Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Alternatively, you could go to Duck Duck Go https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Bucha
Duck Duck Go says the truth is option 2) Ukraine's - the civilians were killed by Russians:Quote:https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/4/will-the-bucha-massacre-wake-u
Duped by the Kremlin’s announcements that said Ukraine needed to be “liberated” from neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists, Russian troops found themselves among a “stormy sea” of hostile civilians, he said.
They resorted to killing adult males and raping women as the only way to “suppress resistance and achieve a collective nervous breakdown”, he said.
“[It was] physical and psychological destruction of a will to resist,” Kushch said.
p-the-world
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
They learned that from Biden* and the Democrats.
After terrorizing the public for a year, they raped a few hundred million Americans, including children, by forcibly penetrating their bodies with needles, "for their own good".
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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September 8, 2022
Vladimir Putin aims to expand Russia’s armed forces by 137,000. But hitting that target won’t be easy. The U.S. experience in Vietnam hints at the challenges.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that Moscow must increase the size of its military was greeted as good news – not by his supporters, but rather by those who are rooting for Ukraine.
It’s a sign, they say, that Mr. Putin’s war isn’t going well for him.
This point was driven home by the development this summer that officials from the Wagner Group – the Russian government’s defense contractor of choice – were offering prisoners parole in exchange for fighting on the front lines.
“It’s a sign of desperation,” says retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. “These are not the kind of people who will show up and contribute to the fighting capability of any Russian unit.”
This is not bad news from the perspective of Ukrainian forces, though the use of prisoners also raises the risk of more Russian war crimes, analysts add.
Yet as the war grinds on, it’s clear that Mr. Putin is anxious to avoid bringing the protracted conflict to the attention of the greater Russian public, which has, up to this point, largely been able to continue life as usual. The question is whether he will be able to carry on with this domestic shielding strategy moving forward.
A draft would mean “pulling people from Moscow and St. Petersburg – and they don’t want to have funerals there,” Mr. Hodges says. “Politically, it would be extremely difficult for even the Kremlin to explain all that.”
America learned from its own experience that drafts tend to cause political problems – and that conscripts generally don’t make the best soldiers.
During the Vietnam War, soldiers pressed into service “brought in attitudes and behaviors that were contrary to good order and discipline,” including drug use and insubordination, says Brandon Archuleta, an Army strategist and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
After draft lotteries were put in place in 1969 in an effort to address unfairness in the system, privileged conscripts outraged at their own predicaments also started asking pointed questions about why America was at war in the first place.
Conscription tends to inspire myriad such questions, analysts note, unless the nation sees itself as facing an existential threat, as with the United States in World War II.
A number of zealous armchair Russian commentators are now pushing Mr. Putin to create a draft, arguing that Russia is indeed facing just such a threat in Ukraine – an argument in keeping with the official Kremlin line.
Mr. Putin, however, is well aware of the political turmoil conscriptions tend to cause.
Though votes are less a concern for Mr. Putin as a means of retaining power, it is likely not lost on him that “conscripts usually vote against those who conscripted them,” Professor Milam notes.
At the same time, military leaders don’t like drafts either, and in the wake of Vietnam, the top echelons of Pentagon leadership fought to put in place an all-volunteer force, which ultimately happened in 1973.
By the Reagan-era defense buildup, “You see morale, good order, and jumps in the right direction in the Army,” Dr. Archuleta says.
In an all-volunteer force, there may be “all kinds of reasons for joining – for money, you need a job,” Professor Milam adds. “But at least you raised your hand of your own volition. In a conscript Army, you don’t want to do it – but your country is making you.”
OK with war, but not wanting to fight
Though figures show that Russian support for war remains high – hovering at around 76% of respondents in favor, according to the Russian independent polling organization Levada – that doesn’t mean that Russians actually want to fight in it.
When Ukrainian forces struck an air base deep inside enemy lines in Crimea last month, it sent thousands of seemingly surprised Russian tourists in swimsuits rushing fr
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:Quote:Too bad for Kiev they've lost 100,000 (conservative estimate) to 300,000 soldiers.
Originally posted by second:
How many Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine? What we know, how we know it and what it really means.
The estimates range from 1,351 and 43,000, but this much is clear: Russia has a manpower problem.
As the 19th-century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “Casualty reports on either side are never accurate, seldom truthful, and in most cases deliberately falsified.”
The impact of all these casualties undeniably important, given that troop losses are likely to be a main determinant of the outcome.
Update, Ukraine has taken back a thousand sq. miles in two weeks. Comrade signym, can_you_see_me_laughing?
T
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Apparently Russia and allied forces have decided to w/ draw from the Kharkiv region. So much for me being a military strategist! There must a lot of things I don't know about the specifics. Alexander Mercouris opined yesterday that they might w/draw from Izyum. Possibly the area is too forested and too easy to launch an attack/ too hard to defend/ not important enough to commit required troops. Perhaps they want to clear the Donbas first and put Kharkiv on the back burner until winter when trees will be bare and they can target bombs/ shells more easily. Or, again, it could be that the troops mostly committed tothe area - Luhansk irregulars- aren't as committed to Kharkiv.
Hard to say.
Here is a good discussion
IMHO Alexander doesn't do his own military analysis but he IS particularly well-informed. He has many people contacting him and a wide circle of friends, acquaintances and contacts and he's pretty gootd at picking out what mades sense.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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As Russians Retreat, Putin Is Criticized by Hawks Who Trumpeted His War
As Russian forces hastily retreated in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday in one of their most embarrassing setbacks of the war, President Vladimir V. Putin was at a park in Moscow, presiding over the grand opening of a Ferris wheel.
“It’s very important for people to be able to relax with friends and family,” Mr. Putin intoned.
The split-screen contrast was stunning, even for some of Mr. Putin’s loudest backers. And it underscored a growing rift between the Kremlin and the invasion’s most fervent cheerleaders. For the cheerleaders, Russia’s retreat appeared to confirm their worst fears: that senior Russian officials were so concerned with maintaining a business-as-usual atmosphere back home that they had failed to commit the necessary equipment and personnel to fight a long war against a determined enemy.
“You’re throwing a billion-ruble party,” one pro-Russian blogger wrote in a widely circulated post on Saturday, referring to the Putin-led celebrations in Moscow commemorating the 875th anniversary of the city’s founding. “What is wrong with you? Not at the time of such a horrible failure.”
Even as Moscow celebrated, he wrote, the Russian Army was fighting without enough night vision goggles, flak jackets, first-aid kits or drones. A few hundred miles away, Ukrainian forces retook the Russian military stronghold of Izium, continuing their rapid advance across the northeast and igniting a dramatic new phase in the war.
The outrage from Russian hawks on Saturday showed that even as Mr. Putin had succeeded in eliminating just about all of the liberal and pro-democracy opposition in Russia’s domestic politics, he still faced the risk of discontent from the conservative end of the political spectrum. For the moment, there was little indication that these hawks would turn on Mr. Putin as a result of Ukraine’s seemingly successful counteroffensive; but analysts said that their increasing readiness to criticize the military leadership publicly pointed to simmering discontent within the Russian elite.
“Most of these people are in shock and did not think that this could happen,” Dmitri Kuznets, who analyzes the war for the Russian-language news outlet Meduza, said in a phone interview. “Most of them are, I think, genuinely angry.”
The Kremlin, as usual, tried to minimize the setbacks. The defense ministry described the retreat as a decision “to regroup” its troops, even though the ministry said a day earlier that it was moving to reinforce its defensive positions in the region. The authorities in Moscow carried on with their festive weekend, with fireworks and state television showing hundreds lined up to ride the new, 460-foot-tall Ferris wheel.
But online, Russia’s failures were in plain sight — underscoring the startling role that pro-Russian military bloggers on the social network Telegram have played in shaping the narrative of the war. While the Kremlin controls the television airwaves in Russia and has blocked access to Instagram and Facebook, Telegram remains freely accessible and is filled with posts and videos from supporters and opponents of the war alike.
The widely followed pro-war bloggers — some embedded with Russian troops near the front line — amplify the Kremlin’s false message that Russia is fighting “Nazis” and refer to Ukrainians in derogatory and dehumanizing ways. But they are also divulging far more detailed — and, analysts say, accurate — information about the battlefield than the Russian Defense Ministry is, which they say is underestimating the enemy and withholding bad news from the public.
One of the bloggers, Yuri Podolyaka, who is from Ukraine but moved to ?rimea following its annexation in 2014, told his 2.3 million Telegram followers on Friday that if the military continued to play down its battlefield setbacks, Russians would “cease to trust the Ministry of Defense and soon the government as a whole.”
It was the bloggers who first rang alarm bells publicly about a possible Ukrainian c
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Ukraine had better win this war in 59 days or they're fucked.
Tick Tock
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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
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Quote:Tuesday, November 8, 2022 is not that important. You know that the next Congress isn't sworn in until January 3, 2023. Only 5 percent of Republicans support Russia over Ukraine, but the MAGA wing of the GOP has continually sided with Putin and against Ukraine. Unless the MAGA in Congress, or Trumptards as I prefer to call them, become the majority in 2023, the United States will continue to support Ukraine.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Ukraine had better win this war in 59 days or they're fucked.
Tick Tock
https://accountability.gop/ukraine-quotes/
Evidence that 6ix is from the MAGA wing of the GOP:
Quote:http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64889&mid=11620
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Ukraine is a joke. I'm sure Russia is doing fine.
09#1162009
6ix, Russia is not doing fine. Trump won't be fine, either, but I do wish he is the GOP's 2024 Presidential candidate.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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On the eastern front, a stunning week of Ukrainian success and Russian failures
Updated 3:04 PM ET, Sun September 11, 2022
The last week has seen a stunning transformation of the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, as a swift armored offensive by Ukrainian forces rolled through lines of Russian defenses and recaptured more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory.
That is more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations in Ukraine since April.
As much as the offensive was brilliantly conceived and executed, it also succeeded because of Russian inadequacies. Throughout swathes of the Kharkiv region, Russian units were poorly organized and equipped -- and many offered little resistance.
Their failures, and their disorderly retreat to the east, has made the goal of President Vladimir Putin's special military operation to take all of Luhansk and Donetsk regions considerably harder to attain.
Over the weekend, the Russian retreat continued from border areas that had been occupied since March. Villages within five kilometers of the border were raising the Ukrainian flag.
The collapse of Russian defenses has ignited recriminations among influential Russian military bloggers and personalities in Russian state media.
As the Ukrainian flag was raised in one community after another over the last several days, one question came into focus: how does the Kremlin respond?
. . . The poor quality of Russian defenses along a critical north-south axis sustaining the Donetsk offensive is hard to fathom. Once underway, the intent of the Ukrainian offensive was crystal clear -- to destroy that artery of resupply. Within three days, they had done so -- not least because Russian reinforcements were slow to be mobilized.
. . . The most influential -- and perhaps surprising -- public critic of the situation was Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has supplied thousands of fighters to the offensive. In a Telegram post Sunday, he said he would be contacting senior officials at the Defense Ministry to spell out his message.
"It's clear that mistakes were made. I think they will draw a few conclusions," he said.
Hinting at disarray among commanders, Kadyrov said that "if Russia's General Staff did not want to leave, the (troops) wouldn't back out" -- but Russian soldiers "didn't have proper military training" and that led them to retreat.
. . . A pro-Putin blogger who goes by the name Kholmogorov reposted an account by the Partizan Telegram channel from the front lines, essentially accusing the Russian authorities of abandoning the troops.
"The soldiers were on foot with one machine gun and a sack. Abandoned by the command, not knowing the way, they walked at random," the post said.
More at https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/11/europe/ukraine-russia-eastern-front/ind
ex.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Comrade like all other Russians, you just can't speak the truth. It won't come out of your mouth.
Can_you_see_me_laughing? Can you?
T
5 MINUTES AGO! Moscow Officials Urge Putin to GTFO: ‘Everything Went Wrong’
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Apparently Russia and allied forces have decided to w/ draw from the Kharkiv region. So much for me being a military strategist! There must a lot of things I don't know about the specifics. Alexander Mercouris opined yesterday that they might w/draw from Izyum. Possibly the area is too forested and too easy to launch an attack/ too hard to defend/ not important enough to commit required troops. Perhaps they want to clear the Donbas first and put Kharkiv on the back burner until winter when trees will be bare and they can target bombs/ shells more easily. Or, again, it could be that the troops mostly committed tothe area - Luhansk irregulars- aren't as committed to Kharkiv.
Hard to say.
Here is a good discussion
IMHO Alexander doesn't do his own military analysis but he IS particularly well-informed. He has many people contacting him and a wide circle of friends, acquaintances and contacts and he's pretty gootd at picking out what mades sense.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Typical border crossing from Ukraine into Russia on Google Maps:
https://goo.gl/maps/GGTS5xpEkMkURcHu7
There is nothing stopping Ukraine, other than orders, from going all the way to the closest Russian city.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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