Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Thursday, October 31, 2024 13:46
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PAGE 61 of 149

Wednesday, February 15, 2023 9:52 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, as a matter of fact you DO want to hurt people. You've threatened people online and claim to have turned lives into "smoking ruins". That must be one of your multiple personalities talking, causing you to contradict yourself.
Again

I can't claim to have a perfect understanding of people I meet online ne- like you do- but clearly constantly lying to yourself has caused some sort of breakdown.
I hope you're getting the hejp you need.

This line of "reasoning" I have repeatedly seen from people who defend Trump. They do something ridiculously self-destructive in their family life or at work, then they get divorced, bankrupted, or fired. Their explanation for what happened? It is their wife's fault. It is society's fault they went bankrupt. It is the boss's fault, not theirs, that they got fired, even though they were fired for stealing. The Russians do the same thing: it is the Ukrainians' fault that Russia invaded Ukraine. It is NATO's fault that Russians die. It's everybody's fault, not Russia's, that Russians are poor compared to the EU. The Russians screwed up Russia, but they don't take the blame, because then the Russians would have to change themselves, but they are already certain they are doing the best they can. The Russians are NOT doing their best. Not at all. They are being their worst.

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 11:39 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

US Informs Ukraine It Doesn't Have Enough Long-Range Missiles To Send

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-informs-ukraine-it-doesnt-have-e
nough-long-range-missiles-send

Pretty soon Ukraine is gonna hear bad news about the jets, tanks, and munitions it isn't gonna get either.

Oh boo hoo for Ukraine and US neocons.
Let the blames begin!

*****

Oh BTW SECOND, I know what you've done, so don't act innocent. You even bragged about it, remember? ( Ah, no. Of course you don't!)

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 1:12 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
US Informs Ukraine It Doesn't Have Enough Long-Range Missiles To Send

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-informs-ukraine-it-doesnt-have-e
nough-long-range-missiles-send

Pretty soon Ukraine is gonna hear bad news about the jets, tanks, and munitions it isn't gonna get either.

Oh boo hoo for Ukraine and US neocons.
Let the blames begin!

*****

Oh BTW SECOND, I know what you've done, so don't act innocent. You even bragged about it, remember? ( Ah, no. Of course you don't!)

You're still convinced Russia is going win, aren't you? And Russia could, easily, if it would withdraw from Ukraine, go back to being reasonable and start emulating Canada.

I am betting that Russians will continue to be stupid and fight to the death for either themselves or Ukraine. Battle on, idiot Russians! Show the world that you don't have to be competent or sane to win, just as Russia showed in WWII (where 27 million Russians died versus only 7 million Germans who were being attacked on the Eastern and Western Fronts).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 3:37 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
US Informs Ukraine It Doesn't Have Enough Long-Range Missiles To Send

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-informs-ukraine-it-doesnt-have-e
nough-long-range-missiles-send

Pretty soon Ukraine is gonna hear bad news about the jets, tanks, and munitions it isn't gonna get either.

Oh boo hoo for Ukraine and US neocons.
Let the blames begin!

*****

Oh BTW SECOND, I know what you've done, so don't act innocent. You even bragged about it, remember? ( Ah, no. Of course you don't!)
You're still convinced Russia is going win, aren't you?

Ya think?

Not only do I think it "will" win, I think it's already winning.

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 3:57 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
You're still convinced Russia is going win, aren't you?
Ya think?

Not only do I think it "will" win, I think it's already winning.

Khodorkovsky said that while a "direct confrontation with NATO" was not part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's plan, Putin will be emboldened enough if Russia succeeds in Ukraine that NATO borders will "no longer be an obstacle" to his ambitions.

Khodorkovsky – once Russia's richest man and the founder of Open Russia, an alliance of progressive Russians – said Putin has no choice but to see the invasion of Ukraine through to the end to satisfy his political base of "patriotic nationalists".

"I am convinced that Putin cannot stop," he said.

https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/the-interview/20230214-if-putin-s
ucceeds-in-ukraine-he-will-invade-a-nato-country-next-warns-khodorkovsky

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 4:35 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Yeah, an oligarch who had his wealth re-nationalized? Not expecting anything unbiased from his direction!

AFAIK Russia's ambition is to move NATO missiles away from their border.
I've been puzzling what Russia will do after it incorporates the Donbas, Kherson, Kharkiv and possibly Odessa. It will still have a neo-Nazi Ruusia-hating west Ukraine with which it doesn't to be burdened. Rather than taking it over and struggling to rebuild/ administer, Scott Ritter has the idea that Russia will just bomb it to destruction to force a regime change and then leave it to the EU to fix.

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 5:08 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

AFAIK Russia's ambition is to move NATO missiles away from their border.
I've been puzzling what Russia will do after it incorporates the Donbas, Kherson, Kharkiv and possibly Odessa. It will still have a neo-Nazi Ruusia-hating west Ukraine with which it doesn't to be burdened. Rather than taking it over and struggling to rebuild/ administer, Scott Ritter has the idea that Russia will just bomb it to destruction and leave it to the EU to fix.

There is no reason to think Russia will ever stop moving its western border further west unless something permanent and horrifying happens to Russia to convince Russians to never again covet more fortunate lands. Something to convince Russians to tend to their own lands, not the EU lands.

EU

NATO

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 6:19 PM

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

Can frozen Russian assets be used to rebuild Ukraine? The EU is considering it

Published 6:12 AM EST, Wed February 15, 2023

The cost of reconstruction was put at roughly $349 billion in a September assessment.

EU official estimated earlier this month that more than $300 billion in Russian central bank assets could potentially be used to rebuild Ukraine.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/15/business/eu-russian-assets-ukraine-reco
nstruction/index.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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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 6:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

BTW, this so-called general completely mischaracerizes what's happening in Ukraine. Anyone with two neurons and/or two hrivna to rub together has already fled. The remainder they're dragooning off the streets. They're trying to train up the younger, fitter ones to reserve for ... something. The rest, they're just throwing under Russian artillery fire Hardly a recipe for success.
You will have a hard time disagreeing with the Russian general's opinion of NATO:
The Ukraine War Revived NATO After It Lost Its Meaning, Unified The Collective West

"I could not have guessed that Finland and Sweden would apply to join NATO. This whole chain of events is going according to plan. Frankly speaking, this is the third time we have saved NATO. After the collapse of the USSR, NATO [as a bloc] lost its meaning. We've ceded to them a significant portion of lands located in Eastern Europe; we allowed them to incorporate some of the former Warsaw Pact member-states. We worked extensively with NATO at one time and asked questions there, 'From whom are you defending yourselves now?'

"Many generals and officers perceived themselves to be unemployed. Then they created the 'Partnership for Peace' program. They had to bear such rubbish. I witnessed a gathering of defense ministers from 42 countries, and an Englishman came to the rostrum and started to talk about the main threats NATO was going to face. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction took first place, second came international terrorism; drugs came third, illegal immigration followed.

(Note: In 1994, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev signed the Partnership for Peace Agreement with NATO )

"Naturally, I asked the division commander, the air wing commander, the commander of some of their cruisers to tell me how they would fight the drug trade or illegal immigration, for instance. I said, 'What do you take us for? Do you take us for idiots?' Nevertheless, we agreed to it.

"Then the Yugoslav conflict saved NATO. And now we are saving it. We gave NATO over to the Americans completely: do whatever you want. Most European countries were constantly cutting back on defense expenditures. But we gave all Europe to the hands of the Americans. We talked all the time and continue to talk of some collective West, although no collective West existed previously. A mass of contradictions existed. But today we have created this collective West with our own hands. We couldn't predict all this. So, I agree with Putin that everything is going to plan...

"I look at this whole process as a dynamic. It all started with the question: to give or not to give Ukraine lethal weapons, or only bulletproof vests? And today the question is already: to give the F-16s or not? And today we are no longer talking about dozens of Abrams and Challenger [tanks]. The latest news: about 400 tanks have been promised to Ukraine. There are already agreements for 320 tanks. So, it's all serious. And there are no restrictions, except for missiles and combat aircraft. Everything is flowing. Because Russia gave Europe into the hands of the Americans."

https://www.memri.org/reports/retired-russian-colonel-general-ivashov-
one-year-ago-i-warned-invading-ukraine-will-hurt

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

Yep...

T

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 7:53 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

It astonishes me, SECOND, how you can be so consistently wrong on every particular.

With the exception of Crimea, Russia has not moved to the west in over 50 years. In fact, it retreated in the other direction.

NATO, OTOH, aggressively moved eastward.

What I sense is a great deal of projection. You're afraid Russia is going to act like we do.

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 8:32 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It astonishes me, SECOND, how you can be so consistently wrong on every particular.

With the exception of Crimea, Russia has not moved to the west in over 50 years. In fact, it retreated in the other direction.

NATO, OTOH, aggressively moved eastward.

What I sense is a great deal of projection. You're afraid Russia is going to act like we do.

Why the arbitrary cutoff at 50 years ago? Signym, do you look back to 1944 and not see Russia invading the West? Russia stopped moving Westward across Europe only because the Red Army came up against the U.S. Army. Only a few American warriors died killing millions of Germans while, in the same time period, tens of millions of Russians died because Russians were grossly incompetent warriors against the Germans. There was also that little thing called the A-bomb to back the U.S. Army if the Red Army decided to keep moving West in 1945 against a far more competent Army than Russia had.

Signym, the Russian Army is on the move again, toward the West and Russians are semi-confident that the U.S. Army won't be there to stop them this time. The Russians will get very-very confident if they take over Ukraine their Army can keep moving West. With President Trump back in office, it is guaranteed the U.S. Army won't be there to stop Russia. There are Baltic states and Moldavia for Russia to take after Ukraine. Maybe Russia will try to take Finland.

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 8:39 PM

Second and Ted really need to get a life.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 9:38 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SECOND should get some kind of prize for having an iron grip on delusion.

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 10:53 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND should get some kind of prize for having an iron grip on delusion.

It is clear that Ukraine is NOT the western limit to Russia's ambitions:

Putin's "bloodhound" Kadyrov: East Germany is "our territory"

The Chechen ruler proposes sending the Russian army back to eastern Germany. He threatened Chancellor Olaf Scholz with a beating.

Kadyrov said he was confident that Russia could achieve its goals in Ukraine by the end of the year. "I believe that by the end of the year we will be 100 percent able to fulfill the task set for us today."

Last October he was promoted to colonel general by Vladimir Putin. Colonel-General is the third highest rank in the Russian Armed Forces, behind Marshal and Army General.

More at https://www-berliner--zeitung-de.translate.goog/news/putins-bluthund-k
adyrow-nennt-ostdeutschland-unser-territorium-li.317491?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

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

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 11:00 PM

Sad.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Wednesday, February 15, 2023 11:09 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Sad.

Indeed, the Russians are sad because the average Russian has less than 25% of the material possessions of a Canadian, but that is what happens to a country that is eternally opposed to everything the US does. The US/Canadian border is the longest in the world and, for some reason, Canadians don't fear that the US will invade. Russians are paranoid about the US and NATO firing missiles at Moscow. Canada is not worried that the US will nuke Ottawa, but that is probably because Canadians are mentally stable, and steady as a rock, unlike Russians and Trumptards.

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 7:23 AM

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

https://www.ft.com/content/a3c943e9-9071-49b8-9f6d-2b82e1f8167b

“It will be almost impossible for the Russians to achieve their political objectives by military means. It is unlikely that Russia is going to overrun Ukraine. It’s just not going to happen,” General Mark Milley said.

“It is also very, very difficult for Ukraine this year to kick the Russians out of every inch of Russian-occupied Ukraine,” he added. “It’s not to say that it can’t happen . . . But it’s extraordinarily difficult. And it would require essentially the collapse of the Russian military.”

When asked if the moment for diplomacy between Moscow and Kyiv had passed, Milley said: “We’re weeks away from the beginning of spring, but it’s a rolling window. There’s opportunities at any moment in time.”

However, he said, both sides were “dug in pretty hard on their objectives” and unwilling to negotiate.

Milley said the conflict echoed a lesson from the second world war that aggression must be stopped “with firmness, deterrence, military power”, though he noted that with Russia’s nuclear arsenal the stakes were now higher.

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 7:37 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Sad.
Indeed, the Russians are sad

Maybe, but I'm not witness to it.

You, on the other hand, are very, very sad.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 8:52 AM

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:
Sad.
Indeed, the Russians are sad

Maybe, but I'm not witness to it.

You, on the other hand, are very, very sad.

I know for a fact that Signym has forgotten all the actual history of Russia, replacing the ugly rusted truth with Putin's shiny gold-plated plastic version of a glorious past. The truth is that Russians have run their country very poorly for centuries, which is why they are poor. The Russians have tried to compensate by stealing other people's richer lands. Ukraine has particularly rich cropland. That didn't work well because the newly stolen land was administered by Russians. They were very inadequate for that task in the past, present, and, probably, will be in the future, the next 10 years or more.

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 9:52 AM

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

Military History Doesn’t Say What Ukraine’s Critics Think
Eliot A. Cohen

It is in the differences from past wars that insight into today’s battles lies.

Updated at 11:21 a.m. ET on February 15, 2023.

Commentators on the Ukraine war who think that American support for Ukraine is pointless or dangerous commonly reach for references to military history. They not only often get it wrong, but they frequently get it backwards, construing that history into a case for Russia’s likely success.

Christopher Caldwell, for example, writes that American aid is intended to “fast-forward history, from World War I’s battles of position to World War II’s battles of movement,” and that this enterprise is doomed to fail. In his view, both Russia and Ukraine will continue to fight a war characterized by hordes of mud-covered soldiers huddling in freezing trenches before perishing in their thousands in a hail of fire as they go over the top, and some shipments of Western battle tanks to Ukraine will not stop that. Thus, and perversely, not bringing this futile war to an end by twisting Ukraine’s arm is America’s fault.

What is wrong with the analogy? To begin with, the fact that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers huddle in dugouts and have to worry about hypothermia (the Russians more than the better-equipped Ukrainians) is something they share in common with soldiers in many wars. Trench warfare was not an innovation of the Great War, as a walk through the Civil War battlefields of Cold Harbor and Petersburg would show. The advent of long-range rifles in the mid-19th century quickly taught soldiers the imperative of digging in as soon as possible. They have done so ever since.

Where references to World War I like Caldwell’s really break down, however, is in the fact that combat during World War I was not, in its concluding phase, characterized by the human-wave assaults familiar to us from movies about the war. The German offensives that nearly broke the Allies in the spring of 1918 relied on deep, accurate artillery fire followed by storm troops using infiltration attacks to achieve breakthroughs of up to 40 miles. That summer and fall, Allied offensives smashed German defenses, forcing that country to sue for peace. These were methodical combined-arms assaults in which the infantry was backed by tanks and aircraft in carefully coordinated attacks to seize terrain piece by piece. They succeeded even more definitively than had the Germans barely six months earlier. These operations, on both sides, shaped the tactics used in World War II in battles such as El Alamein, conducted by one of the promising young leaders of World War I, Bernard Montgomery.

In contrast, the many costly small frontal attacks now being conducted by the Russian army are infinitely less sophisticated than either the German or Allied assaults of 1918. Indeed, on all evidence, the Russian army today is well-nigh incapable of conducting modern combined-arms warfare at scale.

In some respects, the Russian military is now a pre-1918 army. Captured orders and observed behavior suggest an army that struggles to do much more than throw huge quantities of artillery shells at an enemy and then advance, often piecemeal, into a meat grinder. Conducting systematic reconnaissance, coordinating artillery and air support on the move, applying deep precision fires, executing combined-arms tactics, and synchronizing the maneuvering of large units all seem to be beyond the reach of the large majority of Russian forces. Although the Ukrainians do not have the capacity to coordinate and maneuver the way the United States Army does, they are a lot better than the Russians. The defeat of Russian forces outside Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson reveals as much.

If the actual history of the First World War doesn’t offer grounds for abandoning Ukraine, how about the Second? After all, some Russian propagandists and Western pessimists point to that war as evidence of the futility of hoping to defeat the successors of the mighty Red Army. In this view Russia is, as the Soviet Union was, a country with nearly unlimited resources, capable of mobilizing and marshaling its industries to wear down its opponent. Russians, because of their large population and tolerance for casualties, believe they have a decisive advantage even if they are tactically unsophisticated. Western pessimists agree.

But that comparison, too, is incorrect.

The Soviet Union survived World War II in part thanks to the West supplying much of the raw materials and equipment (including 11,000 railroad freight cars) that it needed. But the U.S.S.R.’s own war economy was relatively robust. By late 1941, Russia’s war industry outproduced that of Germany. Today, Russia’s economy is merely the size of a middling European country’s. Its military-industrial plant is limited by Western sanctions, riddled with corruption, and unable to adequately equip troops on the front. Meanwhile, the West’s military industry, a much larger and more sophisticated enterprise, albeit one that is mobilizing too slowly, is sustaining Ukraine.

To the extent that Soviet armies fought ferociously in World War II (and bearing in mind that they included many Ukrainians), it was because they were fighting a war for survival, largely on their own soil until late 1944. If one thing remains constant in war, it is the importance of the will to fight. The imbalance in this war, as opposed to that of 1941–45, is entirely in favor of Ukraine, as the hundreds of thousands of Russians fleeing the draft or mobilization would suggest.

The Soviet Union was able to reconstitute its forces after huge losses in 1941 partly because Germany was suffering its own difficulties from overextension, but chiefly because it already had a huge organizational base from which to work. Joseph Stalin’s military had nearly 3 million men under arms in the western military districts of the U.S.S.R. alone, plus a somewhat smaller number in the east, hundreds of thousands of whom were later brought back west during late 1941 and 1942.

By contrast, the Russian army in February 2022 had perhaps 300,000 soldiers in total, with roughly another 100,000 in various elite or special units—400,000 for the entire country, and no organized reserve system as Western militaries would understand the term. In other words, Russia’s army in 2022 was an order of magnitude smaller than that of 1941, without any effective mobilization system. Once that initial force had taken as many as 100,000 casualties in the first phase of the war, it was bound to have extreme difficulty rebuilding. And after suffering another 100,000 following the chaotic press-ganging of its “mobilization” of the past six months, it will face even more obstacles to re-creating a modern army.

Despite the purges of the late 1930s, the Russian army of 1941 was filled with tough young men used to manual labor in the factory or field and suited to military tasks. They were led by young officers serving in a prestigious profession. That was not the case in 2022. In World War II, Stalin’s son served in uniform and was captured. Today, the sons of the elite flee the country or escape military service in less savory ways.

And, finally, Stalin was a far more capable civilian war leader than Vladimir Putin, working closely with a general staff that included exceptionally capable officers. He did not force them to sit 30 feet away from him.

World War I and World War II offer analogies and metaphors for those reflecting on the Ukraine war, but not templates for understanding a conflict that is characterized by clouds of drones, sophisticated command-and-control systems, extensive long-range precision fires, and ubiquitous satellite-based reconnaissance, among other notable phenomena—almost all of which have favored the Ukrainians. This war has to be understood on its own terms, and displays of historical pseudo-literacy just get in the way of that.

As Carl von Clausewitz, the preeminent theorist of war and no mean military historian himself, put it, “Every war is rich in unique episodes. Each is an uncharted sea, full of reefs.” It is in the differences, as much as the similarities, with the world wars of the past century that insight into today’s battles lies. And by and large, those differences favor Ukraine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230215185503/https://www.theatlantic.com
/ideas/archive/2023/02/russia-ukraine-war-wwii-comparison/673053/

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 10:32 AM

Nobody cares. Nobody really ever cared. Just like I said all along.

Even Twitter is over it.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 10:59 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nobody cares. Nobody really ever cared. Just like I said all along.

Even Twitter is over it.

The Greatest Nuclear Threat We Face Is a Russian Victory by Eric Schlosser

Putin’s blackmail is dangerous; its success would be even worse.

The invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied from the outset by Russian threats to use nuclear weapons. A few days after the war began, President Vladimir Putin complained that “NATO countries are making aggressive statements about our country” and warned that, as a result, Russia’s nuclear forces would be moved to “a special regime of combat duty.” No apparent change in operational readiness followed that warning. But in state-controlled news media, the almost-daily threats to use nuclear weapons have become central to Russian propaganda, seeking to inspire fear in NATO countries, discourage NATO forces from entering the war, and limit the supply of military assistance to Ukraine.

The propaganda absolves Russia, blames the United States for the war, and has four main tenets: first, that a long-standing American effort to bring Ukraine into NATO poses a grave threat to Russian security. Second, that American shipments of weapons to Ukraine have prolonged the fighting and caused needless suffering among civilians. Third, that American support for Ukraine is just a pretext for seeking the destruction of Russia. And, finally, that American policies could soon prove responsible for causing an all-out nuclear war.

Those arguments are based on lies. They are being spread to justify Russia’s unprecedented use of nuclear blackmail to seize territory from a neighboring state. Concerns about a possible nuclear exchange have thus far deterred the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with the tanks, aircraft, and long-range missiles that might change the course of the war. If nuclear threats lead to the defeat of Ukraine, Russia may use them to coerce other states. Tactics once considered immoral and unthinkable might become commonplace. Nuclear weapons would no longer be regarded solely as a deterrent of last resort; the nine countries that possess them would gain even greater influence; countries that lack them would seek to obtain them; and the global risk of devastating wars would increase exponentially.

That is why the greatest nuclear threat we face is a Russian victory in Ukraine.

Russia has about 6,000 nuclear weapons, more than any other country, and for years Putin has portrayed them as a source of national pride. His warnings about their possible use during the war in Ukraine have been coy and often contradictory. “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened,” Putin said in September, “we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people—this is not a bluff.” His vow to rely on nuclear weapons only as a defensive measure conveys an underlying threat: An attempt to regain Ukrainian land annexed by Russia and deemed by Putin to be part of “our country” might prompt a nuclear response. He also asserted that the United States and NATO are the ones engaging in “nuclear blackmail,” and that “those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.” In October, he claimed that Ukraine was planning to launch a nuclear strike on itself—by detonating a warhead filled with radioactive waste—as part of a false-flag operation to make Russia seem responsible. In December, Putin said that the risk of a nuclear war was increasing but suggested once again that the real danger did not come from Russia. “We have not gone crazy,” he said. “We are aware what nuclear weapons are … We are not going to brandish these weapons like a razor, running around the world.”

Although Putin’s comments have been subtle and open to multiple interpretations, the propaganda outlets that he controls have been neither. For almost a year, they have continually threatened and celebrated the possibility of nuclear war. This division of labor allows Putin to appear statesmanlike while his underlings stoke fear and normalize the idea of using nuclear weapons to commit the mass murder of civilians. Julia Davis, a columnist for The Daily Beast, and Francis Scarr, a BBC correspondent, have performed an immense public service: supplying translations of the vicious, apocalyptic, often unhinged rants that have become the norm on Russian television. “Either we lose in Ukraine, or the Third World War starts,” Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of Russia Today and a close ally of Putin’s, said in April. “I think World War III is more realistic, knowing us, knowing our leader … That all this will end with a nuclear strike seems more probable to me.” At various times, Simonyan has discussed nuclear attacks on Ukraine, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, arguing that death would be better than succumbing to “the monstrous organism known as the collective Western world.”

Vladimir Solovyov, another popular broadcaster who is close to Putin, routinely expresses a preference for nuclear annihilation over a Russian defeat. The invitation of Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, to the White House and the U.S. Capitol in December made Solovyov especially angry. “We’ll either win, or humanity will cease to exist, because the Lord won’t stand for the triumph of warriors of the Antichrist,” he said, repeating the new propaganda line that Ukrainians aren’t just Nazis; they’re satanists. “We are Russians. God is with us,” he concluded.

Russia’s popular culture is now marked by a level of nuclear fanaticism previously associated with North Korea. Nothing like it existed during the Cold War. At a November rally, staged with Kremlin approval, demonstrators marched through the streets of central Moscow, led by a mock-up of an RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, and sang the Queen song “We Will Rock You” with new lyrics calling for the destruction of Washington, D.C. Denis Maidenov, a popular singer-songwriter who serves in the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s Parliament, released a slick music video on December 17 featuring a military choir, footage of the Sarmat, and adulatory lyrics about the missile’s prowess: “It’ll scatter our enemies into dust in an instant / It’s ready to carry out the sentence … For the Sarmat there’s only pleasure / To trouble NATO’s dreams!”

As well as encouraging public reverence for nuclear weapons, Putin has promoted the worship of such weapons within Russia’s military. In a deeply unsettling book, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy (2019), Dimitry Adamsky, a professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichman University, in Israel, describes Putin’s multiyear effort to spread the mystical teachings of the Russian Orthodox Church among the personnel who handle nuclear weapons, as a means of fostering patriotism, discipline, and obedience. “Each leg of the nuclear triad has its patron saint,” Adamsky notes, “and their icons hang on the walls of the consecrated headquarters and command posts.” Putin’s linkage of Russian Orthodoxy with Russian nuclear strategy helps legitimize plans to slaughter the nation’s enemies.

Much more at https://web.archive.org/web/20230214065917/https://www.theatlantic.com
/ideas/archive/2023/01/russias-invasion-ukraine-war-nuclear-weapon-nato/672727/

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 11:29 AM

Lies from a coward, copy and pasted here to FireflyFans.net by a bigger coward.

Nobody cares. Keep your nuclear fear porn to yourself. We're tired of being subjected to your daily masturbation sessions, you clueless, closeted NeoCon warmonger.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 1:39 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

"Well I didn't want it anyway"

Blinken engages in ahead-of-time excuse-making.

Quote:
Blinken Warns Ukraine Against Seizing Crimea In About-Face

Thursday, Feb 16, 2023 - 08:10 AM

In a bit of an about-face for Washington based on past officials' more aggressive posture, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken now says the administration is not actively encouraging Ukraine to seize Crimea.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/blinken-warns-ukraine-against-s
eizing-crimea-about-face

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 2:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

"Well I didn't want it anyway"

Blinken engages in ahead-of-time excuse-making.

Quote:
Blinken Warns Ukraine Against Seizing Crimea In About-Face

Thursday, Feb 16, 2023 - 08:10 AM

In a bit of an about-face for Washington based on past officials' more aggressive posture, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken now says the administration is not actively encouraging Ukraine to seize Crimea.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/blinken-warns-ukraine-against-s
eizing-crimea-about-face

T

Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:

SIG pulls most of her information that she posts here from this blog and stupidly defends it as a reputable source. As she continues to do so I will regenerate this thread to remind all it is a corrupted blog designed to create havoc rather than informing.

Below are the names of those behind zero hedge. Don't miss what I've highlighted in red below. This folks is why comrade troll SIG loves to quote zero hedge.

In addition, Lokey said he faced constant pressure to frame stories in-line with a particular world-view, which he described as “Russia=good. Obama=idiot. Bashar al-Assad=benevolent leader. John Kerry=dunce. Vladmir Putin=greatest leader in the history of statecraft.”

All of this matches SIG's playbook here and Putin's globally; exactly.

The men behind zero hedge

Colin Lokey, a 32-year-old former Seeking Alpha director

Daniel Ivandjiiski, a 37-year-old Bulgarian-born former hedge fund employee who was barred for insider trading in 2008

Tim Backshall, a 45-year-old credit derivatives strategist
Despite its populist tone, Lokey told Bloomberg he recently left Zero Hedge because he didn’t see eye-to-eye with the others when it came to editorial vision.

“Zero Hedge ceased to serve that public service years ago,” Lokey said. “They care what generates page views. Clicks. Money.”

In addition, Lokey said he faced constant pressure to frame stories in-line with a particular world-view, which he described as “Russia=good. Obama=idiot. Bashar al-Assad=benevolent leader. John Kerry=dunce. Vladmir Putin=greatest leader in the history of statecraft.”

Lokey claims Zero Hedge’s focus on traffic and revenue is hypocritical, but Ivandjiiski sees things differently.

Finally, Zero Hedge addressed the accusations of systematic bias in its content.

“We are certainly ok with being the object of other’s conspiracy theories, in this case completely false ones since we have never been in contact with anyone in Russia, or the US, or any government for that matter,” Zero Hedge says.

The site claims it has never accepted a dime of funding outside of advertising revenue and that Lokey was never pressured about how to frame his articles or editorialized.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/zero-hedge-unmasked-theres-more-1427301
65.html

According to the Bloomberg article, three men have been churning out all of the content at Zero Hedge, using the joint pseudonym “Tyler Durden” from the Brad Pitt film “Fight Club.” The 1999 cult film, according to Rolling Stone, is “about being young, male and powerless against the pacifying drug of consumerism. It’s about solitude, despair and bottled-up rage.” That ethos is frequently on display at Zero Hedge.

The three “Tyler Durdens” outed by Bloomberg reporters are Colin Lokey, who has now left Zero Hedge in a fit of pique and is responsible for handing over the internal chat sessions from Zero Hedge on traffic-building strategies and other matters. Bloomberg says “the other two men are Daniel Ivandjiiski, 37, the Bulgarian-born former analyst long reputed to be behind the site, and Tim Backshall, 45, a well-known credit derivatives strategist.”

The article notes that “Ivandjiiski has a multimillion-dollar mansion in Mahwah, N.J., and Backshall lives in a plush San Francisco suburb,” suggesting these are “not exactly reflections” of the anti-capitalism reflected in the moniker “Tyler Durden.”

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 2:09 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Lies from a coward, copy and pasted here to FireflyFans.net by a bigger coward.

Nobody cares. Keep your nuclear fear porn to yourself. We're tired of being subjected to your daily masturbation sessions, you clueless, closeted NeoCon warmonger.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

The blizzard of disinfo has really intensified. You'd think SECOND would have run out of propaganda to plagiarize, but there must be a large herd of sychophants out there trying to drown everyone in bullshit.

It's troubling to imagine the number of Americans actively engaged in psyops against... Americans. The people who inhabit the State Dept, Thinktankistan, the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, DOJ, WH, DNC and RNC.

"Journalists", "analysts", opinionaters, "influencers", "big tech". And all of their quisling dupes and paid shills. The same thunderous herd that brought us the TRUMPRUSSIACOLLUSION! hoax and hid Hunter Biden's perversity and corruption.

It must number in the tens of thousands. That's gotta total tens of billions of dollars devoted to fucking America's collective mind.

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 3:46 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

The blizzard of disinfo

large herd of sychophants out there trying to drown everyone in bullshit.

State Dept, Thinktankistan, the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, DOJ, WH, DNC and RNC.

"Journalists", "analysts", opinionaters, "influencers", "big tech". And all of their quisling dupes and paid shills.

TRUMPRUSSIACOLLUSION!

devoted to fucking America's collective mind.

American support for Ukraine remains squarely in its own self-interest. The United States’s trade with Europe, for example, tops $1 trillion annually, making it on one of the United States’s largest trading partners. Ukraine’s success protects not just itself but the whole of Europe and, with it, American economic interests. By contrast, a successful Russian invasion of Ukraine would place a threatening power on the doorstep of American allies, which is also a direct security threat to the United States.

Russia, after all, has meddled in American elections (and promised to do so again in the future), conducted cyberattacks against American institutions and commercial infrastructure, tried to assassinate dissidents and operatives on Western soil and directed proxy groups to engage in a terrorism campaign against Western targets.

Russia’s mercenaries have even outright attacked American forces in Syria. And so, a victory for Ukraine fits squarely within the United States’s interests because it would also mean a Russian defeat.

Further, if the U.S. wants to deter a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or Iranian aggression in the Middle East, then ensuring Russia’s defeat would send a vivid message of deterrence. It signals that inevitable disaster awaits any state that commits such a naked act of aggression.

Much like the 1973 Arab-Israeli War a half century ago, Ukraine has become a live fire test of American weaponry. From a military standpoint, the United States is finding out which systems work, and which do not, on a 21st century battlefield, all without costing American lives.

Much of American military assistance to Ukraine comes from existing, in some cases antiquated, military stockpiles — which means that when Congress pays for military aid to Ukraine, it is functionally allowing the United States to replace its older weapons with new ones. Ukraine aid also boosts the American defense industry and the American economy in the short-run, and, in the long-run, expands the United States’s capacity to build everything from artillery rounds to air defense missiles.

A year into the Ukraine War, most Americans remain committed to providing the aid Ukrainians need. Most see the war for what it is: Russia attacking international order itself. But it’s also worth remembering that America’s support to Ukraine is for America first.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3858658-support-to-ukraine-c
ontinues-to-be-for-america-first/

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 6:05 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The blizzard of bullshit never stops, does it?

Quote:
SIGNYM:

The blizzard of disinfo
large herd of sychophants out there trying to drown everyone in bullshit.
State Dept, Thinktankistan, the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, DOJ, WH, DNC and RNC.
"Journalists", "analysts", opinionaters, "influencers", "big tech". And all of their quisling dupes and paid shills.
TRUMPRUSSIACOLLUSION!
devoted to fucking America's collective mind.

SECOND: [ a quote] American support for Ukraine remains squarely in its own self-interest. The United States’s trade with Europe, for example, tops $1 trillion annually, making it on one of the United States’s largest trading partners. Ukraine’s..

a) Conflating Europe with Ukraine. Ukraine is but a speck on the flea on the dog's rear end.
b) If "Europe's economic success"is so gorram important, then why are they being derpived of cheap energy (oil, gas) which is the lifeblood of ANY thriving economy?

Quote:
blah blah blah ... Russian invasion of Ukraine would place a threatening power on the doorstep of American allies, which is also a direct security threat to the United States.

This reminds me of the cry to "protect American interests" because some Iraqi attacked our troops IN IRAQ. WTF are we doing there in the first place?

Quote:
blah blah blah... more recycled bullshit... blah blah blah ...lies, exaggerations and accusations ...

THIS is what is supposed to convince Americans?

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 6:11 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Psyops, disinfo and head-fuckery: The lifeblood of the M$M today.

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

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 6:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Lies from a coward, copy and pasted here to FireflyFans.net by a bigger coward.

Nobody cares. Keep your nuclear fear porn to yourself. We're tired of being subjected to your daily masturbation sessions, you clueless, closeted NeoCon warmonger.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
The blizzard of disinfo has really intensified. You'd think SECOND would have run out of propaganda to plagiarize, but there must be a large herd of sychophants out there trying to drown everyone in bullshit.

It's troubling to imagine the number of Americans actively engaged in psyops against... Americans. The people who inhabit the State Dept, Thinktankistan, the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, DOJ, WH, DNC and RNC.

"Journalists", "analysts", opinionaters, "influencers", "big tech". And all of their quisling dupes and paid shills. The same thunderous herd that brought us the TRUMPRUSSIACOLLUSION! hoax and hid Hunter Biden's perversity and corruption.

It must number in the tens of thousands. That's gotta total tens of billions of dollars devoted to fucking America's collective mind.

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

And it never would have been possible without the internet.

If I could go back to the 90's and live there I would.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Thursday, February 16, 2023 9:01 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Psyops, disinfo and head-fuckery: The lifeblood of the M$M today.

Putin hasn’t been wrong about everything, and recognizing what he got right should shape how Ukraine and its supporters proceed in the months ahead.

The Biden administration hoped that the threat of “unprecedented sanctions” would deter Putin from invading and then hoped that imposing these sanctions would strangle his war machine, trigger popular discontent, and force him to reverse course. Putin went to war convinced that Russia could ride out any sanctions we might impose, and he’s been proved right up till now. There is still sufficient appetite for Russian raw materials (including energy) to keep its economy going with only a slight decline in GDP. The long-term consequences may be more severe, but he was right to assume that sanctions alone would not determine the outcome of the conflict for quite a while.

Second, Putin correctly judged that the Russian people would tolerate high costs and that military setbacks were not going to lead to his ouster. He may have begun the war hoping it would be quick and cheap, but his decision to keep going after the initial setbacks—and eventually to mobilize reserves and fight on—reflected his belief that the bulk of the Russian people would go along with his decision and that he could suppress any opposition that did emerge. The mobilization of additional troops may have been shambolic by our standards, but Russia has been able to keep large forces in the field despite enormous losses and without jeopardizing Putin’s hold on power. That could change, of course, but so far, he’s been proved right on this issue, too.

Third, Putin understood that other states would follow their own interests and that he would not be universally condemned for his actions. Europe, the United States, and some others have reacted sharply and strongly, but key members of the global south and some other prominent countries (such as Saudi Arabia and Israel) have not. The war hasn’t helped Russia’s global image (as lopsided votes condemning the war in the U.N. General Assembly have shown), but more tangible opposition has been limited to a subset of the world’s nations.

Most important of all: Putin understood that Ukraine’s fate was more important to Russia than it was to the West. Please note: It is by no means more important to Russia than it is to Ukrainians, who are making enormous sacrifices to defend their country. But Putin has the advantage over Ukraine’s principal supporters when it comes to being willing to bear costs and run risks. He has an advantage not because Western leaders are weak, pusillanimous, or craven, but because the political alignment of a large country right next door to Russia was always bound to matter more to Moscow than it was going to matter to people farther away, and especially to individuals living in a wealthy and secure country on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

This fundamental asymmetry of interest and motivation is why the United States, Germany, and much of the rest of NATO have calibrated their responses so carefully, and why U.S. President Joe Biden ruled out sending U.S. troops from the get-go. He understood (correctly) that Putin might think Ukraine’s fate was worth sending several hundred thousand troops to fight and possibly die, but Americans didn’t and wouldn’t feel the same way about sending their sons and daughters to oppose them. It might be worth sending billions of dollars of aid to help Ukrainians defend their country, but that objective was not important enough for the United States to put its own troops in harm’s way or to run a significant risk of a nuclear war. Given this asymmetry of motivation, Biden is trying to stop Russia without U.S. troops getting directly involved. Whether this approach will work is still unknown.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/15/putin-right-ukraine-war/

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 3:29 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The outcome is known.

This is just softening up the part of the American public that still believes the M$M for Ukraine's defeat.

They're also trying to shift blame from being idiots who created brainless policies to some, yanno,impersonal forces that had nothing to do with THEM.

But SOMEBODY decided to launch a proxy war on Russia and saturate the public, and themselves, with disinfo that perpetuated their own disconnect from reality.

You've been had.
Again.

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 7:02 AM

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

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/kremlins-grand-delusions

The Kremlin’s Grand Delusions
By Fiona Hill and Angela Stent, February 15, 2023

Despite a series of blunders, miscalculations, and battlefield reversals that would have surely seen him thrown out of office in most normal countries, President Vladimir Putin is still at the pinnacle of power in Russia. He continues to define the contours of his country’s war against Ukraine. He is micromanaging the invasion even as generals beneath him appear to be in charge of the battlefield. (This deputizing is done to protect him from blowback if something goes badly wrong in the war.) Putin and those immediately around him directly work to mobilize Russians on the home front and manipulate public views of the invasion abroad. He has in some ways succeeded in this information warfare.

The war has revealed the full extent of Putin’s personalized political system. After what is now 23 years at the helm of the Russian state, there are no obvious checks on his power. Institutions beyond the Kremlin count for little. “I would never have imagined that I would miss the Politburo,” said Rene Nyberg, the former Finnish ambassador to Moscow. “There is no political organization in Russia that has the power to hold the president and commander in chief accountable.” Diplomats, policymakers, and analysts are stuck in a doom loop—an endless back-and-forth argument among themselves—to figure out what Putin wants and how the West can shape his behavior.

Determining Putin’s actual objectives can be difficult; as an anti-Western autocrat, he has little to gain by publicly disclosing his intentions. But the last year has made some answers clear enough. Since February 2022, the world has learned that Putin wants to create a new version of the Russian empire based on his Soviet-era preoccupations and his interpretations of history. The launching of the invasion itself has shown that his views of past events can provoke him to cause massive human suffering. It has become clear that there is little other states and actors can do to deter Putin from prosecuting a war if he is determined to do so and that the Russian president will adapt old narratives as well as adopt new ones to suit his purposes.

But the events of 2022 and early 2023 have demonstrated that there are ways to constrain Putin, especially if a broad enough coalition of states gets involved. They have also underscored that the West will need to redouble its efforts at strengthening such a diplomatic and military coalition. Because even now, after a year of carnage, Putin is still convinced he can prevail.

BACK IN THE USSR

One year in, the war in Ukraine has shown that Putin and his cohort’s beliefs are still rooted in Soviet frames and narratives, overlaid with a thick glaze of Russian imperialism. Soviet-era concepts of geopolitics, spheres of influence, East versus West, and us versus them shape the Kremlin’s mindset. To Putin, this war is in effect a struggle with Washington akin to the Korean War and other Cold War–era conflicts. The United States remains Russia’s principal opponent, not Ukraine. Putin wants to negotiate directly with Washington to “deliver” Ukraine, with the end goal of getting the U.S. president to sign away the future of the country. He has no desire to meet directly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. His goal remains the kind of settlement achieved in 1945 at Yalta, when U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sat across the table from the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and accepted Moscow’s post–World War II dominance of Eastern Europe without consulting the countries affected by these decisions.

For Russia, World War II—the Great Fatherland War, as Russians call it—is the touchstone and central theme of the conflict in Ukraine. Putin’s emphasis a year ago on ridding Ukraine of Nazis has faded somewhat into the background. This year, the victorious outcome in 1945 is his primary focus. Putin’s message to Ukrainians, Russians, and the world is that victory will be Russia’s and that Moscow always wins, no matter how high the costs. Indeed, beginning with comments ahead of his 2023 New Year’s speech, Putin has cast off the depiction of the war in Ukraine as just a special military operation. According to him, Russia is locked in an existential battle for its survival against the West. He is once more digging deep into old Soviet tactics and practices from the 1940s to rally the Russian economy, political class, and society in support of the invasion.

Putin is capable of learning from setbacks and adapting his tactics in ways that are also reminiscent of Stalin’s approach in World War II, when the Soviet Union pushed back Nazi Germany in the epochal battle of Stalingrad. In September 2022, as Russia was clearly losing on the battlefield, Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 extra troops. He then declared that Russia had annexed four of Ukraine’s most fiercely fought-over territories: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia, transforming the military and political picture on the ground and creating an artificial redline. Putin has repeatedly made changes in Russia’s military leadership at critical junctures, and he has worked fiercely to ensure his country has enough weapons for the war effort. When Russian forces began to run out of armaments, Putin purchased drones from Iran and ammunition from North Korea.

Putin has also shifted his narrative about the war several times to keep his opponents guessing about how far he might still go. He and other Russian officials, including his spokesman and foreign minister, have openly stated that the invasion of Ukraine is an imperial war and that Russia’s borders are expanding again. They have asserted that the four annexed Ukrainian territories are Russia’s “forever” but then suggested that some borders may still be negotiated with Ukraine. According to newspaper reports, they have pushed for the full conquest of Donetsk and Luhansk by March but also indicated that another assault on Kyiv could be in the offing. At this stage of the conflict, Russia’s actual war goals remain unclear.

What is clear is this: after more than two decades in power, Putin is practiced at playing people, groups, and countries against one another and using their weaknesses to his advantage. He understands the weak points of European and international institutions as well as the vulnerabilities of individual leaders. He knows how to exploit NATO’s debates and splits over military spending and procurement. He has taken advantage of European and American partisan divides (including the fact that only one third of Republicans think the United States should support Ukraine) to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion.

At home in Russia, Putin has proved willing to allow some hawkish dissent and debate about the war, including the grumbling of pro-war commentators and bloggers who used to serve in the military. He seeks to use these debates to mobilize support for his policies. But although Putin is adept at managing quarrels, he cannot always control the content and tone of these disputes, just as he cannot control the battlefield. Some of the domestic commentary on the war has become shrill and even threatening to Putin’s position. There is speculation that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, whose forces have been doing some of the war’s bloodiest fighting, could even seize power at some point in the future. Russia’s wartime casualties appear to be approaching 200,000. As many as one million people are estimated to have left Russia in the past year in response to the war, either because they oppose the invasion or simply to avoid being drafted. In this regard, the world has learned that there are some limits to Putin’s coercive capabilities, even if this mass exodus of dissenters seems to leave behind a more quiescent majority.

DISSUADABLE, NOT DETERRABLE

Russian opponents of the war may have had no chance of stopping Putin from invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022. And none of the United States and Europe’s mechanisms and practices for keeping the peace after World War II and the Cold War had much, if any, effect on his decision-making. The West clearly failed to stop Putin from contemplating or starting the invasion. Nevertheless, the United States’ release of declassified intelligence before February 24 clarified Russian aims and mobilization and helped the pro-Ukraine Western coalition quickly come together once the war started. Furthermore, this past year has shown that even if he cannot be deterred, Putin can be dissuaded from taking certain actions in specific contexts.

Strategic partners of Russia, such as China and India, have criticized Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield. He allowed grain shipments from Ukraine through the Black Sea after complaints from the United Nations, Turkey, and African countries. Putin and the Kremlin remain committed to maintaining partner countries’ support, as was demonstrated during the G-20 meeting in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia. Russia still seems not to want a full-on fight with NATO. It has avoided expanding its military action outside Ukraine (at least so far), including by not shelling military supply convoys entering the country from Poland or Romania. But Moscow’s aggressive rhetoric has risen and ebbed throughout the war. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, once known as a moderate leader willing to engage with the West, now plays the role of Putin’s attack dog, periodically threatening a nuclear Armageddon.

The Kremlin is shameless in its rhetoric, and no one in Putin’s circle cares about narrative coherence. This brazenness is matched by domestic ruthlessness. Putin and his colleagues are willing to sacrifice Russian lives, not just Ukrainians’. They have no qualms about the methods Russia uses to enforce participation in the war, from murdering deserters with sledgehammers (and then releasing video footage of the killings) to assassinating recalcitrant businessmen who do not support the invasion. Putin is perfectly fine with imprisoning opposition figures while sweeping through prisons and the most impoverished Russian regions to collect people to use as cannon fodder on the frontlines.

The domestic ruthlessness is in turn exceeded by the brutality against Ukraine. Russia has declared total war on the country and its citizens, young and old. For a year, it has deliberately shelled Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and killed people in their kitchens, bedrooms, hospitals, schools, and shops. Russian forces have tortured, raped, and pillaged in the Ukrainian regions under their control. Putin and the Kremlin still believe they can pummel the country into submission while they wait out the United States and Europe.

The Kremlin is convinced that the West will eventually grow tired of supporting Ukraine. Putin believes, for example, that there will be political changes in the West that could be advantageous for Moscow. He hopes for the return of populists to power in these states who will back away from their countries’ support for Ukraine. Putin also remains confident that he can eventually restore Russia’s prewar relationship with Europe and that Russia can and will be part of Europe’s economic, energy, political, and security structures again if he holds out long enough (as Bashar al-Assad has in the Middle East by staying in power in Syria). This is why Russia is seemingly restrained in some policy arenas. For instance, it has vested interests in working with Norway and other Arctic countries in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and the Barents Sea, where Moscow has been careful to comply with international agreements and bilateral treaties. Russia does not want its misadventure in Ukraine to embroil and spoil its entire foreign policy.

Putin is convinced that he can compartmentalize Moscow’s interests because Russia is not isolated internationally, despite the West’s best efforts. Only 34 countries have imposed sanctions on Russia since the war started. Russia still has leverage in its immediate neighborhood with many of the states that were once part of the Soviet Union, even though these countries want to keep their distance from Moscow and the war. Russia continues to build ties in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. China, along with India and other key states in the global South, have abstained on votes in favor of Ukraine at the United Nations even as their leaders have expressed occasional consternation and displeasure with Moscow’s behavior. Trade between Russia and these countries has increased—in some cases quite dramatically—since the beginning of the conflict. Similarly, 87 countries still offer Russian citizens visa-free entry, including Argentina, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. Russian narratives about the war have gained traction in the global South, where Putin often seems to have more influence than the West has—and certainly more than Ukraine has.

BLURRING THE LINES

One reason the West has had limited success in countering Russia’s messaging and influence operations outside Europe is that it has yet to formulate its own coherent narrative about the war—and about why the West is supporting Kyiv. American and European policymakers talk frequently of the risks of stepping over Russia’s redlines and provoking Putin, but Russia itself not only overturned the post–Cold War settlement in Europe but also stepped over the world’s post-1945 redlines when it invaded Ukraine and annexed territory, attempting to forcibly change global borders. The West failed to state this clearly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The tepid political response and the limited application of sanctions after that first Russian invasion convinced Moscow that its actions were not, in fact, a serious breach of post–World War II international norms. It made the Kremlin believe it could likely go further in taking Ukrainian territory. Western debates about the need to weaken Russia, the importance of overthrowing Putin to achieve peace, whether democracies should line up against autocracies, and whether other countries must choose sides have muddied what should be a clear message: Russia has violated the territorial integrity of an independent state that has been recognized by the entire international community, including Moscow, for more than 30 years. Russia has also violated the UN Charter and fundamental principles of international law. If it were to succeed in this invasion, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states, be they in the West or the global South, will be imperiled.

Yet the Western debate about the war has shifted little in a year. U.S. and European views still tend to be defined by how individual commentators see the United States and its global role rather than by Russian actions. Antiwar perspectives often reflect cynicism about the United States’ motivation and deep skepticism about Ukraine’s sovereign rights rather than a clear understanding or objective assessment of Russian actions toward Ukraine and what Putin wants in the neighboring region. When Russia was recognized as the only successor state to the Soviet Union after 1991, other former Soviet republics such as Belarus and Ukraine were left in a gray zone.

Some analysts posit that Russia’s security interests trump everyone else’s because of its size and historical status. They have argued that Moscow has a right to a recognized sphere of influence, just as the Soviet Union did after 1945. Using this framing, some commentators have suggested that NATO’s post–Cold War expansion and Ukraine’s reluctance to implement the Minsk agreements—accords brokered with Moscow after it annexed Crimea in 2014 that would have limited Ukraine’s sovereignty—are the war’s casus belli. They think that Ukraine is ultimately a former Russian region that should be forced to accept the loss of its territory.

In fact, the preoccupation of Russian leaders with bringing Ukraine back into the fold dates to the beginning of the 1990s, when Ukraine started to pull away from the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (a loose regional institution that had succeeded the Soviet Union). At that juncture, NATO’s enlargement was not even on the table for eastern Europe, and Ukraine’s affiliation with the European Union was an even more remote prospect. Since then, Europe has moved beyond the post-1945 concept of spheres of influence for East and West. Indeed, for most Europeans, Ukraine is clearly an independent state, one that is fighting a war for its survival after an unprovoked attack on its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The war is about more than Ukraine. Kyiv is also fighting to protect other countries. Indeed, for states such as Finland, which was attacked by the Soviet Union in 1939 after securing its independence from the Russian empire 20 years earlier, this invasion seems like a rerun of history. (In the so-called Winter War of 1939–40, Finland fought the Soviets without external support and lost nine percent of its territory.) The Ukrainians and countries supporting them understand that if Russia were to prevail in this bloody conflict, Putin’s appetite for expansion would not stop at the Ukrainian border. The Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and many other countries that were once part of Russia’s empire could be at risk of attack or subversion. Others could see challenges to their sovereignty in the future.

Western governments need to hone this narrative to counter the Kremlin’s. They must focus on bolstering Europe’s and NATO’s resilience alongside Ukraine’s to limit Putin’s coercive power. They must step up the West’s international diplomatic efforts, including at the UN, to dissuade Putin from taking specific actions such as the use of nuclear weapons, attacks on convoys to Ukraine, continued escalation on the battlefield to seize more territory, or a renewed assault on Kyiv. The West needs to make clear that Russia’s relations with Europe will soon be irreparable. There will be no return to prior relations if Putin presses ahead. The world cannot always contain Putin, but clear communications and stronger diplomatic measures may help push him to curtail some of his aggression and eventually agree to negotiations.

The events of the last year should also steer everyone away from making big predictions. Few people outside Ukraine, for example, expected the war or believed that Russia would perform so poorly in its invasion. No one knows exactly what 2023 has in store.

That includes Putin. He appears to be in control for now, but the Kremlin could be in for a surprise. Events often unfold in a dramatic fashion. As the war in Ukraine has shown, many things don’t go according to plan.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/kremlins-grand-delusions

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 7:06 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The outcome is known.

This is just softening up the part of the American public that still believes the M$M for Ukraine's defeat.

They're also trying to shift blame from being idiots who created brainless policies to some, yanno,impersonal forces that had nothing to do with THEM.

But SOMEBODY decided to launch a proxy war on Russia and saturate the public, and themselves, with disinfo that perpetuated their own disconnect from reality.

You've been had.
Again.

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

Yup.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Friday, February 17, 2023 8:58 AM

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

Despite Putin's efforts to make Europe freeze by cutting its gas supply, Europe is on course to get through winter with its vital gas storage facilities more than half full. EU economies look set to start next winter in a strong position.

The wholesale price of gas rose to record levels during storage filling season — peaking at more than €335 per megawatt hour in August.

Gas prices have since fallen to just above €50/Mwh amid easing concerns over supplies.

Across the EU, five new floating LNG terminals have been set up — in the Netherlands, Greece, Finland and two in Germany — providing an extra 30bcm of gas import capacity, with more due to come online this year and next.

Brussels set member states a voluntary target of cutting gas demand by 15 percent from August last year. The 15 percent target may need to be extended beyond its expiry date of March 31 to avoid gas demand rebounding as prices fall. EU energy ministers are set to discuss the issue at two forthcoming meetings in February and March.

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-energy-gas-supply-russia-putin-wint
er/

Putin the Green? The Unintended Consequences of Russia’s Energy War on Europe
Mitchell Orenstein • February 15, 2023 • Eurasia Program

Vladimir Putin accelerated Europe’s transition to green energy, decimating a key market for Russian exporters. Over the long term, Europe is well-positioned will win the energy war with Russia.

Europe has substantially reduced its dependency on Russian fossil fuels, while prices, which quadrupled at the outset of the war, fell back to pre-war levels. Not only has Russia’s energy war on Europe been unsuccessful, but it may have the unintended consequence of accelerating Europe’s energy transition over the long term. Attempting to win recognition as Putin the Great by uniting the Slavic lands of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin may be hailed instead as Putin the Green, the man who convinced Europe to give up dependence on fossil fuels.

https://www.fpri.org/article/2023/02/putin-the-green-the-unintended-co
nsequences-of-russias-energy-war-on-europe/

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 1:38 PM

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

Russian art in wartime
Culture in the time of Z

Repression can stifle a culture. Creating a new one is another matter

In a small underground theatre in the shadows of a railway line in Moscow, a crowd has fallen into what can only be described as nervous hysterics. Individual acts of defiance are unusual in the age of Z (the symbol of Russia’s war in Ukraine and the nationalist mindset that goes with it). A collective endeavour such as this appears to trigger extreme emotions. The play being performed is a comic take on a biblical classic, but the contemporary allusions are not hard to fathom.

In a Sovietised version of Bethlehem, a paranoid, elderly autocrat is preparing for the slaughter of all young boys aged two and under. The newly born hero of the story—not Jesus in this case, but "Little Sergei’’—is saved when a guardian angel warns his parents to leave for Egypt before it is too late. Audience members who have been following social media know that the real-life inspiration for Little Sergei, Serhii Podlianov from Zaporizhia, was far less fortunate. He was killed in November by a Russian missile, aged just two days old.

Zhenya Berkovich, the play’s writer and director, is a rare breed in today’s Russia: a young creative type declining to take the heavy hints to shut up. Even as Vladimir Putin’s "special operation” struggles to make progress in Ukraine, the fear and conformity it has instilled at home mean that domestically, at least, it is yielding real results. Since February 24th last year, when the current invasion began, authorities have used the crisis to try to yank Russian life from a Western trajectory, meddling in personal space, culture and even schools in a way not seen since the Soviet Union.

In the arts, the result has been a toxic mix of repression and preventive self-censorship. Together with a mass exodus of creative talent, this is arguably the biggest disruption to the course of Russian culture since Stalin’s "cultural revolution" saw off the avant-garde in the benighted 1930s. In a telling indication of autocracy’s limits, however, a push to foment an alternative pro-war culture has been markedly less successful.

Ms Berkovich says she is under little illusion about the reach and effects of her own work, which she describes as a "modest personal survival mechanism’’. Theatre touched only a tiny part of the population at the best of times, she says. In the context of Z-Russia, writing a play that "emphasises the miracle of life” was equivalent to no more than a "mosquito dance”. She sympathises with those who think politically engaged citizens should have different priorities now. But it is not a case of choosing between culture and conscience: "You should always choose both."

Not all cultural figures share Ms Berkovich’s fierce anti-war stance. Pragmatic silence is common. A fringe of loyalists such as Valery Gergiev, a conductor, and Vladimir Mashkov, a theatre director, openly embrace the war. At the most grotesque end of the spectrum is a new wave of Z-culture, which the Kremlin has actively promoted. So far the most prominent artist to have broken into the mainstream is the musician Shaman, who has taken to performing hits such as "I’m Russian”— "I’m Russian/I go to the end/I’m Russian/ My blood comes from my fa-aa-ther”—for the already war-shocked citizens of Donbas in occupied eastern Ukraine.

Some unlikely figures have also begun dabbling in the arts scene. The warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin—whose Wagner brand is better known for executions by sledgehammer—has opened a “cultural” and "coworking” space in St Petersburg. On January 21st the dystopian Wagner Centre hosted the opening of a new “anti-colonialist” exhibition by Alexei Chizov, a local artist.

The aim of the show was to emphasise "Russia’s aesthetic and ethical sovereignty". But the confusing paintings, which depicted buff soldiers in poppy fields, left most of the visitors perplexed. Were they Wagner soldiers? (Apparently not: they were meant to be American.) One woman wondered aloud if the images were homoerotic, only to be drowned out with shouts of "Provocation!”

The comically middling talents of the pro-war culture legion have somewhat limited its impact. "The grey and talentless are trying to take the place of what the state is forbidding, but nobody wants to see it,” says Anatoly Golubovsky, a critic. The trouble, from the authorities’ point of view, is that “non-conformism happens to be better and more profitable.” And with state funding scarce amid the war, cultural institutions are prioritising the bottom line.

The directors Dmitri Krymov, Aleksandr Molochnikov and Kirill Serebrennikov are all opposed to the war. But their plays, which are not themselves explicitly anti-war, are commercially successful and continue to be staged—albeit, absurdly, with the directors’ names removed. Bookshops still sell "Summer in a Pioneer’s Necktie”, an LGBT-themed literary blockbuster, notwithstanding a criminal case over its alleged homosexual propaganda. Meanwhile cinemas across Moscow continue secretly to show Western films such as "Avatar", despite international sanctions and the absence of a local licence.

Flowers in the cracks

The life that continues in the gaps suggests government control is still some way short of Soviet totalitarianism. "Russian reality is in fact a mix of off-the-scale cruelty and kindergarten idiocy, and sometimes one saves you from the other,” says Ms Berkovich. All the same, the risks of stepping outside what counts as permissible in culture are real, and growing.

Ms Berkovich has already been threatened with prosecution. Her appearances at festivals have been cancelled at the last minute. An army of trolls has been attacking her on social media. For now, however, the director has decided against joining her creative peers in exile abroad. She sees a purpose in staying in Russia until that becomes impossible: "Putinism isn’t a geography, it’s a time. You can try to close your window to stay warm, but it will still be cold on the street outside.”

http://web.archive.org/web/20230216200827/https://www.economist.com/cu
lture/2023/02/16/a-portrait-of-the-russian-artist-in-the-age-of-z

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 2:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

The outcome is known.

This is just softening up the part of the American public that still believes the M$M for Ukraine's defeat.

They're also trying to shift blame from being idiots who created brainless policies to some, yanno,impersonal forces that had nothing to do with THEM.

But SOMEBODY decided to launch a proxy war on Russia and saturate the public, and themselves, with disinfo that perpetuated their own disconnect from reality.

You've been had.
Again.

Russia's fleet of modern tanks down by 50%; more than 140,000 Russians killed in Ukraine war: Updates

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-fleet-of-modern-tanks-do
wn-by-50-more-than-140-000-russians-killed-in-ukraine-war-updates/ar-AA17yAhL?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=16ddf3d3b1bf46f78e5449f8baaef2f9

Howdoya like them apples?

T

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Friday, February 17, 2023 3:17 PM

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

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, said in an interview that any Ukrainian attacks on Crimea would be met with "retaliation strikes" that could potentially include nuclear deterrence.

Kyiv knows how valuable Crimea is to Putin, but it also knows the Russian military is stretched thin at the moment. Since maintaining control of Crimea is a greater priority to Putin than recapturing territory in eastern and southern Ukraine, any activity in Crimea is a useful reminder to Putin to keep troops stationed there rather than relocating them to the front.

https://www.newsweek.com/russias-thin-lines-give-ukraine-opening-attac
k-crimea-1781842

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 4:09 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

The outcome is known.

This is just softening up the part of the American public that still believes the M$M for Ukraine's defeat.

They're also trying to shift blame from being idiots who created brainless policies to some, yanno,impersonal forces that had nothing to do with THEM.

But SOMEBODY decided to launch a proxy war on Russia and saturate the public, and themselves, with disinfo that perpetuated their own disconnect from reality.

You've been had.
Again.

Russia's fleet of modern tanks down by 50%; more than 140,000 Russians killed in Ukraine war: Updates

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-fleet-of-modern-tanks-do
wn-by-50-more-than-140-000-russians-killed-in-ukraine-war-updates/ar-AA17yAhL?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=16ddf3d3b1bf46f78e5449f8baaef2f9

Howdoya like them apples?

T

What are you gonna do when NONE of this is proven true? Will you admit that your sources are liars, and FINALLY re-jigger your thinking?

Or will keep digging in the same mental/ emotional hole?

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 4:22 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Why Are So Many in the West Lying About Ukraine’s Casualties?

15 February 2023 by Larry Johnson 160 Comments

I am fascinated by guys like Wes O’Donnell, who publish delusional nonsense without offering one piece of credible evidence. O’Donnell, who claims to have served in the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force, put up a piece at Medium last week with the catchy title, Putin’s Death Cult Prepares for Huge Casualties in the Coming Days.

Here are some salient points from his article:

The Russian army just suffered the deadliest 24 hours since the start of the war. According to Ukraine, 1,030 Russians were killed yesterday as Moscow continues to throw thousands of freshly mobilized soldiers into the meat grinder.

This brings the Russian death toll to 133,190. . . .

In an intelligence update given on Tuesday, the UK Ministry of Defense said Russian forces have “only managed to gain several hundred meters of territory per week,” because the Kremlin “now lacks the munitions and maneuver units required for successful offensives.”

I guess research is not Mr. O’Donnell’s strong suit. Instead of looking for independent sources he repeats the lies from the British Ministry of Defense, which gets its “intel” from the Ukrainians. If you accept the Ukrainian truth you are convinced that the Russians are being slaughtered at a horrendous rate. Only one little problem — I have been unable to find any Russian social media that shows mass graveyards and thousands of grieving Russian relatives.

O’Donnell also relies on the propaganda generated by the Institute for the Study of War (a new competitor for Oxymoron of the Year Award). He makes this outlandish claim:

Perhaps most interesting is how Putin is using conscripts in this war counter to traditional Russian military doctrine. Historically, Russia’s “trigger-pullers” have been its professional corps of contract troops — while conscripts were reserved for menial tasks like manual labor and maintenance.

But in Ukraine, it’s the conscripts who are sent to the front while the contract troops stay safely “in the rear.”

Well, as Chris Berman used to say on ESPN, “Let’s go to the videotape.” Here is a video of Wagner Group “contract” soldiers in the midst of the battle in Bakhmut packing up the corpses of fallen Ukrainians. You can hear the noise of battle in the background. Odd isn’t it. Instead of desecrating the bodies of their adversaries, the Russian contract soldiers treat the dead with respect as they secure the bodies to send them back to their loved ones. (You can see a Ukrainian flag on some of the caskets.)

Here is the rest of that story. Those caskets are headed to western Ukraine and will be buried in graveyards like the following:

I want to reiterate the inability of Ukrainian and Russian authorities to control social media. The ubiquitous cell phone camera provides a powerful tool to record events as they happen. If Russians were dying in the numbers claimed by Ukrainian sources we would be seeing that on social media. We are not. At least not in the number that appear on Ukrainian channels.

I am not suggesting that Russia is casualty free. Russian soldiers are being killed and wounded. But not in the volume that Ukrainian soldiers are. Ukrainian claims about Russian losses is just another manifestation of psychological projection.

https://sonar21.com/why-are-so-many-in-the-west-lying-about-ukraines-c
asualties/

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 4:34 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Pity . . .

The Wagner Group released a video of a stack of dead Russians on Friday to make a point about the shortage of ammunition it was facing, as its leader said he would risk arrest to get his fighters more shells and bullets.

The graphic clip, posted by a Telegram account linked to the Russian mercenary group, showed hundreds of dead bodies – allegedly of Wagner fighters – to show the human cost of the ammunition shortage.

“We’re losing our fighters every day: it would be half as much if the military officials were to supply us with weapons and ammunition on time,” an unidentified man in a hazmat suit said in the video.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s owner, on Friday echoed the same complaint, saying that he is “knocking on every door” to get his hands on ammunition.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/wagner-group-releases-graphic-video-1806174
26.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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Friday, February 17, 2023 5:26 PM

Fuck Ukraine.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Friday, February 17, 2023 6:46 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I followed every link in your Yahoo article, SECOND. I couldn't find any that linked to the video that the headline purports to reference.

Valid link?

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 9:00 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The BBC- hardly a pro-Russuan outlet- and Meduza- an anti-Putin Russian website based inLatvia, most recently estimated Russian dead at 14,000. (Not 140,000).

I tried finding their latest figure on the Meduza- website, but I can only find a link to their December 2022 estimate.

https://meduza.io/en/news/2022/12/09/bbc-and-mediazona-confirm-10-000-
russian-soldiers-dead-in-ukraine

The previous estimate is consistent with the latest estimate.

Even if you double the number, it doesn't come anywhere close to the wildly exaggerated figures that that Kiev and neocons are blathering about.

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 9:38 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I followed every link in your Yahoo article, SECOND. I couldn't find any that linked to the video that the headline purports to reference.

Valid link?

Here is the original story from The Telegraph, UK:
"Wagner Group releases graphic video of corpses in desperate plea for more ammunition", but no corpses on video!
https://web.archive.org/web/20230218022044/https://www.telegraph.co.uk
/world-news/2023/02/17/wagner-group-releases-graphic-video-corpses-desperate-plea-ammunition/

Twitter has a video of "Wagner mercenaries begging the Russian Ministry of Defence for ammunition", but no corpses on video!
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1626260315166892033

New video of alleged sledgehammer execution appears on Telegram channel affiliated with PMC Wagner. Graphic footage. TRIGGER WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC FOOTAGE
https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/02/13/new-video-of-alleged-sledg
ehammer-execution-appears-on-telegram-channel-affiliated-with-pmc-wagner-graphic-footage-en-news

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

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Friday, February 17, 2023 10:50 PM

Sad. You are sad.

Get some mental help.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Saturday, February 18, 2023 3:29 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I followed every link in your Yahoo article, SECOND. I couldn't find any that linked to the video that the headline purports to reference.

Valid link?
Here is the original story from The Telegraph, UK:
"Wagner Group releases graphic video of corpses in desperate plea for more ammunition", but no corpses on video!
https://web.archive.org/web/20230218022044/https://www.telegraph.co.uk
/world-news/2023/02/17/wagner-group-releases-graphic-video-corpses-desperate-plea-ammunition/

No link to any video of Wagner corpses.

Quote:
Twitter has a video of "Wagner mercenaries begging the Russian Ministry of Defence for ammunition", but no corpses on video!
No link to any video of Wagnere corpses there either.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1626260315166892033

Quote:
New video of alleged sledgehammer execution appears on Telegram channel affiliated with PMC Wagner. Graphic footage. TRIGGER WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC FOOTAGE
https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/02/13/new-video-of-alleged-sledg
ehammer-execution-appears-on-telegram-channel-affiliated-with-pmc-wagner-graphic-footage-en-news
No link to any video of Wagner corpses their either.

Is it possible that this so-called video is just a ... lie???

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

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Saturday, February 18, 2023 7:46 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Is it possible that this so-called video is just a ... lie???

Video here: https://t.me/razgruzka_vagnera/10
Google Translate:

Quote:
Every day we lose hundreds of our comrades. There could have been half as many of them if the military functionaries had supplied us with weapons, ammunition and everything that was needed on time. Stop messing around, let us fight, let us defend our country, our homeland. There are hundreds of our guys here. Send your children, sons-in-law, who shoot tik-toks, to this war.

Following a video posted on February 16 of Wagner Group troops stating that they have been cut off from artillery supplies Wagner fighters released another video on February 17 showing a room full of bodies of deceased Wagner fighters.[17] The fighter in the video claims that Wagner is losing hundreds of personnel a day because the Russian MoD is not providing them with the weapons, ammunition, and other supplies that they need.[18] Several Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels also amplified a #GiveShellstoWagner post that explicitly tags the Russian MoD and claims (falsely) that Wagner is the only formation currently advancing in Ukraine and that Wagner elements therefore need immediate support.[19] The escalation of Wagner’s direct accusations against the Russian MoD represents a new informational counteroffensive by Prigozhin that seeks to continue to undermine the Russian MoD and obscure Wagner’s attrition-based operational model by blaming the Russian MoD for its failures.

More at https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-february-17-2023

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

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Saturday, February 18, 2023 8:31 AM

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

Oh, those Russians are "special":

Quote:
I recently talked to a soldier from the Azov Regiment who was known as Commander Savior. He described to me some of his experiences in the besieged Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, the absolutely desperate positions he and his comrades found themselves in, dead and dying people lying around them. He described in graphic terms the smell of gangrene from the people near him. And then he was captured by the Russians after the battalion had to surrender. He was tortured for months. The Russians were trying to get him and his comrades to confess to, for example, the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol, which produced one of the famous images of the war, the pregnant mother being carried out on a stretcher. They [Russians] were trying to get the Ukrainian soldiers to [falsely] confess that it was actually they who had blown up their own hospital.

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/02/18/second-time-as-tragedy-timot
hy-garton-ash/

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

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Saturday, February 18, 2023 2:04 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Uh huh.

Sorry I don't do Telegram.

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

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