Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
PAGE 279 of 1104
Fuck Ukraine. Let it fall into rubble.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Ukraine is pushing the U.S. to start training its fighter pilots on the F-16s now, before President Joe Biden approves supplying the jets, according to the Ukrainian official and one of the people familiar. But there is no appetite in the Pentagon for this proposal, U.S. officials said. One alternative under discussion at lower levels is to start training Ukrainian pilots on introductory fighter tactics in trainer jets.
Ukraine has also considered contracting with private companies in the U.S. to begin training pilots, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.
Ukraine has identified a list of up to 50 pilots who are ready now to start training on the F-16, according to a DoD official and a Ukrainian official, as well as three other people familiar with the discussions. These seasoned pilots speak English and have thousands of combat missions under their belts, and could be trained in as little as three months, the people said.
It’s likely U.S. military training would not start without a presidential decision to supply American fighters. One concern for the Biden administration all along is that sending advanced weapons could be seen by Russia as an escalation, prompting Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons.
But officials point out that the F-16 was first built in the 1980s, and the Air Force is already retiring parts of the fleet. While sending Ukraine the stealthy American F-22s or F-35s would be considered escalatory, sending F-16s would not, they said.
“Let’s face it, a nuclear war isn’t going to happen over F-16s,” the DoD official said.
One European official agreed, saying F-16s “cannot be considered escalatory.”
“It’s simply part of the toolkit of having conventional weapons,” the person said.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/28/pentagon-send-f-16s-ukraine-0
0080045
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Kremlin says Boris Johnson's claim about Putin missile strike threat "is a lie" (It's not. Putin's mouth was faster than his brain when he said what he should never say out loud. Per usual, Russians handle such situations by denying it happened.)
From CNN's Anna Chernova
The Kremlin said Monday former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s claim about Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening him with a missile in a phone call ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine “is a lie.”
“What Mr. Johnson said is not true. More precisely, it is a lie,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a regular conference call.
Peskov said he's aware of what was discussed during that conversation, but stressed “there were no missile threats.”
According to Peskov, “Speaking about the security challenges for the Russian Federation, Putin noted that in the event of Ukraine joining NATO, the potential deployment of NATO or American missiles near our borders would mean that any missile would reach Moscow in a matter of minutes.”
“If this passage was understood in this way, it is a very awkward situation,” he added.
Johnson told the BBC earlier Monday that Putin threatened him with a missile that “would only take a minute.” The exchange was released as a preview to the documentary "Putin vs the West," scheduled to release later Monday, which examines Putin's interactions with world leaders.
https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-1-30-23/h
_cc75481fca09439aa6a84d524d34b2ef
BBC Documentary "Putin vs the West" at
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0dlz7gc/putin-vs-the-west
or download "Putin vs the West" from https://comment.rlsbb.ru/putin-vs-the-west-s01-1080p-ip-web-dl-h264-rn
g/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
RUSSIA REPLACES WAGNER UNIT! Current Ukraine War Footage And News With The Enforcer (Day 341)
FundraiserQuote:
T
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Now you're attributing a post to me that I never made?
Or, more likely, you've got your formatting screwed up - again. Please learn formatting, THUGR. It's really simple.
Also, it's over 2h30min. SOMEWHERE in there, buried in 2h30min of crap, is the crap that you titled. If you want anyone to listen to that particular piece of crap, post a timestamp, willya?
Jeez.
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Brian Berletic, of the New Atlas, with Donbass Devushka . Donbass Devushka explains the Russian Battalion Tactical Group (BTG) - why it was created, how it is formed, its relationship to its brigade, how it operates, its command structure etc
Unlike some of THUGR's videos, this is probably informative.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Brian Berletic, of the New Atlas, with Donbass Devushka . Donbass Devushka explains the Russian Battalion Tactical Group (BTG) - why it was created, how it is formed, its relationship to its brigade, how it operates, its command structure etc
Unlike some of THUGR's videos, this is probably informative.
I cut the video because they screw up the page when they are reposted. Besides, it's about the concepts behind a Russian Tank Brigade. Not how they are functioning in Ukraine in actuality. They are being destroyed quicker than they can send them.
Loser comrade signym. The Russian army consists of nothing but losers. And boy oh boy I told you so.
T
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FnPB0OxXoAEq-9H?format=jpg&name=large
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Kremlin 'Didn't Take It Far Enough' in WWII, Russian Lawmaker Says
"We will win, 100 percent," said Andrey Gurulyov, a Russian parliament member and former military commander. "Where? Everywhere! Everywhere!"
Gurulyov began by saying that Russia must make plans "beyond the horizon" so that "we know what happens in one year, three years, five years and 10 years and harshly move towards it in this paradigm."
"We will win, 100 percent," he asserted. "Where? Everywhere! Everywhere!"
"And this is by far not about Ukraine. Everywhere! Russia was, is, and will be a great nation, capable of bringing peace. Peace is the key word! We bring peace and calm!" Gurulyov continued.
"But we have to draw the conclusion that we didn't take it far enough in 1945. Today, we have to keep pushing to make sure there is no danger and trouble for our country ever again," the politician added.
He said on state television earlier this month that if Russia had wanted to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it would have already done so.
"If a nail had to be hammered into Zelensky's coffin, it would have been done a long time ago, I assure you," he said on Russia-1. "No such goal or objective was set. That is why Zelensky is alive at this stage."
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-state-tv-wwii-andrey-gurulyov-1777402
Julia Davis @JuliaDavisNews tweeted "Meanwhile on Russian TV: State Duma member Andrey Gurulyov, former deputy commander of Russia's southern military district, argues that striking America with nuclear weapons is the only way forward, because Russia brings peace and calm everywhere it goes."
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1619844026638938113
"Russia brings peace and calm everywhere it goes." For 875 years MOSCOW has brought war to everyone in the neighborhood and now wants to export Russia's Wars to the rest of the WORLD. It was the Allies, not Russia, who didn't go far enough. They should have destroyed the USSR and should have handed over Stalin and his KGB buddies to the Hague Court... The world would be a much better place now. It's not too late... PUTIN should face the Hague courts.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Putin vs the West review: World leaders seem rightly shamefaced about how they got taken for a ride by the Russian president
The Independent US by Sean O'Grady January 30, 2023, 4:00 PM
Putin vs the West is the latest series from the legendary Norma Percy, and the three-parter contains everything you’d expect from the veteran documentarian – the right blend of revelation, anecdote, history, drama, forensic analysis and storytelling. It’s Putin, the Ukraine war and how the West fouled up, all made comprehensible. It’s brilliant, and you have to watch it to understand how we got to where we are now.
It is in fact so brilliant that you find yourself in the unexpected position of being almost on the edge of your seat listening to the testimony from the half-forgotten dullards – such as former French president Francois Hollande; ex President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso; Cathy Ashton, once a sort of surrogate EU foreign minister; and various other former apparatchiks, advisors, politicians and ambassadors – who have had the usually bruising experience of dealing first hand with Vladimir Putin over the years.
In the hands of the programme makers, stock archive footage of ministerial comings and goings at EU summits and conferences in Brussels and Minsk take on the quality of a tense thriller, as they are interspersed by revelations about what was going on behind the scenes. Episode one deals with the events that led up to the first Russian invasion of 2014, when they took Crimea and the eastern Donbas region, with minimal Western resistance and punishment, and maximum Western disunity and disarray. The Russians bluffed and fibbed their way to victory. When Putin turns up at a big conference and the Ukrainians confront him with hard evidence that they’ve captured scores of Russian soldiers on their territory, such as ID tags and official orders, Putin comes up with a series of Pythonesque excuses: the Ukrainians are making it up; the Russians were “on holiday”; or they “lost their way” along the border.
On another occasion, when Putin denies unmarked Russian forces have infiltrated and occupied eastern Ukraine, Merkel tells him not to be so silly, according to a witness. However, she still won’t push the Russians too far, for fear of escalation and loss of gas supplies. The EU was utterly divided, as was NATO. Elsewhere, Barack Obama seemingly deliberately calls Russia a “regional power”, something that was particularly offensive to Putin – and hardened his attitudes. Obama talked tough on sanctions, but, like Germany, the Americans then were simply not going to send military assistance and risk a war. This is something we learn from Obama’s close advisers at the time. Merkel and Obama didn’t give an interview for the series, which is understandable because they come out of it quite badly.
They got bamboozled by Putin. “Deny and lie” was and is the standard Russian approach, and the only Western leader who seems able to cope with it is Boris Johnson. Funny, that. To his credit, he took no notice of Putin’s jolly threat to target him with a cruise missile.
Cameron, Hollande, Barroso and the rest of the gullible talking heads are mostly filmed in front of impressively full bookcases or inside what look like ornately furnished palaces. Juxtaposed with bombed-out Ukrainian schools or tanks rolling down Crimean roads, this makes them look rather detached from the bloody reality they allowed to happen.
They at least seem rightly shamefaced about how they got taken for a ride. Somehow, they apparently only believed what was politically convenient, and never took Putin at his word when he went off on one about how he wanted to take back control of Ukraine. Barroso, for example, tells how he listened, open-mouthed, as Putin told him that Ukraine was a creation of the CIA and the European Commission. He acknowledges that European divisions encouraged Putin to push and push.
Hollande almost, but not quite, comes to an apology: “Europe is still facing this threat of its unity.
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How to Get a Breakthrough in Ukraine
The Case Against Incrementalism
By Michael McFaul January 30, 2023
Nearly a year after he invaded Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has failed to achieve any of his major objectives. He has not unified the alleged single Slavic nation, he has not “denazified” or “demilitarized” Ukraine, and he has not stopped NATO expansion. Instead, the Ukrainian military kept Russian troops out of Kyiv, defended Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, and launched successful counteroffensives in the fall so that by the end of 2022, it had liberated over 50 percent of the territory previously captured by Russian soldiers that year. In January, Putin removed the general in charge of the war in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin, whom he had appointed just a few months earlier. Wartime leaders change their top generals only when they know they are losing.
Ukraine is doing so well in part thanks to the unified Western response. Unlike reactions to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 or Ukraine in 2014, the Western pushback against Putin’s latest war has been strong along multiple fronts. NATO enhanced its eastern defenses and invited Sweden and Finland to join the alliance. Europe has provided shelter to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees. Led by the Biden administration, the West has provided massive amounts of military and economic support at amazing speed, levied punishing sanctions, and begun a difficult shift away from Russian energy. Even Chinese leader Xi Jinping has offered Putin only faint rhetorical support for his war. He has not provided Russia with weapons and has cautiously avoided violating the global sanctions regime.
These are the reasons for optimism. The bad news, however, is that the war continues, and Putin has shown no signs of wanting to end it. Instead, he is planning a major counteroffensive this year. “The Russians are preparing some 200,000 fresh troops,” General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, warned in December. “I have no doubt they will have another go at Kyiv.” Even though Putin must understand by now that Ukrainians are willing to fight for as long as it takes to liberate their country, he still believes that time is on his side. That is because Putin expects Western governments and societies to lose their will and interest to keep helping Ukraine. If Putin or his aides watch the television personality Tucker Carlson on Fox News or saw the protests last fall in Prague, their hunch about waning Western support would be confirmed.
If Russia starts winning on the battlefield, or even fights to a stalemate, few will remember U.S. President Joe Biden’s remarkable leadership in galvanizing the world to assist Ukraine in 2022. This is why Western leaders need to shift how they approach the conflict. At this stage, incrementally expanding military and economic assistance is likely to only prolong the war indefinitely. Instead, in 2023, the United States, NATO, and the democratic world more broadly should aim to support a breakthrough. This means more advanced weapons, more sanctions against Russia, and more economic aid to Ukraine. None of this should be doled out incrementally. It needs to be provided swiftly, so that Ukraine can win decisively on the battlefield this year. Without greater and immediate support, the war will settle into a stalemate, which is only to Putin’s advantage. In the end, the West will be judged by what happened during the last year of the war, not by what happened in the first.
. . .
As long as Russian soldiers occupy their country, Ukrainians will fight. They will fight with or without new advanced weapons, with or without harsher sanctions, with or without money to help them run their country. Understanding this key insight about the Ukrainian mentality today leads to an obvious policy recommendation for the West: help Ukraine win as fast as possible.
The best way to commemorate February 24, the anniversary of Putin’s invasion, is to make clear that this is the West’
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