Ukraine war mega thread

[bsnub]

What are you babbling on about?

That is the one thing RS does well.

[sabang]

So you want to crash the German economy now? Some ally.

[russellsimpson]

Trudeau's a pussy. It was his decision, not America's.

Do you think for a moment that Trudeau would have done this wihout American consent. Chew on this one govnor'

Ukraine war: Russia's Lavrov says ready to expand war aims

Russia's military focus in Ukraine is no longer "only" the east, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.


In an interview with Russian state media, he implied Moscow's strategy had changed after the West supplied Ukraine with longer-range weapons.


Russia would now have to push Ukrainian forces further from the front line to ensure its own security, he explained. His comments came as the US announced it would provide Ukraine with more long-range weapons.
Ukraine will receive another four Himars advanced rocket systems to hold the advance of Russian troops, bringing the total number to 16, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said.
Meanwhile Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska addressed US Congress on Wednesday, asking for more air-defence systems to "help us to stop this terror against Ukrainians".


Russia invaded Ukraine in February, claiming falsely that Russian-speakers in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region had suffered a genocide and needed to be liberated.


Five months on, Russia has occupied parts of the east and south of the country, but it failed in its original aim of capturing Kyiv and has since claimed its main objective was the liberation of Donbas.


The US has accused Russia of preparing to annex parts of Ukraine.
Since February, the West has supplied Ukraine with increasingly powerful weapons to use in its defence against Russian forces. Mr Lavrov says that has forced Russia to expand its objectives further.
"We cannot allow the part of Ukraine controlled by [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky... to possess weapons that would pose a direct threat to our territory," Mr Lavrov said in the interview with Margarita Simonyan - a well-known commentator on Russian TV and editor-in-chief of broadcaster RT. "The geography is different now," he said, naming the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions as Russia's latest objectives. Moscow's forces already occupy parts of both regions.

Ukraine war: Russia'''s Lavrov says ready to expand war aims - BBC News

[bsnub]

So you want to crash the German economy now? Some ally.

Germany will be just fine. You as usual are pushing propaganda horse shit.

[sabang]

U.S. officials defend Ottawa decision to return sanctioned Nord Stream pipeline turbine



Argues move will help shore up European energy security

.... Monday’s comment by the State Department gives a diplomatic boost to Prime Minster Justin Trudeau. His government has come under withering criticism from Ukraine and its large diaspora in Canada for agreeing to ship back gear that had been stranded in Montreal since fresh sanctions were imposed last month.

“We support the Canadian government’s decision to return a natural-gas turbine to Germany for use in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. The move “will allow Germany and other European countries to replenish their gas reserves, increasing their energy security and resiliency and countering Russia’s efforts to weaponize energy,” he said.

https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/oil-gas/us-backs-trudeau-on-returning-sanctioned-nord-stream-turbine


Methinks Ukraine and some of their more rabid diaspora and supporters need to pull their bloody heads in. You are just not plain worth crashing the EU economy for.

[sabang]

Apropos-



Listening to television commentary and interviews of retired U.S. generals, one would be forgiven for believing Russia is on the ropes, and Ukraine was winning the war. Looking at on-the-ground battlefield reality in Ukraine, however, it quickly becomes apparent that the generals’ boasts continue a decade-long trend of rosy combat proclamations that all too often turn out to be disastrously wrong. American media, Congress, and the public need to start applying a little more scrutiny to what these officers say.

For example, retired Gen. Ben Hodges said last week that the “Russians are exhausted,” from four months of fighting and that if “the West sticks together through this year, then I think (the war) will be over (early 2023).” Earlier this month, retired Gen. Mark Hertling told a CNN audience that as Ukraine “gets more and more artillery” from the West, Hertling concluded that he believes “you’re going to see a gradual turn in the tide.”

On July 10^th, former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, Gen. Jack Keane – echoing Generals Hodges and Hertling – told Fox News that despite Russia’s progress in the Donbas, the “Ukrainians still have a real opportunity…to take back territory and we should not underestimate them.”

And yet, there is little credible evidence to suggest that any of these claims are accurate.

Russia vs. Ukraine: The State of Play Right Now

The Russians are no doubt bloodied and have suffered significant equipment loss, but there is no evidence on the battlefield that they are anywhere near “exhausted.”

Most of the artillery promised by the West has already been delivered and it has not, to date, resulted in even slowing Russia’s advance through the Donbas, much less stopped it. The HIMARS launchers have enabled Ukraine to strike deep behind Russian lines, and they have caused severe harm in their enemy’s rear areas.

Nonetheless, even that has not resulted in any observable reduction in the still-heavy daily barrage of artillery on Ukrainian positions.

Furthermore, nothing has slowed the Ukrainian casualties – reportedly up to 1,000 per day – from Russian artillery, rocket, and tank fire. Nothing has changed the dynamics in the air where Russia dominates the skies to the tune of up to 300 sorties per day to about 20 for Ukraine. And there has been no change to the fact that Ukraine is running critically short of ammunition for its howitzers while Russia can continue to manufacture almost limitless numbers for themselves.

Why Russia – Sadly – Has the Advantage Against Ukraine

The most important fundamentals of war, the basics of combat operations, almost all reside on the Russian side. Since the G7, G20, and NATO Summits, there have been no additional large-scale contributions of modern weaponry promised to Ukraine. The amount of equipment to date has been a couple of hundred artillery tubes, about 250 Soviet-era tanks, and a few hundred Vietnam-era personnel carriers. Cumulatively, all of this gear – including the HIMARS – are not a fraction of the type of kit Ukraine would need to launch a counteroffensive.

The idea, then, that Ukraine could stop Russia’s current offensive and then transition to a counter-offensive to drive Putin’s troops back – as Hodges said he believed would happen before the end of this year – have no valid basis on the ground in Ukraine. But such optimistic, rosy proclamations that are disconnected from battlefield realities are not new for America’s active and retired generals for the past two decades. Take these examples from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The Generals Keep Missing on The Predictions

In March 2003, the United States invaded the country of Iraq. The initial phase of the war was an unqualified success, as the U.S. deposed the Iraqi army and its leader Saddam Hussein in little more than a month. Things started going south shortly thereafter, as almost immediately upon completion of the conventional phase, American authorities disbanded the surviving elements of the Sunni-dominated Iraqi Army. Within months a Sunni-fueled insurgency was born.

Over the following three years, the insurgency continued to grow, and violence against both Iraqi civilians and U.S. military personnel exploded. In January 2007, President George W. Bush ordered a troop surge to try and quell the violence.

Bush tapped Gen. David Petraeus to lead the surge, and over about 18 months, Petraeus’ new tactics – combined with a brutal crackdown by al-Qaeda in Iraq repression against their Sunni co-religionists – worked to bring down violence in the country. Bush then ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops to be accomplished by December 2011, ordering the U.S. military to train the ISF so they could provide security for their country without U.S. military personnel.

Early in that process, Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling, then-commander of 1^st Armored Division and Multi-National Division-North, said in February 2008 that “the Iraqi government is beginning to become more capable,” and that it was “a great honor” to work with “the great Iraqi security forces.” By June of that year, Maj. Gen. Hertling said that all “the cities that we have in the northern part of Iraq, I think have been secured.”

Hertling was so confident of success, in fact, that he said his U.S. forces were “literally in the post-Gettysburg phase of this” war, adding that “(w)e have defeated (al Qaeda)” in the cities and were now pursuing them in “small villages and towns.” The fight in Mosul, Hertling specified, was an Iraqi-led operation and that the ISF “are growing in capability, Iraqis are stepping forward.” By 2014, however, “post-Gettysburg” Mosul would become ground-zero for the rise of the Sunni-dominated, anti-government Islamic State.

One year after Gen. Hertling left Iraq, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of all U.S. Forces in Iraq, boasted that the ISF “are in charge everywhere in Iraq.” Odierno specifically credited young Iraqi military leaders “who have adapted over time” and made dramatic improvements. Since 2008 the ISF had “gotten much better”, the general claimed, “and that is what has helped to drive us towards a more stable Iraq.”

About a year later, then-commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin said that as the mission concluded, “the stage has been set for Iraq’s young democracy to emerge as a leader in what has been and what will continue to be a very dynamic region.” But had it?

My Own Experience

I worked with a military training team in part of 2009 providing coaching and mentoring to an Iraqi battalion astride the Iran/Iraq border. What I observed there over a period of months was that the Iraqi troops did not genuinely desire to be trained, put very little effort into it, and showed no appreciable improvement by the time we departed. I later spoke with dozens of other U.S. officers who likewise trained Iraqi battalions during the same timeframe, and not one of them had a different experience than I did.

Less than three years after the last American military troop left Iraq, the world discovered just how incapable the ISF had indeed been when in June 2014, a comparatively small band of Islamic State militants stormed into Mosul and put to flight entire Iraqi army divisions. As a War on the Rocks analysis of the debacle later discovered, the “stunningly weak performances” of the Iraqi army wasn’t due to intense ISIS military pressure, but the ISF “had been failing for over a year before they finally crumbled on June 10.”


During the years that general after general continued to tell the American people that the ISF was improving, was taking the lead, and providing adequate security for their country, the truth was something very different. The first time the ISF came under any internal pressure, they folded like a house of cards. Iraq’s collapse wasn’t the fault of the American troops – responsibility for the failure rests entirely on Iraq’s corrupt leaders – but the U.S. senior leaders gave inaccurate public assessments and led the American people to believe that the ISF was capable when they were not.

That dynamic of unfounded optimistic claims is being repeated in Ukraine. There is no valid basis upon which to claim the Ukrainian army will go on the offensive within months from now and drive Russia out by the end of the year, as Gen. Hodges has claimed.

The danger in these types of statements is that they give false hope to the people of Ukraine, give an inaccurate picture to the American people of what’s possible, and encourages Congress to continue funding a strategy that almost certainly will fail. At the very least, it is time to start viewing routinely optimistic claims by some of our active and retired generals with more skepticism.

Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Follow him @DanielLDavis.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/07/...ls-on-ukraine/

[Hugh Cow]

Why do you keep droning on about Iraq? Totally different type of war in every way, from weather terrain and people. I take your point about armchair generals of which I include you, although so far all your predictions were wrong right down to the cause of the conflict so you have retreated to reprinting any pro russian propaganda you can find.
Kherson will be interesting. The Ukrainians seem to be reluctant to use heavy artillery for obvious reasons and taking the city would be costly. I expect they will bide their time until they have fresh equipment in place and then isolate the Russians logistically by blowing the bridges or making them impassable.
The new equipment will make it impossible for the Russian to build a floating bridge across the river. Even if they did their exposure over such a wide river could be disastrous from artillary etc. The Ukrainians could inflict a huge morale and propaganda victory if lack of food/equipment forces a Russian troop surrender in Kherson. By the time the Russians could re group Autumn and winter will be well on the way with the Ukrainians back in Kherson and the Russian exposed in the open and facing more high accuracy weapons. The longer this goes on the lower the Russian troop morale will go.
While you are crowing about your Russian mates with your fellow retards batbrain and ohno, a Ukrainian father was holding the hand of his dead 13 year old son whose body was covered with just a sheet, killed by the Russians. That to me puts this war into perspective.
Anyone who supports or tries to justify Russias invasion to me is nothing but the worst type of low life scum and deserve the fate of that young boy who certainly didn't.

[harrybarracuda]

Why do you keep droning on about Iraq?

Because he's a wanketeer and they go whataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhata boutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutw hataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhatab outwhataboutwhataboutwhatabout etc.

[bsnub]

I take your point about armchair generals of which I include you, although so far all your predictions were wrong right down to the cause of the conflict so you have retreated to reprinting any pro russian propaganda you can find.

Nail meet hammer!

Kherson will be interesting. The Ukrainians seem to be reluctant to use heavy artillery for obvious reasons and taking the city would be costly. I expect they will bide their time until they have fresh equipment in place and then isolate the Russians logistically by blowing the bridges or making them impassable.

Unlike the Russians, the Ukrainians do no want to kill their own people, so they are not shelling the city as you said. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and they will be looking to cut the Russians off on the west side of the Dnipro. The Antonovskiy bridge at some point will be destroyed, as it is already heavily damaged by HIMARS strikes. If that bridge is blown, the Russians will have a 56 km diversion across the Kakhovka bridge and down the m14 highway to bring in ammunition and supplies.

[sabang]

Why do you keep droning on about Iraq?

reprinting any pro russian propaganda

The Author-
"Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times"

It's quite simple hughie and other simpletons- I am a Realist, and you are in Denial. The smarter people who read this forum have already noticed this, and seeing as my posts are not really aimed at the Boneheads anyway I will leave it there.


But just for fun-

The Telegraph: “HIMARS missiles strike key Russian-held bridge in Kherson.”

[Hugh Cow]

I wondered why they haven't blown the bridge already. Some possible reasons are they want more troops in Kherson so the denial of food and arms to the Russian troops occupying the city will be even more dire. The bridge is extremely long and they will require it later in a counter attack and they may block the bridge by shelling Russian vehicles that will be so exposed while crossing. That of course is just my musings. I will leave that to the Ukrainian high command. Any info thoughts on that one snubs or anyone?

[bsnub]

"Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times"

A Colonel who never made it to full bird much less to general criticizing Generals. The article is also riddled with inaccuracies.

I am a Realist

You are an indoctrinated moron who has been wrong since you screamed for months that this war would never happen. Full stop moron.

But just for fun-

You really have no clue what is going on. It was hit 14 times...

[sabang]

Putin’s policy of cleansing the Augean Stables of ‘predatory western capital’ is music to the ears of the Global South, Alastair Crooke writes.Of course, the conflict, to all intents, is settled – though is far from over. It is clear that Russia will prevail in the military war – and the political war too – by which is meant that whatever emerges in Ukraine after the military action is complete will be dictated by Moscow on its terms.

Plainly, on the one hand, the regime in Kiev would collapse were it to have terms dictated to it by Moscow. And, on the other hand, the entire western agenda behind the Maidan coup d’état in 2014 would implode, too. (This is why an off-ramp, short of a Ukrainian rout, is next to impossible.)This moment thus marks a crucial point of inflection. One American choice might be to end the conflict – and there are many voices calling for a deal, or a ceasefire, with the understandably humane intent of ending the pointless slaughter of Ukrainian young men sent to ‘the front’ to defend indefensible positions, only to be cynically killed for no military gain, merely to keep the war going.

Though rational, the argument for an off-ramp misses the bigger geopolitical point: The West is so heavily invested in its fantastical narrative of imminent Russian collapse and humiliation that it finds itself ‘stuck fast’. It cannot move forward for fear that NATO might not be up to the task of confronting Russian forces (Putin has made the point that Russia had not even begun to use its full force). And yet, to cut a deal, to move back, would be to lose face.And ‘losing face’ roughly translates to the liberal west losing.

The West thus has made itself hostage to its unrestrained triumphalism, posing as info-war. It chose this unrestrained jingoism. Biden advisers however, reading the runes of the war – of relentless Russian gains – have begun to scent another foreign policy débacle fast heading their way.They see events, far from reaffirming the ‘rules-based Order’, rather the stark laying bare before the world of the limits to U.S. power – giving front of stage to not just a resurgent Russia, but one carrying a revolutionary message for the rest of the world (albeit a fact to which the West has yet to awaken).Moreover, the western alliance is disintegrating as war fatigue settles in and as European economies stare at recession. The contemporary instinctive inclination to decide first, and think later (European sanctions), has landed Europe in existential crisis.

The UK exemplifies the wider European conundrum: The UK political class, frightened and in disarray, first ‘determined’ to knife its’ leader, only to realise afterward, that they had no successor to hand with gravitas to manage the new normal, and no idea how to escape the trap in which it is ensnared.They dare not lose face over Ukraine and have no solution that meets the coming recession (except a return to Thatcherism?). And the same can be said for Europe’s political class: they are as deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming fast vehicle.

Biden and a certain network which spans Washington, London, Brussels, Warsaw and the Baltics view Russia from a height of 30,000 feet above that of the Ukraine conflict. Biden reportedly believes he is in an equidistant position between two dangerous and ominous trends engulfing the U.S. and the West: Trumpism at home and Putinism abroad. Both, he believes, present clear and present dangers to the liberal rules-based order in which (Team) Biden passionately believes.Other voices – mainly from the U.S. Realist camp – are not so besotted with Russia; for them, ‘real men’ take on China. These want just to keep the Ukraine conflict at a face-saving stalemate, if possible (more weapons), whilst the pivot to China is activated.

In a speech at the Hudson Institute, Mike Pompeo made a foreign policy statement that clearly had an eye to 2024 and his taking the Vice-President spot. The gist of it was about China, yet what he said about Ukraine was interesting: Zelensky’s importance to the U.S. was contingent on his keeping the war going (i.e. saving western face). He did not explicitly refer to ‘boots on the ground’, but it was clear he did not advocate such a step.

His message was weapons, weapons, weapons to Ukraine, and ‘move on’ – through pivoting to China NOW. Pompeo insisted the U.S. recognise Taiwan diplomatically today, irrespective of what occurs. (i.e. regardless of whether this action triggers war with China.) And he rolled-up Russia into the equation by simply saying that Russia and China effectively should be treated as one.

Biden however, seems moved to let pass the moment, and to carry on with the present trajectory. This is also what the many participants in the boondoggle want. The point is that Deep State views are conflicted, and influential Wall Street bankers certainly do not warm to Pompeo’s notions. They would prefer de-escalation with China. Carrying-on therefore is the easy option, as U.S. domestic attention becomes fastened on economic woes.The point here is that the West is comprehensively stuck: It cannot move forward, nor back. Its structures of politics and of the economy prevent it. Biden is stuck on Ukraine; Europe is stuck on Ukraine and on its belligerence towards Putin; ditto for the UK; and the West is stuck on its relations with Russia and China. More importantly, none of them can address the insistent demands from Russia and China for a restructuring of the global security architecture.

If they cannot move on this security plane – for fear of losing face – they will be unable to assimilate (or hear – given the ingrained cynicism that attends any words spoken by President Putin) that Russia’s agenda goes far beyond security architecture.

For example, the veteran Indian diplomat and commentator, MK Badrakhumar writes:
“After Sakhalin-2, [on an Island in the Russian Far East] Moscow also plans to nationalise Sakhalin-1 oil and gas development project by ousting U.S. and Japanese shareholders. The capacity of Sakhalin-1 is quite impressive. There was a time before OPEC+ set limits on production levels, when Russia extracted as much as 400,000 barrels per day, but the recent production level has been about 220,000 barrels per day.

The overall trend of nationalising the holdings of American, British, Japanese and European capital in Russia’s strategic sectors of economy is crystallising as the new policy. The cleansing of theRussian economy, freed of Western capital, is expected to accelerate in the period ahead.

Moscow was well aware of the predatory character of Western capital in Russia’s oil sector — a legacy of the Boris Yeltsin era — but had to live with the exploitation as it didn’t want to antagonise other potential western investors. But that is history now. The souring of relations with the West to almost breaking point rids Moscow of such archaic inhibitions.After coming to power in 1999, President Vladimir Putin set about the mammoth task of cleaning up the Augean stables of Russia’s foreign collaboration in the oil sector. The “decolonisation” process was excruciatingly difficult, but Putin pulled it through”.

Yet that’s just the half of it. Putin keeps saying in speeches that the West is the author of its own debt and inflationary crisis (and not Russia), which gives rise to a great deal of head scratching in the West. Let Professor Hudson however, explain why much of the rest of the world sees the West having taken a ‘wrong turn’ economically. In brief, the West’s wrong turn has led it to a ‘dead end’, Putin implies.

Professor Hudson argues (paraphrased and rephrased) that there are essentially two broad economic models that have descended through history: “On the one hand, we see Near Eastern and Asian societies organized to maintain social balance and cohesion by keeping debt relations and mercantile wealth subordinate to the general welfare of the community as a whole”.

All ancient societies had a mistrust of wealth, because it tended to be accumulated at the expense of society at large – and led to social polarization and gross inequalities of wealth. Looking over the sweep of ancient history, we can see (Hudson says)that the main objective of rulers from Babylonia to South Asia and East Asia was to prevent a mercantile and creditor oligarchy from emerging and concentrating ownership of land in their own hands. This is one historic model.

The great problem that the Bronze Age Near East solved – but classical antiquity and Western civilization have not solved – was how to deal with mounting debts (periodic debt jubilees) without polarising society and ultimately impoverishing the economy by reducing most of the population to debt dependency.

One of Hudson’s key tenets is how China is structured as a ‘low cost’ economy: cheap housing, subsidised education, medical care and transport – means that consumers do have some free disposable income left over – and China as whole, is made competitive. The financialized debt-led model of the West, however, is high cost, with swathes of the population becoming increasingly impoverished and bereft of discretionary income after paying debt servicing costs.

The Western periphery however, lacking the Near Eastern tradition, ‘turned’ to enabling a wealthy creditor oligarchy to take power and concentrate land and property ownership in its own hands. For public relations purposes, it claimed to be a ‘democracy’, and denounced any protective government regulation as being, by definition, ‘autocracy’. This is the second grand model, but with its overhang of debt and now in an inflationary spiral, it too is stuck, lacking the means to step forward.

That latter model is what occurred in Rome. And we are still living in the aftermath. Making debtors dependent on wealthy creditors is what today’s economists call a ‘free market’. It is one without public checks and balances against inequality, fraud or privatization of the public domain.

This neoliberal pro-creditor ethic, Professor Hudson asserts, is at the root of today’s New Cold War. When President Biden describes this great world conflict aimed at isolating China, Russia, India, Iran and their Eurasian trading partners, he characterizes this as an existential struggle between ‘democracy’ and ‘autocracy’.

By democracy he means oligarchy. And by ‘autocracy’ he means any government strong enough to prevent a financial oligarchy from taking over government and society and imposing neoliberal rules – by force – as Putin has done. The ‘democratic’ ideal is to make the rest of the world look like Boris Yeltsin’s Russia, where American neo-liberals had a free hand in stripping away all public ownership of land, mineral rights and basic public utilities.

But today we deal with shades of grey – there is no truly free market in the U.S.; and China and Russia are mixed economies, albeit ones leaning to prioritising a responsibility for the welfare of the community as a whole, rather than imagining that individuals left to their own selfish devices will somehow result in maximising national welfare.

Here is the point: Adam Smith economics plus individualism is ingrained in the western zeitgeist. It will not change. However, President Putin’s new policy of cleansing the Augean Stables of ‘predatory western capital’ and the example set by Russia of its metamophose toward a largely self-supporting economy, immune to dollar hegemony, is music to the ears of the Global South and to much of the Rest of the World.

Taken together with Russia and China’s lead in challenging the West’s ‘right’ to set rules; to monopolise the means (the dollar) as the basis for settling inter-state trade; and with BRICS and SCO steadily acquiring ‘bottom’, Putin’s speeches reveal their revolutionary agenda.

One aspect remains: How to bring about a ‘revolutionary’ metamorphosis, without incurring war with the West. The U.S. and Europe are stuck. They are unable to renew themselves, as the structural political and economic contradictions have locked their paradigm solid. How then to ‘unstick’ the situation, short of war?

The key, paradoxically, may lie with Russia and China’s deep understanding of the flaws to the western economic model. The West is in need of Catharsis to ‘unstick itself’. Catharsis can be defined as the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed, emotions attached to beliefs.

To avoid military catharsis, it seems that the Russian and Chinese leadership – understanding the flaws to the western economic model – must then visit the West with an economic catharsis.It will be painful, no doubt, but better than nuclear catharsis. We may recall the ending to CV Cafavy’s poem, Waiting for the Barbarians,

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

В доступе на страницу отказано

Sorry for the lengthiness of this article, but I have pasted it in full- because for many of you, the Strategic Culture website is censored.

[bsnub]

^

More of your propaganda crap.

Strategic Culture Foundation - Wikipedia

Any info thoughts on that one snubs or anyone?

I am not sure on that one either. They have the capability to blow both those bridges with HIMARS, so they must have their reasons for not doing it already. The word is that the counteroffensive has not yet fully started, so we will have to wait and see.

[sabang]

a Ukrainian father was holding the hand of his dead 13 year old son

Oh spare me your crocodile tears. If you really care about human lives, it is time to talk Peace.


"The poster says: "Donbass and the South-East of Ukraine cannot perceive Ukrainian culture due to insufficient genetic purity." Yevhen Nishchuk (Minister of Culture of Ukraine) Thoughts of Ukrainian politicians"




The poster says: 'Donbass and the South-East of Ukraine cannot perceive Ukrainian culture due to insufficient genetic purity.' Yevhen Nishchuk (Minister of Culture of Ukraine) Thoughts of Ukrainian politicians

“In the comments, we were reminded of o - The Russian Bear

What words can be used to describe these people-



What words can described these people……….

Ukraine Uncensored
- on Diplomacy & Warfare

[Hugh Cow]

The Author-
"Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times"

It's quite simple hughie and other simpletons- I am a Realist, and you are in Denial. The smarter people who read this forum have already noticed this, and seeing as my posts are not really aimed at the Boneheads anyway I will leave it there.


But just for fun-

The Telegraph: “HIMARS missiles strike key Russian-held bridge in Kherson.”

You do understand those strikes weaken the strutural integrity of the bridge I assume. It is not a case of being a bonehead. I doubt the Ukrainians can defeat the Russians militarily but they can make the price of continued military action too high. This combined with the worst inflation and recession since the 90s about to hit them and with a serious weakening of their military assets and the inability to replace them in the short term, will go some way to weakening Putin and hopefully pave the way for a more democratic Russia. The unknown factor is how much Russians will go along with this war as the sanctions start to bite them and how long Putin can continue his false war narrative before the reality spreads through the Russian population. Any Russian who travels outside of Russia China and Nth Korea would already know they have become the worlds Pariah.

[panama hat]

whataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhata boutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutw hataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhataboutwhatab outwhataboutwhataboutwhatabout etc.

The three are exceptionally good at this

[sabang]

I doubt the Ukrainians can defeat the Russians militarily but they can make the price of continued military action too high.

Finally, a sensible comment. The question is, of course- what price is worth paying on the Ukrainian side (not to mention the World economy and long suffering western taxpayer shelling out for this nonsense). So it's a quid pro quo.

I'm afraid I don't know the extent of Putins territorial ambitions in the Ukraine, but it is clear there will be a partition of some sort. All pretty stupid for a war that could and should have been avoided in the first place, but that is history now. And as may, or may not, have dawned on you- a significant blow to US (and thus western) prestige and international influence. Another neo-con foreign policy disaster.

[pickel]

What words can be used to describe these people

Republicans, which you now also claim to be.

[bsnub]

All pretty stupid for a war that could and should have been avoided in the first place, but that is history now.

And as may, or may not, have dawned on you- a significant blow to US (and thus western) prestige and international influence.

What a buffoon. Those two sentences are pure horseshit.

This is 100% Putin's war, and the US has not taken any blows whatsoever. You are just regurgitating your same old crap.

[pickel]

I'm afraid I don't know the extent of Putins territorial ambitions in the Ukraine, but it is clear there will be a partition of some sort.

You're vey confident while admitting ignorance.

And what happens when he gets that partition? Do you think he will stop? Did he stop when he got Crimea?

And your post, once again, failed to partition any blame to Putin whatsoever.

Fucking Neville Chamberlains with short attention spans.

[sabang]

Keep swallowing the Kool Ade snubby- what does it matter what you think anyway? You're not exactly a Player, and certainly not a Thinker. So keep on searching for them WMD, and telling us how Putin is having his 'ass handed to him on a plate' and whatever other fallacies you pursue.

Just quietly, I am more influenced by the knowledgeable commentary of significant people such as Jack Matlock, John Mearsheimer, Noam Chomsky, Pat Buchanan, Alastair Crooke, Jeffrey Sachs, David Stockman, Henry Kissinger et al. But it's a free forum- keep babbling.

[harrybarracuda]

Fucking sniveling putin sycophants with short attention spans.

FTFY.

[Iceman123]

Clearly most contributors to this thread support Ukraine. However wishing and reality are different beasts.
The facts are clear that the Russians are winning.

I appreciate the amount of propaganda from each side can be confusing. However it is not West = truth Russia = lies.

For those of us who remember the nightly coverage of the Vietnam war, we were bombarded constantly with reports of US victories when in reality they were having their arses kicked seven ways to Sunday.

[bsnub]

Keep swallowing the Kool Ade snubby

The only one swallowing Kool-Aid is you. You have swallowed so much of it you should have choked by now.

You're not exactly a Player, and certainly not a Thinker.

You dimwit, how many times are you going to make a fool of yourself on a topic that is clearly out of your depth?

I am more influenced by the knowledgeable commentary of significant people such as Jack Matlock, John Mearsheimer, Noam Chomsky, Pat Buchanan, Alastair Crooke, Jeffrey Sachs, David Stockman, Henry Kissinger et al.

Blah, blah, blah. They are clowns on your personal clown car, Mr. This war will never happen. I am still waiting for you to get one thing right. A repetitive, propagandized, blinkered fool.