Real World Event Discussions

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
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Friday, January 20, 2023 4:10 PM

As U.S. and allies arm Ukraine, Russia warns that losing a conventional war "can trigger a nuclear war"

Updated on: January 19, 2023 / 3:08 PM

When asked whether Medvedev's eyebrow-raising statement represented an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine or Russia's broader standoff with the West, the Kremlin's top spokesman said Thursday that the remarks were in line with Russia's nuclear doctrine.

"There are no contradictions there," presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

Striking an eerily similar note, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church professed in a Thursday sermon that "an attempt to destroy Russia would mean the end of the world." (and a Merry Christmas to you, too!)

"Today there are very big threats to the world, to our country, and to the whole human race, because some crazy people had the idea that the great Russian power, possessing powerful weapons, inhabited by very strong people… who have always come out victorious, that they can be defeated," said Patriarch Kirill, a staunch backer of all Kremlin policy.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-nuclear-war-threat-us-nato
-weapons-tanks
/

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

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Friday, January 20, 2023 6:36 PM

Ukraine’s Swedish-Made CV90 Fighting Vehicles Are Meant To Hunt Enemy Armor In The Woods

David Axe, Forbes Staff

Jan 19, 2023, 01:12pm EST

The Swedish government on Thursday announced it would donate to Ukraine up to 50 CV90 infantry fighting vehicles as well as some of Sweden’s Archer mobile howitzers.

It’s the latest in a flurry of arms packages from Ukraine’s NATO allies. Sweden along with Finland last year began the slow process of joining the transatlantic alliance.

The weapons Ukraine’s allies in recent months have pledged don’t include a lot of tanks—although that soon could change. But they do include a lot of heavily-armed infantry fighting vehicles that, while not tanks, still possess significant anti-armor capability.

The United States is sending to Ukraine an initial batch of 50 M-2 fighting vehicles that are battle-proven, long-range tank-killers. The Swedish CV90s, by contrast, are adept at destroying armored vehicles at close range—and especially in the woods.

The tracked, three-crew CV90, built by Swedish firms Hägglunds and Bofors, weighs up to 37 tons. In its standard version it carries up to eight infantry and packs a 40-millimeter autocannon in an armored turret. “It is one of Sweden's best combat vehicles,” Swedish energy and industry minister Ebba Busch stated.

The CV90 is popular in northern Europe. The Swedish army has 500 CV90s in several variants. The armies of Switzerland, Norway, The Netherlands, Finland, Estonia and Denmark also operate CV90s.

It’s not hard to see why. The CV90’s designers optimized the vehicle for operations in Scandinavia’s forests. It just so happens that eastern Ukraine, where much of the fighting is, also has lots of trees.

Consider the CV90’s main weapon—its 40-millimeter L/70 autocannon. The L/70 isn’t new. It first entered service, as an anti-aircraft gun, a few years after World War II. But it’s proved extremely durable and versatile. An L/70 can fire two-pound shells up to five rounds a second at a thousand-yard-a-second initial velocity.

That’s a lot of metal, moving really fast. Up close, the L/70 is like a chainsaw—especially when firing armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot, or APFSDS-T, rounds.

And that’s the key to the CV90’s anti-armor prowess. True, the CV90 doesn’t have a turret-mounted launcher for long-range anti-tank missiles like the American M-2 and Russian BMP fighting vehicles do. But it doesn’t need one while fighting on forested terrain.

Yes, the M-2 can fire a 50-pound TOW anti-tank missile out to a distance of two miles. But only under the right conditions. The missile requires a clear line of sight between the launcher and the target—both to allow the gunner to steer the missile via an unspooling wire and to prevent the missile from running into an obstacle and prematurely detonating.

The BMP-3’s 60-pound Kornet anti-tank missile travels even farther—up to five miles—but it’s a beam-riding weapon that also requires a clear line of sight for its guidance laser.

All that is to say, anti-tank missiles such as the TOW and Kornet don’t work very well in the woods, where obstructions abound. The L/70, by contrast, doesn’t mind the woods at all. Not when it’s spewing sabot rounds at a rate of several per second.

In 2011, Swedish army major Magnus Frykvall ran a simulation pitting a reinforced Swedish army battalion equipped with CV90s and Leopard 2 tanks against a Russian brigade with BMP-3 fighting vehicles and T-90 tanks.

The forested battleground was bad for tanks, and both sides lost 10 or a dozen Leopard 2s or T-90s. But as the two sides’ infantry fighting vehicles clashed in the woods, the CV90s proved vastly superior to the BMPs.

“The red side's IFVs had difficulty using their anti-tank missiles effectively, while the blue side's CV90’s 40-millimeter automatic cannon with APFSDS-T ammunition is highly efficient in this terrain,” Frykvall wrote. The Swedish force wrote off 48 CV90s. But the Russian force lost a staggering 81 BMPs.

The implication is clear. T

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Friday, January 20, 2023 7:21 PM

The Liberation of Crimea Is a Must

By Tamila Tasheva, January 19, 2023 6:00 AM EST

Tasheva is the Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea

For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a Russian delegation is absent from Davos. After a year of indecision, the West has finally managed to wean itself off the allure of cheap Russian energy. Ukraine has shown the world that Russia’s military is incapable of even the most basic political and military strategy. Russian war crimes are laid bare and their campaign in Ukraine is inexcusable for any rational observer. Over the past year of civilian bloodshed and destroyed infrastructure, Russia’s reputation on the global stage has been irreparably damaged. While Ukraine will be rebuilt after the war is won, it is difficult to say when the world will trust the Kremlin again. Ukraine can and will continue to defend its sovereignty and territory from this unjust aggression for as long as is necessary, and will secure an independent and democratic future for all her peoples.

Nearly nine years after the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014, the de facto consensus of Western observers was shaped around the idea of condemning the occupation, but avoiding meaningful efforts that would have real impact on Russia and would make it respect the principle of inviolability of borders. But after the recent successes of the Ukrainian army in liberating Kherson, some leading international media outlets started to discuss and publish perspectives on deoccupying Crimea, mostly arguing why Ukraine should stay away. But a free Crimea is just as inevitable as the repulsion of Russian troops from Kyiv. The defense of the capital was the first step, and the march will continue until all of Ukraine is free.

One of the most common arguments against Ukraine’s liberation of Crimea is a deeply planted (even when not acknowledged) belief that “Crimea has always been Russian” and that people living in the peninsula are Russians, wanting to be a part of Russia. This assumption ignores when and how the Russian population arrived in the region. Claims of a Russian Crimea ignore the rich history of the peninsula and its diversity which lasted for centuries until the Russian Empire first annexed and colonized it in the 18th century.

Since then, the number of Crimean Tatars, i.e. indigenous people that emerged and have been living on the peninsula for hundreds of years prior to the arrival of the Russians, started to decline due to colonization, repressions, and Stalin-era deportation. The Crimean Tatar people have only one homeland — Crimea, and there is no way these people can co-exist with Moscow, which for centuries has tried to wipe them out. In particular, after the deportation of 1944 was over, the thousands of now empty homes were filled instead with Russian colonizers.

Today, Moscow continues this policy. The self-governing and representative body Medzhlis of Crimean Tatars, is forbidden and its members persecuted. 109 out of 155 persons from Crimea imprisoned in the peninsula and in mainland Russia for political reasons are Crimean Tatars. Aside from the massive inflow of Russian servicemen and their families, occupying law enforcement and civil servants, according to various estimations, not less than 700,000 Russian civilians have been encouraged and supported in relocation to Crimea since the 2014 invasion. If Crimea can be considered as “Russian,” it is a result of the brutal violent colonization which lasted for centuries and is ongoing today.

We are reminded again and again that Crimea allegedly “wanted to join Russia” in 2014. However, what happened was a carefully prepared military and intelligence operation against a temporarily weakened Ukrainian state followed by a so-called “referendum” staged to legitimize this occupation in the eyes of international audiences, not unlike the recent referendums in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions. The difference is that today, a strong Ukraine standing defiantly has

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 10:21 AM

More hopium?

Boy, are YOU gonna look stupid!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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THG
Saturday, January 21, 2023 4:04 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

More hopium?

Boy, are YOU gonna look stupid!






No, it is you that looks like a moron in these threads comrade.

T

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 5:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
More hopium?

Boy, are YOU gonna look stupid!

Russians have a plan for victory based on misunderstanding America's loss in the Vietnam War:

Some of Putin’s top propaganda merchants realize nuclear threats are starting to ring hollow so they recommend slaughtering American servicemen in vast numbers instead.

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, delivered a sermon marking Orthodox Epiphany in Moscow this week. He spoke to those who wish “to defeat Russia,” using the occasion to deliver a threat to the West: “We pray that the Lord admonish those madmen and help them to understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world.”

Russia’s top propagandists, from former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev to state TV host Vladimir Solovyov, have been spreading the same not-so subtle nuclear threat far and wide—and yet, Putin’s mouthpieces are now worried that the “boy who cried wolf” routine is no longer being taken seriously by their target audience in the West. The dilemma manifested during a live broadcast of The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov. After the lineup of talking heads took turns reiterating that Russia’s defeat would mean the end of the world, their agitprop was suddenly deflated by Yevgeny Satanovsky, President of the Institute of the Middle East.

“First of all, our main enemy is certainly the United States. What does the U.S. react to? They react to two things: the threat of physical annihilation and the liquidation of a certain number of military personnel. What we know based on wars in Vietnam and Korea is that several tens of thousands of annihilated American servicemen will cause the public opinion in the U.S. to be severely strained. I will repeat: not several thousand, like in Afghanistan or Iraq, but a certain number of tens of thousands. Who will liquidate them, where they will be liquidated and in what way is completely irrelevant, but this is one of the objectives if we want to influence the American leadership. We have absolutely nothing to lose.”

Head of RT Margarita Simonyan described the mood in the country: “In every home, in every kitchen and living room, in every courtyard all conversations are only about what will happen next, how it will all end... I don’t see any possible course of events except for the following: first of all, they will not stop. I’m not talking about Ukraine or Zelensky [She is talking about the West]... They will keep raising the stakes to the point that it will cause us pain. Safety of the territory of the Russian Federation will be at issue, not just the newly added territories. I don’t doubt that they will do all that they can so that we have to be concerned about the safety of Moscow, or at least seriously thinking about it... This will certainly happen!”

Simonyan concluded: “This can only end with an immediate threat that is voiced and presented, a threat of a nuclear confrontation.” She argued that the failure of the West to acquiesce to the list of demands presented by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December of 2021 led to the invasion of Ukraine. Simonyan said that after Putin’s ultimatum was made public, she told her friends: “Guys, there will be a big war, for sure. By the end of winter, something very big will happen!”

She claimed that this time, the refusal of the West to back out of its support of Ukraine would lead to even bigger consequences: “It’s true that no one will win in a nuclear war, but who needs the world if Russia isn’t in it? It was voiced out loud, it was said by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin!” The head of RT concluded: “I don’t see any other outcome... It will be a wrecking ball! It will be all-in! It will be like two planes, flying head-on into one another. Someone will have to back down and something tells me that it won’t be us.”

Andrey Kartapolov, the head of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, followed up Simonyan’s diatribe by boasting of the Motherland’s nuclear might and absurdly claiming that

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 6:35 PM

Russians have got their Reasons: Russian State TV Host Says There Was No Other Choice But to Invade Ukraine

Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov suggested Russia had "no other choice" but to invade Ukraine in February 2022, and that doing so has "saved millions of lives."

The clip of Rossiya-1 host Solovyov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was shared on Twitter.

Solovyov, who's been nicknamed "Putin's voice" for his support of the Kremlin, made the remarks during an episode of his radio show, Full Contact (Polniy Kontakt).

"What would have happened if we hadn't stopped the Ukrainian Nazis on the counter? In a few hours they would have reached Russia's borders in Donbas, destroying the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, wiping it off the face of the earth with the artillery their NATO b****rds have provided them since 2014," he said.

"They would have brought death and destruction! On February 24 we had no other choices. We saved millions of lives of our compatriots, those who put their faith in us," he concluded.

The Kremlin propagandist said 50 countries are against Russia, and that they're united by "Satanism."

"No matter what they say, no matter how they try to find beautiful words, this candy has a rotten filling. The destiny of this country depends on you. If we don't win, not Russia but the whole world will disappear. Who needs the world if there is not Russia in it?" he concluded.

Solovyov finished his broadcast on state TV by saying: "We are fighting against Satanists. This is a holy war and we have to win."

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-state-tv-vladimir-solovyov-ukraine-in
vasion-war-1775296


A modern day Goebbels, only Goebbels at least understood the art of subtlety.

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

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 11:04 PM

What you're doing, SECOND, is called "demonization".

Quote:

to portray (someone or something) as evil ...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demonize

Yanno, if you want to fight someone, you must know yourself, and know your enemy. (Sun Tzu, Art of War). You know neither. All you know is propaganda. So you're still gonna look stupid, bc you ARE stupid.



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Saturday, January 21, 2023 11:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What you're doing, SECOND, is called "demonization".

Quote:

to portray (someone or something) as evil ...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demonize

Yanno, if you want to fight someone, you must know yourself, and know your enemy. (Sun Tzu, Art of War). You know neither. All you know is propaganda. So you're still gonna look stupid, bc you ARE stupid.

It was four months ago that you quoted an article predicting that the Russian General Staff has a plan. If that secret plan doesn't bring overwhelming success to Russia in the next six months to a year, Putin should fire his General Staff and devise his own Secret Plan. That is what Peter the Great would do.

Signym, here is where you quoted the article:
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=11621
68#1162168


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

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Sunday, January 22, 2023 1:58 AM

What has been made clear to me is that Russia doesn't have "a" plan, it has a lot of contingencies depending on circumstances.

Also, why the artificial deadline? There are several reasons for Russia to go slow:
Allow international support to catch up
Attrit Ukraine and NATO as much as possible
Avoid a "triggering" incident that will fire up the NATO nations

So that's just you, imposing a narrative over reality, again.

FWIW I have no idea what Russia's plans are. They may switch from a static front/war of attrition to "big arrow" offensives or anything in between. The General Staff doesn't consult with me.


Anyway, I got work to do.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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