Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
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Are you saying your inclusion of Stalin in your list of all-time bad leaders -or not- depends on RUSSIAN opinion of Stalin? If not, what's your point?
BTW, you missed Mao and Pol Pot and GWB.
Seems like your list, SECOND, is based on your delusional hysteria of the moment. Facts are not in it.
Still a troll! and still funny!
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Quote:Signym, why mention Mao, Pol Pot, and GWB, when they never invaded Ukraine?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Are you saying your inclusion of Stalin in your list of all-time bad leaders -or not- depends on RUSSIAN opinion of Stalin? If not, what's your point?
BTW, you missed Mao and Pol Pot and GWB.
Seems like your list, SECOND, is based on your delusional hysteria of the moment. Facts are not in it.
Still a troll! and still funny!
Stalin and the Red Army invaded both Europe and Ukraine. The invasion never ended until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The median Russian never expressed the opinion that Stalin had committed a crime by keeping all that invaded territory. That is why those same Russians don't feel that Putin committed a crime by invading Ukraine and keeping that territory. (All the invaded countries, except Ukraine, joined NATO for reasons that the median Russians cannot comprehend because Russians think it was not a crime for the Red Army to stay until 1991.)
Will it take another collapse of Russia in 2024, as in 1991, to finally get the Russian Army out of Ukraine? Maybe. Or maybe just an ordinary collapse of an Army such as during Russia's invasion of Afghanistan in 1988.
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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Changing Places: Europeans Grow More Assertive on Ukraine as Washington Shows Caution
by Yaroslav Trofimov
NATO summit highlighted divisions over Ukraine’s future in the alliance and how far the West should go in supplying weapons
VILNIUS, Lithuania—Last week’s NATO summit revealed a major realignment within the U.S.-led trans-Atlantic alliance.
European nations, once seen as less steadfast in their support for Kyiv and more vulnerable to Russian pressure, are determined to help Ukraine win an unambiguous victory. At the same time, the Biden administration, which orchestrated a unified Western response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion last year, is increasingly cautious—constrained by domestic politics and a fear of direct confrontation with Moscow.
In Europe, the once-gaping divisions between different capitals have narrowed sharply, as countries previously seen as soft on Russia, including France, Italy, Spain and to a lesser extent Germany, have all moved much closer to Ukraine’s fiercest supporters: Poland, the Baltic and the Nordic states.
“It took a while, but then it seeped through. Today a lot of leaders around Europe, including Germany, understand that they must help Ukraine defeat Putin if they want to defend their own security,” said Reinhard Bütikofer, a German member of the European Parliament. “They have well understood that Putin’s threat to Ukraine has significance far beyond Ukraine itself.”
The divergence between Washington and its European allies is increasingly evident on an array of issues, from Ukraine’s prospects of eventually joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to the military capabilities that Kyiv needs for its current offensive aiming to reclaim occupied territory, to the desirability of any peace settlement with the Kremlin in the near term.
“Biden’s mantra is that the unity of the alliance is the high priority,” said Slawomir Debski, director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs, a Warsaw think tank that advises Poland’s government. “The problem now is that it’s the Biden administration that is lagging behind Europe, and it’s the Biden administration that is creating trouble for the unity.”
Washington remains the biggest backer of Ukraine, and President Biden reiterated in Vilnius that America’s commitment won’t waver—warning that Putin is making a “bad bet” as he doubts the West’s staying power and unity.
Yet political winds are blowing in opposite directions on the two sides of the Atlantic. A sizable, and growing, minority of the U.S. Republican Party wants to end any support for Ukraine, and America’s role in the war is likely to become an issue in next year’s presidential election. A proposal to prohibit all security assistance to Ukraine garnered 70 Republican votes, or nearly one-third of all Republican House members, on Thursday.
Former President Donald Trump, who seeks to return to the White House next year, has accused Biden of risking World War III by supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions, a type of ammunition that Russia has been using in abundance, and boasted that he could end the conflict within 24 hours, without saying how.
Few major European leaders have similar electoral concerns in the near term. European economies have successfully weaned themselves off dependence on Russian energy, and even the once pro-Putin nationalist parties rarely openly support Moscow nowadays. Many key European leaders who pushed for talks between Kyiv and Moscow last year, most importantly French President Emmanuel Macron, have increasingly come to the view that no deal on Ukraine can be struck until Putin is routed on the battlefield or leaves power.
“There is a growing belief in Europe that the defeat of Russia needs to be super clear, while at least in some corners of the U.S. system there might be a sense that this needs to be a defeat that generates a negotiated outcome,” said Camille Grand, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Brussels who served until last year as NATO’s assis
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Ukraine Adopts Slow Approach to Counteroffensive: ‘Our Problem Everywhere Is the Sky’
James Marson
Updated July 18, 2023 12:00 am ET
ORIKHIV, Ukraine—Six weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Capt. Anatoliy Kharchenko and his reconnaissance company were supposed to be wreaking havoc miles behind Russian defensive lines pierced by Western-supplied armored vehicles.
Instead, after many of the vehicles got bogged down in minefields, Kharchenko and his men are training how to advance methodically on foot, moving from one line of trees to another, faced with the prospect of taking back their country one field at a time.
“We’ve got nothing to lose,” Kharchenko said. “Victory isn’t just important, but it’s the only option, otherwise we’ll all be dead.”
Ukraine’s counteroffensive, launched at the start of June, is aimed at retaking some of the nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory occupied by Moscow. The West provided dozens of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles and trained thousands of Ukrainian troops for the campaign.
The swift loss of several tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, many of them immobilized by mines or missiles launched from attack helicopters, jolted Ukraine and its Western backers. Ukraine hasn’t achieved a decisive breakthrough, although it has seized several villages.
Kyiv’s political and military leadership has complained that slow and insufficient deliveries of Western weaponry left it no choice but to assault Russian lines without adequate air defenses, leaving troops and vehicles vulnerable.
The Ukrainians are adapting and seeking to press forward in the south as well as around the eastern city of Bakhmut, Russia’s only significant gain in its winter-and-spring offensive. Advancing slowly and meticulously to preserve Western armor, the central aim remains reaching the Sea of Azov, cutting off Crimea and squeezing Russian forces out of the southern Kherson region.
Most of the Ukrainian brigades trained and equipped by the West remain in reserve, waiting to strike. Officers are seeking to preserve precious Western equipment, from tanks to shoulder-fired Stingers, while still pushing forward.
“We are probing with our fingers and working out where to direct our fist,” said Kharchenko.
The stocky former paratrooper and his company of some 100 men had been prepared to push through any gap created in Russian lines and dash south.
But the gap never appeared. On the third day of the counteroffensive, he drove to Mala Tokmachka to the southeast of Orikhiv to check out the route they were supposed to take. As artillery shells crashed around him, he began to withdraw when he saw a Ukrainian vehicle blown up and body parts of Ukrainian soldiers strewn over the road. He and his teammates dismounted to recover what they could.
Now, the task is even more daunting. After the destruction of the Kakhovka dam flooded the Dnipro River at the start of June, Russia moved some units that had been guarding the river’s eastern bank to bolster forces to the south of Orikhiv. They quickly dug in, expanding the lines of defense and reinforcing the edges of towns and roads.
Kharchenko and his men are training for a more gradual advance over the flat land of the south, where neat villages are dotted among open fields of sunflowers and wheat. They are using U.S.-made Bangalore torpedoes, metal poles with explosive charges, which they hope will help them clear mines and booby traps from lines of trees along the edges of fields so that they can advance and dig in.
One of his men questioned why they would seek to advance on foot given that the West provided armor for protection.
Kharchenko said they don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the Russians in the early days of the invasion, when Ukraine chewed up column after column of Russian armored vehicles.
Ukraine has been targeting ammunition stores and command posts with Himars rocket artillery and long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles. The Storm Shadows can strike farther but are expensive and in shorter supply, while the U.S. has so
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IF
Quote:
Ukraine Adopts Slow Approach to Counteroffensive: ‘Our Problem Everywhere Is the Sky’
then why...
Quote:
US Pressuring Ukraine For 'Decisive Breakthrough' & More Aggressive Tactics: WaPo
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/us-pressuring-ukraine-decisive-brea
kthrough-more-aggressive-tactics-wapo
Original article at
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/18/ukraine-co
unter-offensive-weapons-tactics/
???
Do SOME parts of the administration want Kiev to commit suicide faster, and get this constant drain of money, weapons, and stream of bad news over with ASAP so the Ukrainian clusterfuck can be memory-holed in time for campaign season?
I can't see any reason for wanting Kiev to repeat their clumsy "combined arms" offensive. All it did was get a lot of soldiers killed and Leopards and Bradleys destroyed. It didn't work last time and won't work this time.
Furthermore, sending even light infantry against well-constructed defenses may be saving their armored vehicles, but it's still getting a lot of soldiers killed. True, it negates Russia's artillery advantage... why shell a small group of foot soldiers? ...but Russia has plenty of anti-personnel weapons (which IMHO they're testing to see which weapons are most effective and cost-effective, ie TOS1 thermobaric bombs, anti-personnel mines, infantry, and now cluster munitions)
As I see it, Kiev really has only one option: insurgency warfare.
Given the political situation, the worst thing (for Russia) that Kiev can do is go on the defensive and make Russia go on the offensive.
I think Russia, for its part, would benefit from drawing this out all the way thru next summer, creating the greatest political and economic instability in the EU and USA.
This is not in our interest!
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
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Comrade signym, your sources suck.
T 
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG: Comrade signym, your sources suck.
SECOND'S source, WSJ, sucks?
My source, Washington Post, sucks??
Good to know!
That means I can safely ignore them!
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Loving America is like loving an addicted spouse - SIGNYM
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to display his knowledge of Russian history at odd moments, this time appearing to warn against the possibility of revolution in Russia. Putin stated on July 19 that Russia already exceeded its “limit on revolutions in the last century” in response to the mention of the Mayevka tourism event that took place in May.[40] Mayevka was an illegal meeting of revolutionary-minded workers held outside of Moscow during the Tsarist period, but the word can also be associated with the arrival of spring.[41] Putin additionally stated that he hoped that the tourism Mayevka event would not “lead to a revolution.” Putin had previously made a seemingly unrelated and unprompted allusion to Russian history at a public engagement in October 2022 when he spoke about the causes of the 18th Century Pugachev Rebellion, observing that it began because the center appeared weak and because someone decided that he was tsar – an observation that has since appeared to have been apropos.[42]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-19-2023
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 cut a deal to save his skin
The failed Wagner insurrection has put Russian President Vladimir Putin "under pressure'' and exposed the "inexorable decay" of his power, the head of British intelligence said Wednesday.
At a rare public address in Prague hosted by Politico, MI6 chief Richard Moore said Putin's support among the Russian elite is crumbling and pointed out the usually ruthless autocrat did not confront Prigozhin - a former ally who had betrayed him - and instead "cut a deal to save his skin.''
“Prigozhin started off that day as a traitor at breakfast, he had been pardoned by supper and then a few days later he was invited for tea,” Moore said. “So there are some things that even the chief of MI6 finds a little bit difficult to try and interpret, in terms of who’s in and who’s out.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/007-things-the-chief-of-mi6-told-polit
ico/
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 second:
Putin cut a deal to save his skin
The failed Wagner insurrection has put Russian President Vladimir Putin "under pressure'' and exposed the "inexorable decay" of his power, the head of British intelligence said Wednesday.
At a rare public address in Prague hosted by Politico, MI6 chief Richard Moore said Putin's support among the Russian elite is crumbling and pointed out the usually ruthless autocrat did not confront Prigozhin - a former ally who had betrayed him - and instead "cut a deal to save his skin.''
“Prigozhin started off that day as a traitor at breakfast, he had been pardoned by supper and then a few days later he was invited for tea,” Moore said. “So there are some things that even the chief of MI6 finds a little bit difficult to try and interpret, in terms of who’s in and who’s out.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/007-things-the-chief-of-mi6-told-polit
ico/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
lol
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How you do anything is how you do everything.
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