Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
PAGE 344 of 1104
Nearly $100 billion in deposits pulled from (US) banks; officials call system ‘sound and resilient’
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/24/100-billion-pulled-from-banks-but-syst
em-called-sound-and-resilient.html
Hmmmmmmm....
There's really no reason to panic and pull your money out of a bank that was paying 0.0035% interest when you had it buried in undisclosed locations, was there?
No sir, there wasn't.
--------------------------------------------------
Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Money market mutual funds have seen assets rise over the past two weeks, up $203 billion to $3.27 trillion. I'm guessing you are afraid of both banking and money market mutual funds. Do you hide cash in a coffee can buried in the backyard, 6ix? Or bury gold?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Nearly $100 billion in deposits pulled from (US) banks.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Documentary: How mysterious explosions in Bulgaria are connected to Russia’s war in Ukraine
A string of mysterious explosions and a poisoning have targeted Bulgaria’s arms industry, which has been a crucial supplier of weapons to Ukraine.
But amid mounting evidence of Russian involvement, critics accuse Bulgarian authorities of dragging their feet in their investigations of these unsolved blasts.
A new @svobodna-evropa documentary looks into evidence of Russian sabotage, claims that there have been cover-ups by Bulgarian authorities, and whether Bulgarian arms depots are still at risk as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters a second year.
Bulgaria is in NATO. Russia surreptitiously attacking ammo warehouses in Bulgaria is an attack on NATO.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The Problem With How the West Is Supporting Ukraine:
In short, Ukraine is being made to fight the war the hard way, not the smart way.
By Phillips Payson O’Brien
Wars are won or lost well behind the front lines. Allies should arm Ukrainians accordingly.
For the past four months, people around the world have witnessed the macabre process of Russian forces making repeated assaults near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut for only the tiniest of gains. By some counts, Russia has lost about five of its soldiers for every Ukrainian soldier lost—to say nothing of massive equipment losses. Although in theory a country can win a war by using its military forces to make forward assaults against an enemy’s forces, that’s just not a smart way to fight. Military technology long ago evolved to arm both sides in conflicts with extremely lethal weaponry, and any army that tries to approach this machinery head-on is likely to suffer major, and in some cases horrific, losses.
Far more effective is to weaken your opponent’s forces before they get to the battlefield. You can limit what military infrastructure they’re able to build, make sure what they do build is substandard, hamper their ability to train troops to operate what they build, and hinder them from deploying their resources to the battlefield. These steps are doubly effective in that they save your own forces while degrading the other side’s. Over the past two centuries, the powers that have emerged triumphant have been the ones that not only fought the enemy on the battlefield but also targeted its production and deployment systems—as the Union did by controlling the waters around the Confederacy during the Civil War and as the United States and Britain did from the air against Nazi Germany.
In light of such dynamics, the manner in which the West is supporting Ukraine’s war effort is deeply frustrating. Though NATO countries have a variety of systems that can target Russian forces deep behind their lines, recent aid has been overwhelmingly geared toward preparing Ukraine to make direct assaults against the Russian army. The most widely discussed forms of equipment—such as Leopard 2 tanks, Bradley armored personnel carriers, and even Archer long-range artillery—are not the kinds of systems that can disrupt or degrade Russian forces far behind the front lines.
In short, Ukraine is being made to fight the war the hard way, not the smart way.
Ukrainian forces have indeed been pushing back against Russia at the front. But when they have been able to create or obtain the right technology, they have also attacked Russian supply and troop-deployment chains. This approach to war was probably most evident last summer, when the Ukrainians, as soon as they gained access to HIMARS rocket launchers and other Western multiple-rocket-launcher systems, embarked on a highly effective campaign against Russian supply points from Kherson to the Donbas. They managed to wreck a logistics system that had been supplying the Russian armies with huge amounts of firepower daily.
Almost immediately the Russians had to move their large supply depots out of range of the Ukrainians’ new rocket launchers, keeping essential equipment much farther from the front. This has severely limited Russia’s operations. It can fire significantly fewer shells each day and apparently can concentrate fewer vehicles on the front. The area where the Russians can properly supply their forces for operations has shrunk.
This overall approach led the Ukrainians to one of their great successes last year: the liberation of the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson province. When faced with a large, relatively experienced Russian force around the city of Kherson, the Ukrainians tried two different tacks. One involved direct armed assaults against the Russian salient west of the river. These assaults achieved at best modest results. The Ukrainians were able at points to push the Russian front back a few miles, but they were never able to break the line for any major gain.
Yet, in the end, the Russian army
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Putin Wouldn’t Win a War of Attrition in Ukraine
He wants the West to think that’s his goal, but the longer the conflict drags on, the worse things get for Moscow.
By Douglas London
March 24, 2023 6:50 pm ET
Vladimir Putin seeks to prevail in Ukraine through an exhausting war of attrition in which he outlasts his opponents, or so the "expert" consensus has it. The U.S. is supplying weapons to Ukraine at a remarkably slow pace, perhaps for fear of provoking a calamitous Russian escalation. It seems as if Washington is playing right into Mr. Putin’s hands.
But maybe not everything is as it seems. If I learned anything from decades as a Russian-speaking Central Intelligence Agency operations officer working against the Kremlin’s intelligence services, it was to be wary of anything they show you. This looks to me too convenient a narrative for Moscow, and one that’s belied by the facts.
Mr. Putin acts as if he doesn’t believe he can survive if he quits this conflict. But in reality, the war is existential only for the Ukrainian side. Ukrainians would suffer cultural genocide and war crimes if they gave in. Russia can walk away without serious consequences beyond its borders, and Mr. Putin knows it. He can ill afford for the Russian people to realize that they could not only overcome defeat, but never had to fight in the first place. But it’s not clear that the solution the Kremlin really wants is a war of attrition.
Can anyone, even Mr. Putin, imagine the Ukrainians quitting? If they lose external support, they still face an existential threat. It seems probable Ukraine would dig in and fight as long as it possibly could, even if the conflict devolved to guerrilla warfare in occupied streets.
Mr. Putin has to be accounting for this. He gambled wrong a year ago when he expected Ukrainian resolve to collapse quickly as Russian forces rolled in. Though he projects an inflexible image, Mr. Putin seems to still think like an intelligence officer. They rarely make the same mistake twice, particularly when they’ve been embarrassed. Were he really as reckless and blind to reality as he’s sometimes depicted, Russian forces wouldn’t have withdrawn from Kyiv’s outskirts a year ago. Mr. Putin has shown that he will bend when faced with serious consequences.
And that’s what a long war would entail. Mr. Putin might not grieve his heavy casualties, but they are embarrassing to the Kremlin and undermine his narrative of strength and military prowess. As Russian lines thin, he will feel increased pressure to expand mobilization beyond the rural and ethnic communities he has targeted to insulate his urban political base from the war’s consequences.
While some scoff at the effectiveness of Western economic sanctions, Moscow is furiously working to strengthen the ruble and find alternative consumers for the energy exports most of Europe has forsaken. But this still means lower profit, as Russia lures clients with increasingly discounted oil and gas. As the war endures, Mr. Putin will meet increasingly difficult choices between funding the conflict and improving the economy. And whatever military supplies Russia seeks from China, Iran and North Korea are hardly charitable donations—there’s no dictator’s discount. Even ruble remittances from new trade partners won’t help Mr. Putin pay off foreign debt held in U.S. dollars. And less income leaves less resources to dispense to those domestic political allies Mr. Putin needs to maintain control.
All this suggests that the longer the war endures, the worse things get for Moscow. Time allows Ukraine to deploy the sophisticated weapons now en route and the freshly trained Ukrainian operators returning from the West. More time will also enable the increased productivity of ammunition supply chains the U.S. is building. Add it all up, and Ukraine will likely have what’s needed for its much-anticipated counteroffensive. Mr. Putin may repulse those forces, but betting everything that he can is an immensely risky gamble. If Ukraine prevails, could he surv
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Where did Putin discover the Meaning of Life? From philosopher Ivan Ilyin:
After a new Russian Federation emerged from the defunct Soviet Union in 1991, Ilyin’s short book Our Tasks began to circulate in new Russian editions, his collected works were published, and his ideas gained powerful supporters. He had died forgotten in Switzerland; Putin organized a reburial in Moscow in 2005. Ilyin’s personal papers had found their way to Michigan State University; Putin sent an emissary to reclaim them in 2006. By then Putin was citing Ilyin in his annual presidential addresses to the general assembly of the Russian parliament. These were important speeches, composed by Putin himself. In the 2010s, Putin relied upon Ilyin’s authority to explain why Russia had to undermine the European Union and invade Ukraine. When asked to name a historian, Putin cited Ilyin as his authority on the past.
What interested Putin in the philosophy of Ivan Ilyin?
Like all immorality, eternity politics begins by making an exception for itself. All else in creation might be evil, but I and my group are good, because I am myself and my group is mine. Others might be confused and bewitched by the facts and passions of history, but my nation and myself have maintained a prehistorical innocence. Since the only good is this invisible quality that resides in us, the only policy is one that safeguards our innocence, regardless of the costs. Those who accept eternity politics do not expect to live longer, happier, or more fruitful lives. They accept suffering as a mark of righteousness if they think that guilty others are suffering more. Life is nasty, brutish, and short; the pleasure of life is that it can be made nastier, more brutish, and shorter for others.
Ilyin made an exception for Russia and for Russians. The Russian innocence he proclaimed was not observable in the world. It was Ilyin’s act of faith directed at his own people: salvation required seeing Russia as it was not. Since the facts of the world are just the corrupt detritus of God’s failed creation, true seeing was the contemplation of the invisible. Corneliu Codreanu, the founder of a kindred Romanian fascism, saw the Archangel Michael in prison and recorded his vision in a few lines. Although Ilyin dressed up his idea of contemplation in several books, it really was no more than that: he saw his own nation as righteous, and the purity of that vision was more important than anything Russians actually did. The nation, “pure and objective,” was what the philosopher saw when he blinded himself.
Innocence took a specific biological form. What Ilyin saw was a virginal Russian body. Like fascists and other authoritarians of his day, Ilyin insisted that his nation was a creature, “an organism of nature and the soul,” an animal in Eden without original sin. Who belonged within the Russian organism was not for the individual to decide, since cells do not decide whether they belong to a body. Russian culture, Ilyin wrote, automatically brought “fraternal union” wherever Russian power extended. Ilyin wrote of “Ukrainians” in quotation marks, because he denied their separate existence beyond the Russian organism. To speak of Ukraine was to be a mortal enemy of Russia. Ilyin took for granted that a post-Soviet Russia would include Ukraine.
Ilyin thought that Soviet power concentrated all of the Satanic energy of factuality and passion in one place. And yet he argued that the triumph of communism showed that Russia was more rather than less innocent. Communism, he maintained, was a seduction by foreigners and deracinated Russians whom Ilyin called “Tarzans.” They lusted to violate immaculate Russia precisely because it was guileless and defenseless. In 1917, Russians had simply been too good to resist the cargo of sin arriving from the West. Despite the depredations of Soviet leaders, Russians retained an imperceptible goodness. Unlike Europe and America, which accepted facts and passions as life, Russia retained an underlying “Spirit” that recalled Go
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Russian Nukes in Belarus: Why Putin Is Escalating Again
Alex Kokcharov, a risk analyst specializing in Russia and Ukraine, told Newsweek that the weekend announcement "doesn't mean that the nuclear weapons will necessarily be deployed," only that the infrastructure to base them in and launch them from Belarus is being put in place.
"I think this is mostly politically motivated, and it indicates that Russia is not doing particularly well on the battlefield," Kokcharov said. "They are going back to nuclear saber rattling in order to discourage European countries from supporting Ukraine. I don't think it will work."
"If we look at the last year, Russia was ramping up their nuclear rhetoric when they were not doing particularly well on the battlefield. There was the first spike of these Russian nuclear threats in September, when the Kharkiv counteroffensive was taking place. And then another round was in late October, early November, when the Kherson operation was taking place."
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-nukes-belarus-why-putin-escalating-ag
ain-ukraine-nato-1790610
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Another Day and Another Death Threat Out Of Russia:
Vladimir Putin's top security aide, Nikolai Patrushev, has insisted that the dictator is ready to destroy the West if there are any attempts to try to stop Russia's war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin insists he is ready to destroy the West with nuclear weapons as Russia launched new hypersonic missile tests today, his top security aide has said.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/vladimir-putin-ready-destroy-
west-29566212
"NATO instructors and advisers train the Ukrainian military, and mercenaries fight as part of neo-Nazi battalions,” said Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev.
He added that the U.S. and its European allies are trying to prolong this military confrontation. "They do not hide their main goal — the defeat of Russia on the battlefield and its further dismemberment.”
https://www.benzinga.com/news/23/03/31506398/putin-ally-says-west-want
s-dismemberment-of-russia-nato-countries-are-a-party-to-the-conflict
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by CAPTAINCRUNCH:Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Reports say that it was the Azov Battalion that held hostages in the theater and blew it up themselves to blame the Russians.
According to various non-Russian sources, the Russians flew no air missions or fired artillery that night in that area, so it would have been impossible for Ruusians to have destroyed the theater. We need to investigate to find the truth, since "people say" all kinds of things and often lie.
But as usual, you believe what 'sonebody said" without looking carefully at evidence. I'd sure hate to see you in a jury panel!
Russians might as well just sit back with all the Ukrainians killing other Ukrainians according to you.
T
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Putin’s Former Publicity Masterminds Air His Dirty Laundry
The brains behind Putin’s carefully crafted ‘macho’ facade have a lot to say about the Russian president’s public image meltdown.
By Anna Nemtsova
Russian President Vladimir Putin is diving headfirst into an unprecedented—and irreversible—public image disaster over the war in Ukraine.
Long gone are the days of carefully staged photoshoots of Putin riding a horse bare-chested, or diving into rivers to find ancient Greek urns. Now, images of Volodymyr Zelensky visiting Ukrainian soldiers in combat zones across the country stand in stark contrast with reports of the Russian president holding court in the Kremlin and meeting with ministers and generals at comically long tables.
And when the Russian president did finally travel to the war zone, the image he struck shocked former aides and public relations experts.
A day after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes this month—the Kremlin announced that Putin had flown by helicopter to Mariupol and driven a car into the city. Russian officials released a shaky, amateur-style video of the Russian president looking quite miserable, nervously playing with the zipper of his parka with sounds of explosions in the background.
“Putin’s left his comfort zone in the bunker, where he has spent three years, and it is phenomenal to see how his publicity stunts have degraded,” long-time Kremlin observer, Olga Bychkova, a former presenter on Echo of Moscow radio station, told The Daily Beast. “He is surrounded by security guards. No professional cameramen have access to him any longer.”
So, how did the Russian president’s macho publicity stunts take such a nosedive?
More at https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-kremlin-flacks-dish-on-putins-pub
lic-image-crisis-over-ukraine-war
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME