REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Sunday, April 28, 2024 02:14
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Saturday, July 15, 2023 9:38 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SECOND'S neverending fountain of BS.

-----------
"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, July 15, 2023 11:25 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Young Ukrainians Scared To Leave Their Homes As More And More Videos Emerge Of Forced Conscription
Saturday, Jul 15, 2023 - 04:00 AM

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News, https://rmx.news/ukraine/young-people-scared-to-leave-their-homes-as-m
ore-videos-emerge-of-ukrainian-youth-being-forced-into-military/

As Ukraine’s manpower on its frontlines starts to dwindle, military leaders are becoming increasingly desperate to locate new recruits to propel its counteroffensive against Russia forward; however, the number of young people volunteering for such a challenge has plummeted.

Recent videos of young Ukrainian men being conscripted across the country have circulated in popular encrypted messaging apps in Ukraine, and those fearful of being sent to the front are actively engaging in evasive and, in some instances, illegal tactics to avoid such a fate.

The brutal mobilization by Ukrainian military recruitment officers of young men has been occurring for a year and a half now, Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet reports.

“Many conscripted men are taken straight off the street by uniformed men,” it states. “Most recently in Subcarpathia, a surveillance camera recorded the overreach of the authorities as a man trying to go to a store was kidnapped from his bicycle in broad daylight.”

The man was abducted right on a street during the day by police and conscription officers in a small village in the Municipal District of Munkács, with his bicycle left in the road.

video links can be found in the article



-----------
"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, July 15, 2023 11:26 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND'S neverending fountain of BS.
The historical echoes can’t be an accident. The KGB once taught new recruits to study the institution’s history, and the Russian security services clearly do the same: They are carrying out repressive policies that “worked” in the Soviet days, that kept people like Bohdan Klymchak and his brother behind bars. But that history also explains Ukraine’s response. Anyone who wonders why the Ukrainians keep fighting, why they keep asking for more weapons, why they become frustrated by slow-moving transatlantic diplomacy, why they seem angry or “unreasonable,” should remember this: The Gulag was supposed to belong to the past. Now it belongs to the present. If Ukrainians don’t want it to be part of their future, they will have to physically remove these camps—and the people who run them—from Ukrainian land. Until they have succeeded, no help will ever be enough.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/russia-gulag-ukraine
/674705/

Signym, the past is never dead. It's not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.

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, July 15, 2023 11:33 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SECOND'S neverending recycling of BS.

-----------
"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, July 16, 2023 12:21 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND'S neverending recycling of BS.
Signym, Trump dodged the draft, but his draft dodging was no problem for you. Unsurprising that catching Ukrainian draft dodgers is a problem for you. You must approve of Russia's all-volunteer army and disapprove of Ukraine's conscripted army.

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, July 16, 2023 2:43 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND'S neverending recycling of BS.

SECOND: Signym, Trump ...

TRUMP!
Your SECOND favorite topic!
You're so funny!



-----------
"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, July 16, 2023 7:56 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND'S neverending recycling of BS.

SECOND: Signym, Trump ...

TRUMP!
Your SECOND favorite topic!
You're so funny!
Hitler/Mussolini. Putin/Trump. Pairs of evil leaders with vast numbers of followers. Funny how the followers of evil leaders can't see themselves as evil. Instead, they see themselves as seeking strong leadership and national purpose against illegal aliens and NATO.

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

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Sunday, July 16, 2023 7:56 AM

SECOND

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


NYT reported that unnamed US and European officials estimated that Russian forces destroyed up to 20 percent of Ukraine’s Western-provided weaponry in the first two weeks of the counteroffensive.[38] The NYT reported that officials stated that the rate of losses has dropped to 10 percent in the subsequent weeks due to a change in Ukrainian strategy.[39] The NYT reported that the Ukrainian military has changed tactics to focus on wearing down Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles instead of large-scale assaults, which is consistent with Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s statement on July 14 that increased Ukrainian indirect fire can both pin down Russian forces and minimize Ukrainian casualties.[40]

Russian authorities likely continue to forcibly integrate Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) dioceses into the Kremlin-controlled Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) as part of a wider religious persecution campaign in occupied Ukraine. Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) Head Leonid Pasechnik announced on July 15 the incorporation of the Luhansk, Alchevsk, Severodonetsk, Starobilsk, and Rovenky UOC dioceses into the ROC.[47] The ROC has already seized the Berdyansk and Prymorsk dioceses in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast, and a Russian news aggregator claimed that the Russian Ministry of Justice recently registered the Donetsk City and Horlivka dioceses as part of the ROC.[48] The new round of forced integration of the UOC dioceses in occupied Luhansk Oblast followed a Ukrainian court ruling that the Head of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Metropolitan Pavel will go to a detention center instead of remaining under house arrest.[49] Russian sources attempted to portray the integration of UOC dioceses into the ROC as a response to claimed Ukrainian religious suppression of a Kremlin-run ROC. The ROC has explicit links to the Kremlin and has provided material and spiritual support to Russia during the war.[50] This explanation makes little sense, however, as the ROC clearly faces no threats from the Ukrainian government in Russian-occupied territory. The Ukrainian government is not engaging in religious suppression, moreover, but rather acting against religious elements it asserts are linked to the Kremlin’s war effort.[51] Russian authorities have conducted systematic religious persecution in occupied Ukraine since the start of the war, however.[52]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-15-2023

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

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Sunday, July 16, 2023 8:19 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.




Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND'S neverending recycling of BS.

SECOND: Signym, Trump ...


SIGNY: TRUMP!
Your SECOND favorite topic!
You're so funny!

SECOND: Hitler/Mussolini. Putin/Trump.


HEY! Whatever happened to Stalin?
And Trump makes your list because... hmmm... Trump presided over the deaths of how many billions of people, again?

You're still funny!




-----------
"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, July 16, 2023 11:09 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND'S neverending recycling of BS.

SECOND: Signym, Trump ...


SIGNY: TRUMP!
Your SECOND favorite topic!
You're so funny!

SECOND: Hitler/Mussolini. Putin/Trump.


HEY! Whatever happened to Stalin?
And Trump makes your list because... hmmm... Trump presided over the deaths of how many billions of people, again?

You're still funny!
The Russians have had many decades to destroy Stalin's reputation, but they won't because the median Russian is no better than Stalin. Opinion polls in Russia show support for murdering Ukrainians and stealing their land. The land will be emptied. Why not make it Russian?

Meanwhile, back in the good old USA, there are living Americans just as bad as today's Stalin-supporting Russians, but they have their own guy, who they will reelect to President: Trump described as 'most evil person I've ever met' by member of his own cabinet

Miles Taylor, who worked for the former President, wrote on Twitter Tuesday that one Trump cabinet official even went so far as to describe the former president as "evil."

"I’ll never forget an ex-Trump cabinet member telling me: 'He is truly the most evil person I have ever met,'" Taylor wrote. "We cannot make this mistake again." (But if Trump is on the ballot, they won't vote for Biden.)

Although Taylor did not identify this former cabinet official by name, he did follow up with a quote from former Trump chief of staff John Kelly, who offered a similarly withering assessment of the former president's character.

https://www.rawstory.com/miles-taylor-trump/

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, July 16, 2023 11:31 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Are you saying your inclusion of Stalin in your list of all-time bad leaders -or not- depends on RUSSIAN opinion of Stalin? If not, what's your point?

BTW, you missed Mao and Pol Pot and GWB.

Seems like your list, SECOND, is based on your delusional hysteria of the moment. Facts are not in it.

Still a troll! and still funny!



-----------
"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, July 17, 2023 4:50 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Are you saying your inclusion of Stalin in your list of all-time bad leaders -or not- depends on RUSSIAN opinion of Stalin? If not, what's your point?

BTW, you missed Mao and Pol Pot and GWB.

Seems like your list, SECOND, is based on your delusional hysteria of the moment. Facts are not in it.

Still a troll! and still funny!
Signym, why mention Mao, Pol Pot, and GWB, when they never invaded Ukraine?

Stalin and the Red Army invaded both Europe and Ukraine. The invasion never ended until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The median Russian never expressed the opinion that Stalin had committed a crime by keeping all that invaded territory. That is why those same Russians don't feel that Putin committed a crime by invading Ukraine and keeping that territory. (All the invaded countries, except Ukraine, joined NATO for reasons that the median Russians cannot comprehend because Russians think it was not a crime for the Red Army to stay until 1991.)

Will it take another collapse of Russia in 2024, as in 1991, to finally get the Russian Army out of Ukraine? Maybe. Or maybe just an ordinary collapse of an Army such as during Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in 1988.

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, July 17, 2023 4:51 AM

SECOND

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


Changing Places: Europeans Grow More Assertive on Ukraine as Washington Shows Caution

by Yaroslav Trofimov

NATO summit highlighted divisions over Ukraine’s future in the alliance and how far the West should go in supplying weapons

VILNIUS, Lithuania—Last week’s NATO summit revealed a major realignment within the U.S.-led trans-Atlantic alliance.

European nations, once seen as less steadfast in their support for Kyiv and more vulnerable to Russian pressure, are determined to help Ukraine win an unambiguous victory. At the same time, the Biden administration, which orchestrated a unified Western response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion last year, is increasingly cautious—constrained by domestic politics and a fear of direct confrontation with Moscow.

In Europe, the once-gaping divisions between different capitals have narrowed sharply, as countries previously seen as soft on Russia, including France, Italy, Spain and to a lesser extent Germany, have all moved much closer to Ukraine’s fiercest supporters: Poland, the Baltic and the Nordic states.

“It took a while, but then it seeped through. Today a lot of leaders around Europe, including Germany, understand that they must help Ukraine defeat Putin if they want to defend their own security,” said Reinhard Bütikofer, a German member of the European Parliament. “They have well understood that Putin’s threat to Ukraine has significance far beyond Ukraine itself.”

The divergence between Washington and its European allies is increasingly evident on an array of issues, from Ukraine’s prospects of eventually joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to the military capabilities that Kyiv needs for its current offensive aiming to reclaim occupied territory, to the desirability of any peace settlement with the Kremlin in the near term.

“Biden’s mantra is that the unity of the alliance is the high priority,” said Slawomir Debski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a Warsaw think tank that advises Poland’s government. “The problem now is that it’s the Biden administration that is lagging behind Europe, and it’s the Biden administration that is creating trouble for the unity.”

Washington remains the biggest backer of Ukraine, and President Biden reiterated in Vilnius that America’s commitment won’t waver—warning that Putin is making a “bad bet” as he doubts the West’s staying power and unity.

Yet political winds are blowing in opposite directions on the two sides of the Atlantic. A sizable, and growing, minority of the U.S. Republican Party wants to end any support for Ukraine, and America’s role in the war is likely to become an issue in next year’s presidential election. A proposal to prohibit all security assistance to Ukraine garnered 70 Republican votes, or nearly one-third of all Republican House members, on Thursday.

Former President Donald Trump, who seeks to return to the White House next year, has accused Biden of risking World War III by supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions, a type of ammunition that Russia has been using in abundance, and boasted that he could end the conflict within 24 hours, without saying how.

Few major European leaders have similar electoral concerns in the near term. European economies have successfully weaned themselves off dependence on Russian energy, and even the once pro-Putin nationalist parties rarely openly support Moscow nowadays. Many key European leaders who pushed for talks between Kyiv and Moscow last year, most importantly French President Emmanuel Macron, have increasingly come to the view that no deal on Ukraine can be struck until Putin is routed on the battlefield or leaves power.

“There is a growing belief in Europe that the defeat of Russia needs to be super clear, while at least in some corners of the U.S. system there might be a sense that this needs to be a defeat that generates a negotiated outcome,” said Camille Grand, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Brussels who served until last year as NATO’s assistant secretary-general. “There is this nuance.”

Biden, in remarks in Helsinki last week, said his hope and expectation is that “Ukraine makes significant progress on their offensive, and that it generates a negotiated settlement somewhere along the line.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said that no settlement is possible until Ukraine regains occupied land, which amounts to about 20% of the country’s territory, and secures reparations from Moscow.

At the Vilnius summit, the Biden administration surprised many allies with its refusal to negotiate the language on Ukraine, which said that NATO “would be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree and conditions are met.”

Frustrated, Zelensky issued a fiery tweet as he arrived in Vilnius. “A window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia,” he wrote. “And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror.”

Daria Kaleniuk, a Ukrainian anticorruption campaigner and civil-society activist, raised this point in a sharp exchange with U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Is it true, she asked Sullivan at a NATO public forum in Vilnius, that Biden “didn’t invite Ukraine to NATO because he’s afraid of Russia, afraid of Russia losing, of Ukraine winning?”

Speculating that there are backchannel communications between Washington and Moscow, she added: “Should I prepare my son to be a soldier and fight the Russians when he will be 18 years old in seven years?” The audience responded with thunderous applause.

Sullivan responded that any suggestion that Washington would negotiate a secret deal with the Kremlin at Ukraine’s expense was “entirely unfounded and unjustified.”

“There has been a lot of conspiracy theorizing that is simply not based on any reality whatsoever,” he said, adding that “the American people do deserve a degree of gratitude.” U.S. officials sent similar messages denying any clandestine deals with Moscow to their European interlocutors—some of whom say they remain unconvinced by the denials, and are concerned that the American policy on Ukraine is increasingly dictated by the constraints of the U.S. political calendar.

Appearing on NBC Sunday, Sullivan reiterated that Ukraine’s NATO accession “is not subject to negotiation with any country, including Russia.”

The changing dynamic on military aid to Ukraine adds to tensions between Washington and many European allies. Though overall European and U.S. assistance to Ukraine is roughly the same, Washington still supplies most of the weapons used by Kyiv. In recent months, however, the Biden administration has been overtaken by European nations when it comes to providing new, more sophisticated and longer-range types of equipment that Kyiv says it needs for military success.

While the U.S. hasn’t agreed to supply ATACMS missiles sought by Kyiv, London and Paris have supplied longer-range cruise missiles that can hit anywhere in occupied parts of Ukraine, and that are being used against Russian command posts, logistics nodes and ammunition depots. Washington hasn’t delivered pledged Abrams tanks, while scores of German and British tanks already are on the battlefield. The Biden administration has also slow-rolled European efforts to provide Kyiv with F-16 aircraft owned by countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.

“We used to think here that the problem is in Germany, but now it’s increasingly clear that the problem is in Washington,” said Vygaudas Ušackas, a former Lithuanian foreign minister and a former European Union ambassador to Moscow.

Within Europe, perhaps the most significant shift has occurred in France, the EU’s only nuclear power. Macron, who sought diplomatic engagement with Putin last year, has become increasingly convinced of the need for a Ukrainian victory—a belief he expressed in a landmark speech in Bratislava, Slovakia, on May 31. “Only one peace is possible—a peace that respects international law and is chosen by the victims of the aggression, the Ukrainian people,” he said.

Debski, the head of the Polish think tank, said: “France does have a strategic culture, a strategic vision, and can think about the long term, which is why they are much closer now to the Nordic countries and to NATO’s eastern flank—countries that have no option but to think about the long run, the long-term consequences.”

The same sort of socially conservative, nationalist or nativist political currents that oppose helping Ukraine in the U.S. often have a very different attitude in Europe. Italy is a prime example. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose right-wing coalition includes parties historically friendly to Putin, has become one of Kyiv’s most vocal defenders since coming to power last October.

“Even in a Europe that tilts in some countries to the right, that doesn’t necessarily mean backing off from support for Ukraine,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Institute of International Affairs in Rome. “Nationalists like Meloni would feel strongly about the fact that Ukraine is fighting its war of national liberation.”

Europe’s proximity to Ukraine—and America’s distance—explains the different attitudes, she added: “Geography counts at the end of the day. The U.S. is far away, and can live with a compromise in a way that the Europeans would struggle far more to accept.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/changing-places-europeans-grow-more-asser
tive-on-ukraine-as-washington-shows-caution-e4b83acf?mod=djemalertNEWS

Appeared in the July 17, 2023, print edition as 'Europeans Get Bolder In Backing Kyiv Victory'.

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

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Wednesday, July 19, 2023 6:37 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine Adopts Slow Approach to Counteroffensive: ‘Our Problem Everywhere Is the Sky’
James Marson

Updated July 18, 2023 12:00 am ET

ORIKHIV, Ukraine—Six weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Capt. Anatoliy Kharchenko and his reconnaissance company were supposed to be wreaking havoc miles behind Russian defensive lines pierced by Western-supplied armored vehicles.

Instead, after many of the vehicles got bogged down in minefields, Kharchenko and his men are training how to advance methodically on foot, moving from one line of trees to another, faced with the prospect of taking back their country one field at a time.

“We’ve got nothing to lose,” Kharchenko said. “Victory isn’t just important, but it’s the only option, otherwise we’ll all be dead.”

Ukraine’s counteroffensive, launched at the start of June, is aimed at retaking some of the nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory occupied by Moscow. The West provided dozens of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles and trained thousands of Ukrainian troops for the campaign.

The swift loss of several tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, many of them immobilized by mines or missiles launched from attack helicopters, jolted Ukraine and its Western backers. Ukraine hasn’t achieved a decisive breakthrough, although it has seized several villages.

Kyiv’s political and military leadership has complained that slow and insufficient deliveries of Western weaponry left it no choice but to assault Russian lines without adequate air defenses, leaving troops and vehicles vulnerable.

The Ukrainians are adapting and seeking to press forward in the south as well as around the eastern city of Bakhmut, Russia’s only significant gain in its winter-and-spring offensive. Advancing slowly and meticulously to preserve Western armor, the central aim remains reaching the Sea of Azov, cutting off Crimea and squeezing Russian forces out of the southern Kherson region.

Most of the Ukrainian brigades trained and equipped by the West remain in reserve, waiting to strike. Officers are seeking to preserve precious Western equipment, from tanks to shoulder-fired Stingers, while still pushing forward.

“We are probing with our fingers and working out where to direct our fist,” said Kharchenko.

The stocky former paratrooper and his company of some 100 men had been prepared to push through any gap created in Russian lines and dash south.

But the gap never appeared. On the third day of the counteroffensive, he drove to Mala Tokmachka to the southeast of Orikhiv to check out the route they were supposed to take. As artillery shells crashed around him, he began to withdraw when he saw a Ukrainian vehicle blown up and body parts of Ukrainian soldiers strewn over the road. He and his teammates dismounted to recover what they could.

Now, the task is even more daunting. After the destruction of the Kakhovka dam flooded the Dnipro River at the start of June, Russia moved some units that had been guarding the river’s eastern bank to bolster forces to the south of Orikhiv. They quickly dug in, expanding the lines of defense and reinforcing the edges of towns and roads.

Kharchenko and his men are training for a more gradual advance over the flat land of the south, where neat villages are dotted among open fields of sunflowers and wheat. They are using U.S.-made Bangalore torpedoes, metal poles with explosive charges, which they hope will help them clear mines and booby traps from lines of trees along the edges of fields so that they can advance and dig in.

One of his men questioned why they would seek to advance on foot given that the West provided armor for protection.

Kharchenko said they don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the Russians in the early days of the invasion, when Ukraine chewed up column after column of Russian armored vehicles.

Ukraine has been targeting ammunition stores and command posts with Himars rocket artillery and long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles. The Storm Shadows can strike farther but are expensive and in shorter supply, while the U.S. has so far declined to provide longer-range ATACMS missiles that can be launched from Himars.

So Ukraine has resorted to using Himars in a more daring fashion in recent weeks, moving them as close as a few miles from the front line to strike deeper into occupied territory and push Russia’s ammunition dumps and command posts farther back.

Cluster munitions provided by the U.S. could help blast holes in minefields and Russian defensive networks including trenches and antitank obstacles called dragon’s teeth.

Russia remains vulnerable because its troops are generally less well prepared and supplied by a weak logistics chain that depends heavily on railways. With Ukraine pushing in several places, Russia doesn’t know where to deploy its reserves and may struggle to react quickly if Ukrainian forces do break through.

Ukraine has been advancing fastest around the small eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russia seized in late May after months of brutal fighting that cost it several thousand fighters.

The Russians barely had time to lay mines after capturing Bakhmut after months of house-to-house fighting.

Ukraine counterattacked and is now pushing Russian forces back on the northern and southern edges of the city. In the south, Ukrainian forces have crossed a canal and are pushing past the town of Klishchiivka, while in the north they are fighting toward a major highway.

As in the south, Russian air superiority is a major obstacle. Russian Ka-52 helicopters hover at a distance of around 5 miles, outside the range of Stinger missiles, and fire laser-guided missiles at Ukrainian targets.

The West blundered by giving tanks and armored vehicles but insufficient means, such as jet fighters or air-defense systems, to protect them from attack, said Yuriy Ulshyn, a 49-year-old commander near Bakhmut, better known as “Grek,” or “Greek.”

“It’s like giving a bike without pedals,” said Grek. “Thanks a lot for the bike, but…”

Grek, a former geologist, commands a unit of some 40 volunteers whom he stations in gaps between larger formations, gluing them together at potential weak points.

His men on a hillside 3 miles from the edge of Bakhmut are armed with a Stinger and a Soviet-era PKM machine gun, looking out for Russian jets, helicopters and aerial drones.

Russian Orlan surveillance drones are a constant menace, spotting targets and calling in artillery fire.

On cloudy days, if the craft swoops low enough, they fire bursts from the PKM, hoping to down it. If the sky is clear, the Russians can watch idly from above the PKM’s range, because Grek’s team is preserving precious Stinger missiles for a more dangerous target like a helicopter or war plane.

“Our problem everywhere is the sky,” said Grek. “When the enemy can see the whole battlefield, what can you do? You need so much of everything. When he can’t see it, he’s in the dark, and you don’t need as much.”

The lack of equipment weighs on Grek. A tow rope snapped as he was trying to drag a damaged car away from the front line. Immobilized vehicles, even those in Russian range, are quickly stripped for useful parts. He worries about dying not in the heat of battle, but from his lack of an armored car.

“I don’t want to die behind the wheel,” Grek said.

He and his men are finding creative solutions.

They scrambled to the top of a slag heap one recent night to mount a camera connected to a Starlink internet terminal powered by a generator. The camera provides a feed that can help them spot Russian aircraft at a distance.

They make their own attack drones in a garage in a nearby town, equipped with enough explosives to take out an armored vehicle when they slam into them. Their latest innovation, as yet untested in battle, is a remote-controlled machine gun attached to the base of an electric wheelchair.

In the south, meanwhile, the flooded Dnipro River has created opportunities by washing away some Russian defenses.

Ukrainian special forces have crossed the river and are trying to expand a bridgehead opposite the southern capital of Kherson. Other troops have been training in river crossings, including Kharchenko’s men, who used sports inflatables provided by a charity fund.

Ukraine still holds a morale advantage from fighting for its own territory, Kharchenko said. It may take longer and cost more lives, but “there is no other plan,” he said. “It’s our land. We have to do it.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-adopts-slow-approach-to-counterof
fensive-our-problem-everywhere-is-the-sky-a2e51d7a?mod=djemalertNEWS

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

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Wednesday, July 19, 2023 4:21 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



IF
Quote:
Ukraine Adopts Slow Approach to Counteroffensive: ‘Our Problem Everywhere Is the Sky’

then why...

Quote:
US Pressuring Ukraine For 'Decisive Breakthrough' & More Aggressive Tactics: WaPo

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-pressuring-ukraine-decisive-brea
kthrough-more-aggressive-tactics-wapo
Original article at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/18/ukraine-co
unter-offensive-weapons-tactics/

???

Do SOME parts of the administration want Kiev to commit suicide faster, and get this constant drain of money, weapons, and stream of bad news over with ASAP so the Ukrainian clusterfuck can be memory-holed in time for campaign season?

I can't see any reason for wanting Kiev to repeat their clumsy "combined arms" offensive. All it did was get a lot of soldiers killed and Leopards and Bradleys destroyed. It didn't work last time and won't work this time.

Furthermore, sending even light infantry against well-constructed defenses may be saving their armored vehicles, but it's still getting a lot of soldiers killed. True, it negates Russia's artillery advantage... why shell a small group of foot soldiers? ...but Russia has plenty of anti-personnel weapons (which IMHO they're testing to see which weapons are most effective and cost-effective, ie TOS1 thermobaric bombs, anti-personnel mines, infantry, and now cluster munitions)

As I see it, Kiev really has only one option: insurgency warfare.

Given the political situation, the worst thing (for Russia) that Kiev can do is go on the defensive and make Russia go on the offensive.

I think Russia, for its part, would benefit from drawing this out all the way thru next summer, creating the greatest political and economic instability in the EU and USA.

This is not in our interest!

-----------
"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, July 19, 2023 5:23 PM

THG


Comrade signym, your sources suck.

T

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Wednesday, July 19, 2023 6:30 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by THG: Comrade signym, your sources suck.


SECOND'S source, WSJ, sucks?
My source, Washington Post, sucks??

Good to know!
That means I can safely ignore them!




-----------
"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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Thursday, July 20, 2023 7:53 AM

SECOND

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


Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to display his knowledge of Russian history at odd moments, this time appearing to warn against the possibility of revolution in Russia. Putin stated on July 19 that Russia already exceeded its “limit on revolutions in the last century” in response to the mention of the Mayevka tourism event that took place in May.[40] Mayevka was an illegal meeting of revolutionary-minded workers held outside of Moscow during the Tsarist period, but the word can also be associated with the arrival of spring.[41] Putin additionally stated that he hoped that the tourism Mayevka event would not “lead to a revolution.” Putin had previously made a seemingly unrelated and unprompted allusion to Russian history at a public engagement in October 2022 when he spoke about the causes of the 18th Century Pugachev Rebellion, observing that it began because the center appeared weak and because someone decided that he was tsar – an observation that has since appeared to have been apropos.[42]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-19-2023

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

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Thursday, July 20, 2023 10:10 AM

SECOND

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


Putin cut a deal to save his skin

The failed Wagner insurrection has put Russian President Vladimir Putin "under pressure'' and exposed the "inexorable decay" of his power, the head of British intelligence said Wednesday.

At a rare public address in Prague hosted by Politico, MI6 chief Richard Moore said Putin's support among the Russian elite is crumbling and pointed out the usually ruthless autocrat did not confront Prigozhin - a former ally who had betrayed him - and instead "cut a deal to save his skin.''

“Prigozhin started off that day as a traitor at breakfast, he had been pardoned by supper and then a few days later he was invited for tea,” Moore said. “So there are some things that even the chief of MI6 finds a little bit difficult to try and interpret, in terms of who’s in and who’s out.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/007-things-the-chief-of-mi6-told-polit
ico/

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

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Thursday, July 20, 2023 11:03 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Putin cut a deal to save his skin

The failed Wagner insurrection has put Russian President Vladimir Putin "under pressure'' and exposed the "inexorable decay" of his power, the head of British intelligence said Wednesday.

At a rare public address in Prague hosted by Politico, MI6 chief Richard Moore said Putin's support among the Russian elite is crumbling and pointed out the usually ruthless autocrat did not confront Prigozhin - a former ally who had betrayed him - and instead "cut a deal to save his skin.''

“Prigozhin started off that day as a traitor at breakfast, he had been pardoned by supper and then a few days later he was invited for tea,” Moore said. “So there are some things that even the chief of MI6 finds a little bit difficult to try and interpret, in terms of who’s in and who’s out.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/007-things-the-chief-of-mi6-told-polit
ico/

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



lol

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Thursday, July 20, 2023 8:33 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


and in real news...


russia refuses to extend grain deal. the deal, which allowed ukraine to use the port of odessa to export grain, had provisions in it, NONE of which, predictably, the west honored ('not agreement capable')

turkey to inspect ships for weapons to interdict weapons transfer to ukraine
shipping corridor not to be used for military purposes
reattach russian agricultural bank to SWIFT to make payment for russian grain 9
(for example, by african countries) easier
let russian ships be insured again by western insurance companies (lloyd'sof london, mostly)

since none of he provisions have been honored, despite russian extending the grain deal a few times in order to give kiev, turkey and the west 'more time', russia let the deal expire. despite un scy guiterrez' two-faced plea for yet another extension.

timed with the grain deal's expiration, russia rained hellfire on odessa two night in sucession, using a combination of drones and cruise missiles, ruining kiev's main export (the equivalent of the west blowing up nordstream, ruining germany's economy).

i've heard reports that russia has crafted a different grain deal with turkey, this time shipping grain out of crimea, setting aside grain for poorer nations (most urkainian grain went to the EU. So much for ending world hunger!!!) and arranging for payment through non-SWIFT systems.

*****

the attack on kerch bridge has not yet been responded to. some say it will most likely be an attack on 'command centers' in ukraine. 'command centers' aren't simply plces were commanders gove orders: they are what might most accurately be considered 'fusion centers' where satellite data, AWACS data, videos and photos from soldiers and civilians, drone data, humint etc are combined in real-time to form a picture of the war at any one moment, and perform a threat assessment (what are the threats, which of those threats is the most immediate, how can it be countered etc) these command centers exist ON BOTH SIDES. the urkrainian army and russian are are about equivalent. where ukraine's army falls down is in 'multi-domain superiority'

this is a long video whcih discusses NATO capabilities, strategy and tactics v russia in great detail, as well as taiwan, featuring scott ritter, former marine intelligence officer, and andrei martyanov, former russian naval commander. they don't always agree but they always have something interesting to say.



and, as always, simplicius the thinker
https://simplicius76.substack.com/archive


-----------
"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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Friday, July 21, 2023 6:36 AM

SECOND

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


Military briefing: the mines stalling Ukraine’s advance

No obstacle has been as daunting for Ukraine’s counteroffensive as the fields of explosives laid by Russia

Christopher Miller in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions July 19 2023

Dmytro was marching through shrubbery at the front line east of the town of Lyman when his Ukrainian assault unit came under fire from Russian lines. He stepped aside to dodge the bullets. Then came the explosion.

Dmytro had triggered an anti-personnel mine. The blast dislocated his hips, fractured his pelvis, buried shrapnel deep in his left leg and nearly tore off his left ankle.

“We got him here just in time,” said doctor Viktor Stercheus, a doctor with the MOAS aid organisation, after riding with Dmytro and the Financial Times over rocket-cratered roads to Kramatorsk hospital. “He now has a 90 per cent chance of surviving and keeping his leg.”

Hundreds more treated by Stercheus and his colleagues have not been as fortunate. Six weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive to reclaim its eastern and southern regions from Russian occupiers, no military obstacle appears as daunting as Russia’s vast and dense minefields, which are destroying Nato-supplied armour, wounding soldiers and zapping morale.

“We can push with 10 brigades but it won’t work because the mines are everywhere, every half a meter there are mines,” said Sultan, a commander in the 78th regiment, a special forces unit, at a field hospital near the front line in Zaporizhzhia region. “They are everywhere.”

Ukraine’s advance has been painfully slow, and frontline soldiers in southern Zaporizhzhia region and eastern Donetsk region largely blame Russia’s minefields — a hidden threat that has become a psychological torment.

To recapture territory, troops must cross miles of open fields littered with thousands of mines: anti-tank, anti-personnel, improvised explosive devices and an array of booby traps.

Some are launched at random into fields from afar, so-called “distance mining”; others bounce in the air when triggered to spray shrapnel as far as possible. Small green plastic ones that soldiers call “butterfly” mines, a reference to their double-winged shape, are hard to de-mine and especially menacing, troops and doctors said.

Sultan, who preferred to be identified by his call sign, encountered his Russian mine as he sought cover in a thin tree line previously used by Russian soldiers. He pushed a branch out of his way and flicked a tripwire. The blast threw him on his back but the tree took most of the shrapnel. He suffered a concussion — his third — and was evacuated to a frontline hospital.

Russian forces, according to the officer, have noticed the Ukrainians’ tactic of capturing enemy positions and then using them to regroup and launch the next assault. Now booby traps are common.

Western armoured vehicles such as the American-made Bradley fighting vehicles and German Leopard 2 battle tanks have provided some protection. But mine strikes have put many vehicles out of commission, halting advances, and leaving the troops to trek on foot through minefields while under fire.

“These are real people in real machines that are out there really clearing real minefields and they’re really dying,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday. “So, when that happens, units tend to slow down and that’s rightly so, in order to survive, in order to get through these minefields.”

A harrowing drone video published by a Ukrainian journalist captured such a situation earlier this month. It showed Ukrainian soldiers in a rocket-cratered field stepping on anti-personnel mines one after the other, as they tried to evacuate a group of badly wounded men with a Bradley vehicle but became casualties themselves.

The failed assault turned into a rescue operation and lasted about three hours, soldiers with direct knowledge of it said.

“The mines are channelling the Ukrainian efforts, and they are severely limiting the Ukrainians’ manoeuvre space, which is usually not a great thing when?.?.?.?you are attacking,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Russians were employing “basic Soviet doctrine”, he added, drawing parallels with the Red Army laying more than a million mines in 1943 to halt Nazi Germany in the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle in history.

Minefields have already forced Ukraine to adapt, according to frontline soldiers. Instead of trying to punch through Russia’s miles-deep minefields and heavily fortified defences with western armour as previously planned, Ukrainian troops are plodding ahead on foot and hoping that artillery has cleared a path.

Ukrainian military leaders have said they needed western allies to provide more mine-clearing equipment, such as M58 Mine Clearing Line Charge systems (MICLICs), some of which the US has provided already but not to the extent that was promised.

Still, Gady said that more demining equipment would not necessarily lead to greater success. “Additional mine-clearing equipment would help, but?.?.?.?it would be even tough for well-equipped western militaries such as the US to break through those layered defences.”

Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said that the Russians have “spared no expense in deploying mines” as they prepared defences in the months before Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

“They deployed a variety and types of mines [and] in ways to specifically negate certain mine trawlers, or systems that Ukraine is using,” he said after a visiting Ukrainian commanders and troops on the front line in Zaporizhzhia region. “They’re mining trenches. They’re using radio- controlled mines and in some very creative ways to create issues [for Ukrainian troops].”

Lee said that soldiers could benefit from anti-personnel obstacle breaching systems, a mobile explosive line charge system used to clear mines from a safe distance. These can fit into a backpack and can be carried on foot, better suiting Ukraine’s new dismounted strategy.

But it is not just the mines themselves, which Ukraine can in theory break through, said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who visited Ukrainian positions with Lee.

The layered Russian defences — running through several lines of defences and minefields — are often regenerated as the battle progresses; the time it takes for Ukrainian forces to inch forward is time Russia spends bolstering the next line of mines.

“And that’s really the challenge — for Ukrainian forces is not just breaking through the initial line. It is breaking through with enough resources, enough gas in the tank to exploit that breakthrough to actually achieve a strategic objective in this offensive.”

The toll is clear in medical centres. Volodymyr, a medic who works in another military hospital near Bakhmut, said he performs dozens of surgeries daily, most of which are amputations from mine blasts. “Before [the counteroffensive] we mostly treated shrapnel wounds from artillery. Now it is injuries from mines.”

https://www.ft.com/content/bbff1949-4f06-43ad-9691-7c124edbd004

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, July 21, 2023 6:43 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


mines are just one reason why i question the west's implaccable desire to ee a ukrainian 'offensive'. the only thing the offensive is doing is creating a lot od dead soldiers and amputees.


if the ukrainians had gone on the defensive instead, it would be russians having to thread their way thru minefields.

-----------
"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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Friday, July 21, 2023 7:15 AM

SECOND

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


Russia’s Spies Say Putin Faces More Coups

Michael Weiss
20 July 2023
https://theins.ru/en/politics/263596

Yevgeny Prigozhin's coup attempt in June left everyone in the world stunned - except Russian intelligence officials, some of whom tacitly supported the catering magnate's efforts. In this exclusive for The Insider, sources in the FSB, GRU and Ministry of Internal Affairs explain why Vladimir Putin's security apparatus failed to stop Wagner from seizing a key military base and charging all the way to the gates of Moscow.

For Russian spies and soldiers, the biggest shock from last month’s abortive coup in Russia is that Yevegeny Prigozhin didn’t succeed in overthrowing a regime that they say curries little devotion. The Insider has spoken with several sources in Russia’s special services. Prigozhin, the rogue catering magnate turned mercenary financier, they insist, faced little resistance because he enjoys widespread support within the ranks of the very institutions meant to safeguard the state and Vladimir Putin.

To most outside observers, Prigozhin’s rebellion on June 23-24, which saw his Wagner forces come within 120 miles of Moscow, was a cause of astonishment and confusion. Astonishment because few saw it coming and even fewer could understand why it was mostly met by shrugs from the rank-and-file of the Russian army and the nation’s sprawling security apparatus. Confusion because Prigozhin, who came closest to challenging Putin’s 23-year reign, has not been shot or imprisoned – this at a time when merely posting truthful information about Russia’s faltering war in Ukraine can land an ordinary person fifteen years in jail.

In fact, Prigozhin has met at least once with Putin in St. Petersburg since his abortive coup. He still travels in and out of Russia on his private plane, suggesting his passport hasn’t even been confiscated. And now, after much speculation as to his whereabouts, he has turned up in a training camp in Belarus, just outside Minsk, evidently his new home in exile, along with some of his Wagner mercenaries.

The GRU: The Dog That Didn't Bark

One high-ranking source in the Main Directorate of the General Staff, the GRU, Russian military intelligence, previously warned The Insider that a coup attempt was possible in light of Russia’s flailing war in Ukraine; the only unexpected development was the timing and architect of this one.

“Everyone in the Ministry of Defense and in the government as a whole is already tired of this war and would like to stop it,” the source said. “You can feel the discontent , so I expected something similar could happen by autumn. The fact that Prigozhin turned out to be at the head of the rebellion is surprising, but he would never have done such a thing if he had not understood that there would be those in the GRU leadership who would support him.” This echoes statements anonymous Western intelligence officials have made in the past several weeks about the existence of a Russian fifth column.

During Prigozhin’s march on Moscow, the same GRU source told The Insider that he had no doubt it could end in Putin’s overthrow: “Ten thousand motivated people are stronger than a hundred thousand unmotivated people,” this officer said. “If you blow up the bridges on the Oka, then you can try to prevent the column from reaching Moscow. But otherwise there are no serious obstacles for the ‘musicians,’” this GRU officer added, referring to Wagner.

Nor has the meeting between Putin and Prigozhin, the man he had branded a “traitor,” made the Russian president any safer. “Now everyone is convinced of how easily and without a fight you can take power, so there may be many who want to,” the GRU officer said. “Everyone saw that, in fact, no one stood up for Putin. What until recently was considered by many to be absolutely impossible almost succeeded, and now many may want to repeat it again.”

There are generals in the Russian army, the source added, who gave a variety of excuses for not interfering in Prigozhin’s blitzkrieg, which began with the seizure of the Russian Military District headquarters in Rostov-on-Don. Some said they were still hungover from partying the night before – not exactly a sterling pledge of fealty to the regime or much of a declaration that duty to the Motherland trumps all other considerations.

This appraisal was corroborated by a Ukrainian intelligence officer who said: “We monitor in real time what is happening in the Russian army, including through access to computers and communications of the Russian military command. It was clear that, firstly, in the army they were completely unprepared for this rebellion. Secondly, they were not at all going to do something about it.”

“We watched one general in one of the Russian regions who received a call on Saturday and demanded to urgently appear at the headquarters in connection with an attempted military coup,” the Ukrainian spy said, “but he did not go anywhere and continued to drink. And as we understand, such a reaction was typical.”

A senior European intelligence official said the chaotic first 24 hours of Prigozhin’s campaign were the most crucial: “The sense of tension and disorder at the top was real. Putin is no doubt somewhat weakened. Should Ukraine be dramatically successful in its counteroffensive, the likelihood of Act Two increases. It may have a different cast, but the scene has been set.”

The FSB: the Sword But Whose Shield?

An officer in the Federal Security Service, the FSB, elaborated on how even the Russian Spetsnaz, or Special Forces, didn’t show up to stop Prigozhin’s army. “None of us knew anything about what was happening and did not understand what it was. But for some reason, two days before the rebellion, the Alpha unit [an elite Spetsnaz unit of the FSB] was transferred to guard Lubyanka,” he said, referring to the FSB headquarters in Moscow.”

“Whether this is somehow related is not clear,” the source explained. “When it started, the Special Operations Forces were raised in Moscow, but without much success. The 45th Brigade of the Airborne Forces did not come out at all on the order to ‘meet Prigozhin,’ nor did a number of other units, including units of the National Guard.”

The FSB source believes that Prigozhin could have pressed on to Moscow if he so chose. “He had the most successful situation. There was no resistance. Why he stopped no one knows for sure.”

Moreover, people close to the oligarch remained defiant even when the whole plan fell apart – or was called off. When the FSB raided the offices of Concord, Prigozhin’s parent company in St. Petersburg, his son Pavel was present. “He personally told FSB operatives, ‘I will remember you.’ He threatened them,” the FSB source told The Insider. “Then the company accountants were arrested. All were eventually released.”

“Moscow Was Silent.”

Another officer in the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs from Rostov-on-Don described the frantic behind-the-scenes scrambling the night of the coup. “The Fortress plan was announced,” the source said, referring to Russia’s emergency measures to countermand Prigozhin and protect Moscow, “but no one began to execute it. Everyone was scared.”

At around 6 p.m. on June 23, the source recounted, traffic police started chattering about the advance of military columns from the Bakhmut region toward Rostov-on-Don. “One of our operatives phoned his colleagues from Voronzeh and said the Wagnerites, when crossing from Ukrainian territory, fired at the frontier post in the Voronezh region and killed several border guards.” (The Insider can confirm that Wagner indeed shelled the frontier post with mortars, but the border guards, who are under the command of the FSB, were not killed, only beaten.)

The Ministry of Internal Affairs source also cited another rumor: that Wagner had defected to the Ukrainians and would seize Rostov-on-Don and Voronezh on behalf of Kyiv. “Everyone who was in the district police department was seriously frightened and began to call their homes so that they would not leave the house and packed their suitcases, just in case.”

The duty officer in the department called Rostov command , but no one picked up at first. When someone finally did early in the morning, he told the duty officer that Moscow was silent and there were no instructions.

“I phoned the men from the Seventh [Proletarsky District] and Eighth [Sovetsky District] departments. Nobody knew anything and there was no one in charge.”

At around 11 p.m. orders to declare the “Fortress” operational plan came down from Command . “The duty officer began calling employees, but many simply did not pick up the phone or were already drunk. It was Saturday night and many police officers were taking time off outside the city. Our boss was with a friend in a restaurant celebrating; the friend’s granddaughter had just been born.”

The Internal Affairs officer pressed the duty officer for a vehicle and crew to reconnoiter the situation in the city, but the duty officer sharply stated. “No one will go anywhere.”

In the early morning hours, employees began to gather. They received service weapons. They said that all the key points in the city were already controlled by the Wagnerites who took control of the Southern Military District HQ and would shoot the military. During the shift change, the new duty officer told the Internal Affairs source that he did not want to be a hero, and if Prigozhin demanded to open the gun room, he would give him everything: “They will drive the tank and that’s it! Who will feed my children?” the duty officer shouted.

A Plot Without a Plan

Although sources in the GRU believed the Wagnerites were more motivated and capable of taking Moscow, communication among the Wagnerites tells a different story. Mainly, the putschists were at odds with their boss and of no mind to see bloodshed on the streets of their capital city.

As early as last winter, Wagnerites who spoke to The Insider were still completely loyal to Prigozhin and admired his public denunciations of the Russian Ministry of Defense and General Staff owing its poor conduct of the war and alleged failure to adequately equip Wagner in the battleground Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. However, after these criticisms graded into an open confrontation with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, they were uncertain of the future.

“Pavel,” a Wagnerite, told The Insider in February: “Fuck knows what’s going on with them. Shoigu, of course, as a leader is an absolute zero. I don’t know how everything will end between them, but most likely Yevgeny Viktorovich [Prigozhin] will win. He has such powerful resources that it will be very difficult to resist him.”

The start of the June uprising took even high-ranking and well-informed members of Wagner by surprise.

“We are all on alert, no one knows where,” Pavel said. “I myself am not going anywhere until there is a written piece of paper. And if we go, it is not a fact that we will get there. Nobody is going to fight anyone. If Yevgeny Viktorovich decided to become king, then so be it, but maybe it's just some kind of plan, in general, all this is more like some kind of circus.”

Such big top aspects of one of Russia’s most formidable fighting groups are now even worse, as many Wagernites find themselves in makeshift tent encampments outside of their native Russia. Some operatives agreed to relocate along with their boss to Belarus; but many others refused and opted to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Pavel was one. “All [private military companies] are now through the Ministry of Defense, we were framed for this shit,” he said. “Now I'm in Zaporozhye,” a region in southern Ukraine where Ukraine is currently pressing its counteroffensive.

To those who have reached Belarus, Prigozhin offers only cryptic hints about “the biggest work in the world, which will be carried out very soon.” Where this monumental undertaking is to occur he doesn’t say. Not that that stops those most loyal to the man they call batya, or “Dad.” “If Yevgeny Viktorovich says it, so be it,” is still a refrain of the Wagner loyalists.

And while batya has evaded the expected consequences for his act of treason, he’s by no means in the clear yet, according to one GRU officer.

“During the rebellion, it was difficult for Putin to kill Prigozhin simply because he didn’t have enough political capital to easily deal with a man who had gained a certain level of popularity due to his rhetoric as a ‘truth-seeker.’ But after some time has passed, Putin may well punish Prigozhin in order to send a signal to the rest. So if I were him, I would not go out onto the balcony in the near future.”

AUTHORS: Christo Grozev, Roman Dobrokhotov, Michael Weiss, Sergey Kanev

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, July 21, 2023 1:55 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.




-----------
"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, July 22, 2023 12:57 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:


-----------
"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


NATO’s infamous invasion of Palestine. Syria, Somalia, and Yemen have literally nothing to do with NATO, and Yugoslavia was committing a genocide that NATO ended. Yugoslavia is what really gets me. Did they prefer if the genocide continued? Then there is Libya, which was run by Gaddafi, a man gearing up for a genocide who was so insane, Russia and China ABSTAINED in the UN vote to permit NATO military intervention. What's the Commie list of mountains of dead? Russia, Poland, Ukraine,China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, also Afghanistan, Ethiopia.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughCommieSpam/comments/13df84o/povyou_dont
_know_history/

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, July 23, 2023 6:21 AM

SECOND

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


Konstantin Sivkov, who serves as the deputy president of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences, has put forth the idea of detonating nuclear weapons at the North Pole "if necessary" as a way to convey a message to the West, in a statement on Russian state-run TV.

During his speech, Sivkov called for the potential deployment of nuclear weapons and show-casing their presence at the North Pole as a demonstration, under certain circumstances.

"If the situation escalates to an extremely critical stage, we could consider demonstrating a detonation, say, at the North Pole,” he said.

“Similar to what we did with the [thermonuclear aerial bomb with a power of] 58 megatons on Novaya Zemlya, where the test went as planned, proving effective and sending a powerful educational message.”

Sivkov emphasized his desire for Russia to prioritize the "intensive mass-scale development of strategic nuclear weapons," arguing that such armament would provide protection "against any possible encroachments" on the Russian Federation.

He further advocated for Russia to adopt "unconventional forms of using nuclear weapons," specifically referring to "high-powered nuclear munitions capable of causing severe geo-physical consequences, such as supervolcano explosions."

"Therefore, the deployment of these nuclear weapons is, of course, necessary.”

“It’s a pivotal matter... I strongly believe that transitioning to intensive deployment is strategically imperative.”

Russian officials have repeatedly made nuclear threats against Ukraine and the rest of the world. Medvedev, the former President and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, has notably threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine on a number of occasions.

https://english.nv.ua/nation/retired-russian-colonel-calls-for-nuking-
north-pole-to-send-message-to-the-west-ukraine-news-50340925.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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Sunday, July 23, 2023 11:29 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:



SECOND: NATO’s infamous invasion of Palestine. Syria,


SYRIA
Quote:
Even without invoking Article 5, NATO has taken collective defense measures several times, including in Syria

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/27/1088683957/what-is-nato-ukraine-russia-
putin

Quote:
SECOND: Somalia

SOMALIA
Quote:
Operational support includes strategic air- and sealift, as well as planning support for the AU mission in Somalia.

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_8191.htm

Quote:
SECOND: and Yemen

YEMEN
Quote:
the US, France and the UK part of the Saudi-led coalition ... blocked all ships from entering Yemen with [FOOD, MEDICAL] supplies

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Yemeni_civi
l_war_(2014-present)

Quote:
SECOND: have literally nothing to do with NATO, and Yugoslavia was committing a genocide that NATO ended. Yugoslavia is what really gets me. Did they prefer if the genocide continued?


YUGOSLAVIA
Quote:
In June 1991, Croatia and Slovenia ... “ethnic cleansing” –
... in March 1992... Srebenica the massacre constituted genocide [1995] Later... Macedonia and Montenegro seceded, as [well as] Kosovo. In each case, violence against civilians defined along identity-based lines existed... In 1999 Kosovo. In 1999, a multilateral force conducted a ten-week-long bombing campaign against Serbian forces, whom Western leaders feared were set to wage another campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo

https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/yugoslavia-former

So actually, if you knew history at all, you'd know the the dissolution of Yugoslavia which began in 1991, was accompanued throughout with various ethnic cleansings, and that the most infamous of those, Srebenica, occurred a full four years before NATO began bombing.


Quote:
SECOND: Then there is Libya, which was run by Gaddafi, a man gearing up for a genocide who was so insane,
Genocide?
Against who??? I'll bet you can't even name the supposed target group, can you?
LIBYA
Quote:
Russia and China ABSTAINED in the UN vote to permit NATO military intervention.
NATO's stated aim was to create a NO FLY zone, that is, to prevent a potential bombing campaign. as it turned out, NATO forces actively bombed Libyan troops and provided weapons to 'the rebels' who - again, as it turned out- were JIHADISTS who took over much of Libya and turned it into a hellhole, with open-air slave markets and everything.
WAY TO GO, NATO!!!
NATO, and NATO's big member states in various 'coalitions of the willing', have been busier than you thought, SECOND.

Quote:
SECOND: What's the Commie list of mountains of dead?
Whataboutism

What about 'commies'?

SECOND, we are not responsible for what Russia/ 'commies'/ jihadists do, bc we can't control them. In fact, we shouldn't try to take on the responsibility for controlling anyone but ourselves. And that's the one thing we can't seem to do: control ourselves. So why don't we start by controlling our debt, our trade deficit, our borders, our joblessness, our security agencies, and all of the other things that DC seems unwilling/unable to tackle?


-----------
"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, July 23, 2023 12:38 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Zelensky Blames Failing Counteroffensive On Lack Of Munitions From West, Delayed Training


So, Zelenskiy admits the offensive IS failing.
And now begins the blame shifting and finger pointing.
NATO/USA rebuttal in 3...2...1...



-----------
"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, July 23, 2023 4:42 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

SECOND, we are not responsible for what Russia/ 'commies'/ jihadists do, bc we can't control them. In fact, we shouldn't try to take on the responsibility for controlling anyone but ourselves. And that's the one thing we can't seem to do: control ourselves. So why don't we start by controlling our debt, our trade deficit, our borders, our joblessness, our security agencies, and all of the other things that DC seems unwilling/unable to tackle?
What does "control" mean to you, Signym? Nuking Moscow was dinner table conversation during the Manhattan Project. Joseph Rotblat — the only scientist to resign from the Manhattan Project — got a nasty shock in May 1944 when, at a dinner, Groves said, “You realize, of course, that the main purpose of this project is to subdue the Russians.” Later, Groves testified that “there was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy.”
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/7/22/23803380/j-robert-oppenhe
imer-film-movie-nuclear-weapons-manhattan-project-world-war-ii-christopher-nolan

As for your other complaints, Signym, the Nation Debt for one example, there would not be a National Debt if somebody had nuked the Republicans who have stood in the way of collecting $1 trillion in taxes each year since IRS made its first estimate of how much cheating the wealthy do. And if the same somebody had nuked Moscow which has threatened to nuke the US since Stalin got his first nuke, the USA would not have spent more than $10 trillion on nukes to dissuade Moscow from going through with its threats.

Cutting IRS funding is a gift to America’s wealthiest tax evaders
Vanessa Williamson, January 26, 2023
Currently, the tax gap, which is the amount in taxes that are owed but not paid, comes to nearly $7 trillion over a decade. Three fifths of the tax gap is due to underreporting of income by the top 10% of taxpayers, and more than a quarter comes from the top 1%.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/cutting-irs-funding-is-a-gift-to-am
ericas-wealthiest-tax-evaders/

The United States has the world’s highest national debt with $30.1 trillion owed to creditors as of the first quarter of 2023.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/31/infographic-how-does-us-de
bt-rank-compared-world

That $10 trillion for nukes is not inflation adjusted. It could very well be worth $30 trillion if adjusted. The US government is very secretive about how much it has squandered on nukes, thanks to the Republicans. And Moscow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_States

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, July 24, 2023 7:54 AM

SECOND

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


Russia’s Nuclear Option Hangs Over Ukraine and NATO

Some Western officials say Putin’s nuclear threats are all talk. Others are more wary.

By Robbie Gramer, July 11, 2023

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/11/nato-summit-russia-nuclear-ukrain
e-deterrence/

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has thrust the risk of a nuclear showdown between Moscow and the West back into the spotlight. While all allied countries agree the risk of Russia escalating the conflict in Ukraine remains low, there’s a growing gap between the United States and some other allies as to when and how that risk could increase, according to interviews with nearly a dozen current and former NATO officials and security experts.

The nuclear question is an existential one for the alliance, one that’s driven Washington’s calculations on what military aid to send to Ukraine and when, and it has also influenced the debate on when and how to allow Ukraine to join the military alliance as a full-fledged member.

Some U.S. and other NATO defense officials believe there could be an increased risk of Russia launching a limited nuclear strike with a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon to stave off a major battlefield defeat if its forces look to be on the verge of a rout, or if Ukraine appears poised to capture Crimea and large swaths of occupied territory in southern and eastern Ukraine. Others say that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling won’t go further than that, and bowing to such threats will only embolden Russia to use such “nuclear blackmail” in the future.

At the same time, Ukrainian and Western officials also fear that Russia could mount an attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to attempt to trigger a major radiological event, irrespective of whether it launches a nuclear strike—though it’s unclear how successful those efforts would be.

That debate over Russia’s threshold for going nuclear in Ukraine sharpened after Putin announced Russia would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to neighboring Belarus, the first time that Moscow will dispatch part of its nuclear arsenal outside of Russia’s borders since the end of the Cold War. Back in Moscow, meanwhile, prominent Russian scholars and officials are engaging in an unusually public debate about the merits of using tactical nuclear weapons if the war in Ukraine continues to drag on. Many NATO leaders dismissed the move of nuclear weapons to Belarus as posturing aimed at unnerving NATO. Other officials and experts warned that some NATO allies missed or dismissed signs of Russian military escalation before, most notably in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine last February, and needed to take these signals from Moscow more seriously.

Top Biden administration officials, meanwhile, say they take the nuclear threat very seriously but aren’t letting it bind U.S. support for Ukraine. “I think that there are two caricatures in the discourse about the threat of the use of tactical nuclear weapons,” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told a small group of reporters ahead of the NATO summit in Vilnius. “One caricature is the Biden administration is paralyzed by the nuclear threat and therefore won’t support Ukraine sufficiently. I think that is nonsense.”

“The other caricature is this nuclear threat is complete nonsense. Don’t worry about it at all. It’s to be completely discounted. That also is wrong,” Sullivan said. “It is a threat. It is a real threat. It’s one we need to take seriously. And it is one that does evolve with changing conditions on the battlefield.”

Other major voices in NATO say the prospect of Russia actually launching nuclear weapons, even lower-yield tactical nuclear weapons, remains too slim to factor into support for Ukraine. “I’m not concerned about the nuclear issue. I don’t think Putin dares to push the nuclear button,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former NATO secretary-general and Danish prime minister, said in an interview. “The response from the United States and its allies would be very harsh and the rest of the world would turn its back to Russia, including China and India. So I think an attempt to use nuclear weapons would be the end of the Putin regime.”

At its summit in Vilnius, top agenda items include Sweden’s accession to NATO after months of diplomatic negotiations with Turkey, the debate over Ukraine’s NATO membership, and the rolling out of large-scale regional defense plans akin to the alliance’s Cold War playbook. Much about those regional defense plans will remain secret, and NATO isn’t likely to reveal how its allies’ nuclear weapons factor into those plans in detail.

However, alliance leaders signaled that changes were afoot in modernizing its nuclear plans, albeit couched in stilted and formal diplomatic language, that signify how the alliance is re-assessing its nuclear deterrence in ways unseen since the days of the Cold War. “NATO will take all necessary steps to ensure the credibility, effectiveness, safety and security of the nuclear deterrent mission,” the alliance leaders said in a lengthy joint communique issued at the summit. “This includes continuing to modernise NATO’s nuclear capability and updating planning to increase flexibility and adaptability of the alliance’s nuclear forces, while exercising strong political control at all times.”

NATO has only one publicly disclosed nuclear military exercise per year, dubbed “Steadfast Noon,” which it disclosed for the first time in 2019. Other than that, the prospect of expanding nuclear exercises, or merging military exercises involving conventional and nuclear forces, remains “incredibly taboo” within the alliance, said William Alberque, an arms control expert with the International Institute for Strategic Studies and former NATO official.

While the nuclear debate plays out in NATO circles, there’s another nuclear debate playing out on the other side of the war among Russian foreign-policy experts and elites, including some now overtly calling for nuclear strikes on Ukraine that could signify a shift in Moscow’s thinking on when and how to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. Those debates center on the premise that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is critical to the survival of Russia, a common talking point from top Russian officials and state media outlets that is sharply disputed by an overwhelming majority of the international community.

“It is necessary to arouse the instinct of self-preservation that the West has lost,” Sergei Karaganov, a prominent Russian political scientist, wrote in the research journal Russia in Global Affairs last month, in a piece entitled “A Difficult but Necessary Decision” justifying the possible use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine. That piece kick-started a fierce and—for an autocratic country as tightly controlled as Russia—unusually open public debate about Moscow using nuclear weapons in Ukraine to halt the West’s support for that country.

“Morally, this is a terrible choice as we will use God’s weapon, thus dooming ourselves to grave spiritual losses. But if we do not do this, not only Russia can die, but most likely the entire human civilization will cease to exist,” Karaganov wrote.

Other Russian scholars pushed back, but not because of the incalculable devastation a nuclear attack would have, but rather because it would alienate Russia from other world powers outside the West. “Russia will turn into a toxic asset for Beijing, New Delhi, Riyadh, and many other capitals. No one will accept our arguments that we had no other choice, that we were forced to make such a decision,” Ivan Timofeev, another scholar, wrote in response.

Dmitry Trenin, once considered by many in Washington to be the most respected and influential Russian foreign-policy expert in Western circles, has also advocated for Russia to escalate its nuclear threats over Ukraine. “The ‘nuclear bullet’ must necessarily and demonstratively be put into the ‘revolver drum’ the U.S. leadership is recklessly playing with. To paraphrase a now-deceased American statesman, we can say: Why do we need nuclear weapons if we refuse to use them in the face of an existential threat?” Trenin wrote.

Ultimately, Russia’s decision to deploy nuclear weapons won’t come down to elites debating in Moscow, but rather one man: Putin. Bonnie Jenkins, the top U.S. arms control envoy, told reporters in a briefing on Tuesday that the United States and NATO took nuclear threats from Putin seriously and the alliance’s resolve and unity in support of Ukraine served as a major deterrent against Russia.

But, she added, “the fact is we don’t know how Putin is thinking about what he’s going to do next.”

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, July 24, 2023 1:36 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

mines are just one reason why i question the west's implaccable desire to ee a ukrainian 'offensive'. the only thing the offensive is doing is creating a lot od dead soldiers and amputees.


if the ukrainians had gone on the defensive instead, it would be russians having to thread their way thru minefields.





What a dummy. Nobody falls for that. If Ukraine goes on the defensive Russia pays no price for occupying Ukrainian land. And they get to lay more mines and dig more trenches while reinforcing troop levels. Nope...

T

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Monday, July 24, 2023 3:01 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

mines are just one reason why i question the west's implaccable desire to ee a ukrainian 'offensive'. the only thing the offensive is doing is creating a lot od dead soldiers and amputees.
if the ukrainians had gone on the defensive instead, it would be russians having to thread their way thru minefields.


THUGR: What a dummy. Nobody falls for that. If Ukraine goes on the defensive Russia pays no price for occupying Ukrainian land. And they get to lay more mines and dig more trenches while reinforcing troop levels. Nope...


Did you see the video of Ukies getting their feet and lower legs blown off in a minefield heavily salted with anti-personnel mines, trying to drag or wriggle or squirm their way to the safety of a Bradley while their potential rescuers try - sometimes unsuccessfully - to avoid the very same mines?

It's not for the faint of stomach, and not a winning tactic. Suicide attacks only result in suicide. Ukraine needs to try something besides suicide, bc RIGHT NOW Ukrainians are paying a far heavier 'price' than Russians. Sometimes at 10:1. Not sustainable.



-----------
"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, July 24, 2023 3:29 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


So meanwhile, in real news...

Ukrainian military has once again changed tactics, from the initial "combined arms" attack on the southern front (which lost 20-30 pct of its armored vehicles and appx 15,000 soldiers dead or wounded), to attacks with small units of infantry supported by artillery, and now (under the sting of USA criticism that Ukraine doesn't "know how' to run a combined arms offensive) the heavy weaponry is once again at the southern front. The one place that Ukraine has attacked over and over since June 5 is a small place called Rabotino (sp?) in southern Donbas, which is threatening to become another Bakhmut. AFAIK Ukraine eventually decided to move around Rabotino and has made its way appx a half kilometer to the south, but still in the gray zone. In other words, the southern front is essentially static.

Ukrainians are also making a push towards Bakhmut, without the heavy NATO weaponry dedicated to the southern front, but are apparently stuck there, too.

They (Ukrainians) still have very defensible positions in Marinka and Adiivka and Russia is having a hard time dislodging them. Russia appears to be slowly surrounding these positions.

Russians are slowly advancing in the north, towards Lyman.

Odessa was pounded five nights in a row with drones and various missiles (Onyx, KH101, Zircon, Iskander). The explanation that makes sense to me is that Odessa (and other "grain deal" ports) - with docks, warehouses, and rail and roadway networks, became a prime weapons-moving facility and storehouse for weapons, munitions, fuel, even foreign volunteers under the protection of that grain deal. Once the grain deal expired, it was open season on all of that materiel and personnel.
So far, only one civilian death has been confirmed.

But Ukraine is not entirely without a response: it says it destroyed three ammo dumps in Crimea using drones and/or missiles..

-----------
"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, July 24, 2023 4:15 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Another suicide attack by Ukraine on the southern front. Remember, this is a PRO Ukrainian channel.

Quote:
Summer Operation | Complete Defeat of NATO Armored Vehicles. Military Summary For 2023.07.24



-----------
"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, July 24, 2023 4:40 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Another suicide attack by Ukraine on the southern front.

Remember, this is a PRO Ukrainian channel.

Quote:
Summer Operation | Complete Defeat of NATO Armored Vehicles. Military Summary For 2023.07.24





Wow pro Ukraine site. Then why do all their headlines show Russia winning. Nope, another Russian bullshit propaganda site.

T

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Monday, July 24, 2023 5:54 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Wow pro Ukraine site. Then why do all their headlines show Russia winning. Nope, another Russian bullshit propaganda site.

T
Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally told the soldiers that Japan and Germany were winning. So much winning! Why step on a landmine? If you don't get blown to pieces you will face the invincible soldiers of Japan (or Germany).

https://everything-everywhere.com/tokyo-rose-and-axis-sally/

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, July 25, 2023 3:41 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Another suicide attack by Ukraine on the southern front.

Remember, this is a PRO Ukrainian channel.

Quote:
Summer Operation | Complete Defeat of NATO Armored Vehicles. Military Summary For 2023.07.24


THUGR: Wow pro Ukraine site. Then why do all their headlines show Russia winning. Nope, another Russian bullshit propaganda site.
Maybe bc RUSSIA IS WINNING???

Jeez, is it in your playbook that you have to be delusional in order to be a patriot?

Didn't you hear him in the first part of the video? He was spittin' mad that Russia struck sites right on the border with Polnd and none of the border states lifted a finger to help. Basically he was saying It wouldn't have cost them anything to fire off their air defense missiles. They could have said 'We saw missiles coming right a us and we defended ourselves' and Russia wouldn't have responded'. But in his view, Ukraine's border states are chickenshit (my word, not his.)

Every advance Ukraine makes is a victory. Every advance Russia makes is a defeat. His bias is OBVIOUS. But - unlike you- he doesn't let it get in the way of SEEING THE OBVIOUS.

You're such a fool, THUGR. And SECOND is all too willing to play you for one.



-----------
"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, July 25, 2023 6:45 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Maybe bc RUSSIA IS WINNING???

Jeez, is it in your playbook that you have to be delusional in order to be a patriot?

Didn't you hear him in the first part of the video? He was spittin' mad that Russia struck sites right on the border with Polnd and none of the border states lifted a finger to help. Basically he was saying It wouldn't have cost them anything to fire off their air defense missiles. They could have said 'We saw missiles coming right a us and we defended ourselves' and Russia wouldn't have responded'. But in his view, Ukraine's border states are chickenshit (my word, not his.)

Every advance Ukraine makes is a victory. Every advance Russia makes is a defeat. His bias is OBVIOUS. But - unlike you- he doesn't let it get in the way of SEEING THE OBVIOUS.

You're such a fool, THUGR. And SECOND is all too willing to play you for one.

Signym, using your method to track the Final Score in War, when the Vietnam War was over the USA had won a gratifying victory because tens of millions of Vietnamese were dead but only tens of thousands of Americans. And all of Vietnam had been bombed into ruins but not one US city was bombed. Go Team USA!

By the way, Germany, Italy, and Japan were "winning" until the week before signing surrender documents, according to propagandists working for the Axis Powers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_powers

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, July 25, 2023 6:29 PM

SECOND

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


The Dilemma Facing Every 17-Year-Old Boy in Ukraine

Should I stay or should I go? Given the possibility of being drafted into a brutal fight, young men in Ukraine are faced with a potentially life-or-death decision.

by Anna Neplii | July 23, 2023, 2:25 pm

For most young men, turning 18 brings with it some monumental and potentially life-changing decisions – work or university? Gap year or straight to campus? Follow your friends or venture out on your own?

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, 17-year-old Ukrainian boys have been faced with one much more difficult and fundamentally life-altering choice – to stay or not to stay?

Under Ukrainian martial law, which has been in place since February of last year, men aged 18 to 60 are prohibited from traveling abroad and are potentially subject to conscription into the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).

The AFU have for the most part managed to fill ranks with volunteers and is currently far from the point of needing to conscript as many males as possible as soon as they turn 18, but with no immediate end to the war or martial law in sight, those coming of age face an uncertain future.

For some, like Ruslan, the prospect of being sent to war was enough to make him decide to leave Ukraine. “I left in February somewhat spontaneously,” he tells Kyiv Post. “The main reason was that I don’t want to fight and none of my relatives want me to either.

“I am a patriot of Ukraine, but I’m definitely not ready to die, especially at such a young age. I am ready to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine as soon as I earn enough money.”

While staying in Ukraine comes with the many obvious risks of living in a warzone, the prospect of moving abroad raises other, perhaps less lethal but no less valid, concerns for a young adult.

“I don’t want to leave my family, friends and go into uncertainty, where no one and nothing is waiting for me,” Dmytro says.

More at https://www.kyivpost.com/post/19760

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

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Wednesday, July 26, 2023 7:53 AM

SECOND

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


Putin is running out of options in Ukraine

Lawrence Freedman writes:

Governments start wars in pursuit of various objectives, from conquering territory to changing the regime of a hostile state to supporting a beleaguered ally. Once a war begins, the stakes are immediately raised. It is one of the paradoxes of war that even as its original objectives drift out of reach or are cast aside, the necessity of not being seen as the loser only grows in importance—such importance, in fact, that even if winning is no longer possible, governments will still persevere to show that they have not been beaten.

The problem with losing goes beyond the failure to achieve objectives or even having to explain the expenditures of blood and treasure for little gain: loss casts doubt on the wisdom and competence of the government. Failure in war can cause a government to fall. That is often why governments keep on fighting wars: an admission of defeat could make it harder to hold on to power.

All of these dynamics are evident in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin set as his objectives the “denazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine. By the first, he presumably meant regime change, in which case the war has clearly been a failure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s position is as strong as ever. As for demilitarization, Ukraine is on its way to becoming the most militarized country in Europe. Many of the Russian speakers in Ukraine on whose behalf Putin claimed to be acting now prefer to speak Ukrainian, while the Russian-speaking areas of the Donbas have been battered, deindustrialized, and depopulated because of this ruinous war.

Russian forces have failed to take complete control of any of the four oblasts, or administrative regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—that Putin claimed for Russia in September 2022. Much of the ground initially seized after the full-scale invasion has been relinquished, and more is being lost, albeit slowly, during the current Ukrainian offensive. Before February 2022, Russia could be confident that Ukraine would not be able to challenge the illegal annexation of Crimea, but now even Russia’s hold of the peninsula is no longer certain. Ukraine still hopes that its war aims—the liberation of all occupied land and the restoration of the borders created in 1991—can be achieved. Even if Ukraine’s current offensive falters, Russia lacks for now the combat power to seize the advantage and take more territory.

Putin is not close to achieving any of his war aims while the price of his gambit grows ever steeper. He may, of course, believe that at least some of his original objectives are still possible, or take some comfort from those analysts in the West who are convinced that the best Ukraine can hope for is a military stalemate. But the Russian leader has never shown himself to be satisfied with a stalemate. He wants a resolution in which he can be shown to be the clear victor. When asked about negotiation, including by sympathetic interlocutors, for example from Africa, he still demands that Ukraine recognize the annexations of the four oblasts, which would require Kyiv to hand over more territory to Moscow. That is clearly not going to happen.

More at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/putin-running-out-options-ukrai
ne

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

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Thursday, July 27, 2023 5:23 AM

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


Russian soldiers in Ukraine have said the defense ministry is abandoning the bodies of fighters killed on the battlefield so it doesn't have to pay compensation to families.

On January 3, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree promising to pay 5 million rubles ($55,600) to the families of Russian soldiers killed in the war. Troops who are injured or experience trauma on the battlefield will receive 3 million rubles ($33,300), under legislation from March 2022.

Russian troops have voiced frustration over failures to pay compensation.

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-soldiers-killed-ukraine-bakhmut-compe
nsation-putin-war-1815514

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

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Thursday, July 27, 2023 5:34 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine isn't killing enough Russians

Story by Colonel Richard Kemp

We learned this week that Russia has increased its upper age limits for reservist mobilization from 45 to 55, and in some cases even as high as 70. Having sustained huge numbers of casualties in the last 17 months, the shortage of fighting troops is also being tackled with plans to increase the age of compulsory conscription from 27 to 30, and laws to reduce the country’s perennial problem of draft dodging have been tightened.

All this shows that, despite the abject failure of its initial plans for the subjugation of Ukraine, the Kremlin is keen to give the appearance that it is not backing down. But it also reveals Moscow’s Achilles’ heel.

When the war began to go badly wrong for Russia, Putin unexpectedly needed many more men to feed his war machine but was desperate to avoid general mobilization for fear of backlash among the population. Even the partial mobilization of 300,000 in September triggered sporadic protests in several cities and led to an exodus of nearly 400,000 young men frightened of being called up to fight. That number may now be considerably higher.

Historically, high casualty rates have created instability in Russia and the Soviet Union. Death tolls in the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, and the war in Afghanistan contributed respectively to the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the fall of the USSR. Some of the other ingredients of such rebellions are also present today, including increasing economic hardship and incompetent military leadership that has seen several Russian generals dismissed and even arrested.

Casualties foment discontent at home and among the already demoralized troops on the front line – as well as eroding Russian physical fighting power. High enemy attrition rates might therefore be more effective for Ukraine in turning this conflict around than re-taking territory, important though that also is.

Although a wide range of numbers has been bandied around, casualty figures on both sides in this war have been impossible for outside observers to assess in any reliable way. But, despite Kyiv’s claims, the likelihood is that attrition rates have not so far been in its favor.

That means they have to find more efficient ways of killing Russian soldiers or delivering strategic victories which render numbers irrelevant (such as via large-scale encirclements) while preserving their own. Frontal attacks, fighting outnumbered and outgunned against heavily defended obstacle belts, are likely to have the opposite effect, which is why Kyiv has so far been holding back its most powerful armored brigades.

The most prolific killer in this war is artillery. Here, Russia has superiority, perhaps 10-1, in guns, shells, and missiles. The West, and in particular the US, has supplied Ukraine with enormous quantities, especially of 155mm shells, but with thousands fired every day, arsenals are running dry. The US has even shipped operational stocks held in Israel to Ukraine, and the recent decision to supply controversial cluster munitions is a further indication of grave shortages. Western defense industry has been unable to keep up with demand, and it is essential that even greater investment is now made to dramatically increase production.

Air power too is essential. It is not going to be possible for NATO to train pilots and supply F-16s in time to influence the current counter-offensive, but we are facing a long-term war of attrition and President Biden needs to stop prevaricating and make sure the planes that Ukraine so badly needs are got to them as quickly as possible.

The same goes for ATACMS long-range missiles. Biden’s fear has always been, despite Ukrainian guarantees, that these weapons might be used to fire at sovereign Russian territory. But that among other targets – is what they should be used for. Western fears of escalation were once perhaps understandable, but many of Moscow’s supposed red lines have been crossed long since without consequences and this war is now at the stage where the gloves need to come off.

In the circumstances, it is militarily incomprehensible that Russia should be able to move and concentrate its forces to attack Ukraine with complete impunity. Domestically-manufactured Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow, as we saw again last night, and small-scale sorties across the border with irregular forces, are not sufficient. Wherever Russian troops are, Kyiv should be able to kill them, including with Western-supplied munitions.

Despite the West providing Ukraine with enough weapons to keep fighting so far, that will not be sufficient for the future. There has been too much drip-feeding and too little bold decision-making. Unless Ukraine receives far greater quantities of shells, as well as advanced weaponry, to maximize the kill rate against Russian forces, this could become a frozen conflict, which only plays into Putin’s hands.

Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army officer. He was an infantry battalion commander and saw active duty in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-isn-t-killing-enough-russ
ians/ar-AA1enQw7

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

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Thursday, July 27, 2023 9:17 AM

SECOND

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


Amid Odesa Attacks, Russia Deploys Standard Lie of Excluding Civilian and Cultural Targets:

“The planning of strikes with precision weapons against military and terrorist infrastructure facilities of the Kiev regime is carried out on the basis of information carefully checked and confirmed through several channels, knowingly excluding the civilian facilities, as well as cultural and historical heritage sites.”

That is false.

Russia’s July 23 strikes on Odesa destroyed and damaged 44 buildings and sites of cultural significance. Russia provided no evidence to back its claim that the civilian buildings struck in the attack were being used to “prepare terrorists acts.”

https://www.polygraph.info/a/fact-check-amid-odesa-attacks-russia-depl
oys-standard-lie-of-excluding-civiliand-and-cultural-targets/7198916.html

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

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Friday, July 28, 2023 6:00 AM

SECOND

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


One of the difficulties in covering the Russo-Ukraine War as a journalist is the tendency of so many in this profession to assemble facts in favor of whatever the prevailing narrative of the day is. Sixteen months ago, it was hard to find many people in prominent Washington think tanks or at major broadsheets who did not think Kyiv would fall in three days. When it didn’t, those wedded to the notion that Russia was a near-indomitable military power still found the conventional wisdom, built up over years of diligent study and perhaps the unconscious assimilation of Russian propaganda, hard to slough off. Just because Kyiv wasn’t sacked and the Russian army was driven out of the capital region, ran this line of thinking, didn’t mean Ukraine hadn’t exhausted its inventory of miracles. It could not claw back more territory. Then Kharkiv happened. A wondrous bait-and-switch operation, to be sure, but a one-off for that very reason. The Russians were learning, adapting and preparing, and the long-shot play to retake Kherson would prove it. Then Russia withdrew from half of that region in November as a “goodwill gesture.” And so on.

Having serially outperformed expectations, Ukraine finds itself in the unenviable position of having gone from scrappy underdog to victim of its own mythologized success. Six and a half weeks into a much-anticipated counteroffensive and there are no dramatic battlefield developments. A handful of settlements have been reclaimed in the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk, and that’s it. An absence of climax has begun to lead to impending anti-climax and the sort of doomcasting that characterized the preliminaries of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The counteroffensive into which Kyiv and its NATO partners have invested so much kit, manpower and money is already a busted flush, we are told. “Ukraine’s counter-offensive is failing, with no easy fixes,” ran one comment piece in The Daily Telegraph. This was preceded four days earlier by an even less sunny prognosis in the same newspaper, “Ukraine and the West are facing a devastating defeat.”

Ironically, such assessments stand in marked contrast to what Russians in the field are saying about the capability of their adversary. But to understand where Ukraine is headed, it’s first necessary to explain where it is.

Ukraine launched this operation in June hoping, but not expecting, a quick breakthrough of Russian defensive lines in the south. The objective, as several Western and Ukrainian officials told New Lines, is to press through all the way to the Sea of Azov, in Ukraine’s southeast, to sever Russia’s “land bridge” to occupied Crimea and isolate Russian forces on the left bank of the Dnipro, the remaining area of Kherson oblast that is still under Moscow’s control. This was never to be an easy or quick undertaking, as was well known before the counteroffensive got underway. Russian forces have spent more than a year building up enormous fortifications known collectively as the “Surovikin Line,” named for the former commander of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Gen. Sergey Surovikin, who has not been seen or heard from since the Wagner putsch last month and who, the Wall Street Journal reports, may be detained as a willing or passive accomplice in that affair.

More at https://newlinesmag.com/argument/russians-see-ukrainian-progress-where
-others-dont/

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, July 28, 2023 8:07 AM

SECOND

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


Russian cybersecurity chief jailed for 14 years for treason

Did he do what he was accused of? No. What did he actually do? Same as others:

The tech businessman is the latest among many people, including scientists, soldiers, officials and a former journalist, to face the charge in recent years.

A year before his arrest, Sachkov ruffled feathers after he stood up at an event attended by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. In a televised speech, Sachkov accused authorities of allowing a prominent Russian criminal hacker to go about his business unimpeded, criticised the appointment of someone he said was a former spy to a body covering the export of advanced technologies, and accused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cybersecurity envoy of making toxic statements.

Sachkov’s former colleagues, who bought Group-IB’s Russian business and renamed it FACCT, said in a statement that his legal team would appeal his conviction and ask Putin to intervene. In a statement, the company wrote, “While he remains wrongfully imprisoned, we will continue to stand up against injustice and operate our business with the same mission in mind – to fight against cybercrime.”

At the time of his arrest, the firm was focused on investigating high-tech crimes and online fraud, including in Russia, with a global client base that included banks, energy companies, telecoms firms and Interpol.

More at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/26/russian-cybersecurity-chief-j
ailed-for-14-years-on-treason

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, July 28, 2023 10:12 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
One of the difficulties in covering the Russo-Ukraine War as a journalist is the tendency of so many in this profession to assemble facts in favor of whatever the prevailing narrative of the day is.


There you go.

You just cracked the code why AI is coming for your jobs next, buddy.

You get what you deserve.

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

How you do anything is how you do everything.

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Saturday, July 29, 2023 5:33 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine's Armed Forces to be in Crimea soon – Defense Intelligence Chief

Ukrainska Pravda — Saturday, 29 July 2023, 03:10

Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine, has said that the Ukrainian military will soon be able to liberate Russian-occupied Crimea. Budanov did not name the exact date of the liberation of the peninsula. In September 2022, Kyrylo Budanov said that Ukraine would return to Crimea by the end of spring 2023.

More at https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/07/29/7413330/

The story I want to read would include a prediction about the collapse of the Crimea Bridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Bridge


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, July 29, 2023 7:30 PM

SECOND

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


Two super successful leaders praise each other for killing their neighbors and their own citizens while placing all blame on the USA, which they threatened to nuke:

Putin thanks North Korea for supporting Ukraine war as Pyongyang displays its nukes in parade

North Korea’s “firm support” for Russia’s war in Ukraine emboldens the two countries’ determination to cope with Western nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a speech to North Korean officials on Thursday, according to a report in North Korean state media.

Putin did not go into detail of the nature of Pyongyang’s support in what he called Russia’s “special military operation.” But US officials said last year that North Korea was selling millions of rockets and artillery shells to Russia for use on the battlefield in Ukraine.

“Solidarity with Russia on key international issues highlight our common interests,” Putin said in the speech, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The Russian leader’s remarks on his invasion of Ukraine were contained within a message of congratulations to North Korea on the 70th anniversary of the Korean War armistice, known as Victory Day in the North, even though the grueling conflict ended in stalemate and the peninsula divided.

Putin specifically cited Soviet pilots, whom he claimed “carried out tens of thousands of combat flights” for contributing to “annihilating the enemy,” KCNA said.

“The historic experience of combative friendship has noble values, and is serving as a reliable foundation to further develop the connection between Russia and North Korea in the field of politics, economy and safety,” Putin said, according to KCNA.

Much more at https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/28/asia/putin-north-korea-ukraine-parade-i
ntl-hnk/index.html

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

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Sunday, July 30, 2023 2:37 PM

SECOND

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


If Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive against Moscow’s invasion captures Russian territory, there would be no alternative to using strategic nuclear weapons, Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev warned on Sunday.

“There would simply be no other way out” of using nuclear weapons if the Ukrainian offensive succeeded in taking Russian territory, Medvedev, former Russian president and current National Security Council deputy chairman, said in a post on social media.

“Just imagine that the NATO-supported ukrobanderovtsy’s offensive turned out successful, and they took away a part of our land: Then we would have to, following the president’s degree of 02.06.2020, use the nuclear weapon,” Medvedev wrote, referring to followers of Stepan Bandera, a nationalist leader who waged a violent campaign for Ukrainian independence in the 1930s and 1940s.

“That’s why our enemies must worship our warriors. They are keeping global nuclear fire from flaring up,” Medvedev said, referring to Russian efforts to stop the Ukrainian offensive.

Medvedev has not been shy in using Russia’s nuclear arsenal to threaten Ukraine and its Western supporters. During Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s failed coup, Medvedev said the rebellion could lead to a nuclear war.

Before that, Medvedev had said that the war in Ukraine could be “brought to an end within a few days” by doing what “the Americans did in 1945 when they deployed nuclear weapons and bombed two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-dmitry-medvedev-ukraine-counter
offensive-russia-invasion-war-nuclear-weapons/


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

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