Ukraine war mega thread

[harrybarracuda]

I can go as apoplectic with my infantile hissy fits and lamentably childish attempts at insult as I want (not like the Mods do anything about it)- it makes not one iota of difference to what actually happens, and is happening, on the ground. BooHoo.

FTFY.

[bsnub]

Sabangs current meltdown hissy fit was triggered by Davids post accusing him, rightly so, of scraping the bottom of the barrel in finding propaganda for his crap posts...

Barrel-Bottom-Scraping

Then a simple map showing consolidated Ukrainian war gains was enough to trigger him, and he has been on a full tilt meltdown ever since.

[sabang]

It is abundantly clear to any literate reader who the shitposters are.

In Internet culture, shitposting or trashposting is the act of using an online forum or social media page to post content that is satirical and of "aggressively, ironically, and trollishly poor quality", an online analog of trash talk.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} Shitposts are intentionally designed to derail discussions or cause the biggest reaction with the least effort, and are sometimes made as part of a co-ordinated flame war to make a website unusable by its regular visitors.^[6]

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

I wonder if you and ilk are actually proud of how many posters you have driven away from this forum. It probably pisses you off too that it's just water off a ducks back to me.

[Shutree]

I hope you are right. I'm not so sure. Even if Belarus only masses troops along the Ukraine border it adds stress to the Ukrainian resources.

Here we go:

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko - a close ally of Mr Putin - has agreed to deploy forces with Russian soldiers at the border with Ukraine, saying this is in response to a threat from Kyiv.

Ukraine-Russia war: G7 countries will back Kyiv '''for as long as it takes''' - BBC News

[David48atTD]

I only copied and pasted actually-

I just copied and pasted (below) from the same article ... nothing changed.

Looks somehow different to yours.


Three years ago, describing an Australian white supremacist charged with massacring 49 people in New Zealand, the New York Times (3/15/19) wrote: “On his flak jacket was a symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization.”

[David48atTD]

by Ray McGovern Posted onOctober 11, 2022

A day before the sabotage I noted: "On the sanctions front, German politicians may not be able to resist turning on the spigot to North Stream 2, lest the European economy and the European people freeze this winter."

IMHO, won't happen

[bsnub]

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko - a close ally of Mr Putin - has agreed to deploy forces with Russian soldiers at the border with Ukraine

I would not give it a moment's worry. Belarus's army is very small and actually worse than the Russian army, if that is even possible. I highly doubt that they will ever cross the border.

[David48atTD]

Here we go:

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko - a close ally of Mr Putin - has agreed to deploy forces with Russian soldiers at the border with Ukraine, saying this is in response to a threat from Kyiv.

Yes, I read that else where.

It's a worry and two fronts Ukraine is fighting on is enough.


Surely Putin doesn't have many top line troops at his disposal?

So I wonder what Belarus have in the way of hardware to bring to the table?


I also wonder how much the citizens of Belarus will sabotage, not just to stop the second invasion into Ukraine, but also as a protest against Lukashenko's brutal dictatorship?

[bsnub]

So I wonder what Belarus have in the way of hardware to bring to the table?

Not much at all. The already gave most of their T-72s to Russia. They still field T-55s FFS. A truly decrepit force.

[David48atTD]

So I wonder what Belarus have in the way of hardware to bring to the table?

In 2017 the IISS estimated that personnel in the armed forces numbered 48,000. Most soldiers are conscripts serving for a period of 18 months, although there is an alternative service option.^[6]

Belarus conducted military reforms in the early 2000s which reshaped its armed forces as a relatively effective force for a small state in somewhat difficult economic conditions.^[7]
WIKI

2022 Belarus Military Strength


Taking a deeper dive ...

Belarusian Air Force - Wikipedia


Not a lot to be worried about there.

The Su-25 is 47 years old (first flight) and sub-sonic.

Plus, you'd have to wonder just how many aircraft Belarus would commit to the War.

[Shutree]

I also wonder how much the citizens of Belarus will sabotage, not just to stop the second invasion into Ukraine, but also as a protest against Lukashenko's brutal dictatorship?

If that were to be the end of Lukashenko it might give Putin pause for thought.

Every small step like Belarus deploying troops to the border is another tiny escalation and increases the risk of something unexpected. Warsaw is not far from the Belarus/Ukraine border.

[bsnub]

It is abundantly clear to any literate reader who the shitposters are.

You are a big one for sure. You and your colleague OhDoh post more Russian propaganda than everyone else on TD combined. This is why you and Heldge hate NAFO and try to discredit it...



NAFO is actively countering your bullshit, and that hits a nerve and triggers you. Skip to 19:11 to get to the NAFO part of the video. You won't though because it is just more humiliation for you.

[Troy]

Every small step like Belarus deploying troops to the border is another tiny escalation and increases the risk of something unexpected.

I like the analysis from Michael Clarke on Sky News:




Opening up a second front in the North west will force Ukraine to move some of its troops to defence. In an earlier report he mentioned that Ukraine had about 3 brigades in reserve that it could use to open a new offensive in the centre. Opening up a new front would be an attempt to negate this and reduce some of the pressure on Russian troops.

[bsnub]

In an earlier report he mentioned that Ukraine had about 3 brigades in reserve

I would imagine that some of those are these chaps here...

The second batch of 10,000 Ukrainians trained in the UK is now leaving to join the fight in Ukraine! That is now 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers trained by the British and Canadians. I do not think for one second that Ukraine will need to divert any troops from the front.

[misskit]

Homeless problem solved!


Russia’s Military Mobilization Targets the Homeless, Poor

Russian authorities are mobilizing men from the country’s most vulnerable groups to send to the front in Ukraine, the independent Mediazona news website reported Tuesday.


In Moscow, security officers have taken men to military enlistment centers from charity centers for the homeless and needy as well as hostels where labor migrants live, Mediazona reported.


The Food Not Bombs group, which hands out food to Moscow’s homeless community, told Mediazona that it has seen dozens of homeless men taken off the street and brought to military enlistment offices in the weeks since President Vladimir Putin declared a “partial” mobilization.


“The police come here without anyone asking. They see a queue of people waiting for food — and then they grab them by the scruff of the neck, against their will,” the head of the Salvation Hangar, an Orthodox Christian organization that helps the homeless, told Mediazona.


The men are then loaded onto buses and transported to military enlistment offices.

“A 60-year-old man was taken away, then he was released and came back. He told me that they were taken to the military commissariat, where many people who had been called up for war were standing in line. He was told that he didn’t fit the age criteria and that they only take men up to 45 years old,” a representative of Food Not Bombs told Mediazona.


The news website also reported that authorities have come to hostels commonly used as residences by “couriers, labor migrants, taxi drivers, small-scale managers and vendors” to recruit men for Russia’s ongoing invasion.


One guest of the Travel Inn hostel in Moscow told Mediazona that on Oct. 8, police cordoned off the area around the hostel and started searching the rooms and asking for guests’ documents.


“Those who were served draft papers were ordered to come with their things the next day at 9:00 and their passports were confiscated. Those who weren’t handed draft papers were released, ” the eyewitness claimed.


Hundreds of thousands of men have fled Russia since Putin declared the “partial” mobilization on Sept. 21.


Numerous reports have said that the mobilization effort has disproportionately targeted men from poorer regions, ethnic minorities and disenfranchised backgrounds.


“That's why they came to the Hangar,” the head of the Salvation Hangar said. “They know that no one will stand up for the homeless.”

Russia’s Military Mobilization Targets the Homeless, Poor – Reports - The Moscow Times

[Troy]

I would imagine that some of those are these chaps here...

The second batch of 10,000 Ukrainians trained in the UK is now leaving to join the fight in Ukraine! That is now 20,000 Ukrainian soldiers trained by the British and Canadians. I do not think for one second that Ukraine will need to divert any troops from the front.

No I don't think the number includes the new soldiers trained in the UK. I thought this was the first batch of 10,000, not a second batch. Do you have a link to the numbers? I also thought the Canadians were training Ukraine soldiers in Ukraine and not elsewhere, although early reports had suggested they were training them in the UK.

I didn't say Ukraine would need to divert troops already committed to the offensives under way. However, they may have to divert troops that could have been used in another offensive aimed at splitting the Russians down the middle in the South. Much depends on whether Belarus will actually start another front. The quality of their troops and equipment is debatable so it could prove to be a bit of a disaster if they do.

[Hugh Cow]

Belarus has a well equipped riot police force but a poorly equiped army.

[sabang]

Robert Bridge
October 11, 2022


Considering the other alternatives that await the Ukrainian people, it seems that making immediate peace with Moscow is the obvious course of action.

Ukraine was happy to oblige Moscow by proving to the world on its own that it has morphed into a full-blown terrorist state. But there is still time for Kiev to change course, if average Ukrainians have any say in it.

On Monday, Russia undertook a massive barrage of missile strikes across Ukraine in response to Kiev’s brazen attack on the Crimean Bridge. In Kiev alone, there were some 50 missile strikes, targeting infrastructure, administrative buildings, and the decision-making center of the Security Service (SBU).

Other major cities that were targeted included Kharkiv, Dnipro, Lviv, and Odessa.

The Russian military employed a noticeable change of tact this time around as it did not spare critical infrastructure, which has been more a hallmark of US military ‘shock and awe’ operations as put on display in Iraq in 2013. Since the beginning of its special military operation in February, Moscow has deliberately avoided inflicting damage on civilian infrastructure, targeting mostly military assets. The Ukrainian people were desperately in need of a wake-up call for they fail to understand where their leaders are taking them or what this conflict may ultimately come to entail.

For many Ukrainians, the last 8 months have passed more like a cocktail party than any military campaign. Western politicians and celebrities whisk in and out of Kiev, putting their social virtue attributes on display for the whole world to see, while residents of the capital snap selfies alongside images of the Crimean Bridge terrorist attack, just unveiled as a postage stamp. But now perhaps more residents will understand better what Vladimir Putin meant when he said the Russian military ‘has not begun’ fighting in Ukraine.

While Monday’s strikes may serve to wake up a large number of average Ukrainians, who will be the ones to feel the brunt of deprivation come winter, the Kiev elite remain under the illusion that their situation will improve if the West continues pouring money and weapons into the country.

Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, asked Washington for air defense systems, long-range tactical ballistic missiles, and fighter jets, according to Foreign Policy magazine. At the same time, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba was on the phone in yet another effort to squeeze yet more juice from the dried up Western capitals. Germany, for example, has just enough ammunition stockpiles to last two days, German media reported (Incidentally, it has not gone unnoticed that despite the massive influx of Western-made technology, the Russian aerial assault confronted negligible resistance from Ukraine’s defenses).

So were there any realistic alternatives to Kiev phoning its Western partners for yet more futile aid? Indeed there was. According to Alex Christoforou the best person Kuleba could have called to solve Ukraine’s problems was none other than his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.

“Kuleba should be calling Lavrov and telling him, ‘we’re done with the collective West,” Christoforou said. “Ukraine is neutral. We accept your term…and heed your warning. Let’s stop this here.”

Of course such a solution would never be suggested by Kiev, which has been under the total domination of US policymakers even before Victoria Nuland muttered the unforgettable phrase, ‘F**k the EU’ as she and the US ambassador were deciding who should run the country. Yet it is not hard to imagine such a solution coming from the Ukrainian citizenry, who have a pretty solid track record as far as organizing street protests go. While Zelensky’s overtures to the Western elite may seem like a rerun of the president’s acting days, such a charade will quickly dissolve once the heating and plumbing, not to mention cell phone service, stops working. That will be the moment that the Zelensky regime will come face to face with real democracy.

Considering the other alternatives that await the Ukrainian people – from NATO intervention to a Polish invasion to another terrorist attack – it seems that making immediate peace with Moscow is the obvious course of action.

What do the Ukrainian people have to lose, after all, aside from a terrorist regime sitting in Kiev?

Kiev Learns the Hard Way: Terrorism Doesn’t Pay — Strategic Culture

[pickel]

I also thought the Canadians were training Ukraine soldiers in Ukraine and not elsewhere

Canadian troops pulled out of Ukraine before the invasion. They are training them in Britain.

[Switch]

If the Ukraine is influencing Russian tactics, Russia must be concerned!

[russellsimpson]

Crimean Bridge terrorist attack, just unveiled as a postage stamp

That was quick. This war is getting weirder as the days go by.

the Russian aerial assault confronted negligible resistance from Ukraine’s defenses).

Didn't the Ukraines down 44 of 88 missiles?


I take it that were Belarus to invade Ukraine from the north that Minsk would become fair game. Beautiful city. Nobody want6s that.

Hard to know where this damn war is going next

[misskit]

Russia’s ‘irrecoverable losses’ in Ukraine: more than 90,000 troops dead, disabled, or AWOL



More than 90,000 troops make up Russia’s “irrecoverable” military losses in Ukraine, as reported by the Russian media project iStories (or Vazhnye Istorii). One of the two sources of this information works in the FSB; the other is a former state security officer.


“Irrecoverable losses” is a category that includes servicemen who were killed, went missing, died from their wounds or were disabled and cannot return to military service.


This new estimate is close to the figures stated earlier by the Pentagon and the British Defense Ministry. Last August, the Pentagon estimated that 70–80 thousand Russian troops had been killed or critically wounded since the start of the war. In September, the British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace stated that the Russian army’s total losses exceeded 80,000; of those, about 25,000 were thought to have been killed.

Since the start of the invasion, the Russian Defense Ministry accounted for casualties only three times. The last time this happened was September 21, when the Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war.


Mediazona and BBC News Russian have published a joint report of Russia’s war casualties, based on official documentation available through open sources. 7,184 documented deaths were the minimal toll as of October 7, based on open-source information.


The Ukrainian military’s General Staff states that, as of the morning of October 12, 63,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine.

https://meduza.io/en/news/2022/10/12...sabled-or-awol

[misskit]

Perhaps Snowden will be concripted after all.


Russian authorities reportedly conscripting refugees from Mariupol


Authorities in the Russian city of Lipetsk have begun conscripting refugees from Mariupol, according to the independent Russian outlet Verstka.


Ukrainian refugees currently living in Lipetsk told journalists that draft orders were served to men from Mariupol who were working at the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant. According to the refugees Verstka spoke to, the men had previously been granted Russian citizenship through a simplified procedure. The regional military commissariat reportedly didn’t ask the men whether they served in the Ukrainian army.


One woman from Mariupol told Verstka that a 25-year-old refugee who she met at a temporary accommodation center was recently sent to the front after receiving a Russian passport. “Sending people to war who have just escaped war is awful,” she told the outlet. “My husband and I don’t want to receive Russian citizenship on principle. We’re still hoping to leave. But after the referendum, Mariupol has supposedly joined Russia. Does that mean we’re automatically Russian citizens, and our men are also liable to be mobilized?” she said.


A representative of the Lipetsk regional military commissariat refused to answer Verstka’s questions over the phone, claiming questions could only be answered in person. The Novolipetsk Metallurgical Plant’s press service told journalists that no refugees had been served draft orders.

https://meduza.io/en

[Takeovers]

What do the Ukrainian people have to lose, after all, aside from a terrorist regime sitting in Kiev?

You may have missed that the russian assault on Kiew failed. The legally elected government, supported by the vast majority of the Ukraine people, is still in control there. Not an imposed regime.

[russellsimpson]

Russia’s ‘irrecoverable losses’ in Ukraine: more than 90,000 troops dead, disabled, or AWOL

How many dead MK? That's the only number that matters here.

dead, disabled, or AWOL

A statistician's wet dream.

bout 25,000 were thought to have been killed.

Twenty-five thousand husbands, wives, fathers. This number will hardly be a dent in 144, 000,000. How many Ukrainians dead I wonder? Loyd Austen suggesting this morning that the yanks will be there to the 'bitter' end. I'm sure we all understand that in the event of a nuclear war, our and the Russian leadership all get to hide out in underground bunkers. Me and you get to fry. Being directly under the flight path of Russian missiles heading south, this concerns me greatly.

I often wonder whether General Milley might be secretly meeting with the Ruskies just in case our glorious leader flips out. Stranger things have happened.

The last time this happened was September 21, when the Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war. So we have this and we have this,

and we have this,

The Ukrainian military’s General Staff states that, as of the morning of October 12, 63,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine.

Of course we all know the Ruski's are liars, eh. Right?