re: Russia reckons that the wartime emigrants account for roughly 1% of Russia’s workforce, exacerbating an acute labour shortage. The Gaidar Institute, a think-tank in Moscow, said that 35% of manufacturing businesses did not have enough workers in April, the highest figure since 1996. Shortages of specialists are especially severe: according to one Kremlin official, at least 100,000 IT professionals left the country in 2022. With no vision for the future aside from international isolation and war, the Kremlin will struggle to stem the tide.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20230824145303/https://www.economist.com/g
raphic-detail/2023/08/23/russians-have-emigrated-in-huge-numbers-since-the-war-in-ukraine
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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TOO BAD YOUR GRAPH DOESN'T INCLUDE 2022. Because that was the start of the SMO.
Kinda makes the chart pointless, doesn't it?
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:I get the feeling you missed the point. Imagine this scenario: Ukraine has a list of the 922,000 most productive, smartest Russians and killed them all. That would be a loss for Russia almost as devastating as 922,000 dead Russian soldiers. Russia did have that loss, but fortunately for the Russians on the list, they moved on to better lives elsewhere than Russia.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
TOO BAD YOUR GRAPH DOESN'T INCLUDE 2022. Because that was the start of the SMO.
Kinda makes the chart pointless, doesn't it?
Re: Russia, an analysis and policy network, has examined various estimates and available data from countries that have accepted large numbers of Russian émigrés. They found that between 817,000 and 922,000 people have left Russia since February 2022. The largest recipient countries were Kazakhstan and Serbia, each with 150,000 emigrants. But Russians have moved all over the world, including between 30,000 and 40,000 who went to America, according to the estimates.
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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‘Aren’t You a Man?’: How Russia Goads Citizens Into the Army
by Anton Troianovski, Alina Lobzina, Sarah Kerr, Natalie Reneau
The Times tracked several months of Russian state messaging in the Kremlin’s effort to recruit soldiers.
A supermarket security guard, a taxi driver, a guy at the gym. The Russian government has a message for all of them: Aren’t you a man?
And don’t you want to earn more money?
Last spring, the Russian military kicked off a new recruitment drive for the war in Ukraine, seeking to replace tens of thousands of dead and wounded without having to resort to an unpopular draft. For the last four months, The New York Times has tracked how the campaign played out on Russian state television and social media, and found that recruitment messages focused on the Kremlin’s official rationale for the invasion — an existential threat from the West against Russians — played only a supporting role.
Rather, there were frequent appeals to masculinity, sometimes voiced by soldiers’ wives and other women interviewed on television news. There were incessant reminders of above-average pay and benefits for military servicemen. And the messages — appearing both in video ads produced by the Defense Ministry and on regular TV newscasts — stress the ease of signing up, promising relief from Russia’s notorious bureaucracy.
The campaign appeared to start in April. Online, the Defense Ministry published a splashy video ad focusing on two central motivations: machismo, and money. It defines military service as more meaningful — and manly — than what’s depicted as the Russian man’s typical, humdrum existence. After moody shots of civilians transforming into modern warriors, the ad ends with a more down-to-earth reminder: “Monthly payments starting at 204,000 rubles,” or about $2,000.
The themes in the Russian Defense Ministry’s recruitment campaign are picked up frequently in television newscasts — as would be expected, since all of Russia’s major television channels are controlled by the state. But the news anchors and reporters delivering the message are essentially acting as glorified recruiters themselves, repeatedly reminding viewers of the quick-dial phone number — 1-1-7 — they can turn to if they want to sign up to fight.
Since the invasion’s beginning, state television newscasts have been offering viewers a sanitized view of the war. Death and injury of Russians are rarely mentioned. The war itself is referred to with the Kremlin’s anodyne term, “special military operation,” or simply by the term’s Russian initials: “the S.V.O.”
But there are signs that, at least in some regions, the costs of war have now become too widespread to ignore. During a local morning newscast in the city of Irkutsk, in Siberia, on Aug. 9, a reporter introduces a piece about new “mobile” recruitment stands with an interview of a Ukraine war veteran wounded last year.
“I got all the payments that contract servicemen are entitled to if they’re wounded,” the veteran, Nikolai Karpenko, says.
“Contract military service, Nikolai says, gave him the chance to show that he’s a real defender of the fatherland,” the reporter intones.
The message: Yes, you could get hurt, but the government will take care of you. And you will have shown your patriotism.
The recruitment drive appears to have borne some fruit. The Kremlin has been able to keep its invasion going without resorting to a second draft, after mobilizing some 300,000 civilians last fall. And Ukraine’s counteroffensive this summer has run into fierce Russian resistance.
But analysts believe that Russia’s official recruitment figures, claiming that 1,400 people were signing up per day last month, are likely to be overstated — and that a second draft could still come. New laws passed this summer would make it much harder for Russians to dodge the draft if another was declared.
“Soldiers are not being relieved or regularly rotated on the front, suggesting there is still a manpower problem,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corpora
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Ukraine Is Determined to Blow Russia's Bridges to Crimea
The debate about Ukraine has been centered in the West on how Putin and Russia would react to losing Crimea and not on how Russian-occupied Crimea functions as a core component of Russia’s military domination.
Ukrainian strikes on the Kerch Strait crossing will continue and are also very likely to intensify in the near future. It is almost certain that Putin’s beloved bridges will end up at the bottom of the ocean before the end of the war.
Ukraine’s allies can make a difference here by finally providing Kyiv with the long-range missile systems it has been asking for. Sending U.S.-made ATACMS and German Taurus cruise missile systems would put much more of Russia’s military infrastructure within Ukrainian missile range and would spell disaster for the Kerch Strait bridges. This increased capability would provide Ukraine the opportunity to finally respond to the routine bombardment Ukrainian cities have suffered since the start of this war due to Russia’s Crimean military facilities.
Moscow remains emboldened diplomatically and militarily around the peninsula because these bases are currently far enough from the front line that they can function with relative impunity. Ukraine is trying to shift that dynamic.
Both Moscow’s and Kyiv’s international allies need to understand that even without the bridge, a Russian-occupied Crimea poses a critical threat to Ukraine’s survival, and as far as the Ukrainian government is concerned, the destruction of the Kerch Strait bridges will only serve as a prelude to the eventual campaign for the total liberation of the Crimean Peninsula.
Ukraine may pull this off. It won’t stop trying—and there is no point in diplomats or analysts laboring under the absurd assumption that the Ukrainian position on this can be negotiated away in a future deal.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/08/22/russia-crimea-bridges-ukraine-inv
asion/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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It is Saturday and time for Russia to make a new threat to nuke the world!
Putin Ally Issues Ominous Warning on Threat of New World War
By Thomas Kika On 8/26/23 at 10:34 AM EDT
Dmitry Medvedev, a Kremlin official and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused Western powers of ignoring "signals" from Moscow and pushing towards a world war, according to state-run news agency, Tass.
Medvedev previously served as the president of Russia from 2008 to 2012, between Putin's first and second terms, and as prime minister from 2012 to 2020. He currently serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and is considered a major Kremlin propagandist.
In an interview segment published on Saturday, Medvedev told the state-run news agencies Tass and RT that Western nations, not Russia, were pushing the world closer to a new world war. A similar sentiment has been echoed by pro-Russia voices since the start of the country's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
"Frankly speaking, it would have definitely been better if they had heard them [the signals]," Medvedev said. "In any case, the world would not have to face the threat of World War III. In fact, this is where our opponents are actively pushing everyone."
He further stressed, according to Tass, that the West "failed to hear our signals."
Over the past year-and-a-half, Medvedev has frequently made similar comments about Russia's enemies risking World War III or nuclear war, usually in relation to their opposition to the invasion and support of Ukraine.
In July, he accused President Joe Biden of "provoking nuclear Armageddon" after the United States announced that it would provide controversial cluster bombs to Ukraine as part of its ongoing military aid, adding that the move would risk "a Third World War." In earlier comments, he also suggested that Biden, due to his advanced age, could "absent-mindedly start World War III."
In March, Medvedev invoked World War III after The Hague war crimes court in the Netherlands concluded that Putin had committed war crimes in Ukraine, specifically citing the mass deportation of Ukrainian children, and issued a warrant for his arrest. Medvedev suggested that the Russian leader's arrest would be considered an act of war against Russia.
"Let's imagine—obviously this situation which will never be realized, but nevertheless let's imagine that it was realized. The current head of the nuclear state went to a territory—say, Germany—and was arrested," Medvedev said at the time, according to state-run news agency RIA Novosti. "What would that be? It would be a declaration of war on the Russian Federation."
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-ally-issues-ominous-warning-threat-new-
world-war-1822664
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Quote:I get the point. What is missing is THE DATA.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
TOO BAD YOUR GRAPH DOESN'T INCLUDE 2022. Because that was the start of the SMO.
Kinda makes the chart pointless, doesn't it?
SECOND: I get the feeling you missed the point.
From your article:
Quote:
The Kremlin has, unsurprisingly, not published data on the matter. And independent estimates have varied from 500,000 to 1m. But a new analysis has narrowed that range (see chart).
See chart?
It's missing the year that they're purportedly talking about.
But if you want to compare emigration, country to country, Ukraine has lost at least 5 million to other countries, including about 1.5 million to Russia.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:When this war is all over, Russians will brag that they killed/wounded/displaced millions of Ukrainians and destroyed trillions of dollars of Ukrainian property, which all adds up in the Russian mind that Russia is the winner. In Ukraine, they will see victory as their country still exists and Russia did not murder all of them. That is why the worst people in the world (see for example the Kim family in North Korea) choose to back Russia.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
See chart?
It's missing the year that they're purportedly talking about.
But if you want to compare emigration, country to country, Ukraine has lost at least 5 million to other countries, including about 1.5 million to Russia.
You will have to go to the original article because “chart” is combination of png and hyper text markup language.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230824145303/https://www.economist.com/g
raphic-detail/2023/08/23/russians-have-emigrated-in-huge-numbers-since-the-war-in-ukraine
The png looks like this, but I can’t cut-and-paste into firefly fans dot net all the html stuff that brings the “chart” to life.
Quote:I get the feeling you missed the point. Imagine this scenario: Ukraine has a list of the 922,000 most productive, smartest Russians and killed them all. That would be a loss for Russia almost as devastating as 922,000 dead Russian soldiers. Russia did have that loss, but fortunately for the Russians on the list, they moved on to better lives elsewhere than Russia.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
TOO BAD YOUR GRAPH DOESN'T INCLUDE 2022. Because that was the start of the SMO.
Kinda makes the chart pointless, doesn't it?
Re: Russia, an analysis and policy network, has examined various estimates and available data from countries that have accepted large numbers of Russian émigrés. They found that between 817,000 and 922,000 people have left Russia since February 2022. The largest recipient countries were Kazakhstan and Serbia, each with 150,000 emigrants. But Russians have moved all over the world, including between 30,000 and 40,000 who went to America, according to the estimates.
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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Quote:No, they won't.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
"See chart?"
It's missing the year that they're purportedly talking about.
But if you want to compare emigration, country to country, Ukraine has lost at least 5 million to other countries, including about 1.5 million to Russia.
SECIND: When this war is all over, Russians will brag that they killed/wounded/displaced millions of Ukrainians and destroyed trillions of dollars of Ukrainian property,
Quote:Russia will have achieved its goals when Ukraine is constitutnally neutral, de-Nazified, and demiltarized. Those are Russia's security goals. You don't read very well, do you?
SECOND: which all adds up in the Russian mind that Russia is the winner.
Quote:I think the survivors will be grateful to be alive.
SECOND: In Ukraine, they will see victory as their country still exists and Russia did not murder all of them.
Quote:So you say. I never take anything you post as close to the truth
SECOND: I get the feeling you missed the point. Imagine this scenario: Ukraine has a list of the 922,000
Quote:
SECOND: most productive, smartest Russians
Oh, baloney! They're a bunch of self-entitled snivelling narcissists, and Russia is better off w/o them. If we got rid of ours, WE'D be better off. But then we'd have next to nobody left.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:Now I am sure that you are the cause of all your problems. I've always been sure that Russians are the cause of their problems, not NATO, the US, the UK, or the EU. Nor Ukraine. Signym, you and Russians are crazy and your lives, which have so far been poorly lived, won't achieve grace and poise by the end.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:No, they won't.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
"See chart?"
It's missing the year that they're purportedly talking about.
But if you want to compare emigration, country to country, Ukraine has lost at least 5 million to other countries, including about 1.5 million to Russia.
SECIND: When this war is all over, Russians will brag that they killed/wounded/displaced millions of Ukrainians and destroyed trillions of dollars of Ukrainian property,Quote:Russia will have achieved its goals when Ukraine is constitutnally neutral, de-Nazified, and demiltarized. Those are Russia's security goals. You don't read very well, do you?
SECOND: which all adds up in the Russian mind that Russia is the winner.Quote:I think the survivors will be grateful to be alive.
SECOND: In Ukraine, they will see victory as their country still exists and Russia did not murder all of them.Quote:So you say. I never take anything you post as close to the truth
SECOND: I get the feeling you missed the point. Imagine this scenario: Ukraine has a list of the 922,000Quote:
SECOND: most productive, smartest Russians
Oh, baloney! They're a bunch of self-entitled snivelling narcissists, and Russia is better off w/o them. If we got rid of ours, WE'D be better off. But then we'd have next to nobody left.
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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