Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

So, your response to videos and widespread reports of UKRAINE'S WAR CRIMES is a stupid CARTOON?
I suppose it would be too much for you to adress THE FACTS?

Dood, stop rerunning the propaganda movie playing in your head.
Trump is not colluding with Russia.
Russia is not colluding with Trump.

And stop kidding yourself that you post FACTS.
You post crude propaganda, and none of us are stupid enough to believe it, or you.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Sunday, December 31, 2023 1:24 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:
So, your response to videos and widespread reports of UKRAINE'S WAR CRIMES is a stupid CARTOON?
I suppose it would be too much for you to adress THE FACTS?

Dood, stop rerunning the propaganda movie playing in your head.
Trump is not colluding with Russia.
Russia is not colluding with Trump.

And stop kidding yourself that you post FACTS.
You post crude propaganda, and none of us are stupid enough to believe it, or you.

When Russians shoot down a Ukrainian missile, the debris falls just about anywhere, including on civilians rather than military targets. Tough luck but that's the physics of an unguided missile falling randomly out of the skies over Russia. Russians won't take responsibility for the unintended consequences of shooting down missiles. Instead, Russians will claim Ukraine committed a targeted war crime. Lying seems to be a Standard Operating Procedure for Russians, so that's why they also called the UK terrorists.

UK behind terror attack on Belgorod — Russian diplomat
The United Kingdom is inciting the Kiev regime to terrorist actions in coordination with the United States, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said
https://tass.com/politics/1728303

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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Sunday, December 31, 2023 1:30 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

AND NOW FOR SOME ACTUAL REPORTING AND ANALYSIS

Quote:
Yesterday [three days ago now] Russia has send swarms of missiles to strike Ukraine:

" Russia fired more than 150 missiles and drones at Ukraine on Friday in one of the largest bombardments of the war, [Ukrainian] officials said, hitting schools, parks, homes, a hospital and other civilian infrastructure, and rupturing the relative calm of an otherwise quiet winter on the conflict’s static front lines.

The scale of the attack confirmed what many in Ukraine have feared for months — that Russia was conserving its missile stocks throughout the fall for massive strikes in the winter."

It [was] however not schools, parks, homes or hospitals that were the targets.

As Strana [Strana is a top-5 online Ukrainian newspaper founded by journalist Igor Guzhva, in opposition to the current Ukrainian government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strana.ua ] writes (machine translation):

"Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhny said that "critical infrastructure, industrial and military facilities were attacked."

Indeed, judging by many sources, this missile attack was directed primarily at military enterprises and warehouses. Or on other infrastructure. At the same time, unlike last year's massive strikes, the current attack did not focus on energy facilities." https://strana.news/news/454083-raketnaja-ataka-po-ukraine-29-dekabrja
-2023-osnovnye-fakty.html

The Economist confirms the targeting of weapon production facilities:

[A] "source in Ukraine’s defence industry suggests Russia had predominantly targeted defence facilities. Some were connected to missile and drone production. “The attacks had strategic meaning for the enemy, with the aim of reducing our capacity to strike,” the source says. Both sides are locked in a competition to degrade the enemy. “It’s a battle to see who can destroy more of the enemy’s long-range weapons.” " https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/12/29/russia-tries-to-overwhelm-
ukraine-with-missiles

Of course, Zelenskiy & Co are going to announce endlessly about the apparently civilian structures that were hit, so - along with him - let's ignore the other 140+ missiles, bc that's "honest reporting"!

More about that later.

Quote:
This comes three days after the Ukrainian president Zelenski boosted about domestic Ukrainian weapon production:

" Ukraine tripled its domestic production of equipment and weapons in 2023 compared to the year before, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Dec. 27.

Amid rising uncertainty surrounding military aid from key partners like the U.S., Ukraine is looking to increase its own weapons production capacity.

Speaking at a meeting with Ukrainian defense industry workers, Zelensky said there has also been an "extremely significant" increase in domestic ammunition production, especially for artillery.

The production of drone ammunition is being "systematically expanded," Zelensky said. In 2024, "special attention will be paid to the production of explosives and gunpowder, which are in short supply in the world." " https://news.yahoo.com/zelensky-ukraine-triples-weapons-production-161
314865.html

Zelenski is putting his hope on foreign cooperation:

"According to Zelensky, Ukraine's defense complex will become further integrated with the international defense system. In 2023, Ukraine joined forces with German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall to repair Western-produced military vehicles and ultimately produce them domestically in Ukraine.

The joint Rheinmetall-Ukrainian Defense Industry enterprise was registered on Oct. 18. "The creation of a joint enterprise is, without exaggeration, a landmark event that takes cooperation between our countries to a qualitatively new level," Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said.

Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger said on Dec. 2 that the company plans to build the first armored vehicles on-site in Ukraine in the summer of 2024.

Later in December, Ukrainian and U.S. officials signed a statement of intent on the co-production of weapons."

I do not know what Rheinmetall's CEO Papperger is smoking, but if he believes that his weapon production facility in Ukraine can survive more than a few weeks it must be some very strong stuff.

More Strana (machine translation):

"Judging by the locations of the strike, the main targets were warehouses and military enterprises.

A Ukrainian specialist in electronic warfare and drones, Sergey Beskrestnov, recently stated on one of the YouTube channels that "Russia is actively tracking down our defense enterprises," and among their employees there are many informants of the Russian Federation.

"We, unfortunately, have a lot of traitors, pensioners (factory workers - Ed .) merge where, what, where is sent... A hangar with finished products was destroyed at one production enterprise, and very large damage was suffered. When they began to deal with the counter-measures, it turned out that my grandfather, who was the chief engineer there, for a ten - dollar bill (10 thousand - Ed .) reported when it was necessary to do this (strike)," said Beskrestnov.

"Hunting" for enterprises is a predictable strategy of the Russian Federation in light of the fact that Ukraine has announced its intentions to develop military production on its territory and increase the production of drones and ammunition, as well as the capacity to repair armored vehicles". https://strana.news/news/454083-raketnaja-ataka-po-ukraine-29-dekabrja
-2023-osnovnye-fakty.html

Those problems will occur again and again.

There is hope to get more air defense systems from other countries. However, their international availability is limited. The U.S. had to put strong pressure on Japan because it itself can not produce enough for Ukraine to survive:

"Japan is set to announce that it will approve the sale of advanced air defense systems to the United States, a significant shift in its postwar policies restricting the export of weapons and military hardware, and a move that could help Washington support Ukraine in its fight against Russia." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/world/asia/japan-postwar-missile-de
fense-sales.html

Those systems, when delivered, will also get destroyed.

Just recently a complete Patriot system, which had previously taken down some Russian jets, was eliminated at the Kherson railway station. Russia also announced the elimination of an IRIS-T and other such shorter range systems provided by western countries:

"Operational-Tactical and Missile Troops of the Russian Groups of Forces eliminated combat vehicles of air defence systems, namely, one Norwegian-made NASAMS, one German-made IRIS-T, one French-made Crotale-NG, one S-300 air defence system radar, and three U.S.-made AN/TPQ-50 counterbattery warfare radar stations.

There are not enough air defenses to cover each and every production facility in Ukraine and Russia can send a practically unlimited amount of missiles:

"Therefore, it is likely that the Ukrainian command will try to cover important defense facilities with additional air defense systems as much as possible in the near future. Although here a big role will be played by the ability of the allies to supply them in the necessary volumes. As well as Russia's ability to further increase the intensity of strikes." https://strana.news/news/454083-raketnaja-ataka-po-ukraine-29-dekabrja
-2023-osnovnye-fakty.html

But what about those schools, parks, homes or hospitals that were hit and damaged?

Yes, what about them??

Quote:
They are simply collateral losses caused by Ukrainian air defenses:

Ihnat, the [Ukrainian] air force spokesman, said that it was unclear what exactly the Russians were targeting, as some missiles were intercepted by Ukrainian air defense, and damage was caused by falling fragments.

“When certain objects get hit, you can conclude that they were trying to aim for it,” Ihnat said. “But there are also things like debris.”

“If a flying rocket is hit, this is a large mass of metal, burning rocket fuel and so forth,” he said. “And the explosives can also still be undetonated. So when the debris of this rocket falls down, it can still have serious consequences on the ground. The work of air defense, even when it’s successful, can still have serious consequences.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/29/ukraine-russia-missile
-barrage-power/

Air defense systems In Ukraine are just like all those other western super-weapons. Their alleged supremacy gets defeated by Russia before they are able to do any serious damage.

- Posted by b on December 30, 2023 at 12:33 UTC

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/12/ukraine-sitrep-strikes-on-ukrain
ian-weapon-production-air-defense-lacking.html

In addition, air defense missiles that missed their target also land, willy nilly, on the defenders. I've watched videos of spent or errant air defense missiles land on highways and roadways, and there is the infamous incident where a Ukrainian S300 landed in Poland and killed two. Zelenskiy IMMEDIATELY blamed Russia for firing on Poland and tried to whip up a NATO Article 5 response. Fortunately someone in Poland had already filmed and uploaded the wreckage, and it became clear that it was Ukrainian.

Also, when Kiev claims that Russians are using S200 and S300 missiles to strike Ukraine, they're just setting up a scapegoat for theur own errant/ spent air defense missiles landing on someone's property.

*****

"B" is a German posting in English. Located in Germany, he has access to Ukrainian and other European news sources as well as the larger USA online publications. His posts are always full of direct quotes and fully linked. I've reproduced those links for you so you cant cavil https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cavil about the sorcing, which you do every time i post something you don't want to acknowledge.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Sunday, December 31, 2023 3:44 PM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

So, your response to videos and widespread reports of UKRAINE'S WAR CRIMES is a stupid CARTOON?

I suppose it would be too much for you to adress THE FACTS?

Dood, stop rerunning the propaganda movie playing in your head.
Trump is not colluding with Russia.
Russia is not colluding with Trump.

And stop kidding yourself that you post FACTS.
You post crude propaganda, and none of us are stupid enough to believe it, or you.

SIGNYM

I'm sorry comrade; could you remind me who has an arrest on sight warrant issued against them by the Hague?

I know, you were a clown in another life correct?

Just, way too funny.

T

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Sunday, December 31, 2023 3:50 PM

Why don't you get some hobbies?

Your life and your obsessions comes off as extremely pathetic, Ted.

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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, December 31, 2023 3:55 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Oh, that old gem again. We've been over this before ad nauseam. If you're living in a place where the average personal income is $9,733 per year, then everything you buy from food to clothing to transportation to entertainment costs a LOT less than somewhere where the average income is $40k per year. You don't even have to travel out of the country to see that this is true. Somebody working and living in NYC or LA is making a ton more than somebody doing the same job in bumfuck Kentucky doing the same job, but somebody in bumfuck Kentucky isn't paying $3,500 per month for a 600 sq ft. studio apartment.
It's pretty obvious you have very few foreign stamps in your passport. Oh? You don't need a passport? You've seen all you need to know from a screen? Russians are pretty much the same since they get all their "facts" about the Failing West from Putin. Trumptards hear about the Failing NYTimes and Failing California from Trump.

Another dumb argument from Second with zero facts or evidence provided.

Yeah. Sure. Everybody pays the exact amount for everything sold no matter where they live in the world or what the average household income is.

Got any argument and data supporting that, idiot, or have you finally figured out that without any actual facts backing up anything you think that the only thing you have left is personal insults?

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Monday, January 1, 2024 8:20 AM

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin and many Kremlin officials have driven deep into the Russian political consciousness the ideas that Ukraine has no independent identity and no basis to continue to exist as an independent state; that any Ukrainian government not totally subservient to Moscow is a pawn of the West and a threat to Russia; that Ukrainian opponents of Russian rule are Nazis intent on conducting genocide against Russians in Ukraine; and that Russia has a legal, moral, and religious obligation to extirpate these supposed threats and restore Ukraine to its rightful place as a historically Russian land.[2] Putin has made these arguments part of his 2024 presidential election platform.[3] Russian administrators are inserting them in curricula throughout Russia and occupied Ukraine.[4] Kremlin mouthpieces speak to the Russian domestic audience with one voice along these lines.[5] Putin is training Russians to commit themselves to the task of subjugating Ukraine, and that training will neither stop nor vanish following some negotiated ceasefire. It will, in fact, shape the thoughts and likely policies of Putin’s successors for years or decades.

The ongoing fighting is consuming Russian forces generated just about as rapidly as Russia puts them into the field. Should an armistice be established, however, few of the conditions shaping the deployments of these forces would hold anymore. New Russian forces would not be consumed by fighting after a ceasefire. The Russians would no longer be forced to mass in particular areas where they are currently attacking but would instead be able to rearrange their forces to optimize for other factors. They would be able to mass artillery, air defense, electronic warfare, and engineering capabilities, specifically bridging equipment, and other supplies in fortified defensive positions near the front line — something they cannot do now as Ukrainian forces attack any concentrations within range of their weapons systems when they see them. The Russians would be able to prepare, train, equip, and deploy reserves in echelons throughout southern and eastern Ukraine to reinforce and support future operations and to improve the road and rail infrastructure needed to move them rapidly around. They could optimize, in other words, for a short-notice attack at times and places of their choosing in ways that the ongoing combat now precludes.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/lands-ukraine-must-liber
ate

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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Monday, January 1, 2024 10:17 AM

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

Stalin Looms Large Over Putin's Russia

By Robert Coalson | January 01, 2024

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-stalin-putin-legacy/32755048.html

“In Russia today, ‘Lenin’ is just a figure in the mausoleum and in museums and nothing more,” wrote Leonid Nevzlin in a 2020 essay for RFE/RL’s Russian Service. “ ‘Stalin’ is our everyday reality. The Putin regime has a completely defined relationship to Stalin, to Stalinists, to Stalinism. This relationship is primarily tied to the roots of the regime. The KGB [and other Soviet security agencies] cannot be against ‘Stalin’ as an idea and as a practice. Stalin is their patron, their fate, and their biography.

“ ‘Stalin’ is a special operation under which the population is being drawn into the process of Stalinization and being recruited to become neo-Stalinists,” he wrote. “In the cultural-psychological sense, we remain a Stalinist society.”

Calling Stalin “the great manipulator,” Tatar activist and political analyst Ruslan Aisin wrote in an essay for RFE/RL’s Idel.Realities in August that Russia’s enduring inheritance from Stalin is one of subordination, conformity, individual isolation, and dislocation.

“We are definitely living inside Stalin’s legacy,” he wrote, “where the main things are fear, atomization, submission, and other social evils.”

Despite his chilling experience looking into the eyes of the broken NKVD executioner and investigating the Smolenka mass graves, Solovyov welcomes the present-day rehabilitation of Stalin.

“Stalin was a wise politician in his day, and those who criticize him just want to tarnish the ideas of communism and our great past,” he said. “Only those who want to distract Russian citizens from the serious failures of the [post-Soviet] reforms need de-Stalinization. The people don’t need it.

“The repressions were a terrible page in our history,” he conceded. “But any regime has its mistakes and dark spots. We need to talk about all the good things that happened under Stalin. And there were a lot of them. Although you could say the state at that time was built on the labor of the repressed, sometimes you need to make sacrifices to achieve certain goals.”

Oleg Yachmenev is a history graduate student at Zabaikal State University in Chita. Many of his instructors, he said, are “active Putinists.” He recalls discussing Stalin’s crimes with one lecturer who in the end said that “although things were bad, it would have been worse otherwise.”

“Unfortunately, it has become the norm to praise the Stalin era because people don’t know the truth about the camps and the repressions,” Yachmenev said. “Now, if I want to get information about those who were executed and I go to the archives, people in epaulets soon appear asking if I am a ‘foreign agent’ who is trying to smear Stalin, the pride of Russia.”

Respect And Fear

The rehabilitation of Stalin has been a feature of the Putin era since the former KGB officer came to power nearly a quarter-century ago. The independent Levada Center polling agency began asking Russians to name “the greatest figure of all times and peoples” in the early 1990s. In 1994, the Soviet dictator polled about 20 percent to take a distant fourth place in the ranking. By 2012, however, he took over first place, a position he has held ever since. By 2021, Stalin was the pick of more than 40 percent of Russians. In 2023, 47 percent of Russians said they regarded Stalin with “respect.”

“‘Respect’ in modern language signifies a warm, sincere feeling but also a recognition of the superior power of the object of the respect,” wrote Levada Center chief analyst Aleksei Levinson in an essay in August. “‘They fear us, which means they respect us’ is commonly heard these days. And it crops up a lot among the responses to questions about Stalin.”

The Kremlin’s manipulation of Stalin’s image and of the psychological legacy of the Soviet experience for the Russian people has evolved since Putin first became president on the last day of 1999, observers say. In the early years, Stalin was promoted as an “effective manager” who led the Soviet Union to victory over Nazi Germany. His image was almost always tied to World War II, cropping up with increasing frequency on banners and posters illustrating the Putin government’s glorification of the Soviet role in the war.

Over time, however, the tight connection between Stalin and the war has been loosened, and Stalin and Stalinist imagery appeared in a much wider array of contexts -- from advertising to the arts. He features prominently and positively in the dozens of jingoistic Russia: My History exhibitions the government has set up across the country.

In the glasnost era under the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, Stalin largely appeared only in the context of the condemnation of his crimes, as gruesome details emerged and became a topic of media conversation across the country. Now, analysts say, he has become fully normalized in the everyday lives of Russians.

“Stalin constantly appears in the public space,” Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, told RFE/RL in a 2021 interview. “[Folklorist] Aleksandr Arkhipov has counted nearly 150 monuments. In part, these are grassroots initiatives. Sometimes, the Communist Party helps, but fundamentally it is grassroots Stalinism. Nostalgia for a chief, for a strong hand.”

Under Putin, Russia has reached a stage that can be described as “mature authoritarianism,” said biologist Ilya Kolmanovsky, who has created numerous science-education programs.

The effect on the public is that “society is not living its everyday life, but exists in a state of mobilization,” he said. “The state keeps people in a state of mobilization, under the threat of attack, which in turn justifies autocracy and the necessity of a strong hand.”

Much more at https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-stalin-putin-legacy/32755048.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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Monday, January 1, 2024 2:16 PM

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

Will the Ukraine War End in 2024? Experts Weigh In | Dec 28, 2023

"The only way I can foresee the Ukraine war possibly ending in 2024 is if Vladimir Putin dies," Beth Knobel, former CBS News Moscow bureau chief, told Newsweek. "It is theoretically possible that Russia could take advantage of a change in leadership to try to declare victory and just hold onto the land it grabbed since February of 2022," she said. "But even if Putin dies, I think there's only a minuscule chance that Russia would back off from the war, because it has already invested so much of its national image in winning."

"A long-term negotiated settlement also seems highly unlikely. Having spent so much blood, treasure, and prestige on this war, Putin politically cannot afford anything less than a decisive victory," said Gregory Vitarbo, professor of history at Meredith College, Raleigh, North Carolina.

https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-war-end-2024-experts-1853696

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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Monday, January 1, 2024 2:38 PM

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

File this story under #cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys (the sudden bowel-loosening realization that if you are a soldier, you can be killed/wounded/inconvenienced):

Army conscription becomes toxic issue for Ukraine’s leaders

Neither the Ukrainian president nor his top military commanders want to take responsibility for drafting reluctant fighters

By Ben Hall | Jan 1, 2024

https://www.ft.com/content/3ce63abc-9a71-427b-8e11-ab5309288845

As it prepares to enter the third year of full-scale war against Russian invaders, Ukraine needs significantly more troops. But given the risk of a public backlash, the task of raising men for the armed forces has become something of a hot potato in Kyiv, tossed back and forth between Ukraine’s political leaders and its top military commanders. Neither side appears to be willing to take full responsibility for drafting hundreds of thousands of perhaps reluctant Ukrainians to serve in a grim, grinding war.

The tussle began on December 19 when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at his year-end press conference that Ukrainian army chiefs had requested the conscription of 450,000 to 500,000 men. His announcement was extraordinary in two ways.

First, he put a figure on it. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Ukraine has kept secret the number of people it has recruited, whether voluntarily or through compulsion, just as it has the number of casualties.

Second, Zelenskyy stressed this was a request from the top brass, one that he had not yet granted. Before approving it, he wanted a detailed plan from his commanders about why so many recruits were needed and what that would mean in terms of troop rotations at the front.

“I need specifics,” he said. “This is a very serious number.”

Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 are barred from leaving the country and are supposed to register with military recruitment offices for possible call-up. However, under current rules, only men who are 27 or older can be conscripted. A draft bill to lower that age to 25 was published in December, given that the rules governing mobilisation are the responsibility of parliament.

Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party, however, seems loath to take ownership of the bill. Its MPs were instructed not to comment on it and instead refer journalists’ questions to military commanders, according to the Ukrainian Truth media outlet.

The day after the conscription legislation was published, General Valeriy Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was wheeled out to defend it in a TV interview and at his first press conference since February 2022.

Up until then, Zaluzhny had been largely kept out of the media spotlight, with a few exceptions, notably a November interview with The Economist in which he described the war at a “stalemate”, a taboo word in government circles which enraged the president.

In his defence of the recruitment drive, Zaluzhny said the military needed more men and had been included in the drafting of new legislation, but stressed that he was not responsible for all the details.

Asked about the 450,000-500,000 number cited by Zelenskyy, the general said he “did not make any request for any figures”. Revealing any numbers would amount to divulging a military secret, he added.

He also distanced the armed forces from provisions in the bill to expand the conscription orders to Ukrainians living abroad and to impose tougher sanctions on draft dodgers. These were questions for lawmakers to address, he added.

“We are an army, and we should fight, not interfere in the lives of civilians,” he said.

Zaluzhny’s appearance to explain the mobilisation drive was necessary, says Mariia Zolkina of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation think-tank in Kyiv, because Ukraine’s “political authorities attempted to distance themselves from this step and redirect responsibility to military leadership”.

Blaming the army for a potentially unpopular move was “destructive and wrong”, Zolkina wrote on X.

Relations between Zelenskyy and his top military commander were tense even before autumn, when the failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive sparked rumours of the general’s imminent dismissal. Some military officers say differences over strategy and tactics are to be expected in a gruelling conflict.

But some in Zelenskyy’s circle see Zaluzhny, who is highly popular with the Ukrainian public, as a potential political rival.

Mass conscription for a war of attrition is always going to be a hard sell.

Even an autocrat like Russian President Vladimir Putin balked at mass mobilisation for months until battlefield setbacks forced his hand in the autumn of 2022.

Zelenskyy’s eagerness to share with his top commanders the burden of responsibility for a new recruitment push shows that 2024 will be a more difficult year on the home front as well as at the front line.

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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Tuesday, January 2, 2024 9:43 AM

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

So Far Russia Hasn’t Destroyed Even One Of Ukraine’s 39 HIMARS Rocket-Launchers — And Not For A Lack Of Trying

The arrival of HIMARS in Ukraine compelled the Russians to get their act together. In the war’s second year, Russia’s artillery kill-chain got “more responsive and more flexible,” analysts Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds wrote for the Royal United Services Institute in London. https://static.rusi.org/403-SR-Russian-Tactics-web-final.pdf

https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/so-far-russia-hasnt-
destroyed-even-one-ukraines-39-himars-rocket-launchers-and-not-lack-trying

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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Tuesday, January 2, 2024 3:50 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

That's odd, bc Dima has shown videos of HIMARS getting destroyed. Not many, but more than none.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Wednesday, January 3, 2024 7:54 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:
That's odd, bc Dima has shown videos of HIMARS getting destroyed. Not many, but more than none.

You know what else is odd? For the new year, Putin has retconned his explanation for why Russia went to war:

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 2, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin identified the West as Russia’s “enemy” and implied that Russia is fighting in Ukraine in order to defeat the West. Putin responded to a Russian serviceman’s question about Western aid to Ukraine during a meeting at a military hospital in Moscow Oblast on January 1, stating that Russia’s issue is not necessarily that the West is aiding Ukraine, but rather that the West is Russia's "enemy."[1] Putin added that “Ukraine by itself is not an enemy for [Russia],” but that Western-based actors “who want to destroy Russian statehood” and achieve the “strategic defeat of Russia on the battlefield” are Russia’s enemies. Putin claimed that Western elites are trying to break Russia into five parts and are trying to do so using Ukraine, but that the situation on the frontlines is changing and that Russia will “deal with the [West] faster” than the West can deal with Russia on the battlefields in Ukraine. Putin added that the problem is not in Western aid deliveries to Ukraine and noted that Ukraine has already been “completely destroyed,” that there is “nothing left” of the country, and that it “exists only on handouts.”

Putin implied that Russia is fighting an existential war against the West in Ukraine and noted that Western rhetoric has recently refocused on how to “quickly end the conflict.” This phrasing implies that Putin sees a conflict and potential negotiations between Russia and the West – not a conflict and potential negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. Putin added that Russia also wants to end the Russia-West conflict but only on the Kremlin’s terms and emphasized that Russia will not give up its positions. Putin does not view Ukraine as an independent actor and is thus portraying his full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a confrontation between Russian and West – deliberately misrepresenting the reality that Russia invaded Ukraine to destroy Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Putin’s emphasis on changing narratives in the West may indicate that he will perceive and/or frame any wavering in Western support for Ukraine and any Ukrainian defeats on the battlefield as a Russian victory in this supposed Russian-Western confrontation.

Putin’s framing of his war in Ukraine as a Russian struggle against the West – and not Ukraine – indicates that he does not intend to negotiate in good faith with Ukraine and is setting information conditions aimed at convincing the West to betray Ukraine through negotiations. Putin is likely deliberately and falsely framing Ukraine as pawn without agency in the Russia-West conflict to mask his expansionist and maximalist goals of establishing full effective Russian control of Ukraine. Putin’s January 1 discussion of negotiations refers to his intent to negotiate solely with the West about Ukraine’s future within the Russian sphere of influence and only about Western abandonment of Ukraine. It does not signal that Putin is interested in negotiating with Ukraine as an autonomous actor. Putin previously adopted a similar line when issuing two ultimatums to the United States and NATO in December 2021, which were intended to force the West to recognize Russia’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe by surrendering essential elements of Ukraine’s sovereignty in the name of de-escalating the conflict between the West and Russia that Putin was inflaming.[2] Any Western commitment to negotiations about Ukraine's future that bypass Ukraine will signal to Russia that it can impose its will upon countries that it deems to be in its sphere of influence – even countries beyond Ukraine, and potentially including Finland and Moldova, about which various Russian actors have begun setting informational conditions for future campaigns.[3]

Putin may be expanding his war aims in Ukraine to include confrontation with the West in an effort to set conditions for permanent Russian military buildup and to justify high battlefield sacrifices. Russia gained almost no meaningful ground in 2023 at a high manpower cost, despite Putin’s January 1 absurd claims that he only orders Russian servicemen to launch offensives that will not generate significant casualties.[4] The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD), however, stated on December 30 that “the average daily number of Russian casualties in Ukraine has risen by almost 300 during the course of 2023” and that Russian casualties could rise to over half a million by the end of 2024.[5] A declassified US intelligence assessment shared with Congress on December 12 stated that Russian forces have lost 315,000 personnel since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[6] Such high casualties for small territorial gains are likely prompting Putin to present a strong and ideological justification to continue the prolonged war of choice on which he has launched Russia. Ukraine needs no such contorted justifications for the high losses and suffering that Putin’s invasion is inflicting on its people, even when Ukraine’s military operations do not produce the desired results. The war really is existential for Ukraine as it is not for Russia.

Putin notably concluded his observations about the Russian-West conflict by telling one wounded serviceman in the hospital that the serviceman did not get wounded for Russia to give up everything and surrender. Putin also addressed several domestic concerns about the lack of housing and compensations to servicemen who have received injuries on the battlefield, thereby attempting to posture himself as an empathetic and involved wartime leader even while seemingly raising the stakes to support his demands for increasing sacrifices by his people. Putin’s statements likely suggest that he is preparing a long-term justification to keep forces mobilized and engaged in combat for the perpetual defense of Russia’s sovereignty against the West.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-january-2-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Want 200,000 155mm Artillery Shells A Month For Ukraine? Simplify Production

By Craig Hooper | Jan 2, 2024, 02:27pm EST

https://www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2024/01/02/want-200000-155mm-
artillery-shells-a-month-for-ukraine-simplify-production/

It is no secret the artillery fight for Ukraine has devolved into a battle for mass. The West, hoping to pump at least 200,000 155mm rounds a month into the Ukraine fight, is reaching into old stockpiles and even exploring the idea of refurbishing expired shells. These are all viable stopgaps, but, as the West’s ammunition production infrastructure struggles to scale up in 2024, the artisanal, hand-crafted aspects of post-Cold War artillery manufacturing merits some tough scrutiny.

Production is key.

America is set to produce at least 100,000 155mm shells a month by 2025, leaving Europe with the task to boost domestic production of 155mm shells by 150% over the course of 2024.

That is a heavy lift. To beat Russia in the production fight, the West has an obligation to explore every avenue to speed shells to the front. And while raiding old stockpiles and refurbishing expired munitions may offer some relief to Kyiv’s shell-hunger, Ukraine’s allies can do more to speed production by scrubbing their artillery production processes of un-needed and un-necessary requirements.

Excessive requirements are a big problem. To eke the maximum safety, shelf-life, and performance out of each and every shell, Western artillery ammunition is over-engineered—and then, on top of already daunting engineering requirements, the shells are subjected to an array of boutique national requirements.

Having each Western shell lovingly crafted to the exacting tolerances of a Formula 1 race-car engine offers measurable benefit. In ideal circumstances, Allied artillery systems outrange, outfire and hit harder than equivalent Russian systems. But conditions are no longer as ideal.

Any benefit from the West’s exquisite ammunition machining requirements and other time-consuming ammo production steps are likely offset by the degraded field conditions of an actual wartime environment.

Put another way, precision ammunition machining doesn’t make much difference when the shell goes up an overused gun barrel that, in peacetime, would have long been consigned to the scrapheap thousands of shells ago.

This isn’t to say that precision weapons aren’t needed, but a rough-and-ready “deployable” shell — just like the rough and ready M-109 self-propelled gun — is perfectly fine for repulsing Russian human wave attacks. Precision aiming is less of a concern when Ukraine fighters just want to keep hungry and cold Russian conscripts heads-down in their trenches.

Western ammunition is also designed with long-term storage in mind. With a big conventional war long being pretty much an “unthinkable” thing for Europe, frequent artillery employment was secondary to the West’s pursuit of long-term ammunition stability. Long-term ammunition reliability and easy decommissioning after lengthy storage have dominated Western shell requirements.

These peacetime priorities were the correct things for unchallenged armies to pursue. A long-lasting, stable and easy-to-decommission ammunition stockpile is a great thing, but when newly-produced shells are arriving at the front and used within days, some safety and storage features — if they make production more time-consuming or more costly — can be jettisoned.

Speeding ammo production or rapid design changes to advance lethality may not sit well with rear area warrior bureaucrats. In sclerotic procurement systems, change only comes after years of unnecessary study, debate and gamesmanship. Put bluntly, it will take some ruthless leadership to identify and cut requirements that, in the heat of battle, are no longer relevant.

Cherished rice bowls will break. Old, longstanding methods may go away. But, right now, the overarching priority — at least for general purpose artillery ammunition — is lower price and greater speed.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 3, 2024

Recent Kremlin and MoD statements and the Russian MoD-affiliated milblogger’s post may be part of Kremlin efforts to set information conditions for Russia to blame Denmark and other Western Arctic countries for any future conflicts with Russia in the Arctic. These narratives are in line with Putin’s declaration on January 2 that the West is Russia’s “enemy” and his further implication that the war in Ukraine is an existential war for Russia against the West.[26]

Efforts driven by Kremlin mouthpieces to set such information conditions may be permeating the larger Russian information space. Another prominent Russian milblogger, who has previously amplified Kremlin narratives about Russia's maximalist goals of imperial reconquest in Ukraine, amplified a post claiming that the next regional “flare up” will be the Baltics and Nordic countries.[27] The post vaguely claimed that an unspecified actor, possibly the West, is preparing the Baltic and Nordic peoples for a confrontation with Russia and that the Baltic and Nordic countries have lacked sovereignty for a long time - echoing Kremlin narratives about how states that are not great powers - like Ukraine - do not have full sovereignty.[28] These informational lines are disturbingly similar to the justifications the Kremlin used to invade Ukraine in 2022 and to continue the invasion. There are no indications that Russia will seek conflict with NATO in the very near future, but Moscow began running similar information operations in Ukraine many years before Russian invasions in 2014 and 2022.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-january-3-2024

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Is Russia’s Future a Forever War?

The Kremlin is hunkering down, but 2023 showed that its rule is less stable than it wants us to think.

By Stefan Theil, a deputy editor at Foreign Policy | Dec 29, 2023

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/29/russia-putin-ukraine-war-security
-geopolitics-empire-2023/

Part of what makes Russia’s war on Ukraine such a world-changing event is that it’s not just about the latter’s survival as a state. The war has also cast a spotlight on the future of Russia itself. Will it ever settle in its borders? Will the Kremlin turn its stated aims into action and try to restore its Cold War-era empire beyond Ukraine? What happens if Russia loses the war?

That nuclear-armed Russia is not as stable as its leaders would have us believe became obvious last June, when Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin launched an armed rebellion that brought his mercenaries almost to the gates of Moscow. The most significant challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin since he took power in 2000 ended in Prigozhin’s fiery death and a further crackdown on the regime’s critics.

Since then, Putin has hunkered down for a long war. With some 20,000 Russians arrested for anti-war infractions since 2022, dissent has been smashed. A staged election planned for 2024 will extend Putin’s rule for another six years; all serious challengers have been murdered, jailed, or pushed into exile. The Russian economy has been thoroughly retooled for war.

But whether the gamble Putin took on Feb. 24, 2022, will pay off is still unclear. If he wins in Ukraine, Europe could face other wars as Putin seeks to restore what he believes to be Russia’s rightful sphere of control in Eastern and Central Europe. If he loses, Russia might enter a spiral of instability at home. At Foreign Policy, we asked our best authors to spin some of these scenarios forward. Here are some of their most noteworthy articles from 2023.

1. The Dream of a European Security Order With Russia Is Dead
By Kristi Raik, Oct. 31
How will a future Russia fit into the European security order? France, Germany, and other European states long tried to partner with the Kremlin and grow economic ties. That vision crashed and burned with Russia’s invasion, leaving Europe to struggle for an alternative.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/31/russia-ukraine-war-europe-securit
y-order-nato-peace-negotiation-settlement/

2. Why Putin Will Never Agree to De-Escalate
By Maxim Samorukov, June 13
Putin has everything to gain domestically by keeping his country on a war footing, Maxim Samorukov writes. That is one of many reasons why Moscow has no interest in negotiating an end to its brutal war in Ukraine.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/13/ukraine-counteroffensive-russia-p
utin-war-negotiation-ceasefire-successor/

3. Staring Down the Black Hole of Russia’s Future
By Anastasia Edel, March 10
“Increasingly lawless, economically doomed, and morally bankrupt, Russia is running out of good endings,” writes Anastasia Edel, who grew up in the Soviet Union and is no longer optimistic that Russia can take a turn for the better. She argues that only a clear defeat by Ukraine offers Russians the prospect of positive change after centuries of imperialism.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/10/russia-ukraine-putin-war-future/

4. It’s High Time to Prepare for Russia’s Collapse
By Alexander J. Motyl, Jan. 7
In one of Foreign Policy’s most-read articles in 2023, Alexander J. Motyl examines scenarios for a breakup of the Russian Federation, which still contains dozens of colonized non-Russian peoples. Whatever its likelihood in the years ahead, not planning for such a disintegration betrays a dangerous lack of imagination among Western policymakers, Motyl writes.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/01/07/russia-ukraine-putin-collapse-dis
integration-civil-war-empire/

5. Russia’s Frighteningly Fascist Youth
By Ian Garner, May 21
In an excerpt from his book, Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia’s Fascist Youth, Ian Garner describes a new generation of Russians that glorifies war, death, and Putin — a creed that embodies the darkest elements of 20th-century fascism.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/05/21/russia-fascist-putin-war-youth-ia
n-garner-book-z-generation/

Download a free copy of Ian Garner’s Z Generation from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Ian+Garner+Z+Generation
‘Ian Garner has produced a brilliant and chilling investigation. He meticulously details how extraordinary levels of hate permeate a large section of the under-30s, who came of age under Putin’s tutelage. No one can finish this book and still believe the invasion of Ukraine was just the fault of one bad guy in the Kremlin. As Garner so expertly shows, whatever happens in the war, we will be dealing with the consequences of Russian fascism for years to come.’ - Nick Cohen

‘If you thought Putin’s Russia was an ideology-free kleptocracy and most Russians are ashamed of or opposed to the invasion of Ukraine, read Ian Garner’s gripping historical-cultural analysis of the descent of a portion of Russia’s youth into fascist euphoria in support of their country’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.’ - Maria Popova

‘Ian Garner’s exceptional book deals with its subject matter—the growth of Russian fascism—in a way that is multifaceted and nuanced, but also clear-sighted about the threat it poses to Russia’s neighbours, the liberal international order and Russia itself.’ - Mart Kuldkepp

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Behind the New Iron Curtain

By Marzio G. Mian | Jan 2, 2024

https://harpers.org/archive/2024/01/behind-the-new-iron-curtain/

Russia has become, to observers in the West, a distant, mysterious, and hostile land once again. It seems implausible, in the age of social media, that so little should be known about the country that has shattered the international order, but the shadows surrounding Russia have only grown since the days of the Soviet Union. Of course, it is one thing to observe the country from the outside; it is another to try to understand how Russians experience the war and react to sanctions from within, and what they hope the future holds. If Russia seems to have become another planet, it is largely because its regime has also waged war on foreign journalists, preventing them from straying beyond established perimeters.

Over the summer, hoping to do precisely that, I spent a month traveling down the Volga River. In a land of great rivers, the Volga is the river. They call it matushka, the mother; it flows from the Valdai Hills to the land of the Chuvash, the Tatars, the Cossacks, the Kalmyks, and into the Caspian Sea. It’s where Europe and Asia meet or part, are bridged or blocked, depending on whether the compass of Russian history is pointing east or west. It’s where it all started, after all, where the empire took root: Along the river one finds many of the cities that have established Russian culture and faith—from Ulyanovsk, the birthplace of Lenin, to Stalingrad (now called Volgograd), the site of the infamous World War II siege. This is a history that weighs heavily on Russian identity today, as the country continues to look backward, sifting its vaunted past for new myths of grandeur. It seems prepared to resist and to suffer, acts at which Russians have always excelled, and to have resigned itself to a future of isolation, autocracy, and perhaps even self-destruction.

Before starting down the river, I met with Mikhail Piotrovsky, who is an old acquaintance and the director of the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, in his office on the museum’s ground floor, where he has carved out a space for himself among piles of books, stacks of paper, and various sculptures. The photographs crowding the room, of him with eminent Western leaders—a smiling Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth—are now themselves relics, not unlike the tapestry of Catherine the Great hanging above his desk.

I asked him about the river. “The Volga was everything, and is still everything,” he told me. “Because it makes you aspire to greatness. It has a sort of intimacy, sheltering and bright skies, not like the wide-open spaces of the steppe or Siberian rivers, which make you feel like a speck in the cosmos.”

Piotrovsky is an illustrious scholar of Arabic studies. I’ve known him for years, but we would normally talk about Canaletto and Byzantium, the great Islamic explorers and his beloved Sicilian wines. This time I found him in full war fervor. And, I was convinced, it was not only to defend his prestigious position: At his age, seventy-nine, he could easily keep his head down and carry on quietly, like most Russians have elected to do. He spoke with his usual calm but looked feverish, as if something were devouring him from the inside.

Piotrovsky, who is mild-mannered and cerebral, and who wore his jacket loosely over hunched shoulders, seemed to have become a warrior. “Russia is many people, but one nation,” he asserted. “Russia along the Volga was able to incorporate everyone. Islam is just as much a religion of Russian tradition and identity as is Christian Orthodoxy. In Europe, in America, you speak of nothing but multiculturalism, but your cities are bursting with hate. For us, it didn’t take much to include everyone, because we’re an imperial civilization.” Then he grew more animated. “Look at the Hermitage!” he said, opening his arms to the room around us, widening his eyes. “It’s the encyclopedia of world culture, but it’s written in Russian because it’s our interpretation of world history. It may be arrogant, but that’s what we are.”

He took a deep breath, and began to talk of Stalingrad, his Jerusalem. “I don’t call it Volgograd, but Stalingrad,” he clarified for my sake. “It is our reference point now more than ever, an unparalleled symbol of resistance, our enemies’ worst nightmare. During the Great Patriotic War, we used it to defend the Volga as a vital corridor.” He continued to press the analogy: “And it’s been the same in the last few months. The Volga and the Caspian feed our trade with Iran to oppose the sanctions, while we use them to export oil to India and import what we need.” He removed his glasses and cleaned them with his jacket. “Stalingrad is a lucky charm, it’s destiny. If the Nazis had taken it, they would have cut off the Volga and conquered all of Russia. A very material thing that became spiritual. A warning. Whosoever tries it will meet the end of all the others—Swedes, Napoleon, the Germans and their allies.” He went on. “Russians are like the Scythians: they wait, they suffer, they die, and then they kill.”

I would think back to this meeting often over the course of my trip; following the river, I recalled the odd look in Piotrovsky’s eyes and felt the echo of his words.

. . .

I asked him what being Russian meant to him. “We’re influenced by the immense nothingness around us, and by the harsh climate,” he said. “In a land like this, you have to have an objective, a dream. We Russians need to have something big to strive for. We dreamed of communism, equality, and of a life where no one is exploited by anyone. Every person the same as the next.” He went on: “If Russians believe in something, they believe until the end. They believe in God. They’re ready to die for their faith. They believe in communism. They’re ready to die for that. They believe in Russia and they’re ready to sacrifice themselves for Russia.”

Even the atomic bomb, batyushka?

“Of course,” he replied quickly. “We’re ready to sacrifice ourselves. Because if we don’t win, we’ll burn it all down. If we can’t achieve this bright future, then what’s the point in living?” He grew more heated. “Our president is saying what everyone is thinking. If we don’t have the Russia we want, we’re ready to martyr ourselves, sacrifice ourselves and the whole world if it’s unjust and evil. There’s no need for a world like that.”

Much more at https://harpers.org/archive/2024/01/behind-the-new-iron-curtain/

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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 4, 2024

US National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby stated on January 4 that Russia has already launched ballistic missiles acquired from North Korea at targets in Ukraine and continues efforts to acquire similar missiles from Iran. Kirby stated that North Korea provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and an unspecified number of ballistic missiles and that Russian forces launched at least one of the North Korean missiles into Ukraine on December 30, 2023.[6] Kirby also stated that Russian officials continue efforts to buy ballistic missiles from Iran. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported earlier on January 4 that unspecified US officials stated that Russia could receive Iranian short-range ballistic missiles as early as spring 2024 but that the officials do not believe that Russia and Iran have yet completed a deal.[7]

Russia may be intensifying efforts to source ballistic missiles from abroad because these missiles appear to be more effective at striking targets in Ukraine in some circumstances. Russian forces routinely use short-range ballistic missiles to strike Ukrainian cities closer to the frontline, and these missiles appear to be more effective at penetrating or avoiding Ukrainian air defenses. Ukrainian air defenses have intercepted 149 of a reported 166 Russian cruise missiles in intensified attacks since December 29, 2023, but have only intercepted a handful of the ballistic missiles that Russia has launched at Ukraine in the same period, for example.[8] Russian forces have repurposed S-300 and S-400 air defense missiles for conducting strikes against surface targets in Ukraine, and Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that Ukrainian air defenses struggle to intercept these unorthodox missile attacks using their own S-300 and S-400 systems.[9] Ukrainian forces have also appeared to be less successful in intercepting Iskander ballistic missiles during recent strikes, although Ukrainian forces did intercept an Iskander-M missile during a less intense series of Russian missile and drone strikes on December 30.[10] Ukrainian forces reportedly intercepted all Iskander-M or S-300/S-400 missiles that Russian forces launched at Kyiv on December 12.[11] Ukrainian forces reportedly also intercepted all 10 Kinzhal missiles that Russian forces launched at Ukraine on January 2 with Western-provided Patriot systems.[12] The effectiveness of Russian ballistic missiles thus appears to depend in part on the configuration of Ukraine’s air defense umbrella in the target area and the strike package of which the missiles are part.

The relative success that Russian forces have had in striking targets in Ukraine with ballistic missiles in combination with cruise missiles and drones may be prompting an intensification of Russian efforts to source ballistic missiles from abroad. Russia can reportedly produce roughly 42 Iskander missiles and four Kinzhal missiles per month, although it is unclear how many S-300/S-400 missiles Russia can produce.[13] Russia‘s defense industrial base (DIB) likely cannot produce ballistic missiles at the scale required for a persistent strike campaign in Ukraine that relies on regularly expending a large volume of ballistic missiles, and Russia likely has to source ballistic missiles from abroad if it wishes to maintain large-scale missile strikes against Ukraine.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-january-4-2024

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*yawn*

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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A Hard-Won Victory That Ukraine Stands to Lose

By Anthony Borden, Mykhaylo Shtekel | January 4, 2024, 10:30 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/01/ukraine-russ
ia-weapons-counteroffensive/677010/

The Ukrainian counteroffensive has consisted of grueling battles like this one. Its gains are now at risk.

In a trench war, depth matters, and on a hilltop outside Orikhiv, 35 miles southeast of Zaporizhzhia, the Russians were dug in more than six feet deep. They’d fashioned a sunken city, a maze of crossed trails extending nearly a mile and commanding an unobstructed view five miles in all directions.

From that hilltop, known to the Ukrainian military as Position X, the Russians controlled the vital road south. If the Russians were to push forward, to take Orikhiv and move toward Zaporizhzhia, they would advance from that position. If Ukraine’s counteroffensive were to progress in the southeast, with the goal of eventually retaking Melitopol and choking Russian land access to Crimea, it would have to start by gaining Position X.

Last June, Ukrainian forces overcame Russia’s established position on their fifth attempt, after several months and many casualties. Taking Position X was a high point in a tough counteroffensive campaign and a demonstration of Ukrainian capacity. With enough weaponry, Ukrainian persistence, ingenuity, and courage can prevail over numerically superior and better-equipped Russian forces—especially in close combat, where Ukrainians have an overpowering motivational advantage and Russians tend to flee.

But the cost and difficulty of the battle also illustrated just how monumental a task Ukraine set itself with its counteroffensive. The Russians dug in at Position X commanded the high ground and held every advantage in terms of weapons and manpower. The Ukrainians defeated them with clever and flexible tactics, as well as sacrifice, endurance, and luck. But the factors that made this victory so hard-won will make it as hard or harder to repeat.

Read: Ukraine is losing Eastern European allies

After taking Position X over the summer, Ukrainian troops were able to advance down the southern road and recapture the village of Robotyne. But now the flow of armaments from the West has slowed and Ukrainian lines are stretched. Russian troops have recently regained several hundred yards in bitter fighting there and threaten to retake Robotyne. We visited Position X with Ukrainian troops in November 2023 and spoke with commanders about their victory there and the battlefield beyond.

“I understand that our Western partners were expecting a different counteroffensive,” a deputy battalion commander with the 65th Mechanized Brigade, whose call sign is Poltava, told us. “They said it would be fast, and all the rest. But this is not that war.”

Russia’s forward outpost at Position X was built to last. Prepared with the assistance of Wagner forces, its earthworks included protected gunner posts, large munitions stores, and regular blindages—sections covered with beams, dirt, and sandbags for cover. More than a dozen mini-dormitories with tree-trunk roofs, boarded walls, and bunk beds could accommodate 100 Russian soldiers at a time and were wired for lighting with generators. The Russians had arranged the trenchworks in the shape of an X, which allowed them to meet any advance with a hail of fire from two angles, from covered machine-gun positions every 10 to 20 yards. The entire area was also heavily mined.

Ukraine’s 65th Mechanized Brigade therefore made its initial foray last March with hardened vehicles: Vietnam-era armored personnel carriers (APCs) from the Netherlands, which maneuver slowly, have poor communications, and need frequent repair. The APCs also belch and churn at an infernal volume, announcing their approach from more than five miles away. On one of the first Ukrainian attempts, in March, an APC took three direct hits from a bazooka to no effect. But a fourth pierced the hull.

“We had two 200s [deaths] in the car, a commander and a gunner. Three people who disembarked were immediately hit with machine guns and grenades,” a soldier named Renat, also with the 65th, told us. “It is bitter, sad, but this is the experience.”

Tanks aren’t as noisy—but Russian forces are well stocked with anti-tank weapons, and they hit at least one Ukrainian tank in the spring. The Ukrainians prize their T-72 tanks from Poland, and as the campaign progressed, they decided not to use these for frontline engagement, but to keep them farther back, for mobile artillery support.

According to Poltava, Ukrainian commanders calculate that to beat the Russians in any particular battle, they should have “a [numerical] advantage—two, three times; that is the minimum. We didn’t have such an advantage here, so we tried to take these positions with armored combat vehicles. But the experience showed that the use of equipment is impossible here, because on all sides the opponent uses anti-tank weapons, artillery, even aviation.”

In fact, in addition to all of the traditional advantages that Russia possessed at Position X—higher ground, more soldiers and munitions, broad minefields, air support—it also had something more. “Drones, drones, drones. This is a war of drones,” Leonid, a soldier with the brigade, told us. “In the first year, there were not so many drones. Now you can’t imagine. Even if just a group of soldiers come out, in one kilometer they will be hit by artillery.”

Ukrainian soldiers told us of the Russians unleashing dozens of drones at once, sometimes up to 100. They said that many of the downed drones they recovered were cheap but deadly, with Asian-produced electronics and 3-D-printed structures. Even the small ones can drop bombs on sight. Ukrainian forces use electronic-jamming guns to disable enemy drones, making them crash, but these are cumbersome and require careful targeting.

‘‘Anti-drone devices help, but it is impossible for us now to cover such a large front,” Poltava said. “We need to install anti-drone stations, so you are not just running there with a gun but can cover a radius of five or 10 kilometers [three to six miles] to provide protection for people on combat missions.”

In the face of all of these disadvantages, by early summer, the Ukrainians had shifted tactics. Instead of advancing in armored vehicles, small units would approach by foot—much as they were doing across the front line, in an effort to reduce exposure and probe for defensive weaknesses. And rather than firing up noisy APCs, they changed to lighter, quieter vehicles—in some cases using private cars provided by volunteers.

The point, Poltava told us, was to be mobile. “You can drive up with a car quickly … bring ammunition, food, and other things, and leave just as fast.”

The Ukrainians’ initial target was a disabled Russian APC at the base of the X, which the Russians had converted into the cover for a massive steel-protected blindage. On the crest of the rise, with a dugout underneath, it overlooked the important southerly road.

To approach it, the Ukrainians started to establish and equip a bridgehead at a location they called the Corner, a few hundred yards from the Russians. They dug a shallow trench, less than three feet deep, and created a few blindages for cover, maintaining a small unit there at all times, regularly under fire.

“It’s very heavy when you’re sitting in a trench, and everybody is shooting at you,” Poltava said. “We began to move forward, taking up this position slowly, but there were a lot of wounded.”

With this revised approach, the Ukrainians attacked. Drivers would race in and drop soldiers about two miles from the Corner, and then head back immediately to avoid detection. Soldiers would make their way to the staging point, loaded with up to 90 pounds of supplies, ammunition, and communications equipment.

The Ukrainians approached Position X in this manner twice, supporting its soldiers with artillery fire. But from their dug-in position, the Russians overwhelmed the Ukrainians with firepower. And without APCs, the Ukrainians had to carry their casualties off the battlefield, a risky and laborious task under fire. One Ukrainian commander lost a leg to a land mine and had to be carried more than a mile on a stretcher. Other evacuations took several hours.

“Blood, corpses, stench—you can’t describe it in words. I won’t tell you the percentage, but there were losses,” Leonid, the soldier, told us. The majority were wounded but many were dead, mostly from artillery fire.

The Ukrainians made a fourth attempt to gain the position on the afternoon of June 7. By nightfall, exhausted and battered, they once again withdrew.

As the Ukrainian units returned to base, their aerial intelligence picked up something remarkable. The Russians, recovering from the onslaught, did not appear to be armed at their firing stations. And judging from activity on the road south, the Ukrainians surmised that the Russians were undertaking a large-scale rotation: Troops were leaving Position X for the Russian back lines, presumably to be replaced by refreshed forces. But in the interim, only a skeleton unit remained on duty.

The Ukrainians made a crucial decision. They would regroup and return that morning.

“They did not expect that the next morning, even in the dark, our troops would come back,” Poltava told us of the Russians. “They were already so tired, they thought they had repelled our advance, so they would make a troop replacement. But when we talked, we decided to storm these positions again in the morning. They did not expect this.”

Before sunrise, a few dozen Ukrainian soldiers—many of them having taken part in the action the previous day—headed back out to the hill, with Deputy Battalion Commander Poltava in the lead. Following the same path, they were dropped a distance from the staging point, and at about 5:30 a.m., they made their way toward the Corner.

As the Ukrainians took up their positions, the Russians detected them and unleashed a firestorm. Over the course of two hours, 10 kamikaze drones landed along the Ukrainians’ shallow trench—one even entering a blindage—and large explosions deafened the soldiers and injured several. The Ukrainians had to dig in deeper to survive. The Russians also launched flying mines equipped with strong magnets that could sense any soldier nearby. No direction seemed free from fire.

Yet as the sun rose, the momentum shifted. With the majority of Russian troops on rotation, the numbers were more evenly matched, and the Ukrainians advanced, using grenades and machine guns. Closer combat advantaged them: A Ukrainian unit was able to secure the position at the APC that had been their first objective. Other units were then able to move forward, and with oversight of the southerly road, the Ukrainians could prevent Russian reinforcements from arriving.

In total, the Ukrainians counted 11 Russians killed. Many others fled.

“They mostly ran away. They were not ready for us and they gave up,” Leonid told us. “Their artillery and their tanks, these are their trump cards. But in close combat, they run.”

Russian intelligence had apparently provided advance warning of the previous Ukrainian attacks. “We had stormed them four times, unluckily, because they were waiting for us,” Leonid recalled. “They had a phone message informing them when we would come. It would say, ‘Wait for your guests,’ and give the time. This time they were not waiting for us.”

No sooner did Ukraine seize Position X, however, than the Russian counterassault began. For several weeks, the Russians hammered their former location and decimated the tree cover. The Ukrainians defended the position and sought to progress down the southern road. But even with several brigades on the job, movement was difficult: Heavy mining, sometimes 50 or 100 mines along a field road, made every step a risk.

Nonetheless, by late August, the Ukrainians had raised their flag in the village of Robotyne, two and a half miles down the road. Russia’s front line had been pushed back several miles, and Ukraine’s counteroffensive was up and running.

In the months that followed, Ukraine continued to make southerly progress, but the going has been slow. The next major objective, 12 miles from Robotyne, is the town of Tokmak. Seizing it would put the Ukrainians behind Russian defensive lines and in control of an important transport hub. It would also point them toward Melitopol, a further 30 miles on, and the sea.

For now, the soldiers explained, they were targeting not specific location milestones but Russian positions. With more time to dig in, the second Russian line is stronger, and the third even more so. Some areas are so robust, reinforced with concrete, that they can withstand a direct artillery hit. Ukrainians report that some trenchworks have multiple stories underground and video equipment enabling drone monitoring of the battlefield from safety. The Russians are also learning quickly: The 65th has recovered Russian military guides outlining how to counter the Ukrainians’ evolving, small-unit approach.

At Position X, Ukrainian troops demonstrated that when the terms of the fighting are relatively level, they have the persistence and agility to defeat their opponents. In close encounters, Russian soldiers will not match the commitment and determination of Ukrainian troops fighting on their own land. But there as elsewhere, the Russians begin from deeply entrenched positions and with many battlefield advantages.

Ukraine’s overriding priority is therefore to address its deficit of weapons, including bullets and other munitions, as well as control of the air. NATO troops wouldn’t consider attacking an entrenched position without air superiority. The Ukrainians have little choice. Under the circumstances, they are deeply concerned about drone protection and about securing communications lines so that they can retain the capacity for surprise.

“At the moment we are in defense—active defense, but it’s defense. This is because, as I understand it, we don’t have enough capabilities, neither human nor technical,” Leonid told us.

On our visit in November, the 65th was expecting some new, upgraded equipment that hadn’t yet arrived. Soldiers told us that they still hoped to move toward Tokmak in 2024. But since that time, political shifts in the West have slowed arms supplies to the front.

The main task of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is now simply to hold its positions and prevent Russian advances. Brigades near Position X report that, since mid-November, Russian forces have significantly increased offensive efforts, using tanks, mortars, artillery, and kamikaze drones to carry out up to a dozen attacks on Ukrainian positions every day. According to the Institute for the Study of War, the Russians have clawed back several hundred yards on the periphery of Robotyne, threatening to recapture it.

Speaking to us on December 31, 2023, the Ukrainian-army spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun acknowledged that Russian troops are “actively trying to regain previously lost positions in the area of Robotyne.” But another Ukrainian army officer, whom we spoke with on January 2, insisted that Russia’s advances have been minimal and its losses, disproportionately high.

Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines closely follow the debates over military aid in Western capitals, especially Washington. Some told us that they are grateful for the weapons and ammunition Ukraine has received, but that they need about three times as much.

Highlighting Russia’s partnerships with Belarus, China, Iran, and North Korea, an officer told us by text message: “In a global war without international help, any single country is doomed to lose to a coalition of aggressors. This is a matter of resources and time, and in modern warfare, the courage of a Ukrainian fighter alone is not enough.”

In the emerging dark-blue light of a clear November dawn, the smashed buildings of Orikhiv’s outskirts gave way to a militarized zone of deserted fields and long dirt roads. Some officers from the 65th walked us past a burned-out private car that had been used for transport in the Ukrainian assault. Then we came to a broad natural expanse, from which a hill rose only modestly—but the area was so flat that the unobstructed vista from the high ground was 360 degrees.

“If you look from above, the picture is beautiful. But we didn’t come from above; we were below,” Poltava said.

The deep booms of Ukrainian artillery became more frequent as the sun climbed. We walked within the deep, winding trenches on the hilltop, noting the traces of Russian forces—and their hurried departure. Ordnance stores were full of mines, detonators, and unwrapped drone bombs. Tins of shells and rusted hand grenades lay scattered, along with open wooden munitions cases. In the living quarters, twisted sleeping bags lay amid rat droppings, Russian food cans, metal plates and cutlery, water bottles, cigarette packs.

The warren ran on and on, with frequent labyrinthine splits. Down one route we saw the skull of a Russian soldier, upturned. The remains of a second lay beyond. Occasional mounds of dirt suggested shell hits, though there was no way to know from which side.

The sounds of outgoing Ukrainian artillery continued, and in the distance, a towering wall of white smoke rose from the Russian lines that the Ukrainians were targeting outside Robotyne.

Poltava showed us the Corner, the staging point where the attack had begun, and indicated where the kamikaze drones had rained down. “They started hitting here, there, and there,” he said.

Suddenly, his radio crackled to life, warning of drones. Then the whizz-crack of a 152 mm artillery shell screamed above, landing in a field 100 or so yards away, a gray cloud rising where it struck. Shortly after, another hit the trees. We all took cover in a nearby blindage. Minutes later, the radio announced a pickup, and our group climbed from the trench, hustling single-file down the mud road.

A battered Jeep Cherokee appeared and made a fast U-turn. Doors opened, and we crammed in quickly. The vehicle took off down a heavily pockmarked back route, hugging the tree line to avoid being spotted by search drones.

The officers with us kept their eyes forward and rifles up. Only when the damaged city sign for Orikhiv appeared, and then its wrecked houses, did they relax and resume talking freely among themselves.

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, January 5, 2024 11:23 AM

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Friday, January 5, 2024 3:37 PM

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

Statement by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield | January 4, 2023

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) recently provided Russia with ballistic missile launchers and several dozen ballistic missiles.

The DPRK and Russia are both blatantly violating the United Nations arms embargo on the DPRK, which prohibits all UN Member States from procuring arms or related materiel from the DPRK and prohibits the DPRK from exporting arms or related materiel.

The Russian Federation’s pattern of behavior – flouting its responsibilities as a member of the UN Security Council and Member State, propping up regimes engaged in proliferation of arms, ballistic missiles, and related materiel – is unacceptable.

The United States will continue to work with allies and partners to identify, expose, and counter the Russian government’s attempts to acquire military equipment from the DPRK or any state that is prepared to support the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine. We will raise this issue in the January 10 Security Council briefing on Ukraine. And we will keep strengthening cooperation to address the DPRK’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.

https://usun.usmission.gov/statement-by-ambassador-linda-thomas-greenf
ield-on-russias-pursuit-and-use-of-weapons-from-the-dprk-in-violation-of-un-security-council-resolutions/

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, January 5, 2024 3:56 PM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

That's odd, bc Dima has shown videos of HIMARS getting destroyed. Not many, but more than none.

SIGNYM

Russian man: "Evil happens because good people are silent"

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Friday, January 5, 2024 4:52 PM

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

Europe’s Artillery Future: Cluster Munitions

By Craig Hooper | Jan 3, 2024, 04:00pm EST

https://www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2024/01/03/europes-artillery-
future-bigger-new-energetics-more-barrels-and-cluster-munitions/?sh=21c879cf573b

With Russia already seeding Ukraine with mines, it is time for Europe to put aside the demonstrative, “feel-good’ niceties of a cluster bomb weapons ban to discuss how these weapons are doing in the brutal and ugly business of killing Russian soldiers.

Put bluntly, the ban itself may now be unsustainable. Though much of Europe—35 countries so far—ban cluster munitions, cluster munitions have remained important tactical tools for most European armies, and, with each 155mm cluster munition offering the equivalent destructive power of 10 normal 155mm high explosive shells, the grim calculus in favor of cluster munitions is obvious.

With Russia’s continued defiance of international norms of peaceful behavior and European battle strategies baldly calling for a body count, the Convention on Cluster Munitions is looking like more of a hinderance than a help. At a minimum, the document prevents countries maintaining old stockpiles of European-built cluster munitions from transferring those munitions to Kyiv, and, if Russia continues fighting, the ban will make the manufacture of modern cluster munitions in Europe impossible.

With Russia—and every major Russian ally—refusing to join the cluster munitions ban, continued adherence to the cluster munitions ban seems somewhat self-defeating. If these widely-despised and feared weapons are working in Ukraine, it might be time to suggest setting the ban aside, as something Europe might do if Russia continues fighting into the next year.

With cluster munitions, the West is running on borrowed time. Hounded by activists, few modern cluster munition manufacturers still exist. Even though the U.S. is not a signatory to the agreement, the last American cluster munitions manufacturer halted production in 2016. Small-scale cluster munition prototype studies are underway in the U.S., but there’s no real enthusiasm about replacing America’s lost cluster munitions production capability.

The U.S., of course, has plenty of old cluster munitions still in storage. In 2011, the U.S. government reported that it maintained more than 6 million cluster munitions of various types. These aging weapons should, where possible, be readied for transfer to Kyiv, and replacement efforts stepped up.

Europe has the capability to resist—and even defeat—Vladimir Putin. With their clear strategy, Estonia, one of the smallest, least populous European counties to sketch out the way forward (Estonia, by population, is in league with Cyprus, Luxembourg, Montenegro and Malta), is punching far above its weight. But it seems strange that, in a provocative call to kill or wound 50,000 of Estonia’s Russian neighbors every six months, Estonia didn’t dare risk irking the European signatories to the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

It is time to put diplomatic niceties aside. If Europe agrees that it wants Ukraine to kill 100,000 Russians a year, cluster munitions will do a lot to help Ukraine meet those grim goals.

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, January 6, 2024 3:57 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Dbl

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Saturday, January 6, 2024 3:57 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Ukraine is using cluster munitions on civilian centers in Russia. They can't be trusted not to commit obvious war crimes.

Meanwhile, how about catching up on some real news?

Hmmm....

Russia launched the largest drone and missile strike ever. Targets included munitions and drone factories, weapons stockpiles, command centers, foreign "volunteers" in hotels etc in Kharkiv, Odessa, Lviv, and especially Kiev. Not only did this obliterate western and Ukraine made weapons and factories, it made life in Kiev less "normal", and weakened support for Zelenskiy and the war.

Their air defenses appear almost nonexistent.

Ukraine is still thrashing around how to conscript 500,000 soldiers. The Rada has been talking about it for about a month. Zaluzhny and Zelenskiy are tossing the conscription between each other like a hot potato. Considering the political situation in Kiev, neither one wants to be on the losing side of the equation.

Meanwhile, I've seen at least a dozen videos of "recruiters" literally kidnapping men off the street.

Russia is slowly moving the front forward. Since they're now the attackers they're vulnerable to weapons strikes, but since Ukraine is almost out of 155 mm shells, drones are working overtime. Russian soldiers complain most about drones, for which defenses seem incomplete at best.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Saturday, January 6, 2024 7:06 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:

Ukraine is still thrashing around how to conscript 500,000 soldiers.

Ukraine is still thrashing around about how to demolish the Crimean Strait Bridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Bridge#Attacks_during_the_Russia
n_invasion_of_Ukraine

The battle of Ukraine v Russia is best described as the battle of Dumb v Dumber. When two meatheads, Russian and Ukrainian, slug it out in a street fight, the larger usually wins, unless an observer who is also a competent marksman with a gun decides the winner.

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, January 6, 2024 2:29 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

More real news...

Having been warned agianst it by the IMF, Central Banks, economists, and scholars of international law, Biden* looks determined to steal Russia's frozen assets and give them to Ukraine, with the EU's blessing.

The downside?

IMF and some central banks fear that stealing national assets from western banks will make every other cash-rich nation and oligarch in the world (Gulf states, China, oil rich African states) pull their money from western banks where it, too, could be stolen. We saw that effect when Russia was kicked out of SWIFT which accelerated non-SWIFT bank exchanges. This theft is not a big problem for the USA since our banks hold little Rusian assets, but definitely a problem for Brussels, which holds most of the estimated $300 billion Russian foreign reserves.

And clearly, we don't mind throwing our allies under the bus, having blown up their source of cheap natural gas causing inflation and deindustrialization, and urging them to demilitarize themselves. The EU and European national elites, being the flaccid puppets that they are, may quibble and cavil temporarily but will eventually fold.

I predict a further decrease in USD and EUR in international trade.

Another downside? Stealing national assets is an act of war. Should Russia decide to retaliate, it will be Europe on the front line. Good for us, not so much for them.

Yet another downside: it won't affect Russia's military or economy. Russia has written those reserves off, and is doing fine without them.

And it won't help Ukraine's military. They might be awash with money, but the cupboard is bare of relevant current weapons like 155mm shells, Patriot missile installations, APCs and tanks. The latest strikes across Ukraine demonstrate what happens when you try to manufacture weapons inside Ukraine. And how many drones can you use without drone operators?

It won't go to reconstruction either, since you have to be able to protect reconstruction. I think what will happen with some of that money is that it will pay salaries for another few months and keep the Kiev government afloat, preventing outright abandonment. The parts that are designated to "increasing weapons manufacturing in Ukraine" will go straight into contracts with western weapons manufacturers, who wont be able to do anything of the sort. And part of it will, go to ......

*****

The other thing Biden* is considering is long range missiles like the American Tomahawk and the German Taurus, which will be used to strike the Crimean Bridge and targets inside Russia. I noticed that Czech Viper launchers were used to send cluster munitions into civilian Belgorod with nary a demur from the west, so I expect more of the same k war crimes) from from the west.

(By contrast, Russia doesn't target civilian centers, and I doubt that it will even after provocation by the collective west. Just saying.)

F16s are also heading Ukraine's way, but the consensus is that it's too few. Also, since they need pristine runways for takeoff, they will probably taking off from NATO airstrips.

And finally, the USA has a three-star general to oversee Ukraine's war effort.

Ukraine's proxy status is getting thinner and thinner, and NATO's war on Russia is becoming more and more naked.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Sunday, January 7, 2024 6:48 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:
More real news...

Having been warned agianst it by the IMF, Central Banks, economists, and scholars of international law, Biden* looks determined to steal Russia's frozen assets and give them to Ukraine, with the EU's blessing.

The downside?

Signym, you are a lying sack of shit. Russia caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to Ukraine. Russia will never voluntarily pay for damages, regardless of what any international court rules. Forcefully taking the money against Russia's strong objections is the only way to get Russia to pay. Other countries won't lose their money because they are NOT destroying another country. That is either too subtle for Signym to understand or Signym is a lying sack of shit who completely understands who she is and what she is doing but doesn't take care to stop. Kind of like Russians.

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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Sunday, January 7, 2024 6:48 AM

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

Russian missiles and drones are terrorizing Ukrainians. You can help bring safe skies.

We can set an example for our own politicians. And we can bring a bit of peace at the beginning of 2024 to a people who have suffered greatly.

By Timothy Snyder | Updated 5:08 a.m. ET Jan. 5, 2024

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2024/01/05/ukraine-war-r
ussia-drone-detection/72052546007/

The air raid siren in Odesa, Ukraine, didn't wake me. It's sometimes too easy to get used to what should never be normal.

Russia had no reason to invade Ukraine in February 2022. The reasons Vladimir Putin gave, having to do with his view that another people do not exist, have the whiff of genocide. The invasion itself is the crime of aggression.

For nearly two years, Russia has committed countless war crimes. These are not just what happens in war. The filtration camps, the kidnaping of children, the executions of civilians – these are all atrocities, and they are all illegal. Russia has no excuse for sending rockets, cruise missiles and drones into Ukrainian cities.

In Odesa last September, the day before I had visited a cathedral – hit by a Russian rocket. I wanted to go to an outdoor cafe – hit by a Russian rocket. As it turned out, the cruise missile that night was headed not for this southern city but for the port of Izmail.

Russia has been using its drones and cruise missiles to target Ukrainian ports and storage facilities, to try to prevent Ukrainian foodstuffs from being exported to Africa and the Middle East, where of course they are needed.

Russian cruise missiles and Russian drones (often supplied by Iran) are regularly used, especially in cold weather, to target Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. This is a possible war crime. It's not just what happens. It is a deliberate decision, made in Moscow, to make civilians suffer and die by denying them electricity and water in wintertime.

This happened last winter, and it is happening again now.

These realities make the politics as usual in Washington infuriating. It's very easy for us to help the Ukrainians win this war. What we supply them amounts to about a nickel on the Defense Department dollar. Most of that is spent in the United States, on American industry, paying American workers.

Ukrainians fighting Russia on behalf of America and NATO

In fighting the war, Ukraine is performing an extraordinary service to Americans. It is fulfilling the entire NATO mission, absorbing and halting a full-scale Russian attack. It might be deterring a Chinese offensive in the Pacific by showing how difficult offensive operations can be.

We have no excuse for treating any of this as normal. What the Russians are doing in Ukraine is a test for the whole international legal order and for people who say they care about freedom. What the Ukrainians are doing to protect legal order and freedom in general is extraordinary.

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Washington recently, he was told whom he needed to thank. As an American, this makes me very uneasy. It is we who need to learn to thank our friends.

It is the Ukrainians who have been, in the millions, turned into refugees. It is the Ukrainians who have, in the tens of thousands, been killed or wounded on the battlefield or by those rockets, drones and cruise missiles. It is the Ukrainians who are fighting this war.

And it is the Ukrainians who can win it – if the U.S. government does what it should.

How you can help Ukraine win war against Russia

In the meantime, we can all help.

In Ukraine, there is a strong tradition of what is called civil society. This means doing what the government doesn't do, filling the gaps or helping the government do what it should be doing. This Ukrainian government understands that it needs support, and not just from other governments.

I was approached by United24, President Zelenskyy's funding platform, and agreed to help raise money for a very special project. The Ukrainians have developed an ingenious way to detect drones and cruise missiles in the air, which, when implemented, allows them to be shot down.

In the first stage of a campaign called Safe Skies, thousands of people have helped to fund this drone detection system. It is now being installed in four Ukrainian regions, home to about 4 million people: Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Sumy. https://u24.gov.ua/safeskies

I visited the first three of those regions in September. The drones are real. The cruise missiles are real. And they are terrifying weapons of murder. But they can be stopped. And we can help.

The goal of the current stage of Safe Skies is to raise funds to extend the drone detection system to another four Ukrainian regions, home to about 6 million people.

We can set an example for our own politicians. And we can bring a bit of peace at the beginning of 2024 to a people who have suffered greatly.

Timothy Snyder is an American historian, writer, professor at Yale University and United24 ambassador.

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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Sunday, January 7, 2024 8:24 AM

Fuck Ukraine.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Sunday, January 7, 2024 1:43 PM

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

PATRIOT interceptors are estimated to cost about $4 million per missile.
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12297

Forbes calculated the cost based on the estimates that one Russian Kh-101 cruise missile costs $13 million, a Kalibr cruise missile costs $ 6.5 million, a Kinzhal ballistic missile costs $15 million, an Iskander costs $3 million, and one Shahed 136 drone costs $50,000, among others.
https://news.yahoo.com/forbes-estimates-russias-jan-2-154556571.html

Western weapon's wins against Russia are 'intelligence bonanza'

By Chris Panella | Jan 4, 2024, 2:58 PM CST

https://www.businessinsider.com/western-weapons-wins-against-russia-ar
e-intelligence-bonanza-2024-1

Ukraine says it has shot down 25 Russian Kinzhal missiles with Patriot systems since last May.
Any such kill improves the Patriot's accuracy and algorithms, benefiting other users of the system.
It's invaluable intelligence for the West and further highlights the need for more air defenses.

Ukraine's made good use of its Western-provided Patriot air-defense systems, shooting down plenty of Russian missiles, aircraft, and drones, including some advanced, albeit overhyped, weaponry.

But the intercepts, while a win for Ukraine, are also gathering hoards of data for other Patriot operators, making the system smarter and better. It's just one example of how the war in Ukraine is, as one missile-defense expert told Business Insider, an "intelligence bonanza."

And as Ukraine defeats threats, there's also a growing recognition of the importance of robust air and missile defenses, vital for defending and deterrence and, in Ukraine's case, survival amid an increase in missile and drone attacks.

On Tuesday, Ukraine said it shot down all 10 of the new Kinzhals fired during a vicious air assault, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine praising the incident as "what heroism supplied with advanced systems looks like." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, too, hailed Western-provided air defenses like Patriots, IRIS-T, and NASAMS for saving "hundreds of lives."

The reported kills nearly doubled the tally of Kinzhals destroyed in the war. Just Sunday, Ukraine said it had shot down 15 Kinzhal missiles using Patriot batteries since the first recorded intercept last May, which was confirmed by the Pentagon.

A Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson, Col. Yurii Ihnat, praised the Patriot's ability to counter a variety of missile threats. The rate at which the Patriot may have intercepted Kinzhals indicates Ukraine has learned well how to operate its Western air defenses and developed a strong defense against the missile the Russians have touted as an unstoppable hypersonic weapon.

But Ukraine is not the only one benefiting from these engagements. For other Patriot operators, such as the US, new data about how to counter specific threats, such as the Kinzhal, is incredibly useful information.

"Every Ukrainian downing of Russian hypersonic Kh-47M2 Kinzhal with the Patriot missiles will improve the Patriot missile intercept algorithm — and increase accuracy for all Patriot systems, a benefit for the US, the rest of NATO, and other Patriot AD users," Jan Kallberg, a senior fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security program at the Center for European Policy Analysis who was a professor at West Point, posted on X.

That data is valuable for both the US and its NATO allies, giving them a rare opportunity to live test systems and learn more about how not only to engage but also defeat Russian weaponry.

"The larger point is the intelligence bonanza that we are capitalizing on by observing or capturing Russian systems" without actually having any troops on the ground, Tom Karako, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who's the director of the Missile Defense Project there, told Business Insider. He said the opportunity was giving the US valuable data on Russia for potential future conflicts.

Russia's Kinzhal is an advanced air-launched ballistic missile that has been celebrated by Kremlin officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, for its "unique flight characteristics," high speed, maneuverability, and ability to "overcome all existing" and "prospective antiaircraft and antimissile defense systems," characteristics that supposedly make it unbeatable.

The MIM-104 "Patriot" air-defense battery, an older system that first entered service in the 1980s but has nonetheless been praised by the Pentagon as "one of the world's most advanced air-defense systems," arrived on the battlefield in April 2023. The system, once operational, quickly put an end to Russian narratives about the Kinzhal, shooting one down in early May.

Later that month, Ukraine said its Patriot air defenses eliminated six more of these missiles.

The Kinzhal is an advanced capability, but so far, it hasn't really lived up to its overhyped narrative of being an unstoppable hypersonic missile.

"The Kinzhal doesn't fit into the category of either a scramjet cruise missile or a hypersonic boost-glide vehicle," Karako explained.

He added that the term "hypersonic," when used to refer to the Kinzhal missile, tended to be in a more literal sense, as in it could exceed speeds of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound.

But while the Kinzhal is going fast, "it doesn't really constitute sustained and controlled flight in the hypersonic flight regime," Karako explained, adding that "it's essentially a somewhat maneuvering ballistic missile."

Maj. Peter Mitchell, an air-defense officer who's an instructor at West Point, previously characterized Russia's Kinzhal as "more akin to a giant lawn dart loaded with explosives," saying it wasn't capable of sharp turns or quick changes in flight direction.

That doesn't mean Ukraine's reported wins aren't impressive — or that it's not a boon for the US and its partners to see Russia use the Kinzhal. Instead, it's quite the opposite.

Similar to just about any data collected in the war, whether it's information on how Russia's operating its Shahed one-way exploding drones, defending against Ukrainian strikes, or pounding Ukrainian defenses, the takeaway is a beneficial one for the West: By helping defend Ukraine, they learn more about how their enemy could fight them in the future.

Ukraine's successes with the Patriot and other Western systems also highlight the enormous importance of air and missile defenses.

While the drone war being fought between Ukraine and Russia has been eye-opening for many armies, including the US, the air campaigns have also reinforced the realization of how much armed forces need robust air defenses.

The successful engagement of "high-end missile threats from a major power like Russia is ratifying and bolstering the demand signal for both the Patriot family and other air defenses more broadly," Karako said.

During his December visit to Washington to plead for more aid amid Republican roadblocks in Congress, Zelenskyy expressed a dire need for more Patriot batteries in Ukraine. But the demand goes beyond that.

Take, for example, recent news of a handful of NATO nations' plans to buy 1,000 Patriot missiles or Japan's landmark decision to remove its self-imposed ban on weapons exports to transfer dozens of missiles to the US. Other air-defense systems, too, have been prioritized, as seen in the US aid packages to Israel in recent months.

"We're seeing an increased salience and demand for air and missile defense because missiles have become 'weapons of choice,'" Karako said. He said air and missile defense was not a peripheral concern but rather a central concern.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Sunday, January 7, 2024 1:50 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

"Ukraine says..." is your tipoff to a lie. The chance of a Patriot missile hitting a Kinzhal, if the Patriot system is mated with Israel's fancy ultrafast predictive radar (as was done recently), is about 10-15%.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Monday, January 8, 2024 4:45 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I have no idea who Lord Bebo is, but he (they?) is (are?) universally available as LordBebo and Mylordbebo on X, TikTok, Telegram, YouTube and who knows where else.

Lord Bebo posted an interesting video on YouTube about the war in Ukraine from a Russian drone operators POV

I've seen LOTS of drone footage on Military Summary, but there's no audio. And that makes a huge difference. Where you might see small squads of men moving from building to building or clearing trenches under a watchful drone, it looks kind of random. But There's a lot, and I mean A LOT, of communication going on between drone operators and soldiers, between drone operator and drone operator, and between squads. I don't have time to describe everything I heard, but the drone operator was telling a squad which building to clear. When the squad reported they were being shot at, the operator found which building they were being shot at from. Another drone operator broke in to tell them there was a Ukrainian APC coming down the main road, going to their rear. As it turns out, the APC was evacuating Ukrainian soldiers. It's not soldiers all by themselves anymore. There's probably a drone watching and an operator telling .... Sometimes nagging... ("Throw the grenade in the building and go in ... Throw the grenade in the window and enter. FUCK! THROW THE GRENADE AND GO IN") them what to do. With a lot of "fucks" thrown in.

This was, of course, from a Russian POV but I assume it's the same on the Ukrainian side.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Monday, January 8, 2024 7:30 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:
"Ukraine says..." is your tipoff to a lie. The chance of a Patriot missile hitting a Kinzhal, if the Patriot system is mated with Israel's fancy ultrafast predictive radar (as was done recently), is about 10-15%.

Who told you 10-15%?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, January 8, 2024 7:32 AM

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

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 7, 2024

Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky continued the Kremlin narrative that Russia is engaged in an indirect conflict with the West in Ukraine. Polyansky claimed that Ukrainian forces are not planning to march on Moscow because the “Kyiv regime will lose soon,” but noted that NATO threatens Russia’s existence because the alliance is leading the war against Russia in Ukraine.[71] Polyansky’s statements are similar to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s January 1 identification of the West as Russia’s “enemy” and are likely aimed at setting information conditions aimed at convincing the West to betray Ukraine through negotiations.[72]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-january-7-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, January 8, 2024 7:46 AM

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

During Russia’s New Year’s show The Little Blue Light 12 months ago, one of its hosts, Dmitry Guberniev assured the viewers that victory in Ukraine was near. He said, “Life is like a biathlon or ski racing. If you’re having a hard time, then the finish line is near.” During the same program, comedian Yevgeny Petrosyan claimed that the West had tried to destroy Russia but instead was forced to freeze and suffer without Russian gas supplies. He boasted: “Like it or not, Russia is enlarging!”

The mood was markedly different during this year’s festivities. Instead of laughing at the West, Petrosyan wished fellow Russians to have “barns and cellars that are fully stocked and regularly replenished with patience and optimism.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/shocking-reality-of-ukraine-blowback-ham
mers-putin-at-home

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, January 8, 2024 8:11 AM

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

Putin recast his war as Russia’s eternal ideological struggle. “The point is not that they (the West) are helping our enemy. They are our enemy,” he said. “They are solving their own problems with their hands. That is what it is all about. Unfortunately, this has been the case for centuries and continues to be the case today.”

“Though it has been their (the West’s) goal to deal with Russia from time immemorial, we will deal with them faster,” Putin assured the wounded during his hospital visit.

“And the most important thing we have is … the unity of our people and society. Because there is an understanding of how important your job on the battlefield is in the armed struggle for our country and our future.”

Putin’s previous proclamations of “denazifying” Ukraine and “battling the forces of satan” are no longer enough justification.

The messages pushed by the Putin regime’s leading ideologists increasingly resemble caricatures. Indeed, the less credible the information, the more willing Putin’s ideologists are to use it.

One recent accusation by long-term Putin associate Security Council chief Nikolai Patruschev states that “Anglo-Saxon elites” believe Siberia to be the safest refuge from an impending eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano in the western United States. And that is why the West wants to invade Russia.

Other such extraordinary claims include Poland having secret territorial designs over Belarus and Ukraine.

And Finland wanted to seize a broad swath of northern Russia.

The Kremlin relies on stories designed to support slogans such as
“We are not the same as everybody else!”
“We have a special DNA!”
“We are fighting godlessness and the enemies on our country’s Western borders!”
“We have to defend ourselves by reclaiming our ancient territories and ‘liberating’ them!”

In short, the best defense of the beleaguered Russian nation is offense.

https://nypost.com/2024/01/06/news/russian-president-vladimir-putin-re
veals-countrys-new-enemy/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, January 8, 2024 1:42 PM

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

Putin Goes Full Bond Villain

By Brendan Cole | Jan 08, 2024 at 9:24 AM EST

A counterintelligence directorate created by former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin and made famous by the James Bond novels of author and former British spy Ian Fleming has reportedly made a return to Russia.

SMERSH is a portmanteau of the Russian for "death to spies," or "smert shpionam." It was announced in 1943 as a move to target Nazi spy rings, traitors and foreign agents during the World War II, before it was disbanded in 1946.

Fleming portrayed the group as cold-blooded foes of James Bond. One of his characters was Rosa Klebb — an assassin handy with a flick-knife shoe, who was played by Austrian actress Lotte Lenya in the 1963 film version of From Russia with Love.

SMERSH has been recreated in the present day to hunt down intelligence officers Moscow believes are targeting Russia.

https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-bond-villain-smersh-stalin-mod
-1858646

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, January 8, 2024 2:45 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Russia launched another huge missile strike against Ukraine after Orthodox Christmas (which was Jan 7).
There are very few videos of the strikes, since Ukrainian security services arrested people who posted videos online of explosions from the last waves of strikes.

Cities hit include Odessa, Krivoy Rog, Zaparozhiy, all around Kharkov and from Kharkov eastward to the border shelled and struck, and cities to the west (but since no announcement from Russia and no videos or posts from there, hard to say which ones).

Also, active and some Russian advances along much of the frontline.

See Military Summary Channel for this morning

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Monday, January 8, 2024 7:03 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:
Russia launched another huge missile strike against Ukraine after Orthodox Christmas (which was Jan 7).

And yet Russian victory does not arrive because Russia does not have a sufficient number of multi-million dollar missiles. It's time for Russia to bring out the nukes, which it has more than sufficient numbers of and which it never stops hinting that it will use one day soon.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Monday, January 8, 2024 11:42 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Russia launched another huge missile strike against Ukraine after Orthodox Christmas (which was Jan 7).
And yet Russian victory does not arrive because Russia does not have a sufficient number of multi-million dollar missiles. It's time for Russia to bring out the nukes, which it has more than sufficient numbers of and which it never stops hinting that it will use one day soon.

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

Russia is attriting Ukraine and, by extension, NATO and the USA. As had been said, you want to wear your opponent down so much that at the end you can knock him down with a feather. Not at that point yet.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM

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Tuesday, January 9, 2024 7:20 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:

Russia is attriting Ukraine and, by extension, NATO and the USA. As had been said, you want to wear your opponent down so much that at the end you can knock him down with a feather. Not at that point yet.

That explains why Germany only had 7 million dead while fighting on land, sea, and air on two fronts with supply lines stretching 1,000 miles while Russia had 27 million dead fighting on one front with short supply lines. A sensible military strategy is to hit your enemy at its weakest point as hard and fast as possible. That is how successful military campaigns are conducted.

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

Signym, if Russia had the goal you claim, it would have cut all fuel deliveries from Russia to the World, not just some European countries, at the same time it invaded Ukraine once the spring thaw had passed and the ground was hard. Then Ukraine, EU, UK, and USA would have been knocked out in the first round, a worthy goal for Russia. But Russia didn't because its goal was to steal all Ukrainian land by capturing Kyiv.

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

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Tuesday, January 9, 2024 7:29 AM

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

A 1929 Soviet novel shows how dangerous ideas can destroy a society.

By Anastasia Edel | January 8, 2024

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/01/chevengur-andrey-pla
tonov-russia-book-review/677042/

As Vladimir Putin’s army continues to wage war in Ukraine, many people may find themselves probing the culture of modern Russia to make sense of the war. In the past, those looking to art or literature to better understand Russian society might have picked up works by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. But these writers feel less relevant today: The 19th century is receding into the distance, and so are the glorified or mystical qualities its authors ascribed to Russia and its people.

Today, few books offer the level of insight into modern Russian history as Chevengur does, a 1929 novel by the Soviet writer Andrey Platonov, composed as the Bolsheviks established the Soviet Union and consolidated power. Never published in its entirety in his lifetime, Platonov’s epic of the Russian Revolution has recently been translated into English by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler. https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781681377681

Despite having been born in Russia, I discovered Platonov relatively late in life. He wasn’t taught in Soviet schools, and tamizdat (banned material published abroad and smuggled back to the U.S.S.R.) wasn’t available in the provincial town where I grew up. Though Platonov was himself a Communist who took part in the Bolshevik revolution, he owed his obscurity to Joseph Stalin, who disliked his depictions of the savage undercurrents of the revolutionary dream. (Platonov simply saw his book as a truthful ode to Soviet power.) His four novels and numerous plays, scripts, stories, and sketches thus weren’t available in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.

Chevengur shows how an embrace of violence destroys the soul of a nation, and lays bare humanity’s inexhaustible capacity for carnage in the search for a better future. Terror isn’t a side effect of the Revolution, the novel suggests, but rather something endemic to Russian society.

Even after Stalin’s death, and during glasnost, the period of liberalization that led to the rediscovery of Platonov’s work, he was eclipsed by other previously banned writers such as Mikhail Bulgakov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I hadn’t even heard the name Platonov until I moved to America in the late 1990s and merged my book collection with my husband’s. One summer evening in California, I plucked a plain green volume with a mysterious name — Chevengur — from our bookcase and didn’t put it down until I read the last sentence. I remain under its spell.

Set from 1913 to the mid-1920s, a dramatic decade that spanned World War I, revolutions, famines, epidemics, and civil war, Chevengur charts the breakup of the old Russia and the birth of the new communist world. Like War and Peace, Chevengur is a portrait of a society in crisis. But unlike Tolstoy, whose epic is wrapped into an entertaining upper-crust-family saga, Platonov begins his story in an entirely different social milieu: a Russian village where misery is a “habit rather than a torment.” Part coming-of-age novel, part odyssey, part dystopian chronicle, Chevengur has no epic battle scenes, no love triangles, and no glory. It shows the Revolution and the country that engendered it as they were — strewn with dead bodies, broken promises, and dreams turned into nightmares.

More at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-once-forgotten-novel-that-exp
lains-russia-s-violence/ar-AA1mCUp6

Download a free copy of Chevengur from the mirrors at https://libgen.is/fiction/?q=Andrey+Platonov

Download Robert+Elizabeth+Chandler’s other translations from
https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Robert+Elizabeth+Chandler

https://libgen.is/fiction/?q=Robert+Elizabeth+Chandler

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, January 9, 2024 7:53 AM

Fuck Ukraine.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, January 9, 2024 8:20 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:
Fuck Ukraine.

For explanations of why Russians are that way there are Russian novels. For explanations of why 6ixStringJack is this way, there is the movie Joker. 6ix, your sympathizing with the Joker's situation revealed your inner self.

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=36&tid=63327&mid=10857
85#1085785

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Tuesday, January 9, 2024 9:24 AM

THG

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

Russia launched another huge missile strike against Ukraine after Orthodox Christmas (which was Jan 7).
And yet Russian victory does not arrive because Russia does not have a sufficient number of multi-million dollar missiles. It's time for Russia to bring out the nukes, which it has more than sufficient numbers of and which it never stops hinting that it will use one day soon.

Russia is attriting Ukraine and, by extension, NATO and the USA. As had been said, you want to wear your opponent down so much that at the end you can knock him down with a feather. Not at that point yet.

SIGNYM

That's funny, the purpose in war is to win. Not to lose all your troops and equipment. And Putin's intention was not to expand NATO, which is what his actions led to.

T

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Tuesday, January 9, 2024 9:44 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Fuck Ukraine.
For explanations of why Russians are that way there are Russian novels. For explanations of why 6ixStringJack is this way, there is the movie Joker. 6ix, your sympathizing with the Joker's situation revealed your inner self.

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=36&tid=63327&mid=10857
85#1085785

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

That tired line again, huh?

Fuck Ukraine.

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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.

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Tuesday, January 9, 2024 10:07 AM