Real World Event Discussions

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
PAGE 458 of 1104

THG
Wednesday, August 23, 2023 6:59 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
*YAWN!*

Ukraine will prove to you how 'smart' Biden* is.


SECOND: This is what fools say when they have no real purpose or direction for their life: "We must keep doing what we have always done."

And that is exactly what Biden* is doing. And what YOU are doing!

Russia has changed.
Biden*, and YOU.... have not.
Reality really is too much for you!


PS: Ukraine will prove how 'smart' you are.





Ukraine blows up five jets ‘deep within Russian territory’

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ukraine-blows-up-five-jets-deep-w
ithin-russian-territory/ar-AA1fD9CF?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=ef7eb2a1f5c44471807d0be87346b166&ei=20




T

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Wednesday, August 23, 2023 11:45 AM

If it's not on military summary channel I don't believe it. And even then, given their pro-Ukrainian bias (and their willingness to report unverfied Ukrainian successes) not even necessarily then either.

-----------
"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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Wednesday, August 23, 2023 6:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
If it's not on military summary channel I don't believe it.

You will like this news. The Ukrainians don't know any better than the Russians about successful military strategies:

Ukraine’s Forces and Firepower Are Misallocated, U.S. Officials Say

Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff

American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south.

Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive is struggling to break through entrenched Russian defenses in large part because it has too many troops, including some of its best combat units, in the wrong places, American and other Western officials say.

The main goal of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by severing the so-called land bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. But instead of focusing on that, Ukrainian commanders have divided troops and firepower roughly equally between the east and the south, the U.S. officials said.

As a result, more Ukrainian forces are near Bakhmut and other cities in the east than are near Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south, both far more strategically significant fronts, officials say.

American planners have advised Ukraine to concentrate on the front driving toward Melitopol, Kyiv’s top priority, and on punching through Russian minefields and other defenses, even if the Ukrainians lose more soldiers and equipment in the process.

Only with a change of tactics and a dramatic move can the tempo of the counteroffensive change, said one U.S. official, who like the other half a dozen Western officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Another U.S. official said the Ukrainians were too spread out and needed to consolidate their combat power in one place.

Nearly three months into the counteroffensive, the Ukrainians may be taking the advice to heart, especially as casualties continue to mount and Russia still holds an edge in troops and equipment.

In a video teleconference on Aug. 10, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; his British counterpart, Adm. Sir Tony Radakin; and Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander in Europe, urged Ukraine’s most senior military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, to focus on one main front. And, according to two officials briefed on the call, General Zaluzhnyi agreed.

Admiral Radakin’s role has been especially important and not widely appreciated until now, the officials said. General Milley speaks to General Zaluzhnyi every week or so about strategy and Ukrainian military needs. But the Biden administration has prohibited senior U.S. officers from visiting Ukraine for security reasons and to avoid increasing tensions with Moscow. Britain, however, has imposed no such constraints, and Admiral Radakin, a polished officer who served three tours in Iraq, has developed close ties with his Ukrainian counterpart during multiple trips to the country.

American officials say there are indications that Ukraine has started to shift some of its more seasoned combat forces from the east to the south. But even the most experienced units have been reconstituted a number of times after taking heavy casualties. These units rely on a shrinking cadre of senior commanders. Some platoons are mostly staffed by soldiers who have been wounded and returned to fight.

Ukraine has penetrated at least one layer of Russian defenses in the south in recent days and is increasing the pressure, U.S. and Ukrainian officials said. It is close to taking control of Robotyne, a village in the south that is near the next line of Russian defenses. Taking the village, American officials said, would be a good sign.

A spokesman for the Ukrainian military did not respond to text messages or phone calls on Tuesday.

But some analysts say the progress may be too little too late. The fighting is taking plac

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Wednesday, August 23, 2023 10:44 PM

SECOND: I don't even need to read your articles. Just by tracking headlines I can tell you that

The "counteroffensive" isn't meeting America's objectives (regime change in Russia, Crimea)
The "counteroffensive" isn't meeting Kiev's objective (Donbas)
The Biden* administration hasn't figured out a way to win, negotiate, or call a ceasefire by summer 2024
The CIA is saying "we told you so"
Milley is saying "I told you so" (which he did, but he has also said that victory is possible)
This is the Biden* administration throwing Zelenskiy under the bus
And Zelenskiy throwing Zaluzhny and possibly Reznikov under the bus

The only thing left to figure out is "What will Russia do?" bc Russia is controlling the war. Unless the neocons, in their desperation (and there are still crazies in State Dept and WH) resort to nukes or open NATO involvement, in which case all hell breaks loose.

*****

OK, scanning into your article a bit: I'm puzzled by the neocons' projected timing. They seem to think that Ukraine will advance thru the mud of the fall rainy season, and psuse for the winter, when the ground is frozen and trundling heavy weapons around is possible? And they also seem to think that RUSSIA will pause for the winter, and give Ukraine a chance to re-arm?

Isn't this bass-akwards from what we've been told before? That the spring thaw and autumn rains make moving across the landscape impossible? That the best time for an offensive is in the summer or early fall, when the trees are in full leaf and the ground is relatively dry, and the second-best time for an offensive is the winter, when the ground is frozen?


This whole concept of a winter "pause" ... isn't that just wishful thinking on the neocons' part? Bc I can't imagine why Russia would need to pause, altho I can see that Ukraine might run out of ... everything ... by then.

-----------
"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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Wednesday, August 23, 2023 11:37 PM

OK, a point-by-point rebuttal

Quote:

You will like this news. The Ukrainians don't know any better than the Russians about successful military strategies:

Ukraine’s Forces and Firepower Are Misallocated, U.S. Officials Say

Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff

American strategists say Ukraine’s troops are too spread out and need to concentrate along the counteroffensive’s main front in the south.

Bc America's objective has been, and always will be, Crimea and control of the Black Sea. Nevermind what Ukrainians want. Since we're supplying the weapons and money they need to fight for OUR objectives.

Quote:

Ukraine’s grinding counteroffensive is struggling to break through entrenched Russian defenses in large part because it has too many troops, including some of its best combat units, in the wrong places, American and other Western officials say.

The NATO's main goal of the counteroffensive is to cut off Russian supply lines in southern Ukraine by severing the so-called land bridge between Russia and the occupied Crimean Peninsula. But instead of focusing on that, Ukrainian commanders have divided troops and firepower roughly equally between the east and the south, the U.S. officials said.

As a result, more Ukrainian forces are near Bakhmut and other cities in the east than are near Melitopol and Berdiansk in the south, both far more strategically significant fronts, officials say.

True. About half of Ukraine's army is still near Bakhmut.

Quote:

American planners have advised Ukraine to concentrate on the front driving toward Melitopol, Kyiv’s NATO's top priority, and on punching through Russian minefields and other defenses, even if the Ukrainians lose more soldiers and equipment in the process.

Only with a change of tactics and a dramatic move can the tempo of the counteroffensive change, said one U.S. official, who like the other half a dozen Western officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Another U.S. official said the Ukrainians were too spread out and needed to consolidate their combat power in one place.

Er... there must be an optimum concentration of forces in there somewhere. Because TOO concentrated ... as in the mad "combined arms" rush in early June... only paints a big giant bulls-eye on your forces. But too scattered, and you don't have enough firepower to count. I see Ukraine see-sawing between the supposed "combined arms offensive" American model that led to mass killing and destruction of weapons, and "penny packet" attacks that don't go anywhere. Between might and speed (82nd brigade).

But, yanno, it's quite possible that there is NO successful configuration on Ukraine's part. If you're outranged and outgunned in every dimension, it doesn't matter HOW you arrange your forces.

Quote:

Nearly three months into the counteroffensive, the Ukrainians may be taking the advice to heart, especially as casualties continue to mount and Russia still holds an edge in troops and equipment.
Unless .... and even if ... neocons resort to nuke, chemical warfare, biowarfare, or anything beyond conventional warfare, I suspect Russia will ALWAYS hold an edge in troops and equipment.

BTW, SECOND - if Russia had planned all along to nuke everything, do you think they would have equipped themselves so diligently to fight a conventional war?

Quote:

In a video teleconference on Aug. 10, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; his British counterpart, Adm. Sir Tony Radakin; and Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander in Europe, urged Ukraine’s most senior military commander, Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, to focus on one main front. And, according to two officials briefed on the call, General Zaluzhnyi agreed.

Admiral Radakin’s role has been espec

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Thursday, August 24, 2023 1:16 AM

A while back I watched a TV show with a plot point that featured a government agency bringing down an airplane just to kill a single person on board. Has fiction turned into real life today near Moscow?

Reuters has reported that the Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a private jet that crashed north of Moscow on Wednesday, the TASS news agency reported, citing Rosaviatsia, Russia’s aviation authority.

....The cause of the crash was not immediately clear, but Prigozhin’s longstanding feud with the military and the armed uprising he led in June would give ample motive to the Russian state for revenge. Media channels linked to Wagner quickly suggested that a Russian air defence missile had shot down the plane.

....The plane has been under US sanctions since 2019 because of its connection to Prigozhin. The Wagner chief has been reported to have used the plane, including shortly after his failed mutiny, when the plane departed from St Petersburg to Belarus on the morning of 27 June.

The air defense missile theory is just a rumor at this point, but who knows? It's hardly unthinkable that Vladimir Putin would do something like this. It's the kind of thing that happens when you launch a military coup in Russia, even if you call it off and apologize afterward. All ten people aboard the plane were killed.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/aug/23/russia-ukraine-war-
live-updates-drones-downed-moscow


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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Thursday, August 24, 2023 2:18 AM

I saw video, the jet was coming straight down, like a stone, trailing a vapor cloud or white smoke. No forward momentum at all. Almost as if the elevators were screwed up and the jet was diving.

Very strange. I'm sure it means something but I don't know what. More claims and counter claims will follow, and maybe in the hash there will be some info.

*****

Ukraine has dedicated itself to capturing Rabotino, and has been trying sucks June 5. They threw the 82nd and a couple of infantry brigades into the fray, and will probably take Rabotino by tomorrow, Ukraine independence day.

That takes the sting away from Ukraine planning a cemetary for 600,000 and announcing a 200,000 mobilization. (Most people say the real goal is 400,000 but he doesn't want people running away to other countries.)

-----------
"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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Thursday, August 24, 2023 6:57 AM

One in Five of Russian Air Force Losses During War Self-Inflicted
By Ellie Cook, 8/23/23

Between February 24, 2022, when Moscow's troops crossed over into Ukraine, and August 17, 2023, 21.7 percent—or one in five—of Russia's verified manned aircraft losses, which includes jets, helicopters and transport aircraft, were blamed on Russian system malfunctions, pilot errors, friendly fire or other accidents not related to direct combat against Ukraine.

High Russian aircraft losses during training or non-combat missions can be chalked up to several factors, experts suggest, not least Russia's oversights in maintaining its aircraft, investing time in training pilots to a high standard and being rigorous about safety procedures.

As of August 17, 2023, at least 48 units were lost independent of Ukrainian operations. These include seven Su-25 jets, four MiG-31 supersonic interceptors and three of Russia's prized scout-attack Ka-52 "Alligator" helicopters.

At least 48 of the 221 verified manned aviation losses were not-combat related, or were otherwise self-inflicted, which amounts to around 21.7 percent, or approximately one in five. That includes 26.7 percent of all fighter jets and other types of planes lost in the period in question, and 17.5 percent of the helicopter losses.

While these numbers are by no means exhaustive, with further unreported losses, both combat and non-combat, likely to emerge (and some may never be revealed), they still offer a damning assessment of the current state of Russia's air force.

Why Do Russian Aircraft Keep Crashing?

Accidents during training are normal and expected, but a competent air force will try to minimize these often-fatal accidents, said Frederik Mertens, a strategic analyst with the Hague Center for Strategic Studies (HCSS). "Russia lacks experienced pilots," he told Newsweek.

Poor basic training pre-dated Moscow's war effort. In February 2022, Russia had many more jets than truly experienced pilots, with the less experienced contingent having around half the flying time usually designated for pilots in NATO air forces, Mertens said. Training aircraft before the war also left much to be desired.

The intensity of the air operations and the scale of Russian losses have forced Moscow to deploy its instructors on combat missions.

"This both limits the time these pilot trainers have to train other pilots and exposes your trainers to losses," Mertens said.

This has a knock-on effect. The Russian air force needs to recruit more pilots, but there are fewer instructors to teach them.

The problems also extend to the aircraft, which Mertens said were poorly maintained, and have questionable safety precautions. On top of scant training, this adds to the reasons why Russian self-inflicted losses are a significant proportion of their downed aircraft.

More at https://www.newsweek.com/russia-air-force-fighter-jets-helicopters-ukr
aine-war-1820623


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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Thursday, August 24, 2023 7:08 AM

Prigozhin’s Death Heralds Even More Spectacular Violence

by Anne Applebaum, Updated at 8:20 p.m. ET on August 23, 2023

What will others in the Russian president’s circle do now?

Vladimir Putin’s Russia has long been a land of mysterious deaths. In 1998, soon after he had been appointed head of the security services, Galina Starovoitova, a parliamentarian who believed in bringing democracy to Russia, was gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment building in St. Petersburg. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who had learned too much about the Chechen wars that Putin used to propel himself to power, met the same fate in the stairwell of her apartment building in Moscow. In 2015, Boris Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of Putin’s presidency, was killed by an assassin only steps away from the Kremlin. Other critics barely survived. In 2020, Alexei Navalny, organizer of the only truly national anti-Putin political movement, fell critically ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow after being poisoned.

All of these victims were Putin’s formal opponents, people who spoke or wrote in opposition to the kleptocracy he built. Since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a different class of victims—members of the Russian business elite who were perhaps insufficiently loyal or insufficiently keen on the war—have also begun to die in strange circumstances. In the year and a half that has passed since February 2022, two gas-industry executives were found dead with suicide notes. Three Russian executives were killed, alongside their wives and children, in what appeared to be murder-suicides. The body of the owner of a resort in Sochi was discovered at the bottom of a cliff. Another executive was found floating in a pool in St. Petersburg. Others have fallen out of windows or down staircases in Moscow, India, the French Riviera, and Washington, D.C.

Still, even on the very long list of people who have been shot, hanged, poisoned, or subjected to lethal accidents because they somehow got in Putin’s way, Yevgeny Prigozhin stands out. Prigozhin’s private plane mysteriously fell from the sky this afternoon, following an explosion of what seems to be either a bomb or a rocket. Russian authorities reported that Prigozhin was on the passenger list, although Western intelligence agencies could not immediately confirm he had boarded the plane. Either way, someone took down the plane, and that someone could only have acted on Putin’s orders, or at least in anticipation of such orders (Will no one rid me of this turbulent mercenary?). But Prigozhin wasn’t an opponent of Putin; he helped create Putin. He wasn’t a critic of Putin’s kleptocracy; he built the Wagner mercenary group, which supported African and Middle Eastern dictators and exploited diamond mines on behalf of Moscow too. He also ran the Internet Research Agency, the organization that used hacking, leaking, and social media to help elect Donald Trump.

Prigozhin was no opponent of the current war either. His men, and the convicts they recruited, fought the long, bitter battle of Bakhmut, achieving the only significant Russian victory in Ukraine so far this year. Thousands of Russian soldiers, maybe tens of thousands, died in that struggle, thanks to military tactics so wasteful of human life that they are described by the Russians themselves as the “meat grinder.” Along the way, Prigozhin did begin to have some doubts about how the war was being fought, and maybe about the true motives of some of those leading the battle. As a result, he dared to challenge the Russian army leadership, and thus the Russian president, in a bizarre and largely unopposed march into the military headquarters of the city of Rostov-on-Don, and then nearly all the way to Moscow, exactly 60 days ago.

So, yes, this is another mysterious death, but it is a new kind of mysterious death. With this plane crash, the violence on the periphery of Russia’s empire has now migrated to its very heart. Putin’s rule has always been maintained by a heady combination of opportunism, bribery, an

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Thursday, August 24, 2023 7:46 AM

Ukraine used 3% of US defense budget to destroy half of Russian army — Lindsey Graham

August 23, 2023, 04:35 PM

"This is the best investment for American security ever; Ukraine is a fantastic partner — we have not seen such a partner since Churchill," the senator said.

The Washington Post reported that the total amount of aid provided by Washington to Ukraine now exceeds $66 billion.

https://english.nv.ua/nation/ukraine-used-3-of-us-defense-budget-to-de
stroy-half-of-russian-army-war-news-50348574.html


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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