REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Thursday, October 31, 2024 13:46
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PAGE 11 of 149

Thursday, May 5, 2022 6:29 PM

SECOND

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


Yale University historian Timothy Snyder about his latest article for The New Yorker, "The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War."

Snyder writes about the colonial history that laid the foundations for the Russian war in Ukraine, such as Russia's imperial vision and how leaders including Hitler and Stalin have aimed to conquer Ukrainian soil on different premises.

"The whole history of colonialism … involves denying that another people is real. It involves denying that another state is real," says Snyder.

"That is, of course, the premise of Russia's invasion of Ukraine."



When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state, he is speaking the familiar language of empire.

For five hundred years, European conquerors called the societies that they encountered “tribes,” treating them as incapable of governing themselves.

As we see in the ruins of Ukrainian cities, and in the Russian practice of mass killing, rape, and deportation, the claim that a nation does not exist is the rhetorical preparation for destroying it.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-war-in-ukraine-is-a-colonial-
war


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

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Friday, May 6, 2022 6:22 AM

SECOND

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


Gen. Jack Keane predicts how the Russia-Ukraine war will end

I think the Russians have to come to the realization that actually occupying a significant amount of territory in Ukraine is likely not going to happen. The Ukrainians, they have an opportunity here to push the Russians out. They're going to need a significant amount of support, in my calculation, just on artillery alone. Because the Russians - the one thing they do well is artillery. And the thing that kills artillery is artillery. We're going to have to send them a lot to be able to do that - a lot more than we've already sent any other nations. There is opportunity there. But at the end of the day, it'll be probably likely that there'll be some kind of stalemate, hopefully with the Ukrainians taking back most of their territory. The opportunity is there for them to do it.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/gen-jack-keane-predicts-russia-ukraine-w
ar-end


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

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Friday, May 6, 2022 10:30 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Gen. Jack Keane predicts how the Russia-Ukraine war will end

I think the Russians have to come to the realization that actually occupying a significant amount of territory in Ukraine is likely not going to happen. The Ukrainians, they have an opportunity here to push the Russians out. They're going to need a significant amount of support, in my calculation, just on artillery alone. Because the Russians - the one thing they do well is artillery. And the thing that kills artillery is artillery. We're going to have to send them a lot to be able to do that - a lot more than we've already sent any other nations. There is opportunity there. But at the end of the day, it'll be probably likely that there'll be some kind of stalemate, hopefully with the Ukrainians taking back most of their territory. The opportunity is there for them to do it.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/gen-jack-keane-predicts-russia-ukraine-w
ar-end


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



Don't worry. We're voting the NeoCons out of office too.

4 months ago, dipshit second would have agreed with me that we dont' need to be spending all this money on war. Now he quotes Fox News.

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

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Friday, May 6, 2022 11:40 AM

SECOND

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


U.S. intelligence helps Ukraine kill Russian generals

The United States has provided intelligence about Russian units that has allowed Ukrainians to target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war, according to senior American officials.

Ukrainian officials said they have killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines, a number that has astonished military analysts.

The targeting help is part of a classified effort by the Biden administration to provide real-time battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. That intelligence also includes anticipated Russian troop movements gleaned from recent American assessments of Moscow’s secret battle plan for the fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, the officials said. Officials declined to specify how many generals had been killed as a result of U.S. assistance.

The United States has focused on providing the location and other details about the Russian military’s mobile headquarters, which relocate frequently. Ukrainian officials have combined that geographic information with their own intelligence — including intercepted communications that alert the Ukrainian military to the presence of senior Russian officers — to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian officers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/us/politics/russia-generals-killed-
ukraine.html


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

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Friday, May 6, 2022 11:55 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Nobody cares.

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

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Friday, May 6, 2022 12:26 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I see SECOND is jonesing for war, again.

Hey, SECOND, why don't YOU go to Kiev and help them out? You could help direct their war effort/relay orders from USA neocons. Or better yet, go to the front lines and show 'em how it's done.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Friday, May 6, 2022 2:58 PM

SECOND

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


Vladimir Putin’s propagandists explain the new meaning of Nazism: Anyone who is anti-Russian, and especially if they’re from Ukraine.

According to state TV, modern-day Nazis are not necessarily antisemitic at all, but anti-Russian, which apparently means Russians are the new Jews or something.

The propagandists on state TV, which has become a cauldron of foaming rage and historic victimhood during two months of war in Ukraine, are not letting up. On Thursday, on Vladimir Solovyov’s nightly show on Rossiya-1, a guest explained the new definition of Nazism.

“Nazism doesn’t necessarily mean antisemitism, as the Americans keep concocting. It can be anti-Slavic, anti-Russian,” said Solovyov, a sanctioned Kremlin propagandist who has had two villas seized on Italy's Lake Como.

“Of course,” replied political scientist Elena Ponomareva. “Today we are seeing substantive steps to revive a global Nazi project. And why is this a global Nazi project? Because Ukraine is the place where this revival starts, but not without the support of Great Britain, the United States, the European Union etc...”

Twisting the definition just a bit further, Ponomareva described a process of “antisemitism not just against Russians but against anything connected with Russia”—with Ukraine the spawning ground for a new army of “Orcs” including those members of the Azov Regiment fighting to the end at Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant.

The debate on the meaning of Nazism is more than just a sideshow for Kremlin ideologists. Since sending in his army in tanks and trucks into Ukraine bearing a Swastika-style “Z” insignia, Putin’s assertion of political control inside Russia itself has come straight out of the fascist textbook. Those who are not with us must be against us, is the refrain—and since we are fighting Nazis our enemies must also be considered Nazis.

Kamil Galeev, a Russian historian and fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center think tank whose Twitter threads have become a must-read during the conflict, said that for Putin’s propagandists the term Nazi “is first and foremost a racial or cultural traitor who could be Russian but refused to”—what is sometimes called a “vyrus’” or Russian-hating Russian.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-propagandists-explain-new-meaning
-of-nazism-and-its-got-nothing-to-do-with-jews


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

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Friday, May 6, 2022 6:26 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


American propagandists explain the new meanings of

Propaganda, fake news (anything "they" say)

True news (anything "we" say)

Sex (there are many!)

Extremists (anyone not onboard with the Biden* agenda)

Nazis (Russians)

Hitler (Putin)

Democracy (government by money)

Inflation (growth!)

Etc etc




-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Friday, May 6, 2022 8:06 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
American propagandists explain the new meanings of

Propaganda, fake news (anything "they" say)

True news (anything "we" say)

Sex (there are many!)

Extremists (anyone not onboard with the Biden* agenda)

Nazis (Russians)

Hitler (Putin)

Democracy (government by money)

Inflation (growth!)

Etc etc

I read your list and laughed. You react backwards to everything, Signym. I asked myself 'Are there others like Signym?' There are! Here:

Why Do Russians Never Smile? Finally, an explanation for Bitchy Resting Face Nation.

By Olga Khazan https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/05/culture-and-smilin
g/483827
/

Here’s something that has always puzzled me, growing up in the U.S. as a child of Russian parents. Whenever I or my friends were having our photos taken, we were told to say “cheese” and smile. But if my parents also happened to be in the photo, they were stone-faced. So were my Russian relatives, in their vacation photos.

So why is this? Why do some societies not encourage casual smiling? I got my answer, or at least part of one, when I stumbled across a new paper by Kuba Krys, a psychologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Krys focused on a cultural phenomenon called “uncertainty avoidance.” Cultures that are low on this scale tend to have social systems—courts, health-care systems, safety nets, and so forth—that are unstable. Therefore, people there view the future as unpredictable and uncontrollable.

Smiling is a sign of certainty and confidence, so when people in those countries smile, they might seem odd. Why would you smile when fate is an invisible wolf waiting to shred you? You might, in those “low-UA” countries, even be considered stupid for smiling.

Krys also hypothesized that smiling in corrupt countries would be, um, frowned upon. When everyone’s trying to pull one over on each other, you don’t know if someone’s smiling with good intentions, or because they’re trying to trick you.

To test this theory, Krys had thousands of people in 44 different countries judge a series of eight smiling and non-smiling faces on a scale of honesty and intelligence. He compared their answers to the country’s rankings of uncertainty avoidance from a 2004 study of 62 societies and ratings of corruption.

He found that in countries like Germany, smiling faces were rated as significantly more intelligent than non-smiling people. But in—you guessed it—Russia, the smiling faces were considered significantly less intelligent. Even after controlling for other factors, like the economy, there was a strong correlation between how unpredictable a society was and the likelihood they would consider smiling unintelligent.

Ranking countries in order of their uncertainty avoidance can be kind of fraught. Confusingly, there’s an entire other ranking system of uncertainty avoidance, designed by a different researcher named Geert Hofstede in the 1980s, and the two rankings have completely different results. You know what they say about trying to understand Russia with the mind alone, and apparently questionnaires aren’t a whole lot better.

Russia cannot be understood with the mind alone,
No ordinary yardstick can span her greatness:
She stands alone, unique –
In Russia, one can only believe. – Fyodor Tyutchev

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fyodor_Tyutchev

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

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Friday, May 6, 2022 8:57 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

SECOND:
I read your list and laughed. You react backwards to everything, Signym.



Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
American propagandists explain the new meanings of

Propaganda, fake news (anything "they" say)

True news (anything "we" say)

Sex (there are many!)

Extremists (anyone not onboard with the Biden* agenda)

Nazis (Russians)

Hitler (Putin)

Democracy (government by money)

Inflation (growth!)

Etc etc


So, you're saying that

Our M$M DOESN'T define their own news as "true" and everything else as "fake" conspiracy theory, but diligently considers all points of view and conducts it's own thorough investigations?

Putin ISN'T some sort of strongman "new Hitler" but is instead a wise President defending Russians security?

Genetically there are almost always two sexes (XX and XY) with only rare mixups (XXX, XXY, etc)?

Russians are NOT racist brutes but civilized well-informed citizens of the world?

People who disagree with the Biden* agenda are not neo-Confederate white supremacists or traitors, but patriots who love the USA and want to see it strong, free, and prosperous?

Wow, that's quite a change of heart, SECOND! I'm glad you've come to your senses!




-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Friday, May 6, 2022 9:12 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

The Ukrainian artillery team was moving into position in the northern Donbas region, along the front line near Izium. The soldiers did not even have time to orient their guns before they were found by a Russian drone.

The first Russian 152 mm shells – fired by howitzers more than 10 miles away – landed near the Ukrainian guns. As the artillery team ran for safety, its vehicle was hit and set on fire.

The driver, badly wounded, veered straight into bushes as shells rained down. The survivors escaped on foot, across open fields.

Roman, a young artilleryman with a short patchy beard, recalled the events from a darkened military hospital room in Kramatorsk, his eyes glazed and an intravenous drip in his left arm, as he recovered from blast concussion. He gave only his first name, in keeping with Ukrainian military rules for wounded soldiers.

The biggest surprise for him? “That I am still alive here, after that shelling,” he says listlessly, closing his eyes and lying back on his bed.
...
Russia has escalated its shelling in an apparent bid to advance on the eastern region both from the Izium axis in the north and up from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south. The pincers movement seeks to cut off some of Ukraine’s most battle-hardened forces ..
...
In Roman’s unit the driver is dead, the commander is in intensive care, another artilleryman has shrapnel wounds, and the rest are concussed, like Roman.
...
“Their artillery never, never stops,” says the deputy commander of Ukraine’s Donbas Battalion, a major who only gave the nickname Kot (Cat). He spoke in Sloviansk with a balaclava covering his face, as an air raid siren wailed across the city.

“They are changing their strategy, but it is still what we would expect from Russia,” says Major Kot. There are no more long, vulnerable columns: “They are sending recon units, then shell with artillery, and then send tanks,” he says. “If those tanks are destroyed, they send more tanks.”
...
“We really have a lack of heavy artillery,” says Ukrainian Sgt. Viktor Davydov, still wired and speaking quickly of Ukraine’s needs, after returning to the town of Druzhkivka from the front, where he says Russian artillery strikes continue “24/7.”

“When Russia sends incoming 200 shells, we send back 10 shells,” says Sergeant Davydov, who wears sunglasses, a pistol on his thigh, and a skull shoulder patch in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag.

His job is to take freshly mobilized men to the front “to show them not to be afraid,” and to teach them “how to dig in and make very effective defensive positions” to compensate for the firepower imbalance with Russia.

“I tell them that all they have to do is hold our line, and not retreat,” says Sergeant Davydov. The cost can be high. The sergeant recalls 10 recruits in late April being sent to him one night at 11 p.m. By 6 a.m. two were dead and three wounded by Russian artillery.


https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2022/0504/Russian-war-s-Phase-2
-How-Ukraine-troops-adapt-giving-little-ground


Originally found in a larger article at https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/ukraines-forces-are-told-to-hold
-the-line-where-russian-artillery-is-pulverizing-them.html


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Friday, May 6, 2022 10:29 PM

SECOND

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


KYIV, Ukraine, May 6 (Reuters) - Amnesty International said on Friday there was compelling evidence that Russian troops had committed war crimes, including extrajudicial executions of civilians, when they occupied an area outside Ukraine's capital in February and March.

Civilians also suffered abuses such as "reckless shootings and torture" at the hands of Russian forces during their failed onslaught on Kyiv in the early stages of the invasion launched by the Kremlin on Feb. 24, the rights group said in a report.

"These are not isolated incidents. These are very much part of a pattern wherever Russian forces were in control of a town or a village," Donatella Rovera, Amnesty's senior crisis response adviser, told a news conference in Kyiv.

Information collected by the group "can be used, hopefully, for holding the perpetrators to account, if not today, one day in the future", she said.

Russia, which calls its invasion a "special operation" to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists, denies its forces committed abuses.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/amnesty-says-evidence-shows-russi
an-troops-committed-war-crimes-near-kyiv-2022-05-06
/

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

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Friday, May 6, 2022 11:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Any "news" outfit that is going to look you straight in the face and tell you that men and women with mental issues are the opposite sex while their genitalia says otherwise and also tell you that you need to call people with other mental issues by their preferred non-male/female pronouns isn't going to be taken seriously on their opinions of war either.

Until the day that there is a little bit of sanity injected into the 2020's, everything they have to say about anything is sus.

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

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Saturday, May 7, 2022 3:26 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


HRW made up gripping,detailed stories about Qaddafi's "crimes" which were entirely fictitious.

OPCW upper-ups rewrote a report to say that "Assad gassed his own people" and it wasn't until a technical whistleblower came forward that we heard THEY thought it was staged.

Ex MI6, the Justice Department and its minions in the FBI lied endlessly about Trump!Russia!collusion!

After all of these international community lies by government and NGO establishment, do you really think I give a rats ass what Amnesty International says?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Saturday, May 7, 2022 7:56 AM

SECOND

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


What happened to Sergei Lavrov? Foreign ministers come in one of two types: those who matter and those who don’t. Most foreign ministers do a lot of flying and cocktailing but never remap borders, ignite wars or end them. And when such dramas do happen, the foreign ministers are mostly supporting actors in someone else’s show.

But when Russian leaders turn to antisemitism, it means things are going bad, and are set to get worse.

In Russia there is a time-honored formula for changing the subject: talk about the Jews.

That is what the tsars did when they failed to give their people the opportunities and dignity that the era’s competing empires offered in abundance. That was the context in which one of antisemitism’s most notorious tools, the pogrom, was engineered by tsarist officials, and that’s how its literary companion, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was concocted by tsarist spooks.

The tsarist number was then repeated by the Soviet Union, in 1967.

Pressed to explain its Middle Eastern clients’ defeat and their Soviet-made equipment’s trouncing, the Kremlin launched a massive antisemitic assault through its vast network of print and broadcast media, all of which now depicted Israel as a colonialist bloodsucker, imperialist stooge and fascist scourge.

Today’s Kremlin is, fortunately, distant from that legacy. However, Lavrov’s quip to Italian TV that “the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews” and that Hitler was partly Jewish is a throwback to the mindset that drove it.

Judging by recent days’ commotion, Lavrov might think he actually changed the subject. Well that’s also what the tsars thought in their days, and the Communists in theirs, only to soon see that reality remained stubbornly unchanged, and grim.

In fact, the more the regime abused the Jews the more it lost control of events. That is why we know that just like the pogroms didn’t prevent tsarism’s downfall, and just like defaming Israel didn’t prevent Communism’s collapse, Lavrov’s antisemitic broadsides will not offset his Ukrainian defeat.

https://www.jpost.com/international/article-706001

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

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Saturday, May 7, 2022 8:05 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:

After all of these international community lies by government NGO establishment, do you really think I give a rats ass what Amnesty International says?

Is that your answer to Russian war crimes? Denial that crimes were committed? Call everybody a liar? Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy responds: “All of these crimes will be answered, legally and quite practically – on the battlefield.”

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

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Saturday, May 7, 2022 10:40 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Nobody cares.

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

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Saturday, May 7, 2022 1:11 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

SignyM:

After all of these international community lies by government NGO establishment, do you really think I give a rats ass what Amnesty International says?

SECOND: Is that your answer to alleged Russian war crimes?



Yep. Same as my answer to Saddam's ALLEGED "WMD", and Assad's ALLEGED "war crimes", and Qaddafi's ALLEGED "crimes against humanity" and Trump's ALLEGED "collusion" (whichever word or phrase you care to use.)

Maybe if you weren't such a sociopathic liar you'd have more respect for truth.
And maybe if you lived by truth (instead of the lies you tell yourself) you wouldn't be so fucked up in the head.


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Saturday, May 7, 2022 7:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.




-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Saturday, May 7, 2022 11:40 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


From that thumbnail I think the most interesting thing going on in Ukraine is that puppet President* Z finally found a suit.

Guess he still can't find a shirt and tie to go along with it though, huh?

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

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Sunday, May 8, 2022 10:32 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Early, more sober prediction of Russian over confidence and potential failure in Ukraine... by a Russian Colonel

Predictions of bloodthirsty political scientists

About enthusiastic hawks and hasty cuckoos

About the author: Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok - ex-head of the group of the 1st direction of the 1st directorate of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, Colonel

https://nvo-ng-ru.translate.goog/realty/2022-02-03/3_1175_donbass.html

Some representatives of the Russian political class today argue that Russia is able to inflict a crushing defeat on Ukraine in a few hours (and shorter periods are also mentioned) if a military conflict breaks out. Let's see how such statements correspond to reality.

In the expert community of Russia, the opinion has recently taken root quite strongly that it will not even be necessary to send troops to the territory of Ukraine, since the Armed Forces of this country are in a deplorable state.
Some political analysts emphasize that a powerful Russian fire strike will destroy almost all surveillance and communication systems, artillery and tank formations. Moreover, a number of experts conclude that even one crushing blow from Russia will be enough to end such a war.

As a cherry on the cake, some analysts emphasize the fact that no one in Ukraine will defend the “Kyiv regime”.

NO EASY WALK
Let's start with the last one. To assert that no one in Ukraine will defend the regime means, in practice, complete ignorance of the military-political situation and the mood of the broad masses of the people in the neighboring state. Moreover, the degree of hatred (which, as you know, is the most effective fuel for armed struggle) in the neighboring republic in relation to Moscow is frankly underestimated. No one will meet the Russian army with bread, salt and flowers in Ukraine.

It seems that the events in the south-east of Ukraine in 2014 did not teach anyone anything. Then, after all, they also expected that the entire left-bank Ukraine, in a single impulse and in a matter of seconds, would turn into Novorossia. We have already drawn maps, estimated the personnel of future administrations of cities and regions, and developed state flags.

But even the Russian-speaking population of this part of Ukraine (including such cities as Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol) did not support such plans in their vast majority. The project "Novorossiya" was somehow imperceptibly blown away and quietly died.

In a word, the liberation campaign in 2022, following the model and likeness of 1939, will not work out in any way. In this case, the words of the classic of Soviet literature Arkady Gaidar are more true than ever: “It is clear that we will now have not an easy battle, but a hard battle.”

"BY A SMALL BLOOD, A POWERFUL BLOW"
Now about the "powerful fire strike by Russia", which allegedly will destroy "practically all surveillance and communication systems, artillery and tank formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine."

This expression alone shows that only political workers could say such a thing. For reference: in the course of hypothetical military operations on the scale of a theater of operations, strikes are carried out on priority targets and massive fire strikes. Note that in the course of operational-strategic planning, the epithets “powerful” (as well as “medium”, “weak”, etc.) are not used.

Military science emphasizes that strikes can be strategic (this mostly applies to strategic nuclear forces), operational and tactical. According to the number of forces involved and objects hit, strikes can be massive, group and single. It is still better not to introduce or use other concepts, even in works of a political science nature.

Attacks on priority targets and massive fire strikes can be carried out within the front (fronts on the western borders of Russia have not yet been formed) or the main command of the armed forces in the theater of operations (so far, one has not been created in the South-Western strategic direction either). Anything less than that is no longer a massive hit.

And what is, for example, a massive fire strike (MOA) of the front? To begin with, we note that the maximum number of combat-ready forces and means of aviation, missile troops and artillery, electronic warfare equipment at the disposal of the commander of the front forces (operational-strategic formation) is involved in the MOU. The MOU consists of one massive air sortie, two or three launches of OTP and TR missile systems, and several artillery fire raids. Well, if the degree of fire damage to the enemy is 60-70%.

What is the most important thing in this matter in relation to the conflict with Ukraine? Of course, the MOU will inflict heavy losses on a potential enemy. But to expect to crush the armed forces of an entire state with just one such blow means to show simply unbridled optimism in the course of planning and conducting combat operations. In the course of hypothetical strategic actions on the theater of operations, such MOUs will have to be applied not one or two, but much more.

It must be added by all means that the reserves of promising and high-precision weapons in the RF Armed Forces are not of any unlimited nature. Hypersonic missiles of the Zircon type are not yet in service. And the number of Kalibr (sea-launched cruise missiles), Kinzhals, Kh-101 (air-launched cruise missiles) and Iskander missiles is measured in the hundreds at best (tens in the case of Kinzhals).

This arsenal is absolutely not enough to wipe out a state the size of France and with a population of more than 40 million from the face of the Earth. Namely, Ukraine is characterized by such parameters.

ABOUT AIR SUPERIORITY
Sometimes it is asserted in the Russian expert community (by fans of the Douai doctrine) that since the hypothetical military operations in Ukraine will take place under the conditions of complete dominance of Russian aircraft in the air, the war will be extremely short and will end in the shortest possible time.

At the same time, it is somehow forgotten that the armed formations of the Afghan opposition during the conflict of 1979-1989 did not have a single aircraft and not a single combat helicopter. And the war in this country dragged on for as much as 10 years. The Chechen fighters did not have a single aircraft either. And the fight against them lasted for several years and cost the federal forces a lot of blood and casualties.

And the Armed Forces of Ukraine still have some kind of combat aircraft. As well as means of air defense.
By the way, the Ukrainian crews of the anti-aircraft missile forces (by no means Georgian ones) significantly pinched the Russian Air Force during the 2008 conflict. After the first day of hostilities, the leadership of the Russian Air Force was in frank shock from the losses incurred. And you shouldn't forget about it.

Now about the thesis "The Armed Forces of Ukraine are in a deplorable state." Of course, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have problems with aviation and modern air defense systems. But the following must also be acknowledged. If until 2014 the Armed Forces of Ukraine were a fragment of the Soviet army, over the past seven years a qualitatively different army has been created in Ukraine, on a completely different ideological basis and largely on NATO standards. And very modern weapons and equipment are being supplied and continue to be supplied to Ukraine from many countries of the North Atlantic Alliance.

As for the weakest point of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - the Air Force. It cannot be ruled out that the collective West may, in a fairly short time, supply Kyiv with fighters, as they say, from the presence of the armed forces - in other words, second-hand. However, this second-hand, in terms of its tactical and technical characteristics, will be quite comparable with the majority of aircraft in the Russian fleet.

Of course, today the Armed Forces of Ukraine are significantly inferior to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in terms of their combat and operational capabilities. No one doubts this, neither in the East nor in the West.
But this army cannot be taken lightly either. In this regard, one must always remember the testament of Alexander Suvorov: "Never despise your enemy, do not consider him stupider and weaker than you."

Now with regard to the assertion that Western countries will not send a single soldier to die for Ukraine.
It should be noted that this is likely to be the case. However, in the event of Russia's invasion, this does not at all rule out massive assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the collective West with a wide variety of weapons and military equipment and bulk deliveries of all kinds of materiel. In this regard, the West has already shown a consolidated position, unprecedented until now, which, it seems, was not predicted in Moscow.

There is no doubt that the United States and the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance will begin a kind of reincarnation of Lend-Lease, modeled after the Second World War, there is no doubt. An influx of volunteers from the West, which can be very numerous, is not ruled out.

PARTISANS AND UNDERGROUND
And finally, about the duration of a hypothetical campaign. In the Russian expert community, several hours are called, sometimes even several tens of minutes. At the same time, it is somehow forgotten that we have already gone through all this. The phrase "take the city with one airborne regiment in two hours" has already become a classic of the genre.

It is also worth recalling that the mighty Stalinist NKVD and the multi-million Soviet army fought the nationalist underground in Western Ukraine for more than 10 years. And now there is an option that the whole of Ukraine can easily go into the partisans. In addition, these formations can easily begin to operate already on the territory of Russia.

The armed struggle in large Ukrainian cities is generally difficult to predict. It is common knowledge that the big city is the best battlefield for the weak and less technically advanced side of the armed conflict.

Serious experts emphasize that in a metropolis it is possible not only to concentrate a grouping of thousands and even tens of thousands of fighters, but also to hide it from the superior firepower of the enemy. And also to supply it with material resources for a long time and make up for losses in people and equipment. Neither mountains, nor forests, nor jungles today provide such an opportunity.

Experts are convinced that the urban environment helps the defenders, slows down the movement of the attackers, allows you to place a record number of fighters per unit area, and compensates for the lag in forces and technologies. And in Ukraine there are more than enough large cities, including those with a million inhabitants. So the Russian army in the course of a hypothetical war with Ukraine may meet with far more than just Stalingrad and Grozny.

FINDINGS

In general, there will be no Ukrainian blitzkrieg. The statements of some experts such as “The Russian army will defeat most of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 30-40 minutes”, “Russia is able to defeat Ukraine in 10 minutes in the event of a full-scale war”, “Russia will defeat Ukraine in eight minutes” have no serious grounds.

And finally, the most important thing. An armed conflict with Ukraine is currently fundamentally not in Russia's national interests. Therefore, it is best for some overexcited Russian experts to forget about their hatred fantasies. And in order to prevent further reputational losses, never remember again.

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Monday, May 9, 2022 8:51 AM

SECOND

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


"You are fighting for the motherland," Putin told his troops on May 9th.

Putin accused Ukraine of seeking to attain nuclear weapons and planning a "punitive operation in the Donbas, for an invasion of our historical lands, including Crimea." He also laid blame on the West for refusing to have "an honest dialogue" about Russia's demands for formal guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the alliance will pull back its forces from countries in eastern Europe that joined after the Cold War.

"Thus, an absolutely unacceptable threat was systematically created for us and directly at our borders," Putin added. "The danger was growing everyday."

The Russian leader claimed that attacking Ukraine "was a forced, timely and only right decision -- the decision of a sovereign, strong, independent country."

"Russia has given a preemptive rebuff to aggression," he said.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-defends-ukraine-invasion-ma
rking-wwii-victory/story?id=84586995


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

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Monday, May 9, 2022 9:09 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
"You are fighting for the motherland," Putin told his troops on May 9th.

Putin accused Ukraine of seeking to attain nuclear weapons and planning a "punitive operation in the Donbas, for an invasion of our historical lands, including Crimea." He also laid blame on the West for refusing to have "an honest dialogue" about Russia's demands for formal guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the alliance will pull back its forces from countries in eastern Europe that joined after the Cold War.

"Thus, an absolutely unacceptable threat was systematically created for us and directly at our borders," Putin added. "The danger was growing everyday."

The Russian leader claimed that attacking Ukraine "was a forced, timely and only right decision -- the decision of a sovereign, strong, independent country."

"Russia has given a preemptive rebuff to aggression," he said.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-defends-ukraine-invasion-ma
rking-wwii-victory/story?id=84586995





The Irony is that for a country and culture that lies so often, they are terrible at it. Lazy people think lying is a refuge. They'd rather lie than do the work of being ethical or virtuous, or even to simply, "figure things out." You can see it in their military on so many levels.

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Monday, May 9, 2022 9:58 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:

The Irony is that for a country and culture that lies so often, they are terrible at it. Lazy people think lying is a refuge. They'd rather lie than do the work of being ethical or virtuous, or even to simply, "figure things out." You can see it in their military on so many levels.

Lies certainly have gotten America into trouble. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster wrote the book Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

Download the free book from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.blue/search.php?req=H.R.+McMaster

From the Preface:

Despite scores of books on the subject, the why and how of direct U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War remains unclear. The war continues to capture the public interest in part because, looking back, its cost seems exorbitant—and would seem so even if the United States had “won.” The war took the lives of fifty-eight thousand Americans and well over one million Vietnamese. It left Vietnam in ruins and consumed billions of American dollars, nearly wrecking the American economy. Vietnam divided American society and inflicted on the United States one of the greatest political traumas since the Civil War. Indeed, the war’s legacies proved to be as profound as the war was traumatic. It led Americans to question the integrity of their government as never before. Thirty years later, after the end of the Cold War, the shadow of the American experience in Vietnam still hangs heavy over American foreign and military policy, and over American society.

Hopefully, there will someday be a Russian version of "The Lies That Led to the Ukraine War".

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

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Monday, May 9, 2022 10:28 AM

THG


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:

"You are fighting for the motherland," Putin told his troops on May 9th.

Putin accused Ukraine of seeking to attain nuclear weapons and planning a "punitive operation in the Donbas, for an invasion of our historical lands, including Crimea." He also laid blame on the West for refusing to have "an honest dialogue" about Russia's demands for formal guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO and that the alliance will pull back its forces from countries in eastern Europe that joined after the Cold War.

"Thus, an absolutely unacceptable threat was systematically created for us and directly at our borders," Putin added. "The danger was growing everyday."

The Russian leader claimed that attacking Ukraine "was a forced, timely and only right decision -- the decision of a sovereign, strong, independent country."

"Russia has given a preemptive rebuff to aggression," he said.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/putin-defends-ukraine-invasion-ma
rking-wwii-victory/story?id=84586995





The Irony is that for a country and culture that lies so often, they are terrible at it. Lazy people think lying is a refuge. They'd rather lie than do the work of being ethical or virtuous, or even to simply, "figure things out." You can see it in their military on so many levels.





The German defeat was not exclusive to Russia as Putin portrays for propaganda purposes. Aside from the west, all the countries that were swallowed by Russia that then made up the Soviet Union, also contributed to Germanys’ loss.

T



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Monday, May 9, 2022 10:35 AM

THG


Be ready to learn twenty-two thousand Russia troops have been surrounded in Izyum. Hey comrades kiki and signym, Putin says send money.

Too funny, can you see me laughing comrades, cause I'm a laughing.

T



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Monday, May 9, 2022 1:03 PM

THG


T


Former Russian Prime Minister says Putin is 'losing strength'



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Monday, May 9, 2022 2:14 PM

SECOND

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


Has Putin shown us his off ramp?

In his speech yesterday, Putin did not declare a mobilization, or even lay the groundwork for one. Instead, he seemed to be laying the groundwork for a cease fire that would involve only rhetorical concessions from Ukraine and NATO.

Putin’s bottom line: Ukraine stays out of NATO, and Crimea remains in Russian hands (or perhaps he would even accept genuine self-determination for Crimea). NATO reiterates that its only concerns are defensive.

Putin will not be able to claim victory in a war of territorial conquest, but he can claim a victory in a defensive war against unprovoked aggression.

If this is right, we should allow Putin to save face and go home. We should not threaten him with prosecution (prosecuting others involved in war crimes is fine). As long as he remains in charge of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, deposing him is beyond our capability, and in any event his successor in the event of a collapse of his regime may be even worse than he is.

In the longer run, perhaps this catastrophic war will persuade Russians that their inclination towards authoritarianism is unjustified and they should work to rejoin democratic Europe. It will soon become clear that the consequences of isolation will be catastrophic for Russia. We should make clear that we would welcome them back into the democratic fold. Things could certainly go badly wrong, but after resisting any optimism on the war for weeks I really do see a path forward that is far from endless war and war crimes and totalitarian domination for Ukraine.

More at https://angrybearblog.com/2022/05/has-putin-shown-us-his-off-ramp

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

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Monday, May 9, 2022 2:21 PM

SECOND

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


The US sees “anecdotal reports” of Russian troops and “mid-grade officers at various levels, even up to the battalion level” refusing to obey orders to move forward in the new Donbas offensive in Ukraine, according to a senior US defense official.

The official said these officers “have either refused to obey orders or are not obeying them with the same measure of alacrity that you would expect an officer to obey.”

Russian forces have struggled with widespread morale problems since the beginning of the invasion, according to this official.

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-09-22/
h_dbac40d3209526677220c80431a10322


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

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Monday, May 9, 2022 2:33 PM

THG


Quote:

Originally posted by second:

The US sees “anecdotal reports” of Russian troops and “mid-grade officers at various levels, even up to the battalion level” refusing to obey orders to move forward in the new Donbas offensive in Ukraine, according to a senior US defense official.

The official said these officers “have either refused to obey orders or are not obeying them with the same measure of alacrity that you would expect an officer to obey.”

Russian forces have struggled with widespread morale problems since the beginning of the invasion, according to this official.

https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-09-22/
h_dbac40d3209526677220c80431a10322


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



T


Ukraine War: 'The next few weeks will be critical'



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Wednesday, May 11, 2022 1:42 PM

SECOND

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


Stop Falling for Russia’s Delusions of Perpetual Victory

May 10, 2022, 12:46 PM

By Mart Kuldkepp, associate professor of Scandinavian history and politics at University College London.

Much of the West’s commentary on Russia’s war against Ukraine has fallen victim to critical blind spots or inherent biases—an approach often claimed as “realism” but which has little to do with academic international relations theories. As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion continues, it’s time to consider what a better approach to punditry on Russia’s war against Ukraine would look like.

To be sure, I am not a neutral observer—in fact, I couldn’t possibly be more pro-Ukraine. My view is shaped by being an Eastern European academic working at an elite Western university. But as a researcher who specializes in how people make sense of ongoing conflicts, I believe pointing out some of these biases and blind spots can help us make better sense of the war.

The biggest blind spot of all is the Ukrainians themselves. More than two months into the invasion, it is striking how little agency Ukrainians are habitually given in analyzing unfolding events. The realist (in reality, colonialist) understanding of Ukraine as a passive periphery, the fate of which must be inevitably decided by Russia and the West, has led to underestimations of the role of the Ukrainian armed forces, civil society, national and local governments, and, most of all, Ukraine’s strong will to resist.

Russian aggression is not impersonal, Western assistance is not automatic, and T-72 Russian battle tanks don’t pop off their turrets by accident. This is Ukraine’s new war of independence, a nation-shaping conflict that will define the country’s sense of identity for generations, and Ukrainians have the central role in it.

The best way to mitigate for this is to follow and read Ukrainian journalists, politicians, academics, and others commenting on the war as well as amplify their voices and contributions. Don’t assume that Ukrainians are untrustworthy because they must be biased or are producing and repeating their own forms of propaganda because they are one of the parties to the conflict.

In fact, Ukrainians often know what is going on best exactly because they are there on the ground in the thick of it. Ukrainian reporters, analysts, and commentators have constantly been more accurate and insightful than almost any Western ones, both in 2014 with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and now. The early casualty numbers that were widely treated as Ukrainian propaganda have in fact been largely borne out. So too have early reports of the sinking of the Russian flagship Moskva, denied by Russia, proved to be accurate.

Ukrainians aren’t passive victims of Putin’s aggression who are looking for Western pity and handouts. They are, in fact, looking for recognition that they share a common cause with the West and that the West needs to do its part, not simply free ride on Ukrainian efforts (and, effectively, their lives).

Then there’s the blind spots around Russia itself. Putin’s Russia believes itself to be a major economic and military power, feared and respected around the globe. It is also obsessed with its glorious history, especially with the Great Patriotic War, as it calls World War II, and is convinced that it can somehow never be defeated on the battlefield. These ideas get regularly repeated by Western commentators, especially on the far left. Some more egregious examples include Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis claiming that “Ukraine cannot win this war” and that the West has a “moral duty to give Putin a way out” as well as American political activist Noam Chomsky pointing out that former U.S. President Donald Trump was the “one Western statesman” with a “sensible” plan to limit NATO expansion and establish a security accommodation with Russia.

But this is all Russian propaganda, and you should approach it as such.

Actual data about Russia’s economy is available, and anyone can look it up. Anyone can read the history of World War II, including the story of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which allied the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany and divided up Eastern Europe between the two alliance partners. Throughout its history, Russia has been defeated in multiple wars, from the Crimean War and Russo-Japanese War to the Soviet-Afghan War and the First Chechen War, and there is nothing to make its defeat unthinkable in the current one.

But propaganda works in subtle ways, and Russian talking points are often repeated even by people who are pro-Ukraine and against the war. When you come across claims like “Russia will win in the end,” “this war will drag on for years,” “China will come to Russia’s help,” or “Russia will use weapons X and Y,” approach them critically. The overestimation of Russia’s military and economic strength (and underestimation of Ukraine’s) is a major reason why the West was hesitant before the invasion and did not provide Ukraine with the weapons that would have helped save many lives. Persistently overestimating Russia’s capabilities continues even after its failings have been brutally exposed on the battlefield.

Then there’s fearmongering over Russia’s nuclear weapons and the idea that they could be used at any moment. Yes, people claim Russia will use maybe not its full nuclear barrage but some form of a “tactical nuclear weapon” in the battlefield. The argument, implicit or explicit, is that Putin is a madman and will press the red button regardless of the danger of Western retaliation! As put by lawyer and military historian John Storey: “I fear [Putin] will use nuclear weapons, but not against the West. If Russia’s conventional forces continue to struggle in Ukraine, the use of tactical nuclear weapons in that country seems more plausible.”

This sort of talk comes close to scaremongering. Firstly, there are no tactical nuclear weapons in this war because there are no suitable tactical targets like tank columns or aircraft carriers that Russia might conceivably want to attack in this way. As Geneva-based Russian nuclear forces analyst Pavel Podvig pointed out, “the only way nuclear weapons could be used in this war is to kill a lot of people or to show resolve to do so,” such as in the same way they were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. This will constitute strategic use and elicit a Western response in kind. Secondly, if Putin is a madman, then his madness is oddly rational. It only kicks in under certain circumstances. In fact, his behavior and pronouncements—including the absence of any further escalatory rhetoric in his Victory Day speech—strongly suggests that Putin is not a madman but an aging dictator, very afraid of COVID-19, who dearly cares about the survival of his regime and himself. Whatever danger a military defeat in Ukraine would entail for Putin, this danger would be easier to weather than a Western nuclear response.

Finally, there’s the question of the role of the collective West: the international pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian coalition of Western actions that are constantly being portrayed as risking the line of peace with Russia or as provocative. NATO’s enlargement into Eastern Europe—almost two decades ago and very much part of the initiative of Eastern European states themselves—is constantly being called out for having provoked Russia’s invasion, and the decisions to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons were in most cases taken only after much prevarication.

But the West isn’t a neutral party here—and for good reason. Russia has waged a criminal war of aggression, and the West has a clear interest in defeating it. It also abides by Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which very clearly asserts “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

Western states are not neutral. Instead, the West is, at least for the time being, properly characterized as a nonbelligerent. This term was in use during World War II to designate countries that did not participate in the fighting but openly supported and favored one of the belligerent sides. The United States before Pearl Harbor was probably the best example of nonbelligerency; it had already imposed an oil embargo on Japan for its aggression in China and was vigorously supporting the United Kingdom and Soviet war effort. As the U.S. case demonstrates, a nonbelligerent can turn into a belligerent when circumstances demand it.

Everyone needs to exercise their critical and moral faculties when thinking and talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine—including about claims like the ones I’ve made in this article. Exercise source criticism, and trust the voices that have made accurate predictions in the past. But most of all, listen to the people affected by and fighting against this invasion: Ukrainians.

Mart Kuldkepp is associate professor of Scandinavian history and politics at University College London.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/05/10/russia-blind-spots-ukraine-propag
anda
/

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

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Wednesday, May 11, 2022 3:34 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Everyone needs to exercise their critical and moral faculties when thinking and talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine...



I agree. And until any one of you chucklefucks start doing so, you should all just shut the fuck up.

Nobody gives a shit about Russia or Ukraine.

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

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Wednesday, May 11, 2022 5:16 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Everyone needs to exercise their critical and moral faculties when thinking and talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine...



I agree. And until any one of you chucklefucks start doing so, you should all just shut the fuck up.

Nobody gives a shit about Russia or Ukraine.

If you count this comment, three times on this one page you told us 'nobody cares'. You keep telling everybody that you don't care.

All the Trump voters I know are saying 'nobody cares' about what the Trump voter doesn't care about. This is all subjects, not solely Russia/Ukraine. They all act like other people are eating the Trump voter's food, owing money to the Trump voter, and have to follow the Trump voter's rules or else the Trump voter will be angry at them, telling them 'nobody cares'. Trump voters keep telling everybody to shut-up because the Trump voter wants to be in charge. Then Trump voter makes threats about what they will do after the next election. The Trump voter's enemies will rue the day the topic 'nobody cares' about was mentioned.

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

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Thursday, May 12, 2022 9:16 AM

SECOND

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


World War II Is All That Putin Has Left

In the official accounts, the Red Army soldier did not brutalize civilians, rape women, or loot property. Famously, a staged photograph of soldiers waving a Soviet flag on top of the Reichstag in May of 1945 had to be doctored, because one of them was wearing two wristwatches (they were stolen from Germans; Soviet soldiers typically did not own several wristwatches). Many years later, when another British historian, Antony Beevor, published archival evidence of looting — children as young as 12 traveled to Berlin for that purpose — and the mass rape of 2 million German women, the Russian ambassador to the U.K. accused him of “lies, slander, and blasphemy.”

But plenty of Russians already knew the truth. Stories of the horrors of the war, experienced by veterans as well as those who stayed at home, were passed down within families. Ambivalent memories persisted. Not long after the war ended, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, himself a former member of the Red Army battalions that had rampaged across the German region of East Prussia, composed a poem describing what he had witnessed:

The little daughter’s on the mattress,

Dead. How many have been on it

A platoon, a company perhaps?

A girl’s been turned into a woman,

A woman turned into a corpse.

This year’s World War commemoration had a rote, empty quality, as if the Russian state is no longer capable of offering its citizens anything more than cardboard nostalgia — but also as if it assumes those citizens need little else. President Vladimir Putin made a short, dishonest speech about his invasion of Ukraine, just barely alluding to the costs and casualties. Soldiers waved Soviet flags. Spectators saw less military equipment than last year (and no air show at all), but tanks, trucks, and intercontinental ballistic missiles still paraded across Red Square. Mini celebrations unfolded around the country, at least one featuring Russian children singing, “Uncle Vova, we are with you” — Uncle Vova being Putin — followed by one-armed salutes. Even as Russia carries out a brutal war of aggression, one in which Russian soldiers are once again committing terrible crimes against a civilian population, the whole occasion was permeated with a sense of grievance, as if Russia were the only real victim of both conflicts.

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20220511151159/https://www.theatlantic.com
/ideas/archive/2022/05/putin-speech-ukraine-invasion-soviet-union/629825
/

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

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Thursday, May 12, 2022 9:25 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Everyone needs to exercise their critical and moral faculties when thinking and talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine...



I agree. And until any one of you chucklefucks start doing so, you should all just shut the fuck up.

Nobody gives a shit about Russia or Ukraine.

If you count this comment, three times on this one page you told us 'nobody cares'. You keep telling everybody that you don't care.



I'll say it a million times more.

If we were riding high in the 90's economy, people would be able to afford the time and mental energy to care.

It's 2022, the economy is shit, and people don't have time or mental energy for the Neo-Con/Neo-Lib war machine and lies about countries half a world away.

You keep pretending like you give a shit about Russia and Ukraine all the way until November and wake up on the morning of November 9th and wonder how the hell Democrats got destroyed so thoroughly even though Republicans overturned Roe v Wade in the SCOTUS.


Nobody gives one single shit about Russia or Ukraine.

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

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Thursday, May 12, 2022 10:22 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Everyone needs to exercise their critical and moral faculties when thinking and talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine...



I agree. And until any one of you chucklefucks start doing so, you should all just shut the fuck up.

Nobody gives a shit about Russia or Ukraine.

If you count this comment, three times on this one page you told us 'nobody cares'. You keep telling everybody that you don't care.



I'll say it a million times more.

If we were riding high in the 90's economy, people would be able to afford the time and mental energy to care.

It's 2022, the economy is shit, and people don't have time or mental energy for the Neo-Con/Neo-Lib war machine and lies about countries half a world away.

You keep pretending like you give a shit about Russia and Ukraine all the way until November and wake up on the morning of November 9th and wonder how the hell Democrats got destroyed so thoroughly even though Republicans overturned Roe v Wade in the SCOTUS.


Nobody gives one single shit about Russia or Ukraine.

I heard the same defeatism and silliness from my own grandmother. When Apollo landed on the moon, she did two things: said it was a waste of tax-payer money that should go to people like herself and, the cherry on top, said it was all a lie. She said nobody cares and nobody landed on the moon. The moon-landing was all fakery by a hidden conspiracy. Grandma was ahead of her time. She would fit in well with today's Trump voters.

That is how I have always seen a large portion of Americans: they whine about the money government spends, claim it is wasted when not spent on them, claim that whatever happened didn't actually happen and what didn't happen actually did happen. Everything gets turned upside down and backwards by the kind of people who, once upon a time, voted for Nixon and, if they had lived, would have voted for Trump. I found it completely unsurprising that grandma didn't prosper or even live very long. Neither did grandpa. Those two couldn't see their low expectation future which was dreadfully obvious to teenage me. My sisters and I did not want to end up like our grandparents, which is why all three of us ran far away from our extended family. The ones that didn't run, didn't do well, but they do vote for Trump.

Looking back 50 years after they died, at all myriad details of their lives, theirs looks exactly like the life of the angry poor white trash who vote for Trump and defend him.

P.S. Grandma and grandpa had a two-story house, all paid for, a farm, a car, the whole she-bang. They believed they were doing great. I know they weren't because I and my sisters have gone back and looked.

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

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Saturday, May 14, 2022 6:09 AM

SECOND

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


Poland is next, after Ukraine

18:18 13.05.2022
The State Duma proposed to put Poland in line for denazification

MOSCOW, May 13 - RIA Novosti. The Polish leadership's statements about Russia "as a cancerous tumor" and about indemnities to Ukraine encourage the Russian Federation to "put it in line for denazification," said Oleg Morozov, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Control.

"By its statements about Russia as a 'cancer tumor' and about the 'indemnity' that we must pay to Ukraine, Poland encourages us to put it in first place in the queue for denazification after Ukraine," Morozov wrote in his Telegram channel.

Earlier, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in a Telegraph column that he considers the Russian world "a cancer that poses a deadly threat to the whole of Europe", in his opinion, it needs to be "eradicated". Also, Polish President Andrzej Duda said that Russia would be forced to pay indemnity to Ukraine.

Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal "the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out "demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine", to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for "bloody crimes against civilians" in Donbass.
https://ria.ru/20220513/polsha-1788409643.html

OSINTdefender @sentdefender tweeted:
The Russian State Duma has proposed that after the Invasion of Ukraine, that Poland be invaded and denazified next due to their clear Support for “Nazi Elements” in Ukraine and around the World while also providing Aid to Ukraine that results in the death of Russian Troops.
1:07 PM · May 13, 2022·Twitter for iPhone
https://twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1525176043539144704

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

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Saturday, May 14, 2022 9:59 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Everyone needs to exercise their critical and moral faculties when thinking and talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine...



I agree. And until any one of you chucklefucks start doing so, you should all just shut the fuck up.

Nobody gives a shit about Russia or Ukraine.

If you count this comment, three times on this one page you told us 'nobody cares'. You keep telling everybody that you don't care.



I'll say it a million times more.

If we were riding high in the 90's economy, people would be able to afford the time and mental energy to care.

It's 2022, the economy is shit, and people don't have time or mental energy for the Neo-Con/Neo-Lib war machine and lies about countries half a world away.

You keep pretending like you give a shit about Russia and Ukraine all the way until November and wake up on the morning of November 9th and wonder how the hell Democrats got destroyed so thoroughly even though Republicans overturned Roe v Wade in the SCOTUS.


Nobody gives one single shit about Russia or Ukraine.

I heard the same defeatism and silliness from my own grandmother.



It's not defeatism. It's realism.

Fail to see the difference between the meaning of those two words at the peril of your party.

Tick Tock

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

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Tuesday, May 17, 2022 12:01 PM

SECOND

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


The international humanitarian group Human Rights Watch released stunning details of the carnage in Chernihiv and Kyiv that Russia left behind. It stated in a report released Tuesday morning that it is currently investigating 22 potential summary executions, nine other unlawful killings, six possible kidnappings, seven cases of torture and 21 reported incidents of other forms of “unlawful confinement in inhuman and degrading conditions” carried out by Russian forces against civilians in those regions.

“The numerous atrocities by Russian forces occupying parts of northeastern Ukraine early in the war are abhorrent, unlawful, and cruel,” Giorgi Gogia, associate Europe and Central Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “These abuses against civilians are evident war crimes that should be promptly and impartially investigated and appropriately prosecuted.”

More at https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2022-05-17/russian-c
arnage-destruction-revealed-in-newly-liberated-ukrainian-territory


Where is the original report? According to Jan Kooy @KooyJan

New research Human Rights Watch on executions and torture in Ukraine, during Russian occupation in Kyiv and Chernihiv regions, going out on Wednesday May 18.

Reporters can DM me for embargoed copy, access to video, interview requests etc.

2:50 AM · May 17, 2022·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/KooyJan/status/1526470077075312640

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

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Thursday, May 19, 2022 4:25 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Oh yeah, the same HRW that made up Qaddafi's "crimes against humanity" out of nothing.
Fuck off, HRW.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Thursday, May 19, 2022 4:28 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Ongoing Surrender "On Far Bigger Scale Than Kyiv Has Acknowledged" At Azovstal

1,700 and counting...

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/ongoing-surrender-far-bigger-scale-
kyiv-has-acknowledged-azovstal


I'm sure that there are still higher-ups and foreign high-ranking "advisors" down there. I can hardly wait until they're interrogated.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Thursday, May 19, 2022 4:55 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


So, thinking out loud here...

Apparently there is much criticism inside Russia that Ukraine isn't being rolled up faster, and concern by pro-Russian outsiders that the "go slow" campaign is going to give the west time to re-equip Ukraine and train additional troops in Poland, Romania etc. They are concerned that the west will turn Ukraine into Russia's slow bleeding war, like Vietnam.

Anti-Russians say that Russia's slow pace means that the Russian campaign has "stalled" or even been reversed.

So, did some thinking and discussing, and not sure that any of this is meaningful.

If Russia were to race to Ukraine's western border in a blitzkrieg of destruction (using missiles, bombs, and eventually artillery to flatten everything to rubble and then swarm with the rest of their troops) would it slow the pace of re-arming, re-equipping, and retraining going on in border (and further) nations?

No. (Not unless Russia is willing to strike outside of Ukraine.)

And if the west chooses to launch a counteroffensive from (say) Poland, what advantage would Russia have by being right at the border, except that maybe they could defend with artillery instead of longer-range weapons? Russia would in essence be fighting two wars: they would have to subdue occupied territory and at the same time defend against invaders crossing over the Polish border

I think that Russia's go-slow strategy is the right path. They can afford to wait until the west crosses the border with a serious amount of arms and/or soldiers because, really, they have no choice: There's no way to pre-empt that.

At the same time they maintain western Ukraine as a buffer zone/ battlefield. What I imagine Russia is doing at the moment is building up a stockpile of missiles, bombs, and long-range artillery in anticipation of the western border being breached. They will respond when it happens, not earlier. In the meantime, they're busy destroying the bulk of Kiev's army that's within reach. Once that army is "liquidated", Russian and allied troops in SE Ukraine can and will change direction. Not sure if they will head up the Dnieper (probably) or swarm the coast to Tranistria (encircling Odessa and laying it to seige) or both.

I believe their goal is still to force a surrender from Kiev, so they will apply whatever pressure they think is the most effective towards that goal. In the meantime they will continue to degrade Kiev's ability to transfer men and materiel to the east by hitting railway, bridge, and roadway infrastructure.

It would be a judo move for Russia to turn Ukraine into America's second Vietnam.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Thursday, May 19, 2022 5:44 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I wasn't really paying attention to what was going on in Ukraine. Military affairs bore me to shit. So I had to go back and timeline events.

It seems the initial plan was to occupy Kiev by taking the Antonov Airport (17 miles from Kiev) and ferrying in more troops (a la Kazakhstan) but the level of resistance was misjudged and many elite paratroopers were killed.

A few days AFTER that, a "40-mile" convoy developed from the airport (which is to the west of Kiev) to the outskirts of Kiev. Given the number of Russian/Belarusian (?) troops committed to the operation (40,000) it's impossible to imagine that this was a serious attempt to take a soread-out city of 3million people. Especially since they knew by then that Antonov Airport was not under their control. My guess is that, by then, Russia has turned an attempted decapitation into a feint, which accounts for the poor equipment and relatively poor training, and by then the Russians had moved on to a war of attrition.

Given that the Russian general staff wargames with math (according to Andrei Martyanov) I imagine a war of attrition in a simplified differential equation: filling a bathtub with an open drain.

Assume the rate of fill is constant. The rate of drain, however, depends on the height of water above the drain. If the drain rate (of an empty tub) is always faster than the full rate, the tub will never fill. If OTOH the fill rate is slightly higher than the drain rate, the tub will slowly fill. Until water pressure increases the drain rate. The question is, will equilibrium be reached before the tub overflows?

Now imagine an equation with DOZENS of variables. You need to identify the rate-limiting step(s) to simplify the equation, shore up your weakest operations etc. Also develop contingencies and estimate your enemy's variables and see if you can cause a critical rate-limiting step.

It seems that Russia isn't afraid of a long war.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Thursday, May 19, 2022 7:23 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by SignyM:
Oh yeah, the same HRW that made up Qaddafi's "crimes against humanity" out of nothing.
Fuck off, HRW.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - reportedly NOT William Blake, but Signym.

See Spark Notes for the actual words and meaning, rather than Signym's not-at-all-subtle rewrite of a long poem.
https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/blake/section8/


Did Human Rights Watch do what Signym says it did? No.
https://www.hrw.org/sitesearch?search=Libya&sort_by=search_api_rel
evance


Did William Blake write what Signym's signature says he did? No.

Did Human Rights Watch release its report on Russian War Crimes? Yes.

Is Signym believable? No. No. And No.

Ukraine: Executions, Torture During Russian Occupation

Russian forces controlling much of the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions in northeastern Ukraine from late February through March 2022 subjected civilians to summary executions, torture, and other grave abuses that are apparent war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today.

More at https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/05/18/ukraine-executions-torture-during-
russian-occupation


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

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Thursday, May 19, 2022 7:57 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I read the HRW report. It alleged that Qaddafi had done things to protesters that didn't happen, incuding an especially gruesome description of how a 6year-old girl was watching the demonstrations from a 2nd floor porch, but a tank clipped a support post, knocking the girl down to the street where she was crushed by tank treads.

The report has since been scrubbed but is referenced by other documents:

Quote:

Multiple reports from reputable organizations such as Human Rights Watch claim to have witnessed security forces firing heavily into crowds of peaceful protesters in the capital city of Tripoli.

http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1642/libya-2011-exploring-the
-implementation-of-the-responsibility-to-protect


Unfortunately, the link that they use only takes you to a Newsweek article which doesn't cite HRW. It was a nearly complete scrubbing.

Their less-sensational report is here
https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/08/01/handing-qaddafi-get-out-jail-free-
card


****

You interpret the poem however you like, SECOND. Blake crossed off the alternate "If there was nobody poor" to emphasize that impoverishing people is something we do on purpose. More here:
https://www.paper-darts.com/pity-would-be-no-more/

If you want to talk about liars, please note YOUR apology to me for repeatedly lying by calling me a Russian troll. Thanks for your apology; it's the one decent thing I remember you doing.


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Friday, May 20, 2022 10:00 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Another thing that occurred to me while I was pondering Russia's tactics in Ukraine. Andrei Martyanov (ex Soviet naval officer now living in th USA) emphasizes

Amateurs think of strategy. Generals think of logistics

So while I was thinking about what it takes to move equipment and personnel here and there, that explains Russia's limiting its role in Syria to air support and training.

Air support is relatively expensive. OTOH, moving enough tanks and artillery to make a difference in Syria, let alone "boots on the ground" would have been phenomenonaly more difficult, and pontless, considering that Syria already has an army, and Hezbollah and Iran were also supplying troops. So I believe that Russia looked at the critical deficiency and filled the gap in the most efficient manner.

The one gap they left was air defense. They have anti-aircraft systems in place but limited its use to protecting Russian bases only. Maybe they should have created a "no fly" zone over Syria so that Israel couldn't strike at will.

Huh.
Maybe military matters aren't so boring after all, if you look at it right.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake


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Friday, May 20, 2022 10:07 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Amateurs think of strategy. Generals think of logistics



I guess that explains the 40 mile log jam headed for Kyiv and then not headed for Kyiv early on.
"Logjamstics!"

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Saturday, May 21, 2022 5:28 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Amateurs think of strategy. Generals think of logistics



I guess that explains the 40 mile log jam headed for Kyiv and then not headed for Kyiv early on.
"Logjamstics!"

Yep. No idea what happened there. Nobody's perfect.

Still, the Russians are winning.

Why do I think this?
Because
Quote:

On May 13, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu for the first time since February 18. Secretary Austin urged an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3030753/readout-
of-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iiis-call-with-russian-minister
/

IMHO the USA doesn't ask for a cease-fire when it thinks it's winning.



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake


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Saturday, May 21, 2022 5:33 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Ukraine SitRep - Russians Break Through U.S. Bolsterism

On May 14 I noted that the U.S. had asked Russia for a ceasefire in Ukraine:

The U.S. readout of the call says:

On May 13, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu for the first time since February 18. Secretary Austin urged an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication.

Austin initiated the call and the U.S. is seeking a ceasefire in Ukraine!!!

Yesterday the top officers of the U.S. and Russia had a call which, again, the U.S. side had initiated:

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, held a conversation that the Pentagon declined to further detail beyond acknowledging it had happened.

Thinks must be bad in Ukraine for this to have happened. Indeed if one trusts the daily 'clobber list' the Russian Ministry of Defense puts out all positions of the Ukrainian army are under heavy artillery fire and it is losing about 500 men per day. There are additional Russian effective strikes on training camps, weapon storage sites and transport hubs all over the country.

On top of that the tactical situation at the eastern frontline has changed after Russian forces broke through the heavily fortified frontline.

Source: liveuamap.com - bigger
A few days ago the Russian army went forward along the H-32 road, broke through the line in the direction of Propasna and took the town. It has since extended the bulge by taking several villages to the north, west and south.

bigger

This breakthrough gives the chance to roll up the Ukrainian fortifications along the frontline through flank attacks or from behind. By cutting the supply lines of the Ukrainian troops to the north and south envelopes can be created which will eventual lead to cauldrons with no way out for the Ukrainian troops.

This is especially dangerous for the several thousand soldiers north of the bulge which currently defend the cities of Sieverodonetsk and Lysychansk in the north eastern part of the upper bubble.

bigger

The Russian plan was to have another breakthrough from the north pushing to Siversk to then close the upper envelope. But after several failed attempts to cross the forest area and the Seversky Donets river that breakthrough has still to happen.

Russia is now likely to push fresh troops into the Propasna bulge to extend its reach into all directions. Reports of current actions show that the heavy fighting and bombing on the frontline continues and that bombing also continues to target traffic nodes.

bigger

Other fronts in Ukraine are currently relatively quiet with little direct fire. Still daily Russian artillery attacks hits all Ukrainian front lines and will cost daily casualties.

Some 2,000 Azov militia and Ukrainian army troops have left the catacombs of Azovstal in Mariupol. Another thousand may still be down there. The Russian army is filtering these prisoners. Members of Azov and other militia will be put to court. Ukrainian army soldiers will become prisoners of war.

The gasoline and diesel scarcity in Ukraine is currently having severe impacts. Even the Ukrainian military is now rationing its fuel. Since about six weeks ago Russia has systematically attacked refineries and fuel storage sites in Ukraine. It also disabled railroad bridges along the lines that brought fuel from Moldova and Romania.

At the same time the Ukrainian government had held up price regulations for fuel. The consumer sale prices for diesel and gasoline were fixed. The cost of fuel brought in by private trucks from Poland exceeded the price gas station owners could ask for. In consequence gas stations ran dry as their owners refrained from purchasing new fuel.

MORE AT https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/ukraine-sitrep-russians-break-th
rough-us-bolsterism.html#more


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake


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Monday, May 23, 2022 8:12 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine rules out any ceasefire deal that would involve ceding territory to Russia | May 22, 2022

Ukraine has said it will not agree to any ceasefire deal that would involve handing over territory to Russia, as Moscow intensified its attack in the eastern Donbas region on Sunday.

“The war must end with the complete restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty,” said Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, in a Twitter post.

The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, offered Warsaw’s backing, telling politicians in Kyiv that the international community had to demand Russia’s complete withdrawal and that sacrificing any of Ukraine’s territory would be a “huge blow” to the west.

“Worrying voices have appeared, saying that Ukraine should give in to Putin’s demands,” Duda said, in the first in-person address to the Ukrainian parliament by a foreign leader since Russia’s invasion on 24 February. “Only Ukraine has the right to decide about its future,” he said.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s lead negotiator in the stalled peace talks, Mykhailo Podolyak, said: “Any concession to Russia is not a path to peace, but a war postponed for several years. Ukraine trades neither its sovereignty, nor territories and Ukrainians living on them.”

Podolyak made clear that Ukraine would not accept any deal with Russia that involved ceding territory, and that agreeing to a ceasefire now while making concessions to Russia would backfire on Ukraine because “Moscow would hit back harder after any break in fighting”.

More at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/22/ukraine-russia-ceasefire
-deal-territory-donbas


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

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