Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 16, 2026 19:42
VIEWED: 569467
PAGE 60 of 111
The stench of rotting corpses in Avdeyevka is overpowering. Russia will be picking up and collecting bodies for weeks.
Wounded and left behind. As soldiers wait to die, they contact loved ones far away.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trapped-and-left-for-dead-injured
-ukrainian-soldiers-in-avdiivka-exchanged-desperate-messages-as-the-town-fell/ar-BB1iwN62
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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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Systematic atrocities are integral to Moscow’s way of waging war
By Fredrik Wesslau, the chairman of the board of the Reckoning Project | February 20, 2024, 2:22 PM
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/20/russia-war-crimes-justice-ukraine
-putin-children-deportation-torture/?tpcc=recirc_latest062921
Two years have passed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian brutality against Ukrainians has been striking, and the evidence of Russia’s war crimes is mounting as the atrocities continue.
What has become evident is that these war crimes are not aberrations or crimes of omission. They are part and parcel of what Russia is trying to achieve in Ukraine. Testimonies collected by my organization, the Reckoning Project, and by others point to the systematic and deliberate nature of Russia’s crimes. https://www.thereckoningproject.com/
This makes the pursuit of accountability in Ukraine not only about justice. It is also about denying Russia its objectives and setting a precedent for other states intent on attacking their neighbors. Ensuring accountability and justice in Ukraine will contribute to accountability and justice globally.
Every day, Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General publishes on its website the total number of war crime cases that the office has registered since February 2022. This month, that number passed 125,000. The number—staggering by any account—increases every day, sometimes by the hundreds, and stands for thousands of destroyed lives. Each case is a devastating tragedy in and by itself. https://en.gp.gov.ua/
The actual number of war crimes is much higher, as the reported number doesn’t account for most of the crimes committed in the occupied territories, where Ukrainian law enforcement has no access—close to 20 percent of Ukraine. There may be some 3 million Ukrainians still living in these territories. Many residents have fled, but many still remain.
Beyond the scale of the crimes, it’s crucial to understand that the atrocities are integral to Russia’s war aims. Of course, some crimes are the result of a rogue soldier’s actions. But the bulk of crimes stem directly from how and why Russia is waging war against Ukraine. They are a feature, not a bug, of Russia’s war. They are systematic, deliberate, and serve a clear purpose.
Take the missile and drone strikes against civilian critical infrastructure. Last winter, Russia launched a massive air campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing nearly irreparable damage to the energy network. The purpose of these attacks was to make Ukraine uninhabitable during the cold winter. This was intended to trigger a new wave of refugees into the European Union with the aim of creating divisions among Europeans and undermining their support for Ukraine.
Today, the barrages of missile and drone attacks against civilian targets—including schools, shopping malls, and apartment blocks—are meant to terrorize the population in order to undermine Ukrainian’s morale and put pressure on the government in Kyiv to capitulate.
Russia’s crimes can also be seen in the liberated territories. The scale and scope of these crimes became evident when Ukrainian forces entered previously occupied towns such as Bucha and Irpin in the early days of the invasion. Mass atrocities were also uncovered in the Kherson and Kharkiv regions after these territories were liberated.
The killing of civilians, torture, and disappearances were part of a deliberate strategy to terrorize the local population and rid the territories of Ukrainian resistance. These crimes were—and are—a deliberate means to subdue and control Ukrainians living under occupation.
When preparing the invasion, Russia developed plans to take over and exercise control over Ukrainian territories. These included filtration camps and death lists of notable activists, journalists, and politicians. Although Russia failed to take Kyiv, these policies are being implemented i
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“This war is going Russia’s way now,” warned a European ambassador who’s one of the West’s wisest observers of the Kremlin. He remembered cautioning U.S. officials when the war started that “it will take 500,000 dead before Russia stops.” Their estimated casualties total more than 300,000 dead and wounded, according to U.S. officials.
Putin can keep sending troops not just because of Russian stoicism, but because he has cleverly drawn his forces from the poorest and most disadvantaged areas of the country. Those dying are disproportionately ethnic minorities from backwaters such as Chechnya and Dagestan, U.S. analysts say. The pay for soldiers at the front is three times what they would normally earn, and the families of dead soldiers receive a bonus worth more than $50,000, noted the European ambassador. “The war has brought a kind of prosperity for poor Russians,” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/20/ukraine-russia-atta
cks-atacms-missiles-weapons/
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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Pro-war Russian blogger who revealed huge Avdiivka losses dies by suicide
Andrey Morozov said he had been pressured to delete post detailing the number of Russian casualties in Avdiivka.
Morozov, a prominent pro-war Russian blogger, has reportedly died by suicide following outrage over a post in which he claimed that the Russian army lost 16,000 soldiers during the capture of the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka.
Morozov, who went by the pseudonym Murz on Telegram, was an ultra-nationalist commentator who fought alongside Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and participated in Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
On Sunday, Morozov wrote to his 120,000 followers on Telegram that Russia lost 16,000 personnel and 300 pieces of armour during its months-long capture of Avdiivka. The post drew heavy criticism from senior Russian propagandists, who accused the blogger of “slandering the Russian defence ministry”.
In Morozov’s final messages on Tuesday morning, he announced his suicide and said he was pressured by his superiors to delete the post detailing the number of casualties in Avdiivka. Several people close to Morozov on Tuesday confirmed his death, with some saying that he had shot himself.
Triggered in part by the rebellion by then-Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin last year largely cracked down on voices such as Morozov, who once was part of a loud group of ultra-nationalist hawks who criticised Moscow over shortages of weapons and accused the Russian military leadership of hiding the true death toll among its forces.
Russia hides its war losses and the true casualty toll from its invasion of Ukraine remains a secret, though western officials believe the war has cost the country more than 315,000 dead and injured troops.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/21/pro-war-russian-blogger-
who-revealed-huge-avdiivka-losses-dies-by-suicide
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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Germany faces a political crisis over sending Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine
Berlin is reluctant to supply Kyiv with its powerful bridge-buster bombs.
February 20, 2024 5:21 pm CET
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-political-crisis-taurus-cruise
-missiles-ukraine-marie-agnes-strack-zimmermann/
The missiles have a range of about 500 kilometers and a powerful warhead that can destroy reinforced targets or key infrastructure like bridges. That's what's giving Chancellor Olaf Scholz pause, thanks to worries about escalating the conflict with Russia and also being out of step with Washington, which so far has sent only a handful of its MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System ballistic missiles.
Despite the Taurus debate, Germany is far ahead of all other European countries in sending military aid to Ukraine. Since the start of the war, Berlin has pledged €17.7 billion in arms, second only to the U.S., according to the Kiel Institute's Ukraine Support Tracker.
"Ukraine is fighting for our peace, our freedom and our future in Europe," Strack-Zimmermann tweeted.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, a member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and chair of the Bundestag's defense committee, said she'll support sending the missiles to Kyiv.
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:They don't believe that any more than I do. It's for propaganda purposes only.
Originally posted by second:
Pro-war Russian blogger who revealed huge Avdiivka losses dies by suicide
Andrey Morozov said he had been pressured to delete post detailing the number of Russian casualties in Avdiivka.
Morozov, a prominent pro-war Russian blogger, has reportedly died by suicide following outrage over a post in which he claimed that the Russian army lost 16,000 soldiers during the capture of the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka.
Morozov, who went by the pseudonym Murz on Telegram, was an ultra-nationalist commentator who fought alongside Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and participated in Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
On Sunday, Morozov wrote to his 120,000 followers on Telegram that Russia lost 16,000 personnel and 300 pieces of armour during its months-long capture of Avdiivka. The post drew heavy criticism from senior Russian propagandists, who accused the blogger of “slandering the Russian defence ministry”.
In Morozov’s final messages on Tuesday morning, he announced his suicide and said he was pressured by his superiors to delete the post detailing the number of casualties in Avdiivka. Several people close to Morozov on Tuesday confirmed his death, with some saying that he had shot himself.
Triggered in part by the rebellion by then-Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin last year largely cracked down on voices such as Morozov, who once was part of a loud group of ultra-nationalist hawks who criticised Moscow over shortages of weapons and accused the Russian military leadership of hiding the true death toll among its forces.
Russia hides its war losses and the true casualty toll from its invasion of Ukraine remains a secret, though western officials believe
Quote:
the war has cost the country more than 315,000 dead and injured troops.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/21/pro-war-russian-blogger-
who-revealed-huge-avdiivka-losses-dies-by-suicide
As you know, I check in with Military Summary Channel almost every day, twice a day. Being pro-Ukrainian, he re-posts every video and every report of Ukrainian battlefield success, and I've seen no such thing.
Meduza, in partnership with the BBC, attempts to estimate the number of Russian deaths through open sources such as obituaries, death notices, applications for family assistance, newly dug graves and so forth, and they show a declining death rate, even during the Avdiivka operation, and more or less stuck at about 50,000 dead, after bumpong up the figure to account for the ones they missed. If there are 3 wounded for each death, that's 200,000 dead and wounded. But that doesn't mean severely wounded.
That figure will probably creep up after Avdiivka, because these figures take time to collect, but not hugely.
Looking at Avdiivka, the weapons that Ukraine was able to bring to bear on Avdiivka were mines, FPV drones, some artillery (early on) and infantry. And while you may kill soldiers in the onesies and twosies ... maybe even up to half a dozen at a time ... you're not about to kill dozens or scores.
There were two times when I could see Russia taking armored vehicles losses:
The capture of the "terrikon" slag heap (north of the coke plant in the northernmost portion of Avdiivka). Since the terrikon is the highest position, it left Russian armored vehicles and infantry open to artillery and FPV drones strikes. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/23154
An attempt to cross a minefield to the southwest of Avdiivka which wasn't properly demined.
But mentally adding up Russian losses, his figures just don't add up to what
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Sweden's potent anti-submarine weapon Torpedo 47: A game-changer in Ukraine's stand-off with Russian fleet
9:21 PM EST, February 20, 2024
https://essanews.com/swedens-potent-anti-submarine-weapon-torpedo-47-a
-game-changer-in-ukraines-stand-off-with-russian-fleet,6997839384188545a
Sweden has announced it will supply Ukraine with a crucial new weapon named the Torpedo 47 or SLWT (Saab’s Lightweight Torpedo).
The Torpedo 47, a Saab-developed lightweight torpedo, is a brand-new weapon created to counter submarines. The weapon was introduced to service in 2022 (deliveries started as of October) among the Swedish and Finnish navies.
A key advantage of the SLWT over its predecessors is its versatility; it can be launched from various platforms, ranging from different types of ships, planes, and helicopters to makeshift carriers specifically designed for this task.
Ukrainians view this versatility as a benefit, as the Torpedo 47 is an excellent fit for diverse naval drones. With such weaponry, the hardware Ukrainians use against the Russian fleet would transition from kamikaze to modern, unmanned carriers of potent weapons.
Designed specifically for the Baltic Sea's challenging environments, the SLWT can operate in varying water depths and complex seabed topographies. The Torpedo 47 is relatively compact - the torpedo is approximately 9 feet long, has a 1.3 ft diameter, and weighs around 750 lbs. The explosive charge accounts for roughly 110 lbs. of this weight.
The Torpedo 47 has a range of approximately 12 miles, a passive and active guidance system, and can travel at speeds exceeding 40 knots. It can target submerged objects at depths greater than 984 feet.
The announcement of the SLWT delivery was subtly made within the information that Sweden would support Ukraine with a weapons package worth $680 million. This includes, among other items, swift CB90 (Combat Boat 90) boats and 'underwater' weaponry.
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:About that dead guy:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Sorry the guy is dead, but I think he was misinformed.
Prominent independent Russian milblogger Andrei Morozov reportedly committed suicide on February 21 after refusing the Russian military command’s orders to delete his reports about high Russian casualty rates around Avdiivka.[1] Morozov (also known under the alias Boytsovskiy Kot Murz) was a sergeant in the Russian 4th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic’s [LNR] Army Corps) and an avid critic of the Russian military command and the Ministry of Defense (MoD). Morozov published a lengthy suicide note in which he stated that an unnamed Russian colonel ordered him on February 20 to remove his February 19 report that claimed that 16,000 Russian personnel died in combat during Russian offensive operations in Avdiivka.[2] The colonel reportedly threatened to cut off ammunition and military equipment supplies to Morozov’s unit if he did not delete his reports about the Russian military’s heavy losses in seizing Avdiivka and told Morozov that he would not be able to change the current situation on the battlefield and that only presidential elections could trigger some changes. Morozov claimed that the colonel was likely following orders from the Russian military command, political leadership, and Russian propagandists such as Vladimir Solovyov, who had sought to eliminate Morozov even prior to full-scale invasion. Morozov proclaimed that he tried to expose the truth about Russian battlefield realities and could no longer serve under this abusive colonel who assumed command over a “decapitated” brigade operating on a critical frontline and whose poor leadership made the situation worse for Russian forces. Morozov also implied that Russian authorities may have conspired to murder or arrest him and noted that he no longer saw the point in continuing his under-resourced fight against the incompetent Russian military bureaucracy.
Morozov used his suicide note to further discuss Russian military failures in Avdiivka and Donetsk Oblast. Morozov accused Russian generals of wastefully sacrificing thousands of servicemen to advance their military careers and implied that most Russian journalists lie about battlefield realities. Morozov also observed that the Russian military command had been increasingly using mobilized personnel as barrier forces (specialized units that shoot their own forces who retreat or refuse to attack) and amplified a formal complaint from a mobilized Russian serviceman of the 1487th Regiment (a mobilized unit under the command of the 1st Donetsk People’s Republic’s [DNR] Army Corps), which the Russian military prosecutor’s office rejected in early February. The mobilized serviceman complained that the 1487th Regiment was reduced to less than 30 percent of its strength due to the regiment’s lack of reinforcements and rotations since the regiment’s deployment in mid-January 2023.[3] The serviceman added that the commander of the 1st Army Corps, nicknamed “Krym” (Crimea), transferred 300 servicemen from the 1487th Regiment to the command of the Russian “Veterany” private military company (PMC) in November 2023 – most of whom died or were injured in the Avdiivka direction. The mobilized serviceman accused the “Veterany” PMC – which is reportedly staffed with convicts, drug addicts, and looters – of using mobilized personnel as barrier troops and refraining from participating in assaults. The mobilized serviceman added that his battalion completely lacked grenade launchers, mortars, and vehicles necessary for offensive operations. The mobilized serviceman also observed that Russian military medical staff refused to treat shellshocked servicemen and sent them back to the frontlines without medical examinations and that these issues systematically plague other Russian units.
The Russian information space, apart from select Russian propagandists and Kremlin-controlled milbloggers, largely mourned Morozov’s death and blamed various military and political actor
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How come nobody heard about this guy until a week ago?
Now we hear that he was practically a saint.
Let's just say he ain't no Pearl Harbor. Once it's clear that this will gain no traction, none of you dummies are ever even going to speak his name again 2 weeks from now.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:Russians killed 62 million Russians and no Russians remember who killed who. What's one more dead Russki in the greater scheme of things? Another drop of blood falls into an ocean of dead.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
How come nobody heard about this guy until a week ago?
Now we hear that he was practically a saint.
Let's just say he ain't no Pearl Harbor. Once it's clear that this will gain no traction, none of you dummies are ever even going to speak his name again 2 weeks from now.
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 second:Quote:Russians killed 62 million Russians and no Russians remember who killed who. What's one more dead Russki in the greater scheme of things? Another drop of blood falls into an ocean of dead.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
How come nobody heard about this guy until a week ago?
Now we hear that he was practically a saint.
Let's just say he ain't no Pearl Harbor. Once it's clear that this will gain no traction, none of you dummies are ever even going to speak his name again 2 weeks from now.
Lefty media is making a huge deal out of this one.
They didn't care that Epstien did a high dive off of his bunk bed with tied up bed sheets and snapped his own neck while the two guards charged with making sure he didn't kill himself both went to do their laundry at the same time that the camera watching him shorted out.
Sure thing. Suicide. Nothing to see here.
It's not like he was the most important person in the world when it came to taking down rich and powerful people on both sides of the aisle all over the globe or anything.
But let's keep talking about this guy who may or may not have even really existed until a week ago. See if we can't get some of those Trumptards to change their mind and happily agree to piss away more of their grandkids money into the Raytheon war machine in the name of a country that 98% of Americans wouldn't have been able to point out on a map 2 years ago and 75% of Americans still couldn't today.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:Ask them about anything at all and 98% will give you a wrong answer rather than make the effort to search for the right answer. For a widely held example of giving wrong answers and not caring, can't care: they will insist for their entire life that Presidents control inflation. That is the kind of mental malfunction that gets them into trouble in all things, all the time, not just where is Ukraine and who is Jeffrey Epstein.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
But let's keep talking about this guy who may or may not have even really existed until a week ago. See if we can't get some of those Trumptards to change their mind and happily agree to piss away more of their grandkids money into the Raytheon war machine in the name of a country that 98% of Americans wouldn't have been able to point out on a map 2 years ago and 75% of Americans still couldn't today.
I bet Epstein was in the 98% group of Americans. Easy to know the answer: Jeffrey Edward Epstein was an American financier and sex offender. Born and raised in New York City, Epstein began his professional life as a teacher at the Dalton School despite lacking a college degree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein
Born: January 20, 1953, Brooklyn, New York, NY
Died: August 10, 2019 (age 66 years)
Epstein has all the signs of being a 98 percenter: 1) faking knowledge he does not have. 2) breaking universal rules. 3) an endless stream of lies and bullshit. 4) an early death (You might think this is hard to know while they are still alive. Not true! Look for prominent signs of an eventual early death such as smoking, over-eating, illegal drugs, weird sex life, drunkenness, divorces, cheating on universal rules, Nazi sympathies, unemployment, etc.) Not surprising that almost every Russian courts an early death.
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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Ukraine has been defending itself against illegal Russian military intervention and aggression for 10 years.[1] Russia violated its commitments to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity and began its now decade-long military intervention in Ukraine on February 20, 2014 when Russian soldiers without identifying insignia (also known colloquially as “little green men” and, under international law, as illegal combatants), deployed to Crimea.[2] The deployment of these Russian soldiers out of uniform followed months of protests in Ukraine against pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for refusing to sign an association agreement with the European Union (EU) that the Ukrainian Rada had approved.[3] The Yanukovych government killed and otherwise abused peaceful Ukrainian protestors, leading to an organized protest movement calling for Yanukovych’s resignation. This Ukrainian movement — the Euromaidan Movement — culminated in Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity during which the Rada voted to oust Yanukovych who then fled to Russia with the Kremlin’s aid. Russian President Vladimir Putin viewed these events as intolerable and launched a hybrid war against Ukraine as the Euromaidan Movement was still underway with the goal of reestablishing Russian control over all of Ukraine. Russia’s military intervention in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 violated numerous Russian international commitments to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, including Russia’s recognition of Ukraine as an independent state in 1991 and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia specifically committed not to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty or territorial integrity.[4]
Russia’s grand strategic objective of regaining control of Ukraine has remained unchanged in the decade since its illegal intervention in Ukraine began. Russia’s overarching strategic objective in Ukraine, as first manifested in the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the Donbas, has been and remains the destruction of Ukraine’s sovereignty and the re-establishment of a pro-Russian Ukrainian government subservient to Moscow’s direction. Russia began immediate efforts to dismantle and eradicate Ukrainian identity in Crimea, consolidate its military presence on the peninsula, and forcibly integrate Crimea into the Russian Federation along multiple avenues, all while promoting a parallel political subversion campaign to destroy Ukraine’s ability to resist dominant Russian influence.[5]
Russia worked hard to obfuscate its grand strategic objectives of regaining control of Ukraine between 2014 and the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The Kremlin successfully employed disinformation to obfuscate Russia’s objectives in Ukraine for many Western leaders. Putin learned valuable lessons from the way the West responded to Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine and tailored Russia’s information operations to mask his grand strategic intent towards Ukraine in the years leading up to the 2022 full-scale invasion. Putin succeeded in convincing many Western leaders that Russia had limited objectives in Ukraine: that Moscow only sought control over Crimea, or that Russia sought only to occupy parts of eastern Ukraine, for example.[6] Russia also obfuscated its true intentions in Ukraine by promulgating the lie that Russia’s actions in Ukraine were aimed at preventing NATO expansion. The Euromaidan Movement and the Revolution of Dignity were never about NATO — they were about Ukraine’s desire to associate with the EU. In the years between 2014 and 2022, however, Russia managed to pollute the global information space with the fallacy that pro-NATO policies in Ukraine forced Russia’s hand. While the mechanisms Russia uses to cloak its intentions in Ukraine have adapted and evolved in the past decade, Russia’s grand strategic objectives of controlling Ukraine and denying Ukrainians their right to choose their own future have persisted and likely will not change until Russia is defeated. The Kremlin continues information operations to persuade Western audiences and
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Desperate for soldiers, Ukraine weighs unpopular plan to expand the draft
By SAMYA KULLAB and SUSIE BLANN | 11:17 PM CST, February 21, 2024
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-draft-b2ca1d0ecd72019be2
217a653989fbc2
The parliament is considering legislation that would increase the potential pool of recruits by about 400,000, in part by lowering the enlistment age from 27 to 25. But the proposal is highly unpopular, forcing elected officials to grapple with questions that cut to the heart of nationhood: Can they convince enough citizens to sacrifice their lives? And, if not, are they willing to accept the alternative?
Ukrainian politicians are very stupid people to realize this so late in the war. Ukraine has been fighting Russia for ten years since Crimea was invaded. But then Ukrainian politicians also failed to foresee the immediate purchase of the weapons that would be needed to knock down the bridge Russia built into Crimea. It is no surprise when elected politicians show zero foresight, always waiting until events force them to look ahead a few weeks into the future.
What is wrong?
"The average Ukrainian servicemen is in their 40s, according to Western officials."
"Dima’s assault company recently received seven new recruits ages 55 to 58."
"At the start of the war, soldiers were rotated every two weeks for one week of rest, he said. But now his soldiers fight for a month, then get four days of rest."
"Brigades of 3,000-5,000 soldiers are typically fighting with only 75% of their full strength. Some brigades have as few as 25%."
I'm guessing that the Ukrainian politicians will form a committee to look into this. The committee report will be issued in 12 to 18 months, which is very fast for politicians. Then the debates will begin about what to do. Putin might cut the debate short out of impatience with highly sophisticated, refined, and articulate Ukrainian politicians finessing problems rather than choosing brutally simple solutions to problems. Slava Ukraini.
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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Titushko, 39, explained to the Guardian how he and his men, part of an artillery division in Ukraine’s First Tank Brigade, received back in November a supply of about 300 shells every 10 days. Now, he said, they have a “firing limit” of just 10 a day. “Back then, we could keep (the Russians) on their toes, fire all the time, aim every time we saw a target,” he said from a base in the forest to the soundtrack of artillery fire. “Now we fire exclusively for defense.”
Adding insult to injury, his fellow soldier piped in, some of the remaining reserves of ammunition are Iranian shells that were seized en route to Yemen, and mostly don’t work.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/18/shock-anger-and-war-fati
gue-ukraines-two-years-of-agony
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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Iconic former Polish president message to lawmakers on Ukraine: 'If we don't act now, we will lose'
'It is in the interest of us all, including the US, to deal with Russia once and for all'
By Nana Sajaia | February 22, 2024 10:46am EST
Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Polish President Lech Walesa exclusively spoke with Fox News Digital about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and why the U.S. and the West need to support Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Fox News: Mr. President, you have been advocating for Ukraine from the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion. What exactly did you ask American lawmakers to do?
Lech Walesa: In [the] late '80s I led a big revolution in Poland, and that led to the end of communism and the Soviet Union. We did this to build a new world, but we did not finish our job in regards to Russia and China, we were too weak to do it. Forty years later, the time has come to finally finish the job, and I am here to encourage the United States to help. That's what I am trying to explain to my American friends.
Fox News: In 1989, when you spoke in front of the U.S. Congress, among other things, you asked for economic aid for Poland. And in that speech, you said, "In peacetime, it's better than tanks, better than warships." Did you ever imagine that 40 years later there would be a war going on in Europe?
Walesa: Yes, I imagined it, and I warned everybody about it. At the time, we believed Mikhail Gorbachev [the last leader of the Soviet Union] too much. He was doing great things, but we forgot that he was a Russian patriot. He was trying to build back Russia and get the West to rely on Russia more. The U.S. has a historic chance to make amends now. The world has never been as united against Russia as today. We have a chance for peace, so that our grandchildren do not have to fight.
Fox News: You are one of the first foreigners who was not head of state by the time you addressed the Congress in 1989. Two years later, Boris Yeltsin spoke at Congress as Russia’s first elected president. Back then, the U.S. was optimistic about Russian democracy. Do you think Russia can be a democracy any time soon?
Walesa: If we offer solidarity and the U.S. is able to lead the world, this will happen. My question is, when will this happen? And what will be the price?
Fox News: You were friends with President Ronald Reagan. How do you think he would react to American foreign policy of today?
WALESA: Well, Reagan started these processes. It's difficult to imagine things moving further without Reagan. That's how the epoch of the bad divides in the world ended. That stage, we have won. But today, we are not winning. It is becoming more and more dangerous. That's why I would like to convince the U.S. to take charge of the world.
Fox News: While you are here, the Republican Party is divided over Ukraine aid. What would you say to Republicans who are holding up the funding process?
Walesa: I would tell them to listen to old Walesa. If we don't act now, we will lose.
Fox News: What happens to Ukraine if it does not receive the help it needs?
Walesa: It won't just be Ukraine that is affected. The United States will be in danger. Russia wants to attack the U.S. Right now it's too weak to do so, but if it is let to defeat Ukraine, the U.S. will be next. So, it is in the interest of us all, including the U.S., to deal with Russia once and for all.
Fox News: When you talk to American politicians, do they share your concerns?
Walesa: They do not fully understand the danger that they're faced with.
Fox News: We have elections coming up here, the implications of which will go further than the United States. Are you worried about our presidential elections?
Walesa: I am worried. We haven't noticed that we live in a time where epochs are changing. Solutions from old times do not fit current issues. We found ourselves in a time of word discussion and what the world is supposed to look
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Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia would likely have to seize Kyiv sooner or later while identifying Russia’s possible further territorial objectives in Ukraine. Medvedev responded in an interview published on February 22 to a question asking if there will “still be any part of Ukraine left that [Russia] will consider as a legitimate state, whose borders [Russia] will be ready to recognize.”[1] Medvedev stated that Russia must “ensure its interests” by achieving the goals of the “special military operation” as laid out by Russian President Vladimir Putin – referring to Russian demands for Ukraine’s “demilitarization,” “denazification,” and neutrality. Medvedev reiterated Russia’s intention of changing the government in Ukraine, stating that the Ukrainian government “must fall, it must be destroyed, it must not remain in this world.” Medvedev claimed that Russia must create a “protective cordon” in order to protect against “encroachments on [Russia’s] lands,” including shelling and active offensive operations. Medvedev stated that he does not know where Russia should “stop” but that Russia “probably” must seize and occupy Kyiv “if not now then after some time.” Medvedev claimed that Kyiv is historically a “Russian” city from where “international” threats to Russia’s existence currently originate. Medvedev also labeled Odesa a historical “Russian” city. Putin similarly emphasized on January 31 the idea of a “demilitarized” or “sanitary” zone in Ukraine.[2] ISW previously assessed that Putin’s statements about creating a “protective” zone in which Russia’s claimed and actual territories are out of Ukrainian firing range actually mean that Russia cannot accept the existence of any independent Ukraine with the ability to defend itself.[3] Medvedev, however, also claimed that “if ... something remains of Ukraine,” then it “probably” has a low chance of survival and reiterated his previous comments about a possible Ukrainian rump state in Lviv Oblast while alluding to the fact that this area was Polish territory earlier in history.[4] Medvedev’s comments continue to indicate that the Kremlin has returned to its domestic narrative that Russia is fighting the war to “liberate its historic lands.”[5]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-22-2024
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Why Europe Still Can’t Get Its Military Act Together
The continent faces multiple obstacles on the way to military autonomy.
By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
February 21, 2024, 10:12 AM
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/02/21/europe-military-trump-nato-eu-aut
onomy/
Former U.S. President Donald Trump set off alarm bells in Europe when he told a campaign rally that he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any countries he judged to be delinquent on their defense obligations. European countries were already fretting about the possibility of a second Trump term, and these latest remarks sent these concerns into high orbit. European Commission President Ursula Van der Leyen told the Financial Times a few days later that Europe was facing a world “that has got rougher” and that “we have to spend more, we have to spend better, and we have to spend European.”
But the question remains: Will Europe do enough to be able to defend itself? Complaints that European states are overly dependent on U.S. protection and unwilling to maintain adequate defense capabilities have a long history, and the wake-up call provided by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has yet to produce a dramatic increase in Europe’s usable military power. Yes, NATO members are now spending more money and the EU recently authorized an additional 50 billion euros in financial support to Ukraine. But Europe’s ability to maintain substantial forces in the field for more than a few weeks remains paltry: It still relies on the United States for some critical capabilities, and some NATO members have reason to wonder if their partners could do much to help if they were attacked, even if those partners tried.
To be sure, rhetoric from European officials is becoming more strident. Danish defense minister Troels Lund Poulsen recently warned that Russia might test the NATO mutual defense clause “within three to five years” and another senior NATO diplomat believes “we no longer have the luxury to think that Russia would stop with Ukraine.” According to another senior diplomat, “Russia’s intent and capability” to attack a NATO country by 2030 was “pretty much consensus” within the alliance at this point. Because it might take Europe 10 years or more to develop sufficient capabilities of its own, diehard Atlanticists want to keep Uncle Sam firmly committed to Europe despite all the competing demands on U.S. time, attention, and resources.
Can Europe get its act together? Two well-established bodies of theory are relevant here. The first, to which I have tried to contribute, is balance of power (or if you prefer, balance of threat) theory. It predicts that a serious external threat to European security—such as a nearby great power with a strong military and highly revisionist ambitions—would cause most of these states to join forces to deter the threat (or if necessary, to defeat it). That impulse would grow stronger if these states understood that they could not rely on anyone else for protection. Recent increases in European defense spending and Sweden and Finland’s decisions to join NATO illustrate the tendency for threatened states to balance perfectly, and this well-established tendency should make us more optimistic about Europe’s ability and willingness to take greater responsibility for its own defense.
Unfortunately, a second body of theory makes that upbeat outcome less certain. Because security is a “collective good,” states in an alliance will be tempted to “buck-pass” or free-ride on the efforts of others, in the hope that their partners will do enough to keep them safe and secure, even if they do less. This tendency helps explain why the strongest members of an alliance tend to contribute a disproportionate amount to the collective effort. If an alliance’s leading members do enough to deter or defeat an attack, the contributions of the smallest members may be superfluous. After all, the alliance wouldn’
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Quote:
"Russia, Russia, Russia" Has Been A Long & Elaborate Lie...
The Dark & The Light
"'The rule of law is under threat!’ the Regime shrieks, as it throws its political foes into the gulag"
- Benjamin Weingarten
The florid carbuncle of Woke-Maoist lawfare weeps its vile effluvium across the social landscape, poisoning whatever it touches, and nothing in the armory of reason, principle, or good faith avails to heal it. Sickness rages through the body politic. You have lost faith in all the doctors, and they have lost faith in themselves. The fever intensifies. The crisis is upon us. Which way will fate turn us? Toward death or recovery?
The poison killing our country is pervasive untruth. Every institution we have relied on to run the public interest has become a factory churning out lies, evasions, and misdirection — not unlike the way mRNA “vaccines” turned the cells in your bodies into tiny generators of spike proteins destroying your organs. Likewise, half the population, apparently, thinks this is a good thing, that we need more lawfare — the perversion of law by attorney perverts — and that we need ever more lies, evasions, and misdirection (just as the degenerates who run Harvard declare their student body needs more mRNA boosters to remain in school).
MORE AT
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-dark-and-the-light/
-----------
"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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File the following story under #Russians_Are_Odd
Russian ultranationalists are increasingly attributing the shootdown of Russian aircraft to Russian rather than Ukrainian air defenses. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces mistakenly shot down their own A-50 aircraft and accused the Russian military of systemic issues that it must fix to avoid further friendly fire incidents.[7] One milblogger noted that A-50 aircraft and its highly specialized crew are scarce resources for Russia that it cannot easily replace.[8] The milbloggers specifically denied Ukrainian and Russian reporting that Ukrainian forces shot down the A-50 on February 23 and connected this shootdown to their prior denials that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the A-50 and Il-22 shootdowns on January 15.[9] The milbloggers have also attributed recent Ukrainian downings of Russian Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets to friendly air defense fire and criticized reports attributing them to Ukraine.[10] Russian milbloggers may be refusing to attribute any successes to Ukrainian forces as part of wider efforts in the Russian information space to demoralize Ukrainians and convince Russians that victory is assured. Recent Kremlin rhetoric has focused on portraying Russia as able to outlast Ukraine’s willingness and ability to fight, including outlasting Western military support for Ukraine, and Russian milbloggers‘ consistent claims of ineffective Ukrainian air defenses and other battlefield capabilities are congruent with this disinformation campaign.[11] Ukrainian shootdowns of Russian strategic-level aircraft, especially twice within mere weeks of each other, severely undermine this Russian narrative. The milbloggers’ enthusiasm for attributing staggering incompetence to Russia’s own air defenders—the only possible explanation for multiple instances of friendly fire taking down the aircraft helping coordinate the air defenders themselves--is odd.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-23-2024
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Satellite images show expanding Russian gravesites, reflecting the mounting death toll of the Russia-Ukraine war
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/satellite-images-appear-to-show-e
xpanding-gravesites-reflecting-the-mounting-death-toll-of-the-russia-ukraine-war/ar-BB1iNMsj
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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Feb 24, 2024 – Alexander Lukashenko, a close friend of Russian president Vladimir Putin, has warned that the West is on the "edge of the abyss" of World War Three. The Belarusian President voiced his "legitimate concerns" about the possibility of a global conflict and accused the West of fuelling war tensions and pushing the world towards disaster.
"We are literally covered with an information wave of the so-called premonition of the third world war, which just a lazy one still hasn't mentioned. And there are grounds for these fears," Lukashenko said, according to Sky News.
Speaking about the tension between East and West, Lukashenko added: "The masks have been completely dropped."
World leaders and military experts had previously worried that the dictator would invade countries like Poland after he launched his full-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022. However, Lukashenko called it "complete stupidity" to think Russia was planning to attack the Baltic countries.
Lukashenko's comments come as he announced his military had received a new batch of weapons. This included two anti-aircraft missile divisions and two divisions of Iskander-M missile systems, which are made and deployed by the Russian military.
Estonia's Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, has announced that the country has successfully stopped a "hybrid operation" by Russian operatives on NATO territory. This news comes just a day after reports of Russian security services attempting to encroach on Estonian land.
Kallas took to social media to share: "Estonia has successfully stopped a hybrid operation by Russia's security services on our territory. We know the Kremlin is targeting all of our democratic societies. Our answer: be open and reveal their methods. This is the way to deter harmful actions and make us resilient."
Local media have suggested that this incident may be linked to an attack on an Estonian minister's car last year, believed to have been carried out by Russian special services.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/vladimir-putin-s-ally-warns-masks
-have-been-dropped-as-he-issues-ww3-threat/ar-BB1iO4Z6
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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In Year Three of the Ukraine War, It’s Time to Learn the Lessons of the First Two
By Eugene Rumer | February 7, 2024
A year ago, after the dire predictions of the Russian assault and the optimism of the unexpected Ukrainian victories at Kharkiv and Kherson, the word “stalemate” was already widely in use to describe the state of the war. The massive rearmament and training effort of Ukraine by its allies and partners was designed to prepare its armed forces for the summer offensive. The aim of that offensive was to achieve a strategic breakthrough in the south, put Russia’s hold on Crimea at risk, and force Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiations on terms favorable to Ukraine.
That theory of quick victory on the battlefield and at the negotiating table did not come to fruition. On the ground, the state of the war at the two-year mark is effectively the same as it was at the one-year mark. Both sides suffered massive losses in 2023. Military experts now judge that neither side has what it takes to radically change the situation on the battlefield. With both sides resolved to achieve their vision of victory, just as they were a year ago, nothing suggests that the war will end soon.
More at https://carnegieendowment.org/2024/02/07/in-year-three-of-ukraine-war-
it-s-time-to-learn-lessons-of-first-two-pub-91580
Eugene Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council, is a senior fellow and the director of Carnegie’s Russia and Eurasia Program.
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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How is it that I could predict how this would turn out when all of the so-called "experts" were so wrong? They should have been listening to Brian Berletic New Atlas, The Duran, and other reality-based analysts, not their high-on-ideology neocons and military yes-men.
TWO YEARS into a war and they're JUST NOW "learning lessons"??? (Actually, they're not. They're just trying to figure out how to adjust their narrative bc the old one isn't working anymore.)
Their pay grade is waaaaay above their planning capabilities. Bust 'em all down to roadside trash collectors. At least they'd be doing something useful, instead of spinning dangerous narratives and poisonous lies.
-----------
"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:
On the ground, the state of the war at the two-year mark is effectively the same as it was at the one-year mark. Both sides suffered massive losses in 2023. Military experts now judge that neither side has what it takes to radically change the situation on the battlefield. With both sides resolved to achieve their vision of victory, just as they were a year ago, nothing suggests that the war will end soon.
So, this is their "new narrative"? (The other "new narrative" is that Russia will invade NATO countries. Another crock of shit!)
What "they" mean when they say that the "reality on the ground hasn't changed" is that the front hasn't moved much. It's the same mistake that Dima on Military Summary Channel makes: he will go on to describe how Russia has found and destroyed local or strategic munitions stockpiles, or concentrations of troops, or command headquarters, or Patriot missile launchers, or tanks and other armored vehicles, and then he'll say "But no changes on the ground, just regular preparation" bc the front hasn't moved.
No, dummy! The Ukrainian army is being destroyed. Over 500,000 men have been killed or wounded, and with Ukraine's battlefield medic conditons, many of those wounded will become disabled or die. Independent investigators place Russian dead at about 50,000. If yiu apply the usual 3 wounded for every death, that comes out to 200,000 dead and wounded. But Russian battlefield evac and medics are better organized, and manynof yhe wounded return to the front.
The Ukrainian army has been operating mostly without rotation. They are running out of peple to drag off the street. They have run out of shells. They have little air defense capability. Many armored vehicles have been lost, and the west doesn't have the capability to make more. Russia has a million+ in its army and a huge military complex.
To successfully make an offensive, the attacking army needs about 3 to each defender. Russia has the capability but they want to improve their odds and degrade the Ukrainian army further, and that's what theybwill continue to do, as long as they can make Ukraine bleed a lot more than they 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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Ukraine is fucked. But by all means, fuck Ukraine.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Politico: The West tried to crush Russia’s economy. Why hasn’t it worked?
From an unenforced oil price cap to rogue countries teaming up, Moscow is exploiting the West’s weaknesses.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/24/russia-economy-west-sanctions
-00142713
Good.
Fuck Raytheon. Fuck NeoCons. Fuck Democrats. Fuck NeoCon and Democrat money laundering through Ukraine and Raytheon. Fuck Ukraine.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:Biden is a deer hunter who misses the shot. His excuse? "I did not want to cross the deer's red line. But the deer will be back very soon." Biden, you only get one chance but you threw it away.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
TWO YEARS into a war and they're JUST NOW "learning lessons"??? (Actually, they're not. They're just trying to figure out how to adjust their narrative bc the old one isn't working anymore.)
There is an accurate description of financial things Biden could have done to Russia, but didn't because these things would have crossed Putin's red lines:
LARRY KUDLOW: If the Biden admin had a backbone, they could inflict some serious financial damage on Putin
https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/larry-kudlow-biden-admin-backbone-in
flict-serious-financial-damage-putin
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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They kicked Russian Central Bank off SWIFT. They sanctioned everything they could, and just to make it stick they blew up Nordstream pipeline. They seized $300 billion of Russian assets and have been scheming ever since how to steal it with some sort of legal figleaf. The thing that is keeping outright seizure at bay is EU CENTRAL BANKS FEARS of what that will do to the Euro.
The only thing they managed to to was torpedo the EU and UK economy into recession. And if they start applying secondary sanctions to India and, especially China ... an economy they (and we) desperately depend on... they will torpedo the US as well as further sink the EU and UK.
-----------
"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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Ukraine faces GOP-made crisis two years into war
by Ellen Mitchell - 02/24/24 6:02 AM ET
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4486044-ukraine-american-made-crisi
s-russia-war/
Throughout 2022, the Democrat-led Congress approved $113 billion worth of aid and military assistance for the Ukrainian government and allied nations, in a series of emergency funding packages.
The support paid off, with a Ukraine counter-offensive in May 2022 able to drive back Russian forces near Kharkiv. Further Ukrainian counteroffensives in the south and the northeast allowed forces to recapture the majority of Kharkiv Oblast in September and the city of Kherson in November, with Russian forces withdrawing to the east bank of the Dnieper River.
When HIMARS rockets systems were provided to Ukraine in June “you could suddenly see that the Russian logistics were being hit effectively, and they had to move their logistics back and that made frontline attacks much more difficult and that gave Ukraine breathing space,” Jordash said.
But since Republicans took control of the House in January 2023, Congress has not approved any major aid for Ukraine. And Ukraine’s breathing space has given way to Russia retaking initiative in the war.
“It’s no longer a stalemate. The Russians have regained momentum,” former Defense Secretary Gates told The Washington Post this week. “Everything I’m reading is that the Russians are on the offensive along the 600-mile front.”
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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Fucking blame-shifting. Heaven forefend that we blame the real neocon instigators!!
Ukraine faced a crisis in 2014. That was the one we engineered. And we've been pushing it forward ever since.
Neocons are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian. Once again proving Kissinger's point about being America's friend.
-----------
"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 Tusk government inhabits Brussel's EU anus, but Polish people are getting fedupski with substandard Ukrainian grain and entitled Ukrainian refugees.
Quote:
Polish Farmers To Block Critical Border Road As Tusk Government Faces First Serious Challenge
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/polish-farmers-block-critical-b
order-road-tusk-government-faces-first-serious
-----------
"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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Putin Ally Threatens to 'Destroy' Poland: 'We Won't Even Think Twice'
By Aila Slisco | Feb 23, 2024 at 5:07 PM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-ally-threatens-destroy-poland-1872956
Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov has warned that Russia is poised to "destroy" Poland as tensions between Moscow and its European neighbors continue to rise amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Solovyov, a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the host of a popular state television program, suggested during a recent broadcast that European nations would not "understand" Russia's dominance of the continent until the decision is made to "smash Europe's face."
Solovyov asserted that while Russia feels "sorry for" its "brothers" in Ukraine, Moscow would show no hesitation in wiping out Polish cities "in an instant."
"We will simply, I am not sure about nuclear strikes, but with missile strikes and air strikes, I am sure, we will just freaking destroy them," he continued. "And we won't even think twice."
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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Fuck Ukraine.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Biden* ally** threatens to destroy Russia.
(**pick any neocon of your choice. You've certainly quoted plenty!)
You're an idiot.
-----------
"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:Vladimir Solovyov is telling you what Putin is thinking but does not say. Signym, if you know a "Biden* ally** threaten(ing) to destroy Russia", what is their name?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Biden* ally** threatens to destroy Russia.
(**pick any neocon of your choice. You've certainly quoted plenty!)
You're an idiot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Solovyov_(TV_presenter)
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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Fuck Joe Biden*.
Fuck anybody who considers Joe Biden* an ally.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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A Difficult but Necessary Decision writes Sergei A. Karaganov
Morally, this is a terrible choice as we will use God’s weapon, thus dooming ourselves to grave spiritual losses. But if we do not do this, not only Russia can die, but most likely the entire human civilization will cease to exist.
It is necessary to arouse the instinct of self-preservation that the West has lost and convince it that its attempts to wear Russia out by arming Ukrainians are counterproductive for the West itself. We will have to make nuclear deterrence a convincing argument again by lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons set unacceptably high, and by rapidly but prudently moving up the deterrence-escalation ladder. The first steps have already been made by the relevant statements of Russian President and other leaders.
But there are many steps on this ladder. I have counted about two dozen. Thing may also get to the point when we will have to urge our compatriots and all people of goodwill to leave their places of residence near facilities that may become targets for strikes in countries that provide direct support to the puppet regime in Kiev. The enemy must know that we are ready to deliver a preemptive strike in retaliation for all of its current and past acts of aggression in order to prevent a slide into global thermonuclear war.
Much more at https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/a-difficult-but-necessary-decisi
on/
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 for fuck's sake! That's like calling Joy Reid a Biden* ally. He's a TV host, not a Krelin insider.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Biden* ally** threatens to destroy Russia.
(**pick any neocon of your choice. You've certainly quoted plenty!)
You're an idiot.
SECOND: Vladimir Solovyov is telling you what Putin is thinking but does not say.
Quote:Anyone in the Kagan family including Vicki Nuland, the head of NATO Stolteneberg, BoJo the Clown, most of the heads of Europe ... and they're actually allies and/or work for the State Dept or other areas of our government.
Signym, if you know a "Biden* ally** threaten(ing) to destroy Russia", what is their name?
-----------
"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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Russian information space actors continued responding to the February 23 A-50 shootdown and largely denied that Ukraine is responsible for the downing of any recent Russian aircraft. Russian milbloggers continued to claim on February 23 and 24 that Russian forces were responsible for shooting down the A-50, but offered many different theories about the shootdown. One prominent milblogger claimed that Russian authorities are investigating a Russian S-400 crew for shooting down the A-50 while trying to intercept Ukrainian missiles targeting the A-50.[52] Another milblogger claimed that a Russian air defense crew purposefully targeted the A-50.[53] Other milbloggers continued to claim that Ukrainian forces could not have shot down the A-50 because the aircraft was out of range of Western-provided Patriot air defense systems and complained that Russian air defenders are so systemically incompetent that they shot down five of their aircraft in February 2024.[54] A prominent Wagner Group-affiliated milblogger dissented, however, expressing disbelief that Russian air defenses are so incompetent as to have shot down so many Russian aircraft in such a short period and attributed the shootdown to Ukrainian forces instead.[55]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-24-2024
Big Fat Missiles To Take Down Big Fat Russian Planes. How Ukraine Brought Back Its Massive S-200s.
By David Axe | Feb 24, 2024, 07:43pm EST
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/24/big-fat-missiles-to-t
ake-down-big-fat-russian-planes-how-ukraine-brought-back-its-massive-s-200s/?sh=749ab42a4743
According to Ukrainian magazine Pravda, the missile the Ukrainian air force used to shoot down a rare Russian air force A-50 radar plane on Friday wasn’t an American-made Patriot, as many observers assumed. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/24/7443493/
No, it reportedly was an ex-Soviet 5V28: the missile component of the S-200 air-defense system.
In retrospect, it should have been obvious that something other than a Patriot shot down the A-50. The lumbering radar plane was around 120 miles from the front line in southern Ukraine when it plummeted to the ground. Where a Patriot usually ranges no farther than 90 miles, a S-200 can hit targets 150 miles away or farther.
We already knew the Ukrainians had reactivated some of their aged S-200 batteries—out of 16 the Soviet air force once maintained all across Ukraine—because they’ve been lobbing them at targets on the ground in occupied Ukraine, and even in Russia itself.
We didn’t know the Ukrainians were firing the brutish missiles at aerial targets until this week.
But the development makes sense. The S-200 isn’t the most accurate air-defense system in the world. It’s certainly less accurate than the Patriot is. But what the S-200 lacks in finesse, it makes up for in sheer power.
The eight-ton 5V28 “is a honking big missile with a really heavy and voluminous seeker space,” wrote Trent Telenko, a former quality auditor with the U.S. Defense Contract Management Agency. The 5V28 packs a massive, 500-pound warhead.
The Soviet Union developed the S-200 in the early 1960s specifically to target U.S. Air Force heavy bombers. Ukraine finally retired the air-defense dinosaurs more than a decade ago owing to their relative cumbersomeness—they’re heavy and bulky and difficult to transport—as well as the high cost of upgrading them.
But an upgrade was on the table. Before the current, wider war, the Ukrainian government considered reactivating some S-200s and retrofitting them with the same new seeker Ukrainian industry had developed for the smaller S-125 air-defense system.
Given the reasonably good accuracy of the resuscitated Ukrainian S-200s in the surface-to-surface role, there’s a good chance Kyiv’s engineers have installed a better seeker in the 5V28: either the S-125’s new seeker or some other model. Whether that same seeker might work in the surface-to-air role is an open question.
Regardless, the Friday shoot-down
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Putin’s ‘greatest hits’: Russian dissidents continue disappearing in pattern of bizarre deaths
Several major dissidents, including politicians and journalists, have died in unsolved cases
By Peter Aitken | February 25, 2024, 6:00am EST
https://www.foxnews.com/world/putins-greatest-hits-russian-dissidents-
continue-disappearing-pattern-bizarre-deaths
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s opponents continue to disappear in a pattern of strange and sudden deaths, and his greatest domestic opponent, Alexei Navalny, died after a sudden collapse, according to Russian authorities.
"Generally, as a culture, the Russians don’t believe in coincidences. But, in this particular case, there’s a reason why, although we are unlikely to determine conclusively exactly how Navalny died, many analysts agree that Russian intelligence services are likely behind his death," Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of "Putin's Playbook," told Fox News Digital.
"There’s a specific intelligence tradecraft that dates back to 1920 that the Soviets used to eliminate the so-called enemies of the state," Koffler said. "The Soviets and now the Russians are also masters of covering their tracks and making the assassination look like it’s a natural or accidental death.
"Wet affairs, which connotes the spilling of blood is a doctrine of targeted assassinations, includes poisonings, executions with a shot in the back of the head, forced suicides — such as throwing yourself out of a window — explosions of a mini-bomb hidden in a box of chocolates … and other contrived methods," Koffler explained.
Koffler argued that Putin has not been shy about indicating that the deaths of opposition — be it a direct rival like Navalny or an ally challenging his authority like Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin — occurred at his behest because "he wants us to know that his operatives are behind the operation."
"He sends us subtle signals that are easily picked up by those who understand who Putin is and know Russian intelligence signature tactics," Koffler said. "For example, after [GRU officer] Sergei Skripal was poisoned, Putin, in an interview with the Financial Times in June 2019, said that ‘treason is the biggest crime on Earth, and traitors must be punished.’
"In 2010, responding to a question as to whether he had ever had to sign an order ‘to liquidate enemies of the motherland abroad,’ Putin said, ‘Traitors will kick the bucket on their own — whatever they got in exchange for it — those 30 pieces of silver they were given, they will choke on them’," she added.
Navalny died in prison last week after collapsing in what prison officials claimed was a case of "sudden death syndrome," but an anonymous paramedic claiming to work for a morgue told independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe that he saw bruising on the body consistent with a person being held down while having a seizure.
Prigozhin, who died when his plane suddenly exploded, killing him and everyone on board, and Navalny are two of the highest-profile examples of Putin’s opponents meeting sudden demises, but many examples have occurred throughout his reign.
More at https://www.foxnews.com/world/putins-greatest-hits-russian-dissidents-
continue-disappearing-pattern-bizarre-deaths
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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Too little, too late? Ukraine’s backers lose ground in the ammo race
By Tom Kington | Feb 23, 2024, 09:40 AM
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2024/02/23/too-little-too-la
te-ukraines-backers-lose-ground-in-the-ammo-race/
Four million: that’s the number of artillery shells that Russia will reportedly be able to muster this year in Ukraine, begging the question: can Europe and the US match that? And if not, is the war lost?
The number comes courtesy of researchers at the RUSI think tank in the U.K., who wrote in a recent report that Russian industry expects to increase 152mm shell production to 1.3 million rounds this year and produce 800,000 122mm rounds over the same period.
Add in two million 122mm rounds arriving from North Korea, and Moscow will have just over four million shells, the report stated, plus what it can salvage for existing stocks, much of which is in bad condition.
Matching that number will be crucial for Ukraine, said Nick Reynolds, a Land Warfare research fellow at RUSI, and co-author of the report.
“It is a very important factor since both Russia and Ukraine are artillery armies – artillery is their backbone,” he said.
In the short term, Reynolds said whatever solutions were put into play now, Ukraine would not be able to match Russia on the front line this year.
“Russia will have its four million shells this year, which is more than Ukraine can hope to have. It is more than Europe, NATO and the U.S. can supply before taking their own restocking into account. Russia will have artillery advantage in 2024,” he said.
That does not mean, though, that Ukraine will lose the war, but it will give Russia time to rearm, he added.
“Russia’s armed forces have lost a great deal of combat power. Its ability to carry large scale maneuvers is reduced by losses, but it can still do damage with attrition, especially if Ukraine is short of munitions,” he said.
“We may not see Russian advances in the short term, but it now has time to rebuild its combat power. Seeing little change on the map now should not lull us into a false sense of security.”
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’s kidnapping campaign takes a crushing toll on Ukraine
by Laura Kelly - 02/24/24 3:00 PM ET
https://thehill.com/policy/international/4486043-russia-kidnapping-cam
paign-ukraine-war/
No one outside of the Kremlin knows how many Ukrainian children have been stolen from their families since the start of Russia’s unprovoked invasion two years ago.
An estimated 500 Ukrainian children have been returned since February 2022, but that’s just a small fraction of the estimated hundreds of thousands of children — ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers — torn from their homes and held hostage in Russia.
The mass kidnapping is a central piece of a war crimes case against Russian President Vladimir Putin, and part of allegations of genocide. The international legal process will take years to play out, but there’s no time to waste for the governments and non-profits working to return kidnapped children.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s an orphan, non-orphan, it is the same strategy – to brainwash, to indoctrinate Ukrainian children to erase their identity,” said Mykola Kuleba, CEO of Save Ukraine, which carried out covert operations inside Russia to return stolen children.
“They are attending Russian schools where every day they are listening to this propaganda. They have special lessons, they have to attend military monuments, they have to learn that Ukraine is not a state, not a country, not a nationality, that the West is the aggressor, and Russia is victim.” . . .
While Ukrainian officials say they have identified more than 19,000 Ukrainian children in Russia, they believe that the actual number of kidnapped children is much higher, and cite claims from Russian officials that between 700,000 to 750,000 Ukrainian children have been transferred to Russia.
Moscow is holding back all data on the children it has taken from territory it occupied in Ukraine. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Putin and his top official for children’s rights, Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belov, on war crimes charges for the unlawful deportation and transfer of children.
Why is Russia kidnapping Ukrainian children en masse?
“It’s one word. Leverage,” said Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) at the Yale School of Public Health, which is part of a U.S. and Ukrainian effort to track down and identify Ukrainian children.
“Imagine the single most horrific thing that could happen in war imaginable — and there is something worse than death – it’s that they take your children. And so, that’s what they’ve 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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You can't refute that Biden's ACTUAL allies threaten to destroy Russia so you post a wall of bullshit?
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
No one outside of the Kremlin knows how many Ukrainian children have been stolen
Nobody knows how many small pets SECOND has tortured to death, but we'll write about an estimated 150 anyway.
-----------
"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 second:
No one outside of the Kremlin knows how many Ukrainian children have been stolen
Nobody knows how many small pets SECOND has tortured to death, but we'll write about an estimated 150 anyway.
That's what they call an Appeal to Ignorance.
They learn that in Journalism 101
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Howard G. Buffett Foundation has emerged as a stalwart ally to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion, injecting $521,779,225 into humanitarian assistance for Ukraine as of January 2024.
"It's going to be one of the biggest mistakes that the United States makes historically if we don't continue to support Ukraine.
"The most frustrating part is to watch the narrative in the US because you have congressmen and senators whose constituencies or districts are benefiting from this war," he said.
Putting his money where his mouth is, Buffett said another $300 million is budgeted for Ukraine this year, and for the last two years, the foundation exceeded the budgeted number.
https://www.businessinsider.in/international/news/warren-buffets-son-h
oward-has-given-500m-to-ukraine-he-warns-the-us-is-making-a-historic-mistake-by-pulling-its-support/articleshow/107969820.cms
6ix, Warren Buffett's son called Trumptards demented assholes. I knew that a long time ago, simply by watching these assholes self-destruct in their varied ways: suicide, obesity, smoking, drinking, drugging, you know the many ways angry poor white trash kill themselves for "freedom". Funny how Russians kill themselves the same way Trumptards do. Maybe that explains why the Trumptards and the Russians agree to fuck Ukraine.
Where is Buffett's money from?
Berkshire Hathaway Inc Class A
$628,930.20 per share
up 49,035.17%
Feb 23, 8:04:01PM UTC-5 · USD · NYSE
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BRK.A:NYSE?authuser=0&window=
MAX
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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Nepobaby can keep asking his rich daddy for allowance and piss it all away on Ukraine.
Nobody gives a shit.
Fuck Ukraine.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:It is not nepotism. Anybody can buy Berkshire Hathaway Inc Class B or S&P500 Index mutual fund and get fabulously wealthy. Or you could be a Trumptard and hide gold coins at home and achieve nothing. Your choice to be rich or be a stupid asshole.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nepobaby can keep asking his rich daddy for allowance and piss it all away on Ukraine.
Nobody gives a shit.
Fuck Ukraine.
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BRK.B:NYSE?window=MAX
Geoffrey Holt (March 27, 1941 – June 6, 2023). He gifted US$3.8 million to his town of Hinsdale, New Hampshire, upon his death. He worked as a groundskeeper in a mobile home park where he resided, choosing to navigate town aboard a lawn mower rather than using a car.
Holt's gift inspired discussions about other low-profile individuals who left fortunes to their communities[12] and how these communities are using the unexpected windfall. For example, Francis "Rudy" Gelnett left the bulk of his estate—US$5.8 million—to his borough of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, (population c.?5,000) when he died in 2010. As of 2023, the Rudy Gelnett trust (valued at c. US$5.5 million) supported the Gelnett Memorial Library, Dauntless Hook & Ladder Fire Co., and the public swimming pool.[13] Another secret millionaire, Ronald Read, a janitor and gas station attendant, left US$6 million of his $8 million fortune to his town's hospital and library in Brattleboro, Vermont, (7 miles (11 km) away from Hinsdale) when he died at 92 in 2014. Like Holt, he quietly built his wealth through savvy investing and living modestly, a fact unbeknownst to even his closest friends.[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Holt_(philanthropist)#Legacy
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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Zelensky warns ‘millions will be killed’ without US aid to Kyiv, as Ukrainian troop deaths reach at least 31,000
By Stephanie Halasz and Ivana Kottasová | 4:26 PM EST, Sun February 25, 2024
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/25/europe/ukraine-troop-casualties-intl/in
dex.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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Zelinsky is a child rapist.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:
Avdeevka Denouement: Russian Momentum Turning Point
A lot of revealing things have come to light in the continuing coverage of the Avdeevka denouement. For the first time, the U.S. mouthpiece was forced to acknowledge Russia is having success:
http://stream.mux.com/MERZySxu01XJGdmW5d3bTiZl7e78G9uryfXK3Kp02I11E.m3
u8
This was followed by a series of MSM articles that blew the lid on some of the true losses incurred by the AFU at the final collapse.
The ... WaPo article begins with:
KYIV — Ukraine failed to safely evacuate all its troops from the eastern city of Avdiivka during its disorderly retreat last weekend, despite claims from its new top military commander that the move was designed to save lives and avoid encirclement by the advancing Russians.
But the most shocking report came from NYTimes which stated that soldiers close to the action confirmed upwards of 850-1000 AFU were captured during the chaotic retreats.
So why is this so shocking? Beyond the simple admission of such a huge amount of captures in merely a day or two, the most profound thing is that it confirms Russian figures, which I reported last time. I wrote that Russian sources said at least 500+ had been captured, and pro-UA accounts had scoffed at this number. Thus, if this proves that Russian estimates of captures were accurate, it means Russia’s other even more critical figures are likely accurate as well—for instance, about total AFU losses in Avdeevka.
Shoigu gave the figure as 2,400 casualties just in the final two days of the collapse:
And as for Russia? Shoigu reported the final capture of Avdeevka happened with “minimal losses” on the Russian side:
Some would laugh at the disparity—but as I said, NYTimes already grudgingly proved Russia is giving accurate figures. For anyone who’s been watching the many ‘clean up’ videos that have streamed out post-liberation, you’ve likely seen the mountains of AFU corpses being cleared by Russian forces.
...
Ultimately, MediaZona has Russia averaging something like 200 weekly dead across the entire war since early October, when the Avdeevka offensive began.
Starting Oct 1, and including all of February (which hasn't happened yet) that's about 21 weeks, or 4,200 dead. At the usual rate 3 wounded for each death, that's about 17,000 total casualties across the entire front. I'm sure the figures for January and February will be revised upwards, but probably won't increase the total by more than 15%.
Quote:
[But] the remarkable thing is that the losses for Ukraine appeared to be so grave, that it seems to have set off a downward spiral of panic and collapse. Figures all across the pro-UA side are now ringing alarm bells. For instance, White House spokesman Sabrina Singh said that if aid is not given soon, Ukraine will have to start choosing “which cities they can or can’t defend”:
There are panic-stricken calls for action from within and outside of Ukraine, with dire predictions of collapse
Quote:
The auto-translation messes up a little at the end, but he essentially states that “Russia is rotating troops back and forth everywhere, from Avdeevka, Kupyansk, Rabotino, etc.”:
One running theme has been that with ISR on both sides, "surprises" are impossible. But Ukraine was recently surprised by a Russian offensive in central Donetsk when they were expecting an offensive in the north, near Kupiansk.
The reality is that Russia has so many forces on all five fronts, they can attack on any direction, while Ukraine has to constantly anticipate where to send it's troops to plug the next potential hole.
For example, the AFU pulled troops from the south Zaparozhiy front to bolster Avdeevka, abandoning Krynky and leaving Rabotyno and surround almost undefended.
MORE, MUCH MORE, AT https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/avdeevka-denouement-russian-moment
um
Wherever you see a : a link to original sources follows. Simplicius is extremely good at getting to original sources, well
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So, according to Vicki Nuland (mother of Project Ukraine and Biden* employee) if Russia gets its $60 billion then it will use that money to serve up some "nasty" "asymmetric" "surprises" again Russia.
And if Budanov holds true to form, that would mean more assassinations (like Daryana Dugina), more attacks on civilians (Ukraine is wasting its HIMARS missiles on civilians in Dontesk City), long-range drone attacks on Moscow office buildings, as well as drone and missile attacks against legitimate military targets like the Russian Black Sea fleet, military airports, and refineries.
That's an admission that the conventional war is lost, and any talk about an offensive in 2025 is just whistling past the graveyard.
But if I were a die-hard neocon, and Project Ukraine was the one thing I'd staked my career on for the past 20 years (like Vicki Nuland) I'd be hoping to get my hands on some of that Russian $300 billion and start attacking Russia directly with every long range missile I could buy, borrow, or beg from any military, our own or allied, stupid enough to trigger a more direct "kinetic" version of WWIII.
Our people in charge aren't thinking, they're obsessed.
-----------
"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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No shit, Sherlock.
Don't forget that the CIA and State Dept work hand-in-glove, with embassies often serving as stations in many nations.
And I would say that my supposition of what Vicki Nuland "wants" to do is a good description of what's been happening for years.
Quote:`Including attacks on Russia itself
CIA Built "12 Secret Spy Bases" In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, Bombshell NYT Report Confirms
On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making
Quote:2014. Gee, what a shock. Vicki Nuland had been working on that coup for over a decade by then. It was a coup with a purpose.
but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.
Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago
Quote:So, we weren't provoking Russia?
and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine's intelligence services has "transformed" the former Soviet state and its capabilities into "Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today."
This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began eight years ago.
Quote:
These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders' communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.
This means that with the disclosure of the longtime "closely guarded secret" the world just got a big step closer to WW3, given it means the CIA is largely responsible for the effectiveness of the recent spate of attacks which have included direct drone hits on key oil refineries and energy infrastructure.
CIA fomenting WWIII.
Quote:
"Without them [the CIA and elite commandoes it's trained], there would have been no way for us to resist the Russians, or to beat them," according to Ivan Bakanov, former head of the SBU, which is Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency.
A main source of the NYT revelations —disclosures which might come as no surprise to those never willing to so easily swallow the mainstream 'official' narrative of events —is identified as a top intelligence commander named Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy.
So, why would a top UKRAINIAN intelligence commander reveal all of these secrets? Is he effectively "burning" the CIA?
Quote:
Clearly, Kiev and Washington now want world to know of the deep intelligence relationship they tried to conceal for over the past decade. It is perhaps a kind of warning to Moscow at a moment Ukraine's forces are in retreat: the US is fighting hand in glove with the Ukrainians.
And yet the revelations contained in the NY Times report also confirm what President Putin has precisely accused Washington of all along.
While the lengthy NYT report is full of fresh revelations and confirmation of just how deeply the CIA has always been involved in Ukraine, below are seven of the biggest contained in the story...
Description of secret spy bunker
The report contains a surprisingly detailed description of one of the 'secret' underground command centers established by the CIA near the Russian border... location undisclosed of course:
"Not far away, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker where teams of Ukrainian soldiers track Russian spy satellites and eavesdrop on conversations be
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Russian officials and state-run and state-affiliated TV channels likely refrained from commenting on the two-year anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion to avoid drawing attention to Russia’s failures to achieve its stated strategic goals in Ukraine and its more immediate goals of seizing all of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, while also suffering high personnel losses.
Russian opposition outlet Agentstvo Novosti reported on February 25 that Russian state TV channels Rossiya 1 and Channel One (Perviy Kanal) and Gazprom Media-owned TV channel NTV did not mention the two-year anniversary of the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in broadcasts on February 24.[1]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-25-2024
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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It boggles the mind, SECOND, how you can find so many lies to post.
-----------
"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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Denmark ends Nord Stream blast investigation but concludes deliberate sabotage at play
Denmark on Monday said it had dropped its investigation into the explosions in 2022 on the Nord Stream pipelines carrying Russian gas to Germany, becoming the second nation to do so after Sweden also closed a separate probe, Reuters reports.
The multi-billion dollar Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines transporting gas under the Baltic Sea were ruptured by a series of blasts in the Swedish and Danish economic zones in September 2022, releasing vast amounts of methane into the air.
Russia and the West, at loggerheads over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February that year, have pointed fingers at one another. Each has denied any involvement and no one has taken responsibility.
"There is not sufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case in Denmark ... and therefore the Copenhagen Police has decided to conclude the criminal investigation of the explosions," Denmark's police said in a statement.
Police added that they believe there was deliberate sabotage of the gas lines.
Sweden earlier this month dropped its investigation into the explosions saying it lacked jurisdiction in the case but had handed evidence uncovered over to German investigators, which are yet to publish any findings.
The Kremlin has responded to a decision made by Denmark to drop its investigation into the 2022 Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosions, saying it was “close to absurdity.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Denmark had recognised that the blasts had been an act of premeditatd sabotage, but had decided not to go further with the investigation anyway because the case involved Copenhagen’s close allies.
He said Denmark had refused requests to provide information about its investigation.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/feb/26/russia-ukraine-war-
live-missiles-drones-kharkiv-dnipropetrovsk-eu-leaders-summit-elysee-zelenskiy
I think Ukraine sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines to cut off a Russian stream of revenue supporting the war. Ukraine should sabotage empty crude oil carriers headed for Russia, again to cut off another revenue stream, but unlike the two pipelines, there are thousands of moving carriers, making sabotage thousands of times more difficult than pipelines. And the crude oil carriers are not owned by Russia. Russia owned the Nord Stream pipelines. Sabotaging carriers not owned by Russia would be unjustifiable unless Ukraine first declared war officially on the true owners of the carriers.
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:`Including attacks on Russia itself
CIA Built "12 Secret Spy Bases" In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, Bombshell NYT Report Confirms
On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making
Quote:
but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.
Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago
These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders' communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.
This means that with the disclosure of the longtime "closely guarded secret" the world just got a big step closer to WW3, given it means the CIA is largely responsible for the effectiveness of the recent spate of attacks which have included direct drone hits on key oil refineries and energy infrastructure.
CIA fomenting WWIII.
Quote:
... [T]he revelations contained in the NY Times report also confirm what President Putin has precisely accused Washington of all along.
... Putin was basically right
Below is a hugely ironic excerpt from the Times report. The section begins by noting that Putin has repeatedly blamed the US-NATO for expanding its military and intelligence infrastructure into Ukraine. Not only had this precisely been going on for the past decade, as is now being admitted, but was presented by the Kremlin as a key cause of the Russian invasion of Feb.24, 2022. Putin and his officials were adamant on the eve of the invasion that NATO was militarizing Ukraine. The Times appears to now fully admit that, yes - this was actually the case:
"Putin has long blamed Western intelligence agencies for manipulating Kyiv and sowing anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine.
Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the CIA, together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow.
...
Operation Goldfish
Money and advanced tech given by the CIA has allowed the Ukrainians to establish eavesdropping operations far beyond what they would otherwise be capable of. ...
" In the bunker, Dvoretskiy pointed to communications equipment and large computer servers, some of which were financed by the CIA. He said his teams were using the base to hack into the Russian military’s secure communications networks.
“This is the thing that breaks into satellites and decodes secret conversations,” Dvoretskiy told a Times journalist on a tour, adding that they were hacking into spy satellites from China and Belarus, too.
...The CIA began sending equipment in 2016, after the pivotal meeting at Scattergood, Dvoretskiy said, providing encrypted radios and devices for intercepting secret enemy communications.
A stunning admission: "Tiptoeing Around Trump"
Among the most interesting and curious moments of the NYT report is a description of the CIA program's expanse under the Trump administration. The report suggests that the true scope may have even been hidden from Trump.
"MAY have been"?
That Trump_ Russia_collusion hoax was probably designed to both distract Trump from learning what his supposed underlings were doing, and also defang any possible attempts on Trump's part to repair relations with Russia by poisoning the concept from the start. It was im
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Quote:Neither Signym nor ZeroHedge included the original URLs because both are lying sacks of shits:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The CIA directly interfered with our election results.
So it appears our foreign policy, our President, and our media are controlled by the CIA. I imagine our Congresspeople are too. What did Chuck Schumer say? The CIA has "six way from Sunday" to get at people who go against them? And, how would he know??
I don't understand the purpose of these revelations. The only thing I can figure is that Vicki Nuland, Burns et al are laying their cards on the table because they desperately need that $60billion. Not to carry on the fight to 2025, but to get the hell out.
Because, despite their dirty tricks against Russia, pressure and even dirty tricks against our presumed allies (WHO blew up Nordstream, again?), CONSTANT gaslighting and censoring of us Americans ... Russia is POUNDING UKRAINE INTO THE GROUND. THINGS ARE FALLING APART AROUND THEM. Their control over our media, Trump, the economic situation at home and the military situation abroad (and not just in Ukraine) is unraveling.
And all of those fancy bunkers filled with fancy equipment and "eyes only" info on sources and methods, and highly trained Russian-speaking spies are about to be overrun or bombed out of existance.
If they are willing to let this particular cat out of the bag, they must be butt-puckeringly desperate. And I wonder, of course, what else they have to hide, because I'm sure this isn't their only game.
So, what will Russia do?
What will The House?
What will Trump?
And what will the American people?
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/02/25/7443679/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligen
ce-russia-war.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 Second Genocide
by Gunnar Heinsohn | Feb 26, 2024
Gunnar Heinsohn (1943-2023) founded the Rafael-Lemkin-Institut at the University of Bremen in 1993, Europe’s first center for the comparative study of genocide, and served as its director until 2009.
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/02/putins-second-genocide.h
tml
Following his initial genocide—committed from 1999 to 2009 in Chechnya—Vladimir Putin has now embarked on a second, under the pretext of preventing an alleged genocide of Russians in Eastern Ukraine. A historic first.
Putin evidently sought legal grounds for a war of aggression, and all his experts could come up with was the UN Convention on Genocide. Under article 1, the Convention’s Contracting Parties—147 states, including Russia—are obliged to “prevent” genocide, not merely to punish it. Such a provision does not exist even for the prevention of an ordinary civil war. Putin’s accusation of genocide, leveled at Ukraine, and his strict avoidance of the terms war and invasion, can be explained by the will to embellish his monstrous project.
Like all murders, genocide requires intent and planning. A spontaneous massacre may leave 1,000 dead, but legally speaking it is still a case of mass manslaughter. Premeditated genocide, on the other hand, though it be hindered after “only” 100 people have died, has nevertheless produced 100 victims of genocide. This is a crucial legal distinction.
Genocide may still be said to occur if only some members of the group in question are targeted for killing. [Article 2 affirms: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group…”.] Rafael Lemkin, the Polish-Jewish drafter of the Convention on Genocide, deliberately included the term “part” because he had himself witnessed two instances of partial genocide.
In September 1939 the Germans began murdering the Polish intelligentsia. This was the Intelligenzaktion, carried out 22 months before the Holocaust proper began, and it moved Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the chief of Hitler’s military-intelligence service, to stage his own internal resistance to Germany’s SS, for which he would be hanged in Flossenbürg in April 1945. The murder of Polish officers and civil servants by Russians followed in 1940, in Katyn and other places. Both mass murders were intended to destroy Poland’s culture and allow the rest of the population to be enslaved, and either Germanized or Russified. One of the signatories to the death warrant at Katyn, Mikhail Kalinin, is honored by Russia to this day in the name of the city of Kaliningrad, formerly known as Königsberg.
Why is Putin carrying out another genocide following his second Chechen war? He wants to spare the Russian Empire the fate of its Western counterparts. In 1998, the year before he became prime minister, he was director of Russia’s Federal Security Service, where he established a special department for the preservation of the Empire. Its agents were tasked with creating the conditions, in the former Soviet Union, for the rebirth of the Imperial Russia under the control of Moscow.
The Spaniards, the Dutch, the Belgians, the French, and the British, having tried in their turn to hold on to their empires by force, were all defeated in wars fought in their colonies after 1945. They too committed massacres and destroyed cultural artifacts. In 1974, with Portugal’s loss of its colonies, the last of these empires was finished.
During its period of decline, France came the closest to civil war. President Charles de Gaulle survived two assassination attempts by seditious officers, in 1961 and 1962, and granted Algeria its independence after years of bloodshed. At the time, the North African territory was like a French Ukraine: one out of six citizens was French. Those who were forced to leave Algeria for France responded by burning down schoolhouses. Even the country’s largest library—part of the University of Algiers—went up in
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Why did Ukraine's CIA-trained spy guy, Budanov, claim Navalny died of natural causes?
To distract from the fact that Navalny was murdered. By his wife.
That explanation makes sense: Navalny was no longer useful to the USA as a possible Putin replacement/ regime-changer. However, he WAS useful as a perpetual victim (claiming to have been poisoned more than once) and, ultimately, martyr. The timing of his death was convenient distraction from the fall of Avdeevka, and happened just a couple of days after his wife visited. (,Which she hadn't done in over a year.,)
So the CIA gets its timely distraction, Putin gets the blame, the prisoner swap is scuttled, Yulia Navalnya gets $10million (j/k) and crowned as his successor, and everyone in the western deep state is congratulating themselves on another successful assassination.
:thumbsup:
-----------
"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:Wowie! Signym, you are a lying sack of shit.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why did Ukraine's CIA-trained spy guy, Budanov, claim Navalny died of natural causes?
To distract from the fact that Navalny was murdered. By his wife.
That explanation makes sense: Navalny was no longer useful to the USA as a possible Putin replacement/ regime-changer. However, he WAS useful as a perpetual victim (claiming to have been poisoned more than once) and, ultimately, martyr. The timing of his death was convenient distraction from the fall of Avdeevka, and happened just a couple of days after his wife visited. (,Which she hadn't done in over a year.,)
So the CIA gets its timely distraction, Putin gets the blame, the prisoner swap is scuttled, Yulia Navalnya gets $10million (j/k) and crowned as his successor, and everyone in the western deep state is congratulating themselves on another successful assassination.
:thumbsup:
The Death of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s Most Formidable Opponent
The opposition leader, who died in prison, had been persecuted for years by the Russian state. He remained defiant, and consistently funny, to the very end.
By Masha Gessen | February 16, 2024
https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/the-death-of-alexey-navalny-
putins-most-formidable-opponent
Alexei Navalny spent at least a decade standing up to the Kremlin when it seemed impossible. He was jailed and released. He was poisoned, and survived. He was warned to stay away from Russia and didn’t. He was arrested in front of dozens of cameras, with millions of people watching. In prison, he was defiant and consistently funny. For three years, his jailers put him in solitary confinement, cut off his access to and arrested his lawyers, piled on sentence after sentence, sent him all the way across the world’s largest country to serve out his time in the Arctic, and still, when he appeared on video in court, he laughed at his jailers. Year after year, he faced down the might of one of the world’s cruellest states and the vengeance of one of the world’s cruellest men. His promise was that he would outlive them and lead what he called the Beautiful Russia of the Future. On Friday, they killed him. He was forty-seven years old.
Hours after the news of his death broke, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, addressed the Munich Security Conference. “I don’t know whether to believe the news, the terrible news, which we are only getting from state-controlled sources in Russia,” she said, from the conference’s main stage. “As you all know, for many years we’ve been unable to believe Putin and his government. They always lie. But, if it is true, I want Putin and everyone around him, his friends and his government, to know that they will be held responsible for what they have done to our country, to my family, and to my husband. The day of reckoning will come very soon.”
In Russia, Vladimir Putin was visiting an industrial park in Chelyabinsk, in the Urals. He took questions from staff and students, who were seated a safe distance from the Russian President on what appeared to be the plant floor. Putin seemed to be in an unusually good mood. He bantered and flirted with the audience. He boasted that Western sanctions in response to the war in Ukraine had boosted industrial production inside Russia. He hadn’t seemed so jovial in public in years.
In exactly a month, Russia will hold a ritual that it calls an election. With no actual alternative to Putin, who has total control of the media and the so-called electoral institutions, the current Russian President will be crowned for another six-year term, extending his time in power to thirty-one years. Navalny tried to run against Putin six years ago, but the rigged system stopped him. His very name was banished from the airwaves. Still, even when the system shut him out, and, later, when it put him in prison, Navalny remained Putin’s most formidable opponent.
Putin could only envy Navalny’s ability to mobilize Russians. In July, 2013, as the political crackdown th
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why did Ukraine's CIA-trained spy guy, Budanov, claim Navalny died of natural causes?
To distract from the fact that Navalny was murdered. By his wife.
That explanation makes sense: Navalny was no longer useful to the USA as a possible Putin replacement/ regime-changer. However, he WAS useful as a perpetual victim (claiming to have been poisoned more than once) and, ultimately, martyr. The timing of his death was convenient distraction from the fall of Avdeevka, and happened just a couple of days after his wife visited. (Which she hadn't done in over a year.,)
So the CIA gets its timely distraction, Putin gets the blame, the prisoner swap is scuttled, Yulia Navalnya gets $10million (j/k) and crowned as his successor, and everyone in the western deep state is congratulating themselves on another successful assassination.
:thumbsup:
SECO D: Wowie! Signym, you are a lying sack of shit.
Was Budanov recruited and trained by the CIA?
Well, NYT says so, so it must be so!
Did Budanov say that Navalny died from natural causes?
Well, that was widely reported by the M$M, so he must have said it
Does the CIA lie, cheat, steal, and assasinate?
Well, Brennan said so, and the NYT just listed their successes at terror attacks and assassinations, so that must be true, too!
Was Navalny ever able to scrape up enough votes to get even one representative in the Duma? Was he ever a "formidable opponent"?
NOPE! At the height of his political popularity (appx 2011) he managed to get 19% of a vote ... for Mayor of Moscow.
Did Yulia JUST visit her husband and claim he looked healthy during her visit ?
Yep!
Just the facts, ma'am.
The rest is my own supposition.
But methinks thou doth protest too much.
Too plausible?
-----------
"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:Signym, you are so full of shit that it is coming out of your nose, literally, not figuratively:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The rest is my own supposition.
But methinks thou doth protest too much.
Too plausible?
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=65350&mid=11885
92#1188592
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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Over 20 heads of state, including 15 European Union (EU) leaders met in Paris on February 26 to discuss ramping up ammunition supplies to Ukraine.[16] French President Emmanuel Macron organized the conference and announced the creation of a new coalition to supply Ukraine with longer-range missiles and munitions.[17] Macron also stated that France “will do whatever it takes to ensure that Russia cannot win this war” and that European states should prepare for possible Russian escalations in the coming years.[18] Estonian Prime Minister Kaya Kallas stated that Estonia is providing long-term military aid to Ukraine worth 0.25 percent of Estonia’s GDP through 2028 and called on Ukraine’s other supporters to make similar commitments.[19]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-26-2024
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Russia Claims It Destroyed More Than Triple of Ukraine's Entire Air Force
Published Feb 26, 2024 at 10:38 AM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-jets-helicopter-aircraft-losse
s-1873253
Russia has downed 839 Ukrainian jets and helicopters in two years of all-out war, Moscow said ahead of the second anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a figure significantly higher than the size of Ukraine's fleet outlined by Russia in early 2022.
Kyiv had up to 250 warplanes and helicopters on combat duty when Russian forces crossed into Ukraine in late February 2022, Igor Konashenkov, the head of Russia's information department at the Defense Ministry, said in a clip published by Moscow, dated March 2022, that has resurfaced online.
On Friday, Moscow said Ukraine had lost 572 fixed-wing aircraft and 267 helicopters, totaling 839 aircraft losses. In updated figures published on Monday, Russia's Defense Ministry then said Ukraine had lost a total of 841 aircraft and helicopters, including 574 jets.
It may be "driven by propaganda and disinformation, aimed both at its enemies and its own population," Frederik Mertens, an analyst with The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, told Newsweek. Russia's own losses in high-profile Ukrainian strikes appear more palatable if Kyiv has also taken bruising hits, Mertens said.
The Ukrainian Air Force had 124 combat-capable aircraft before Russia launched its full-scale invasion, according to the 2022 Military Balance, an annual count of the world's armed forces compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank. Ukraine also had around 46 helicopters, by this count.
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 Advances in Ukraine With 'Staggering Magnitude' of Losses: Petraeus
"Having written so many letters of condolence to American mothers and fathers, particularly during the surge in Iraq, I don't know how he can actually look at this, how Putin can deal with this," Petraeus — who in a storied military career led the allied effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan — said of the Russian dictator.
The fate of other leading figures in Russia's invasion, he said, may speak to Putin's mindset. "I think, for example, [Yevgeny] Prigozhin literally went mad, in part because of the enormous casualties of the Wagner Group."
Petraeus spoke with Newsweek just hours after Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi announced the withdrawal from Avdiivka.
"This is not a strategically significant piece of terrain," he added. "It's basically a town that has been destroyed, totally. And giving that up, allowing Russia to take control of that, I don't think it has huge significance. Actually, it simplifies the defensive line."
"There's no collapse here. There's an orderly withdrawal, under pressure to be sure, but not some massively strategically significant achievement by the Russians. I think it's even less so than Bakhmut was last year, frankly. Which was so costly, and what did it really get them in the end?"
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-advances-ukraine-staggering-losses-pet
raeus-avdiivka-1873354
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:
The rest is my own supposition.
But methinks thou doth protest too much.
Too plausible?
SECOND: Signym, you are so full of shit that it is coming out of your nose, literally, not figuratively:
Aha! An insult!
Must mean you can't actually... er... DISCUSS ...the topic.
And, you posted something from Patraeus?
Why do you even repost that failed General and "ex" CIA professional liar?
He failed in Iraq and lied about it
https://theintercept.com/2021/09/08/afghanistan-iraq-generals-soldiers
-disciplined-911/
And then there was this....
Quote:
David Petraeus and the fall of a general
23 April 2015
Former US General David Petraeus, one of the most senior US military commanders of the post-9/11 era, has been sentenced to two years of probation for leaking classified material to his mistress.
The seeds of his downfall were sown in 2012 when he resigned as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after acknowledging an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell.
Prosecutors said that while Ms Broadwell was researching a book about him in 2011, Petraeus gave her eight binders of classified material.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-20276786
This full-court press from the CIA and neocons for that $$61 billion sounds like that "51 intelligence officers" who signed the letter saying the Hunter Biden laptop was "Russian disinfo": a whole lotta liars spouting a whole lotta crap.
-----------
"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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Meanwhile, for some REAL news.
RUSSIA IS ADVANCING ACROSS THE ENTIRE FRONT.
EUROPE and the CIA are in a panic.
Ukraine has signed security agreements with Italy, France, Canada (Canada????), and Denmark.
The supposition is that different European nations would each be assigned a section of western Ukraine to defend.
Western boots on the ground in Ukraine.
These people are morons.
Quote:
Moscow Reacts To Macron Proposing European Boots On The Ground In Ukraine
Tuesday, Feb 27, 2024 - 08:20 AM
French President Emmanuel Macron is now openly discussing the possibility of sending European troops to Ukraine to fight the Russians, which would without doubt trigger WW3 between major nuclear powers.
His jingoistic words came just at the end of a summit held in Paris in support of Ukraine, which involved 20 mainly European leaders. He said of efforts to arm the Ukrainians with more advanced weapons, "people used to say give them just sleeping bags and helmets." But he emphasized that now "Nothing should be ruled out."
Nukes?
Quote:
He admitted there is as yet "no consensus" on sending Western troops Ukraine but he laid out that "We will do anything we can to prevent Russia from winning this war."
Macron warned in his remarks, "There is a change in Russia’s stance. It is striving to take on further territory and it has its eyes not just on Ukraine but on many other countries as well, so Russia is presenting a greater danger."
OMFG. I think people are past being stampeded by yet another hair -on-fire politician waving his/her arms and hyperventilating.
Quote:
"We’re at a critical moment in this conflict that requires us to take the initiative," Macron said while also unveiling a new European coalition which is to provide Kiev with medium-range and long-range missiles. President Putin and top Kremlin officials have repeatedly rejected the charge that Russia is seeking to wage an expansionist war in Europe and in other former Soviet satellite states.
Keep in mind that the NYT article admitted that Putin was right, the west was weaponizing Ukraine against Russia, and Russia's war in Ukraine is about Russia's border security, not expansion. The west also broke every agreement they made about NATO expansion, nuclear weapons, and peace in Ukraine.
Who's the aggressor?
Quote:
According to CNN, "Macron had told reporters at a news conference that while he and the other 21 European leaders present did not agree on deploying military personnel, the prospect was discussed openly." However, Germany, the UK, Poland and others have rejected the possibility of deploying troops, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz - who was among those present - later emphasizing that participants were "unanimous" in being set against it. The statement out of the UK prime minister's office was interesting, given it admits the "small number of personnel" already on the ground in Ukraine:
Britain is not planning a "large-scale deployment of troops" in Ukraine, Prime Minister Sunak’s press secretary said. "Other than a small number of personnel who are in the country supporting the Ukrainian armed forces, we have no plans for a large-scale deployment," he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Germany's Scholtz tried to caution, "What was agreed among ourselves and with each other from the very beginning also applies to the future, namely that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European countries or NATO states."
Everything Scholz ever said he wouldn't do, he did. He makes it a practice to cross his own red lines.
Quote:
Zakharova pointed out in this regard that just a month ago, the top French diplomat had denied that Paris was involved in recruiting mercenaries for the Kiev regime, slamming direct evidence as "crude R
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Macron wants to lead Europe on Ukraine, but France may not let him
French president faces blowback across the political spectrum for not ruling out a Western military presence in Ukraine.
All French opposition forces have already rounded on him. Marine Le Pen, on the far right, has pilloried his assertion that Western troops in Ukraine “shouldn’t be ruled out” as toying with “the lives of [France’s] children,” while far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said it was “madness” to pitch “one nuclear power against another nuclear power.” More mainstream forces, such as the Socialist Party and the conservative Les Républicains, also condemned the French president’s muscle-flexing.
https://www.politico.eu/article/macron-wants-to-lead-on-ukraine-but-fr
ance-might-not-let-him/
Macron, the daring cheese-eating surrender monkey, suggests a faint possibility of fighting Russians in Ukraine. The other monkeys screech, moan, and throw feces at Macron.
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 relishes NATO disarray after hasty denials of plan to deploy ground troops to Ukraine
PUBLISHED WED, FEB 28 2024, 5:00 AM EST
• Russia appears to be relishing the gaffe French President Emmanuel Macron made this week in suggesting that NATO countries discussed the possibility of Western ground troops being deployed in Ukraine, saying such an eventuality could not be “ruled out.”
• Macron’s suggestion was widely — and very publicly — rejected by NATO member countries Tuesday, leaving France looking isolated.
• Russian officials have commented widely on the situation, appearing to enjoy NATO’s division and France’s humiliation.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/28/russia-relishes-macron-humiliation-aft
er-nato-denial-on-ground-troops.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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Use profits from frozen Russian assets to arm Ukraine, says Ursula von der Leyen
European Commission head outlines plans for joint weapons procurement for Kyiv
By Henry Foy, Alice Hancock, Paola Tamma | Feb 28, 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/d6059942-eaf2-4e57-be03-7e589fe86a79
Ursula von der Leyen said windfall profits from Russian frozen assets should be used to buy weapons for Ukraine as discussions intensified between European allies about how to continue supporting the war-torn country.
The proposal comes amid a lack of consensus over the legality of using roughly €300bn in Russian sovereign assets frozen by G7 allies in response to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
“It is time to start a conversation about using the windfall profits of frozen Russian assets to jointly purchase military equipment for Ukraine,” the European Commission president said in a speech to EU lawmakers on Wednesday. “There could be no greater use for that money than to make Ukraine and all of Europe a safer place to live.”
The commission will present a formal proposal in two weeks, a person familiar with the discussion said.
Her statement is the first time the EU has linked the use of frozen Russian sovereign assets to potential weapons procurement as friction grows between western allies about how to provide financial and military support for Ukraine.
After French President Emmanuel Macron suggested that deploying western troops to Ukraine could not be ruled out, Berlin told Paris to instead “supply more weapons” for Kyiv.
Von der Leyen’s proposal will need unanimous approval from the EU’s member states, which have so far agreed only to set aside the windfall profits, not whether they can be used, or how.
France’s finance minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters at a G20 meeting in São Paulo “that the best use of those windfall profits remains to be discussed among the 27 member states”, adding that von der Leyen’s proposal is “a very interesting one”.
However, he said there was no legal basis for seizing Russian assets themselves.
“We don’t have the legal basis to seize the Russian assets, and we should never act if we don’t obey by international law and the rule of law,” he said.
Christian Lindner, Germany’s finance minister, told reporters in São Paulo that von der Leyen’s proposal was a “realistic step that is legally secure and which can be implemented quickly”, according to Reuters.
Previous discussions focused on moving the proceeds into the EU budget as a conduit for investing in Ukraine’s reconstruction. Using them for weapons could involve a different channel, such as the European Peace Facility or other EU mechanisms used to purchase ammunition directly from manufacturers, according to an EU diplomat involved in the discussions. That process is likely to take some time.
“There’s no rush. Member states want to tread very carefully on this given the potential political, legal and economic implications,” they said. “It’s a classic case of [von der Leyen] trying to push the envelope.”
A senior EU diplomat said: “We have agreed they should be dedicated to reconstruction ‘in particular’. Which gives us wriggle-room to use them for other things if there’s an emergency need, like weapons right now.”
Talks over an EU fund used to reimburse governments that supply weapons to Ukraine are also stuck because of disagreements over the rules governing the facility, with France restating its position that EU money should be used to purchase weapons made in the bloc.
In parallel, EU countries have been seeking to raise €1.5bn to buy foreign-made weapons for Ukraine under a Czech Republic-led fallback plan.
Ukraine has warned its allies that it is running perilously low on ammunition. Kyiv has said it particularly needs long-range weapons to damage Russia’s military logistics.
The US has been pushing its G7 allies to confiscate about €300bn of frozen Russian sovereign assets, the majority of which are held in Belgium. But EU coun
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After Russia invaded Ukraine, its seafood industry thrived
According to Stephanie Madsen, the head of the US-based At-Sea Processors Association, Russian fish made it through EU and US borders ultimately in disguise, under another country’s label.
Madsen testified in front of the US Congress that Russian fish exports also directly funded Moscow’s war in Ukraine. In 2023, newly-added Russian fish export duties and $3.97bn from auctions distributing pollock and crab fishing quota reportedly went to support Putin’s warfare.
“I think they would feel very uncomfortable if they thought that their fish sticks that they’re eating at home or the [fish] sandwich that they’re eating at lunch was made up of Russian pollock that was supporting the Russian regime in its war against Ukraine.”
Much more at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/fishy-business-after-russia-i
nvaded-ukraine-its-seafood-industry-thrived
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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Why Germany is Holding Back on Taurus Missiles
Chancellor Scholz does not want any German soldiers involved in the planning or combat of Russian targets, neither on site in Ukraine nor from Germany. Scholz said that "this clarity is necessary. I am surprised that some people ... don't even think about whether what we are doing could, so to speak, result in participation in the war."
For the Taurus missiles, German soldiers would have to either lead the attack operations in Ukraine on site or from a distance – with lots of additional effort – and also provide and continuously update highly classified data libraries with electronic identifications of enemy defense systems and much more.
Much more at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/why-germany-is-holding-back-on-ta
urus-missiles-insights-from-an-ex-colonel/ar-BB1j2774
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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Comedy in Combat Culture
Understanding the Use of Humor in Crisis and Conflict
By Maj. Sally Williamson, Australian Army | September-October 2023
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Editi
on-Archives/September-October-2023/Combat-Culture/
There are few leaders with a job more serious right now than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Yet, this emergent world leader still finds the odd occasion not to take himself too seriously. During an interview with David Letterman in an underground train station in Kyiv nine months after the large-scale Russian invasion, Zelensky joked:
Two Jewish guys from Odesa meet up. One is asking the other, “So what’s the situation? What are the people saying?”
And he goes: “What are people saying? They are saying it’s a war.”
“War? What kind of war?”
“Russia is fighting NATO.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, Russia is fighting NATO!”
“So, how is it going?
“What do you mean, how is it going? Seventy thousand Russian soldiers are dead. Missile stockpile has been almost depleted. A lot of equipment is damaged, blown up. That’s the situation.”
“And what about NATO?”
“What about NATO? NATO hasn’t even arrived yet!”
We can reconsider the Zelensky joke from the opening paragraph as both a stress-coping mechanism and a means of voicing dissatisfaction toward NATO. Although the subject of his joke is primarily Russia, there is a hint of deprecation toward his powerful Western-based allies. Zelensky makes his humorous yet poignant criticism in such a way that his message is clear and culturally acceptable given Ukraine’s position within the global hierarchy. His joke is appropriate and relatable, and he delivers it at a time and to both an internal and external audience who is ready to receive it.
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:
"Americans Are Being Lied To About Ukraine" - Tucker Carlson Reflects On Putin, Zelensky, Navalny & Nuclear War
Carlson explained that the West's escalation of the conflict long ago into a full-blown proxy war has not only resulted in more needless Ukrainian deaths, but it has been devastating for the United States. "I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective," Carlson told Fridman. "There’s a war going on that is wrecking the US economy in a way and at a scale that people do not understand."
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/tucker-carlson-gives-wide-rangi
ng-reflection-putin-interview-americans-are-being-lied
-----------
"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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A Financial Times (FT) investigation published on February 27, reportedly based on leaked classified Russian military documents from 2008-2014, outlines Russia’s purported criteria for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. FT reported that the documents show that Russia has war-gamed avenues for employing tactical weapons and alleged that the files show that Russia has a lower threshold for using nuclear weapons “if the desired result can’t be achieved through conventional means” than Russian officials have ever publicly admitted.[28] FT stated that the criteria for a nuclear response vary between “an enemy incursion on Russian territory” to more specific parameters, such as “the destruction of 20 percent of Russia’s strategic ballistic missile submarines.” FT noted that unspecified experts have confirmed that the documents remain relevant to Russian nuclear doctrine despite the fact that they are over a decade old. ISW cannot independently verify the legitimacy of the documents but has frequently observed that Russian actors invoke nuclear rhetoric and threats of nuclear weapons use to target the Western information space and instill concern aimed at weakening Western support to Ukraine.[29] It has long been established that Russian nuclear doctrine includes the option to use nuclear weapons in conventional wars at thresholds much lower than Western states.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-28-2024
[28] Leaked Russian military files reveal criteria for nuclear strike
https://www.ft.com/content/f18e6e1f-5c3d-4554-aee5-50a730b306b7
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 warns West that sending troops to Ukraine risks nuclear war
By Alexander Smith | Feb. 29, 2024, 6:41 AM CST
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/putin-warns-west-sending-troops-ukr
aine-risks-nuclear-war-rcna141089
“This is very dangerous because it could actually trigger the use of nuclear weapons,” he said. “Do they not understand that?”
The Russian leader said his strategic nuclear forces were at "full readiness" and suggested that a hypersonic nuclear weapon he first mentioned in 2018 was approaching a full state of readiness — a claim that cannot be verified.
Putin has often made such threats over the past two years since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But this week’s warning was, in the eyes of some observers, his most pointed to date.
On Monday, Macron caused a stir by suggesting that the West “should not exclude” the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine. This would be a huge practical and symbolic step for allied support of Kyiv, which has so far extended to providing billions of dollars for its defense but has deliberately stopped short of sending its own forces for fear of starting a direct war with nuclear-armed Russia.
The U.S. and others quickly poured cold war on the idea, with the White House saying that it had “been clear that the U.S. will not send troops to fight in Ukraine.”
Mark Galeotti, head of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence, and an honorary professor at the University College London, said Macron had handed Putin a “propaganda gift” because it boosted the Russian leader’s narrative that Moscow is fighting the West at large, rather than just Ukraine.
During Putin’s speech, “his reference to potential NATO deployments to Ukraine was less, in my opinion, about warning off the West so much as using it to reinforce his message that this is a struggle against the whole collective West,” Galeotti told NBC News. “Macron gave him something of a propaganda gift.”
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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Why Is Trump Trying to Make Ukraine Lose?
The former president isn’t in office—but is still dictating U.S. policy.
By Anne Applebaum | February 29, 2024, 6:15 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/one-global-issue-tru
mp-cares-about/677592/
Nearly half a year has passed since the White House asked Congress for another round of American aid for Ukraine. Since that time, at least three different legislative efforts to provide weapons, ammunition, and support for the Ukrainian army have failed.
Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker, was supposed to make sure that the money was made available. But in the course of trying, he lost his job.
The Senate negotiated a border compromise (including measures border guards said were urgently needed) that was supposed to pass alongside aid to Ukraine. But Senate Republicans who had supported that effort suddenly changed their minds and blocked the legislation.
Finally, the Senate passed another bill, including aid for Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and the civilians of Gaza, and sent it to the House. But in order to avoid having to vote on that legislation, the current House speaker, Mike Johnson, sent the House on vacation for two weeks. That bill still hangs in limbo. A majority is prepared to pass it, and would do so if a vote were held. Johnson is maneuvering to prevent that from happening.
Maybe the extraordinary nature of the current moment is hard to see from inside the United States, where so many other stories are competing for attention. But from the outside—from Warsaw, where I live part-time; from Munich, where I attended a major annual security conference earlier this month; from London, Berlin, and other allied capitals—nobody doubts that these circumstances are unprecedented. Donald Trump, who is not the president, is using a minority of Republicans to block aid to Ukraine, to undermine the actual president’s foreign policy, and to weaken American power and credibility.
For outsiders, this reality is mind-boggling, difficult to comprehend and impossible to understand. In the week that the border compromise failed, I happened to meet a senior European Union official visiting Washington. He asked me if congressional Republicans realized that a Russian victory in Ukraine would discredit the United States, weaken American alliances in Europe and Asia, embolden China, encourage Iran, and increase the likelihood of invasions of South Korea or Taiwan. Don’t they realize? Yes, I told him, they realize. Johnson himself said, in February 2022, that a failure to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine “empowers other dictators, other terrorists and tyrants around the world … If they perceive that America is weak or unable to act decisively, then it invites aggression in many different ways.” But now the speaker is so frightened by Trump that he no longer cares. Or perhaps he is so afraid of losing his seat that he can’t afford to care. My European colleague shook his head, not because he didn’t believe me, but because it was so hard for him to hear.
Since then, I’ve had a version of that conversation with many other Europeans, in Munich and elsewhere, and indeed many Americans. Intellectually, they understand that the Republican minority is blocking this money on behalf of Trump. They watched first McCarthy, then Johnson, fly to Mar-a-Lago to take instructions. They know that Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent figure at the Munich Security Conference for decades, backed out abruptly this year after talking with Trump. They see that Donald Trump Jr. routinely attacks legislators who vote for aid to Ukraine, suggesting that they be primaried. The ex-president’s son has also said the U.S. should “cut off the money” to Ukrainians, because “it’s the only way to get them to the table.” In other words, it’s the only way to make Ukraine lose.
Many also understand that Trump is less interested in “fixing the border,” the project he forced the Sena
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Republicans used to back Ukraine. Then came middle fingers in Alabama.
By Danielle Paquette | February 29, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/02/29/ukraine-support-alaba
ma-political-divide/
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — In the early days, long before Russia’s war entered its third year, drivers honked and smiled when Natalia Reznick stood by the roadside holding her handmade sign: “Support Ukraine.”
Then one afternoon in November (2023), a man lowered his truck window and flipped her off.
She might have dismissed that as a fluke if, a few weeks later, another man hadn’t approached her booth in a Trader Joe’s parking lot and asked, “Haven’t we given you enough money?”
“The hostility shocked me,” recalled Reznick, 44, whose late father was Ukrainian. “I felt it then — the shift.”
She had been trying to collect a couple hundred dollars for food and medicine — food and medicine! Yet somewhere along the way, even a stay-at-home mom’s little charity effort outside a northern Alabama grocery store became mired in another American culture clash.
To many Republicans here and across the country, “Support Ukraine” is now a liberal cause — a costly diversion from more pressing domestic issues, such as securing the southern border. Some think European allies should bear the responsibility for stopping Vladimir Putin’s takeover, casting Kyiv’s potential ruin as not America’s problem. Others suspect aid funds might be landing in the wrong pockets. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) claimed this month, without evidence, that U.S. tax dollars meant to help Ukrainian forces have vanished in an “enormous theft.” Then he slammed Ukraine as “one of the most blatantly, notoriously corrupt places in the world.”
It’s a far cry from the display of unity two years ago, when Putin launched his invasion and politicians from both sides of the aisle scrambled to arm Kyiv, Reznick thought. Billions of aid dollars flowed through her city, Huntsville, a defense industry hub with an Army base one local official called the “center of gravity for supporting the Ukrainians.”
Plenty of conservatives in this community, a purple dot in a sea of bright red, are proud of that distinction. The president of the county’s GOP men’s club, for instance, describes himself as a “Mitt Romney Republican” and openly blasts Putin an enemy of freedom.
The mood among the MAGA devotees, however, has lately veered toward mistrust, said Reznick, a Democrat. Her circle, she acknowledges, is a “progressive bubble,” but still, she had never dreamed of being confronted outside a Trader Joe’s or anywhere else in Huntsville.
She could understand why her neighbors wouldn’t want to spend money on a war overseas. She could understand heartbreak over this nation’s woes. But the nastiness? The way Tuberville had insulted an already battered Ukraine?
“It’s unbelievable,” she said.
By all accounts, her dad’s home country was losing ground to Russia and dangerously short on gear needed to fight back.
Tuberville was one of the two Republican senators from Alabama blocking that gear. They had opposed the latest foreign aid package that includes $61 billion for Ukraine, which was ultimately able to pass the Senate with bipartisan support, Reznick had noted with relief, yet now looked doomed to languish in the House.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has refused to bring the package up for a vote until “we take care of our own first,” raising concerns that it could be held up through spring, if it survives the congressional standoff at all.
Such resistance has become increasingly popular among right-leaning voters, according to a December poll from the Pew Research Center: Nearly half of Republicans said the United States, Kyiv’s single largest defense backer to date, is providing too much aid to Ukraine, a steep climb from the invasion’s earlier stages. Just 16 percent of Democrats shared that view.
Reznick blames the shift on former president Donald Trump, who has expressed admiration for Putin, criticized Ukrainian leader Volodym
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Fuck Ukraine.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Fuck Ukraine.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
Indeed.
-----------
"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:No. It's a phony cause, like our invasions and regime changes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya and our proxy wars in Syria and Georgia.
Originally posted by second:
Republicans used to back Ukraine. Then came middle fingers in Alabama.
By Danielle Paquette | February 29, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/02/29/ukraine-support-alaba
ma-political-divide/
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — In the early days, long before Russia’s war entered its third year, drivers honked and smiled when Natalia Reznick stood by the roadside holding her handmade sign: “Support Ukraine.”
Then one afternoon in November (2023), a man lowered his truck window and flipped her off.
She might have dismissed that as a fluke if, a few weeks later, another man hadn’t approached her booth in a Trader Joe’s parking lot and asked, “Haven’t we given you enough money?”
“The hostility shocked me,” recalled Reznick, 44, whose late father was Ukrainian. “I felt it then — the shift.”
She had been trying to collect a couple hundred dollars for food and medicine — food and medicine! Yet somewhere along the way, even a stay-at-home mom’s little charity effort outside a northern Alabama grocery store became mired in another American culture clash.
To many Republicans here and across the country, “Support Ukraine” is now a liberal cause —
Quote:continuing our proxy war of aggression against Russia
a costly diversion from more pressing domestic issues, such as securing the southern border.
Some think European allies should bear the responsibilityfor stopping Vladimir Putin’s takeover,
Quote:Because transparencyand accountability are lacking. This is like the well-known cash flood to Iraq and Afghanistan, which lined a lot of pockets and funded a number of NGO buildings on "Embassy row" but didn't rebuild or secure either nation..
casting Kyiv’s potential ruin as not America’s problem. Others suspect aid funds might be landing in the wrong pockets. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) claimed this month, without evidence,
Quote:
The Pentagon spent $62.3 billion in 2022 on Ukraine for weapons, ammunition, training, logistics, supplies, salaries and stipends, according to the Joint Strategic Oversight Plan for Ukraine Response report. Inspectors general for several agencies released the report in January.
The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development spent $46 billion for activities ranging from border security to basic government services such as utilities, hospitals, schools and firefighting. Other government agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, spent another $5 billion.
The report noted the difficulty U.S. agencies had accounting for the billions spent.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/19/oversight-ukra
ine-russia-military-aid/11271555002/
Quote:
that U.S. tax dollars meant to help Ukrainian forces have vanished in an “enormous theft.” Then he slammed Ukraine as “one of the most blatantly, notoriously corrupt places in the world.”
Because it is ....
Quote:
Ukraine climbs global corruption ranking: Country's current position revealed
Albania, Argentina, Belarus, Gambia, Ethiopia, and Zambia are one point ahead of Ukraine, scoring 37.
The rest of the article is just blah blah blah. But it starts out with a lot of propaganda.
-----------
"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 Duran did a good job of explaining why the EC wants to keep project Ukraine going, according to Tom Luongo: Eurobonds.
Background: The European Commission (EC) is an UNELECTED bureaucracy wanting to govern all of the EU nations, superceding each nation's trade, cultural, legal, agricultural, economic, military, financial, judicial, and foreign policies. Ursula van der Leyen (van der Crazy) and Brussels bureaucrats have been hankering for that centralized power for a long time. The one thing they DON'T have is the power to levy taxes on insitutions and individuals within the EU.
They're trying get around that is by issuing "Eurobonds" ...
Drats, busy. More later.
-----------
"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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Derailed by this...
Quote:
Pentagon Chief: If Ukraine Is Defeated, NATO Will Be At War With Russia
Thursday, Feb 29, 2024 - 07:45 PM
This is the single most important, dangerous and highly revealing statement from a top defense official in the West in a long time... It also demonstrates the precarious urgency of the moment and the huge stakes going into the November US election. The world truly stands on the precipice of a nuclear nightmare with the following fresh assertion of Biden's Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said before Congress on Thursday:
"If Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia," Austin stated.
What's more is that this came the very day that Russian President Vladimir Putin warned things could easily spiral toward nuclear war in the scenario that NATO sends troops to Ukraine.
According to the fuller context of the Pentagon chief's statements, he emphasized that more Washington funding is crucial for Ukraine in order to prevent a situation where "one country can redraw its neighbors’ boundaries and illegitimately take over its sovereign territory."
"We know that if Putin is successful here, he will not stop. He will continue to take more aggressive actions in the region ... Blah blah blah
What is even more alarming about this statement is that everyone now knows that Ukraine forces are in retreat at this very moment...
No.
What is REALLY alarming is that by now everyone who read or even heard about our weaponizing Ukraine SINCE 2014 knows that everything that Putin said about NATO, the USA, and the CIA is TRUE: WE provoked the war.
What is WITH these 'tards???
Is Ukraine part of NATO???
NO.
So??
Who the fuck believes these maroons anymore, anyway?
-----------
"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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Putin used his February 29 address to the Federal Assembly to attempt to convince the Russian public that his next term as president will be defined by Russian military success in Ukraine but not at the expense of stagnating or decreased social and economic welfare.
Putin claimed that the West is attempting to draw Russia into an arms race as the West successfully did with the Soviet Union in the 1980s to the detriment of the Soviet Union’s economy. Putin emphasized, however, that the Russian government is taking measures to develop the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) while increasing social and economic spending, likely in an effort to demonstrate to the Russian public that Russia has measures in place to avoid ballooned defense spending reminiscent of the Soviet Union before its collapse.
Putin also emphasized that Russia possesses weapons that can strike Western countries and claimed that Western escalation is threatening a possible nuclear conflict that could destroy civilization.[20] Putin and Russian officials frequently invoke nuclear threats to instill fear in Western audiences and weaken Western support for Ukraine.[21]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-29-2024
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Tucker Carlson Throws Putin Under the Bus
By Kaitlin Lewis | Feb 29, 2024 at 4:01 PM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-throws-putin-under-bus-1874897
Tucker Carlson bashed Russian President Vladimir Putin's justification for invading Ukraine, claiming that the "denazification" of the country was "one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard."
Speaking with host Lex Fridman in a podcast episode released Tuesday, Carlson discussed his controversial interview with Putin released earlier this month. The former Fox News star has faced mounds of backlash for meeting with the Kremlin leader, which was the first time Putin agreed to sit down for an interview with Western media personnel since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Putin and Carlson's interview touched on a long list of topics, from a long-winded Russian history lesson to Putin's thoughts on the next U.S. presidential election. Carlson also described his first impression of Putin as someone who "seemed nervous," telling Fridman that the Russian president "went into [the interview] like an over-prepared student."
Fridman specifically asked Carlson for his opinion on Putin's justification for continuing the war in Ukraine, which in part is to achieve the "denazification" of the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, has repeatedly dismissed the Kremlin's claims that Kyiv's government is openly "pro-Nazi."
"I thought it was one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard," Carlson told Fridman. "I didn't understand what it meant."
"I hate that whole conversation because it's not real," he continued. "It's just ad hominem. It's a way of associating someone with an evil regime that doesn't exist anymore."
Nazism, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, describes the body of doctrines held by the Nazi Party movement led by Adolf Hitler in Germany. According to Carlson, Nazism does not exist anymore because it "is inseparable from the German nation."
"I'm very anti-Nazi," he told Fridman. "I'm merely saying there isn't a Nazi movement in 2024. It's a way of calling people evil."
Newsweek reached out to the Kremlin's press office via email for comment.
Putin has also complained about his conversation with Carlson, telling Russian journalist Pavel Aleksandrovich Zarubin that he had prepared for the former television host to "behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions."
"I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way," Putin said.
The Russian leader also explicitly mocked Carlson during the interview, pointing fun at the fact that his attempts to get a job with the CIA were repeatedly unsuccessful.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov previously told reporters that Putin gave an interview to Carlson because "he has a position which differs" from other Western media."
Comments on the article:
Carlson is finally realizing that he got played.
So it took Tucker 3 or so weeks to figure this out? What a genius.
Looks like Tucker is not going to get a house in the same neighborhood as Tara Reade, Edward Snowden, and Steven Seagal after all.
Poor Russian trolls, they'll have to find a new spokesman. Never mind, we learned this week that the Kremlin spends 1.1 billion on propaganda, enough to afford the White House.
If you read the article, Tucker doesn't believe in Nazis, he thinks they cannot exist out of the context of the Third Reich. Now that's the dumbest thing I ever heard, especially from a current day Nazi like Tucker, who owes his success to promoting modern day nazism... wait, it's starting to make sense now... It's like that saying, “The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.”
After Putin savaged Tucker fo
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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned on Thursday that NATO will be drawn into war if Ukraine is defeated by invading Russian forces.
https://www.newsweek.com/nato-will-drawn-war-russia-if-ukraine-loses-l
loyd-austin-1874913
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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Fuck Ukraine. Fuck NATO. Fuck Lloyd Austin.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned on Thursday that NATO will be drawn into war if Ukraine is defeated by invading Russian forces.
https://www.newsweek.com/nato-will-drawn-war-russia-if-ukraine-loses-l
loyd-austin-1874913
I already posted this.
Why the repeat?
Is Ukraine in NATO????
NO???
Then WTF is he talking about?
He's just another one of those lying psycopaths who doesn't give a shit about America or Americans.
And why this urgent urgency for $$$$.
THE WAR IS LOST, DOOD. Throwing more $$$ at Ukraine isn't gonna help them, or us. It's just one last (corrupt) payday. Gotta throw $$ at your bought and paid for oligarchs, CIA assets, MIC colleagues, Eurocrats, and bankers. Right?
-----------
"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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Back to Eurobonds ....
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The Duran did a good job of explaining why the EC wants to keep project Ukraine going, according to Tom Luongo: Eurobonds.
Background: The European Commission (EC) is an UNELECTED bureaucracy wanting to govern all of the EU nations, superceding each nation's trade, cultural, legal, agricultural, economic, military, financial, judicial, and foreign policies. Ursula van der Leyen (van der Crazy) and Brussels bureaucrats have been hankering for that centralized power for a long time. The one thing they DON'T have is the power to levy taxes on insitutions and individuals within the EU.
They're trying get around that is by issuing "Eurobonds" ...
Drats, busy. More later.
The Eurocrats' problem (They always call for MOAR "EUROPE"!) is that the EC has a common currency and a central bank (European Central Bank, ECB) but no direct revenue stream, i.e. no power to tax individuals or corporations. In fact, the EU treaties specifically FORBID the ECB from issuing European bonds. They have a European stabilization fund" but that has to be agreed to by every Euro nation. Eurobonds would be different: issued by the ECB, but payout backed by non-democratcally imposed ECB taxes.
Eurobonds were first proposed in 2008 and several times since.
MERKEL (Germany) had been a cobble in the Eurocrats' shoe on that issue, and Germany, being the industrial powerhouse of Europe and the biggest source of growth and savings was able to block Eurobonds.
EUROCRATS THEREFORE NEEDED TO DESTROY GERMAN POWER AND THE GERMAN ECONOMY IN ORDER TO GRAB THAT POWER.
So Merkel retired, and a bunch of transnationalists and diehard Eurocrats were wedged into place. Just looked at the Green Party poopheads running Germany today! They are not only assenting to the destruction of Germany (why have they not raised a fuss about Nordstream?), some are actively participating.
Back to Eurobonds.
There was one "crisis" that led to Eurobonds, and that was the Covid crisis. (Climate shift is another "crisis" that TPTB are using to tighten control over populations.)
It was supposed to be a one-time thing, but bureaucrats whose sole goal is MOAR CONTROL use exceptions as precedents.
So now that Project Ukraine is going down the tubes, Eurocrats and Rothschild bankers (van der Leyen, Macron, Habeck, Baerbock etc.) are talking up the "spectre that is haunting Europe" (Russian invasion) to create a "European army" which must, of course, be funded and equipped using.... Eurobonds.
It has nothing to do with Russia. It's literally painting a "CRISES" to grab more taxes and more power, lower living standards, and squeeze more out of the average person.
"Never let a good crisis go to waste" indeed!
*****
This explains only part of the drive for Project Ukraine. There are many factions interested in the project, from
die-hard ideologues like the Kagan clan to
deepstate "interagency" actors who love the funding and prestige of moving and shaking the world, to
MIC reps embedded in the Pentagon whose interest is more mercenary, to
transnational financiers like BlackRock and Monsanto who were hoping for a big Russian, or at least Ukrainian payday, to
braindead politicians who believe what they read in the NYT (No, they don't have better sources of info, they and their staff read and believe press clippings just like most people.)
Right now TPTB are in panic mode. Some want to push this hobby-horse further (Eurobonds), others (CIA) have already burned their operations, some American conservative and European populist politicians sense that winds have shifted (huge demonstrations in Europe by farmers and truckers, USA border security). Blame-shifting between the Pentagon and the CIA. Fear of another Afghanistan-style collapse.
The one thing they can all agree on: MOAR $$$!
-----------
"It may be dangerous to b
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Quote:Modern Banzai Charge: Russian Troops Pile Onto Vehicles, Speed Toward Ukrainian Lines ... And Die.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And why this urgent urgency for $$$$.
THE WAR IS LOST, DOOD. Throwing more $$$ at Ukraine isn't gonna help them, or us. It's just one last (corrupt) payday. Gotta throw $$ at your bought and paid for oligarchs, CIA assets, MIC colleagues, Eurocrats, and bankers. Right?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/26/modern-banzai-russian
-troops-pile-onto-vehicles-speed-toward-ukrainian-lines--and-die-but-the-tactic-is-helping-russia-advance/?sh=3626e4c6b5ef
During World War II, Japanese troops often resorted to human-wave attacks they hoped would overwhelm Allied troops. The Allies labeled these attacks “banzai charges”—and responded by opening fire with machine guns and mortars.
Eighty years later in Ukraine, Russian troops are resorting to similar tactics. The difference now is that the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition, mostly owing to Russia-aligned Republicans in the U.S. Congress continuing to block U.S. aid to Ukraine.
Infantry-first “meat assaults” are nothing new in Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, but the tactics are evolving. Noting the Ukrainians’ desperate shortage of artillery ammo, the Russians are betting that back-to-back-to-back waves of troops, riding in or on infantry fighting vehicles, can deplete Ukrainian firepower faster than the Ukrainians can deplete Russian manpower.
The Ukrainian Center for Defenses Strategies noted the modern banzai tactics in fighting around west of the ruins of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. “A strike group, comprising 100 to 200 personnel on eight to 12 IFVs, rapidly advances to the front line of the Ukrainian defense forces and initiates an attack,” CDS explained.
“Due to a [Ukrainian] ammunition shortage, a segment of the assault group reaches the target and engages in combat. Concurrently, another assault group swiftly moves towards the battle area.”
“This tactic allows for a continuous build-up of effort but results in substantial enemy losses,” CDS concluded. “Up to 60 percent of armored vehicles in a single attack and up to half of the personnel. This also leads to increased casualties in the Ukrainian defense forces units, which is critical for them.”
The Russian army’s 70th Motor-Rifle Regiment deployed the tactic in Robotyne, in southern Ukraine, on Saturday. At least two BMP-3 tracked IFVs barreled into the devastated settlement—the southernmost Ukrainian position in Zaporizhzhia Oblast—and, firing as they moved, dropped off infantry who then sheltered in collapsed buildings.
The BMP-3s retreated, leaving the infantry to fight alone against the Ukrainian 65th Mechanized Brigade and its explosive drones. It seems there were few Russian survivors.
So the Russians tried again the next day, this time rolling three BTR-82 wheeled IFVs toward Robotyne. A Ukrainian mine popped one of the BTRs. A Ukrainian soldier reportedly from the 118th Mechanized Brigade hit a second BTR with a rocket-propelled grenade, at least temporarily halting the assault.
The banzai attacks are extremely costly for the Russians, and help to explain why the Russians are losing around 800 troops a day, according to the Ukrainian defense ministry. And why the Russians have, in the estimation of open-source analyst Andrew Perpetua, written off or abandoned 19 BMPs and BTRs in just the last two days.
In the first two years of the wider war, the Russians on average lost around 80 BMPs and BTRs per month. Lately, they’ve been losing them at a rate of hundreds per month. That’s attrition that even the Russians, with their large stocks of old Cold War vehicles, can’t sustain for very long.
It’s not for no reason the Kremlin has enough IFVs for maybe another year of hard fighting. At which point Russian troops will have to find other ways of riding into battle.
But in the short term, the modern banzai charges—however costly for the Russians—are working.
The Joss Whedon script for Se
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND
Modern Banzai Charge: Russian Troops Pile Onto Vehicles, Speed Toward Ukrainian Lines ... And Die.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/26/modern-banzai-russian
-troops-pile-onto-vehicles-speed-toward-ukrainian-lines--and-die-but-the-tactic-is-helping-russia-advance/?sh=3626e4c6b5ef
I HAVE SEEN NO SUCH THING ON MILITARY SUMMARY CHANNEL, WHICH POSTS EVERY CONCEIVABLE CLAIM TO, AND VIDEOS OF, ANY SORT OF UKRAINIAN "VICTORY". Simplicius is also good at linking to original sources/videos.
If this happened more than a couple of times, I'd know.
Stop posting bullshit.
Liar.
-----------
"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:Yevgeny Prigozhin was assassinated over the Russian Army's meat grinder tactics.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND
Modern Banzai Charge: Russian Troops Pile Onto Vehicles, Speed Toward Ukrainian Lines ... And Die.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/26/modern-banzai-russian
-troops-pile-onto-vehicles-speed-toward-ukrainian-lines--and-die-but-the-tactic-is-helping-russia-advance/?sh=3626e4c6b5ef
I HAVE SEEN NO SUCH THING ON MILITARY SUMMARY CHANNEL, WHICH POSTS EVERY CONCEIVABLE CLAIM TO, AND VIDEOS OF, ANY SORT OF UKRAINIAN "VICTORY". Simplicius is also good at linking to original sources/videos.
If this happened more than a couple of times, I'd know.
Stop posting bullshit.
Liar.
https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90436
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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With A Million Shells About To Ship, Ukraine’s Artillery Crisis Could End Soon
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/03/01/with-a-million-shells
-about-to-ship-ukraines-artillery-crisis-could-end-soon/?sh=53678c45a88f
In awkward fits and starts, Ukraine’s European allies finally are piecing together the financing and industrial resources to supply the Ukrainians with the artillery ammunition they need.
Several separate and parallel initiatives—a European Union arms deal, a Czech-led bulk ammo-purchase and a portfolio of bilateral deals between Ukraine and individual allied countries—should ship at least 700,00 shells over the next couple of months.
The Ukrainians might get, via Europe, more than a million shells this spring. And if Russia-friendly Republicans in the U.S. Congress finally end their blockade of U.S. aid to Ukraine in the next month or so, as seems likely, Ukrainian batteries could enjoy a windfall of way more than a million shells as spring turns to summer.
That’s not quite enough artillery ammunition to match Russia’s supply of ammo from its own factories and, more importantly, from North Korea. But it’s enough ammo for the Ukrainian armed forces at least to hold the line against Russia’s much larger armed forces. And maybe to begin planning for a new offensive.
Which country has more and better artillery ammunition might be the decisive factor as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its third year.
It was artillery parity, thanks to a U.S. purchase of a million South Korean shells, that allowed Ukraine to go on the attack last summer. And it was the abrupt end of U.S. aid—and the subsequent withholding of perhaps a hundred thousand shells this winter—that forced Ukraine to cede the battlefield momentum back to Russia.
Meanwhile, Russian’s offensive this year has been been sustained by the Kremlin’s purchase, from North Korea, of around 400,000 shells a month for four months in a row starting in September.
Notably, as many as half of the shells are duds, according to an official at Ukraine’s intelligence directorate. But despite the high dud rate, the Russians are firing around 10,000 shells a day all along the 600-mile front of their wider war. The Ukrainians are firing just 2,000 shells a day.
While the Ukrainians somewhat have compensated by flinging as many as 50,000 explosives-laden first-person-view drones every month for several months now, an FPV drone can’t fully replace a 155-millimeter shell. The drone might range two miles with a pound of explosives. The shell carries 25 pounds of explosives at least 15 miles.
Increasingly unafraid of Ukrainian howitzer batteries, Russian batteries have been massing, out in the open, for devastating salvos that level Ukrainian fortifications. With more ammo, the Ukrainian gunners could scatter the Russian gunners.
Republicans’ abrupt blockade of ammo supplies might not have been so devastating for Ukraine’s war plans had the European Union honored its pledge to supply Ukraine with a million shells in 2023.
Struggling to expand production without also investing a lot of money or political capital, E.U. countries ultimately shipped just half a million shells last year. It was an embarrassing betrayal—and one that E.U. officials only now are making right with a planned shipment of 170,000 shells through March.
At the same time, the United Kingdom, Finland and other NATO countries individually have pledged to Ukraine undisclosed quantities of shells through 2024. Perhaps a few thousand a month.
But it’s the Czech Republic that’s poised to reverse Ukraine’s artillery misfortunes. At the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 18, Czech defense policy chief Jan Jires shocked his audience when he announced his government had identified 800,000 artillery shells “sitting in non-Western countries.” Those countries apparently include South Korea.
The shells could be had for $1.5 billion.
“Most of these countries [are] unwilling to support Ukraine directly for political reasons so they need a middleman,”
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Ukraine is a fucking crisis.
Flush Ukraine down the toilet.
--------------------------------------------------
Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND
Modern Banzai Charge: Russian Troops Pile Onto Vehicles, Speed Toward Ukrainian Lines ... And Die.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/26/modern-banzai-russian
-troops-pile-onto-vehicles-speed-toward-ukrainian-lines--and-die-but-the-tactic-is-helping-russia-advance/?sh=3626e4c6b5ef
I HAVE SEEN NO SUCH THING ON MILITARY SUMMARY CHANNEL, WHICH POSTS EVERY CONCEIVABLE CLAIM TO, AND VIDEOS OF, ANY SORT OF UKRAINIAN "VICTORY". Simplicius is also good at linking to original sources/videos.
If this happened more than a couple of times, I'd know.
Stop posting bullshit.
Liar.
SECOND: Yevgeny Prigozhin was assassinated over the Russian Army's meat grinder tactics.
https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90436
More crap from a source that breathes, drinks, and shits lies 24/7/365.
So, you're saying that Proghozin was assassinated .. by the Kremlin, no less ... because of the Kremlin's own military policy???!
How does that even pass the laugh test?
THE RUSSIAN ARMY DID NOT WANT TO TAKE BAKHMUT. It was supposed to be grind the Ukrainian Army.
Prigozhin, for his own reasons, decided he wanted to "take" Bakhmut, against orders. In fact, before the Bakhmut operation was over, Russian command was so disturbed by what he was doing they forbade him from recruiting from prisons anymore.
The Russian army uses a variety of tactics.
One is strategic: they attrit the Ukrainian army throughout it's entire depth of operation. From its ports and bridges and railways to the west and south, all the way to Ukraine's eastern front.
They prepare battlefields ahead of time, with artillery, flamethrower, heavy bombs and/or drones before they engage.
That way, once they engage the UA they never encounter its full force.
I've seen several approaches. One is where the Russian army advances, engages, and then pulls back, drawing the UA forward into a prepared fire sack. Rabotyno and Stepove have been crossed by each side many many times, but each time, the UA army loses more and more soldiers. Russian army also likes to prepare "cauldrons", but they never close it completely. They leave an opening through which the UA pours in more reinforcements, only to have them slaughteed.
It's much, much easier for the Russians to defend than to attack, so they like to provoke attacks in a time and place of their choosing. "Active defense" is what they call it. "Toying with the mouse" is what it looks like to me.
Unlike the UA, Russia rarely commits to defending, or taking, a particular territory "at all costs". That's why they withdrew from Kherson and Kharkov.
I'm not sure what their threshold is ... it's probably numeric, like casualties per day ... but they will definitely stop attacking in a certain area if UA defenses are too strong. The only committed advances I've seen were Mariupol, Bakhmut (and that wasn't supposed to happen. The Russian army wound up too far forward of its defenses after that), and Avdeevka. And Avdeevka fell because it took a tremendous pounding by heavy bombs.
Anyway, you keep passing on tropes and memes that are really just laughable lies.
Eventually if we keep believing in, and operating on, lies, we will fail majorly.
I think we're there, and for whatever part you played in cheerleading on a ridiculous policy, you're to blame. One would almost think you want to see the USA destroyed.
-----------
"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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Europe Battles Powder Shortage To Supply Shells For Ukraine
By Tom Barfield | March 1, 2024
https://www.barrons.com/news/europe-battles-powder-shortage-to-supply-
shells-for-ukraine-0173c7d0
Production of artillery shells is a key contest between Ukraine's allies and Russian invaders
Hard-to-find gunpowder is hindering Europe's scramble to provide hundreds of thousands of shells for Ukraine's defensive effort against Russian invaders, with solutions only starting to emerge.
"We have all become aware of the need to face up to the scarcity of some components, especially gunpowders," French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday after a gathering of Kyiv's allies in Paris.
"Powder is really what's lacking today," he added.
Gunpowder goes into propellant charges that hurl artillery shells -- such as the NATO-standard 155-millimetre projectiles used in many guns sent to Ukraine -- over distances of tens of kilometres.
"A simple explosive artillery shell has three parts. It has a steel casing, a high-explosive main charge and a detonator" usually set to trigger the blast on impact, said Johann Hoecherl, a munitions expert at the German armed forces university in Munich.
"Propellant charges are usually separate, because (gunners) will take one or two, up to six or even eight" depending on the desired range, he added.
While the propellant is still referred to as gunpowder "it's not powder at all these days, it's made up of rods or pellets", Hoecherl said.
In a video on its website, German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall illustrates stackable propellant cylinders filled with explosive pellets slotting in behind a shell in the breech of a cannon.
Rheinmetall – 155mm Artillery Modular Charge System
Europe counts a very small number of powder producers, said Jean-Paul Maulny, deputy director of France's Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS).
They include firms like Eurenco, with operations in France, Belgium and Sweden, and Nitrochemie, majority-owned by Rheinmetall, with sites in Germany and Switzerland.
With many countries pushing to bring production home, France "is in the process of relocating part of Eurenco's production to Bourges" around 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Paris, Maulny said.
"This is one of the bottlenecks for munitions," he added. "The top question is the quantity of production."
EU internal market commissioner Thierry Breton told reporters in Paris Friday that the bloc also faced challenges finding the raw materials for gunpowder.
"To make powder, you need a specific kind of cotton, which mostly comes from China," he said.
Nitrocellulose, also known as guncotton, is a key ingredient in gunpowder manufacture.
"Would you know it, deliveries of this cotton from China stopped as if by chance a few months ago," Breton added.
China and Russia have in recent years ramped up economic cooperation and diplomatic contacts, and their strategic partnership has grown closer since the invasion of Ukraine.
In Russia this week, China's Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong declared relations "are at their best period in history".
Breton said that "Nordic countries have found a substitute for the Chinese cotton... innovation is at work, precisely to meet the need for powder, because... we have problems today with powder capacity".
Companies producing the substitute ingredients for powder would be among those selected for grants under the EU's Act In Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) to be announced next week, Breton said.
Breton predicted that EU efforts to boost artillery shell output would bring the bloc's annual production capacity to between 1.5 million and 1.7 million by the end of this year.
He estimated that the equivalent figure for Russia was "a little below two million".
"Everyo
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Ukraine and the Netherlands signed a 10-year bilateral security agreement on March 1.[24] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that the Netherlands announced that it would provide 2 billion euros (about $2.17 billion) in military aid to Ukraine in 2024 and additional security assistance over the next 10 years.[25] Zelensky stated that the bilateral security agreement prioritizes assistance in air defense and artillery systems and naval and long-range weapons.[26]
The Dutch MoD also announced that it is increasing its contribution to the Czech initiative to provide artillery shells to Ukraine from 100 million euros (about $108 million) to 250 million euros (about $271 million).[28]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-1-2024
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on March 1 that documents it obtained of the draft treaty from the 2022 Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations indicate that both sides initially agreed that Ukraine would be a “permanently neutral state that doesn't participate in military blocs.”[1]
The draft treaty also reportedly banned Ukraine from receiving any foreign weapons or hosting any foreign military personnel. The WSJ reported that Russia pushed for the Ukrainian military to be limited to 85,000 soldiers, 342 tanks, and 519 artillery systems, whereas Ukraine wanted the caps to be 250,000 soldiers, 800 tanks, and 1,900 artillery systems. Russia also reportedly demanded that Ukrainian missiles be limited to a range of 40 kilometers, a range that would allow Russian forces to deploy critical systems and materiel close to Ukraine without fear of strikes. The Kremlin has repeatedly called for the “demilitarization” of Ukraine since its full-scale invasion but has not previously provided details on what that would specifically entail.[2]
The Ukrainian military in 2014 – before Russia’s first invasion – consisted of about 130,000 personnel, and the documents from 2022 indicate that Russia intended to drastically reduce Ukraine’s military to such a level that Ukraine could no longer defend itself.[3]
Russian President Vladimir Putin has most recently emphasized the idea of a “demilitarized” or “sanitary” zone in Ukraine that would place Russian territory – including occupied Ukraine – out of range of both Ukrainian frontline artillery systems and Western-provided long-range systems.[4] Putin likely aims for the ”demilitarization” of Ukraine to allow him to enforce his will upon Ukraine without any substantial resistance.
Reported details of the draft treaty suggest that Russia intended to use the treaty to set conditions for future attacks against Ukraine while also prompting the West to make concessions on Ukraine’s sovereignty. The WSJ reported that the United States, United Kingdom, China, France, and Russia were to be guarantors of the treaty.[5] Russia also reportedly wanted to include Belarus as a guarantor. The guarantor states were supposed to “terminate international treaties and agreements incompatible with the permanent neutrality of Ukraine,” including military aid agreements. The WSJ did not specify if other non-guarantor states would have to terminate their agreements with Ukraine as well, although this is likely considering that the treaty would ban Ukraine from having foreign-supplied weapons. It is unclear what Russia considers to be “incompatible” with a permanently “neutral” Ukraine, although the Kremlin most certainly would have broadly interpreted this as forbidding Ukraine from joining NATO, which is stipulated by Ukraine’s constitution, thereby likely demanding that Ukraine amend its constitution.[6]
Russia reportedly wanted all guarantors to agree on a response should Ukraine be subject to any attacks, but the WSJ stated that the guarantor states were unlikely to agree on a response should Russia attack Ukraine again – likely due to the guarantor states’ diverging interests. This stipulation likely intended to allow Russia to influence, predict, and prepare for the international response to any possible future Russian attacks on Ukraine. ISW continues to assess that any ceasefire would benefit Russia, giving it time to reconstitute and regroup for future offensive operations.[7]
Russia’s territorial objectives beyond the areas it occupied in 2022 likely prevented Russia and Ukraine from agreeing on the status of Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine in April 2022. The WSJ reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were to hold “face-to-face talks” to discuss areas of eastern Ukraine that Russian forces have occupied since 2014, but that this meeting never took place.[8] The need for Putin and Zelensky to discuss the matter independently and separately suggests that the Russian and Ukrainian negotiating delegations were unable to reach a
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German Soldiers not needed for Taurus deployment in Ukraine: Bundestag refutes Scholz's claim
By Daria Shekina | Germany, Fri, March 01, 2024 - 22:43
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/soldiers-not-needed-for-taurus-deploym
ent-1709325830.html
The statement by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the presence of German troops in Ukraine is mandatory for deploying long-range Taurus missiles there is untrue, says the head of the European Committee in the Bundestag, Anton Hofreiter.
He notes that Scholz's claims regarding the Taurus missiles "clearly do not correspond to reality."
As an example, Hofreiter explains that South Korea has 260 Taurus missiles at its disposal, but there are no Bundeswehr soldiers there.
"The chancellor is clearly lying," he adds.
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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