Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
PAGE 556 of 1104
Iskander on descent (R) v Kinzhal (L).
If it's not glowing on the way down, it's not a Kinzhal.
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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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NATO Hits Only One of Two Major Spending Targets
Jan 10, 2024 at 3:00 AM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/nato-hits-major-equipment-target-2024-2014-su
mmit-20-percent-1859101
The fierce backbiting of the alliance's "brain death" era—as described by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019—is generally in the rear view mirror.
Allied leaders agreed on two key 10-year spending targets at the Wales summit in September 2014. By 2024, they said, members would "move towards" or beyond spending 2 percent of GDP on their militaries, while committing 20 percent of annual defense spending to major new equipment and related research and development.
As the deadline approaches, the picture is mixed. The majority of NATO nations have still not reached the 2 percent threshold, much to the chagrin of those who have. NATO estimated that as of July 2023, all 31 member states had surpassed the 20 percent spending target; seemingly a big win for a bloc so often consumed by expenditure disputes.
"If you take the technical way of looking at those targets, 20 percent is as important as 2 percent," Fabrice Pothier, a former director of policy planning for NATO, told Newsweek. "It's not just about how much you spend, it's where you spend it." (If 80 percent of spending goes to pensions, NATO is not buying defense. Rather its spending is a social welfare program.)
But even amid success, tough questions remain. "Where do you put this 20 percent?" Pothier asked. "Do you put it in developing some Europe-grown technologies like in air defense? This is what the French would like to do, to fill one of the biggest gaps in the NATO, and especially European, defense toolbox."
"Or do you go more for existing technology like the U.S. Patriot system and the Israeli systems, which is what Germany is proposing?"
"These debates, which can be quite technical, can become very political," he added. "If the two main European military powers go in different directions about where they want to put their money, you're not going to build that defense industrial base for certain technologies—like air defense systems—that will be robust enough to actually create the kind of mass of production that you need."
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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Nearly 50 Nations Say Russia Must 'Cease' Accepting Weapons From North Korea
Nearly 50 countries released a joint statement on Tuesday condemning the relationship between North Korea and Russia after Russia launched North Korean ballistic missiles at Ukraine at least twice in recent weeks.
https://www.state.gov/joint-statement-on-dprk-russia-ballistic-missile
-transfers/
The statement — issued by the State Department — called on Russia and North Korea to “immediately cease all activities that violate” the three United Nations Security Council resolutions it said the countries are violating through their arms transfers, one of which explicitly bans the transfer of arms with North Korea.
https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/s/res/1718-%282006%29
I'm sure Russia won't change despite the stern words of these statements, but if the message was also attached to a highly explosive device delivered to Putin, that might motivate change. When Putin reads "We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK) export and Russia’s procurement of DPRK ballistic missiles" Putin starts laughing when he gets to the words "strongest possible terms" and never finishes reading even to end of that sentence.
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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How Ukraine Must Change If It Wants to Win
A beleaguered country needs more than volunteerism and chutzpah to protect its version of democracy.
By Anne Applebaum | January 9, 2024, 8:30 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/rustem-umerov-defens
e-minister-ukraine/677060/
On December 29, Russia launched the largest missile attack against Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. On January 2, another attack of the same magnitude hit schools, hospitals, and apartment blocks across Ukraine. Early yesterday morning—the day after Orthodox Christmas—the Russians hurled yet another missile barrage at Ukraine. Together, these attacks sent a message: Russian President Vladimir Putin is not interested in negotiations, cease-fires, or swapping land for peace. Although he cannot overwhelm Ukraine militarily, Putin now believes that he can keep up the pressure, destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, wait for Ukraine’s allies to grow tired, goad the Ukrainian public into turning against the government, and then win by default.
Often, this new phase of fighting is described as a “war of attrition,” as if the only thing that will determine the outcome is the number of bullets. But although the number of bullets does matter, the war has an important narrative and psychological component too. Alongside the bombings, Kremlin officials are now telegraphing to everyone—to Western politicians and journalists, to Ukraine, to the Russian people—that they can absorb 300,000 casualties and massive equipment losses, that their country’s economy is thriving, that they are willing to devote half of the national budget to defense production indefinitely. At the same time, the Russians and their supporters in the United States and Europe describe Ukraine as corrupt, politically divided, and, above all, certain to lose. In Washington, some Republicans justify their (so far) successful attempt to block American aid to Ukraine by using this language. Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who courts investment from Russia and China, does the same when blocking European aid.
Ukrainians know that negotiations with Russia are fruitless, and in any case not on offer. They also know that military loss still means the same thing that it meant when Russia invaded in February 2022: occupation, mass repression, concentration camps, and the end of an independent Ukraine. They also know that the Russians are much weaker than they claim. Their soldiers still stumble into traps; their commanders still seem to be improvising. The Russian public is tired of the war and of the falling living standards it has created. Nevertheless, to beat the Russians militarily and psychologically, to undermine the Russian propaganda repeated by Orbán and the MAGA right, to maintain their alliances and defend their territory until the Russians have had enough, they have to change.
Two years ago, in the weeks that followed the full-scale invasion, ordinary people pitched in to buy night-vision goggles, the managers of chic bistros mobilized to feed troops, men drove their children to the border and then went home to fight in the territorial army. Now the volunteerism, chutzpah, and wild energy that carried the army and the society forward for the past two years have to be transformed into systems, institutions, and rules. Ukraine needs not just the most enthusiastic army, but the best-managed. Ukraine needs not just clever engineers who build innovative sea drones, but the most modern defense industry in Europe, if not the world. Finally, Ukraine’s government needs to eliminate any remaining corruption and mismanagement—and convince its allies that it has done so as well.
I did not invent these recommendations. I heard them in Kyiv, late last month, from Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s new defense minister.
To outsiders, Umerov might seem an odd choice for this job. Born in 1982 in Uzbekistan because Stalin had sent Umerov’s Crimean Tatar family into exile there in 1944, Umerov returned to Crimea with his parents on
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It amazes how many lies Anne Apolebaum works into each para
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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:Since the article was by Anne Applebaum, not Apolebaum, you have photophobia. But I've always been convinced you and the Russians were from the Mirror Universe of Star Trek where characters are aggressive, mistrustful and opportunistic in personality.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It amazes how many lies Anne Apolebaum works into each para
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Universe#Characteristics
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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Just wanted to give you a little update since you obsess over my expenses buddy...
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I understand your position since you can't afford to fix your house because wood is outrageously expensive.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
There is a Path to Victory in Ukraine
The Delusions and Dangers of Defeatist Voices in the West
By Dmytro Kuleba | December 14, 2023
It was almost two years ago that Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
And here we are, still talking about the war that nobody cares about.
Sure. Let's send them another $150 Billion, Joe*.
Fuck Ukraine.
Yes. Wood is outrageously expensive because of Bidenflation.
I can afford it. I choose not to pay that much for it. I haven't worked in 4 1/2 years and I've got plenty of money left because I never buy anything on credit and I bide my time and wait for the sale or clearance. That's how I got $2,000 of pre-Bidenflation baseboard and trim to do my entire house for $125.
It will get done. Just not at this price.Quote:
You can't pay your taxes, either, but fortunately, you don't have any income to tax.
Sure I can. I just wasn't going to pay more than my share and I got them to drop my property taxes by nearly $800 per year, and that will be every year going forward too.
Funny though... They didn't get around to filing the paperwork on time so I had to pay their full amount and I won't be reimbursed until about 2 months before the next bill is due. But the point is I had the money to pay for it.
And you're right. I don't have any income tax.
How was work today, bitch?Quote:
Meanwhile, Biden is sending the equivalent of 3% of the Pentagon's budget to Ukraine so that the other 97% isn't another year of complete waste with nothing to show for it.
$150 Billion.
I lived on $7,000 this year.
If everybody knew how to use money like I do, 21,428,571 Americans could have paid for everything they needed to live off of that money sent to Ukraine.
Or... I could have lived 21,428,571 years off of that money.
We've had 3 years of nothing to show for anything under the Biden* Administration. Including Ukraine not winning a war that it's never going to win.
I just bought ten 6' Oak closet poles for the job. Normal price is $22.98 per rod. They were on sale for $19.99 and there is a no-limit $10 rebate per rod.
So normal price with tax would have been $245.87.
Because I waited patiently for 27 days for a sale I knew would pop up eventually, my price after rebate is now going to be $113.98, and whatever I buy in the future with the $100.00 rebate card I get in the mail 10 weeks from now gets the sales tax taken off of it too, so it really in essence only cost me $106.98 for $245.87 worth of wood because I didn't run out on December 14th and buy it like you would have.
That's a 56.49% savings and all it cost me was 27 days more waiting on a job that I've been wanting to get done for 12 years now anyhow.
SPOILER ALERT: Even before Joe Biden* sat in that chair the first day it would have cost me a lot more than $106.98 for all that wood if I'd paid full asking price for it when Trump was still President.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:6ix, I also include you, along with Signym, Russians, Nazis, and Texas Trumptards in general, as menaces from Star Trek's Mirror Universe. Your lives are woeful because you are in the wrong universe. Once that is widely known, your troubles will double until you return to the mirror. (The Mirror Universe plans to conquer this universe but fails. That's your role. Strife. Defeat. Repeat. Forever.)
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
SPOILER ALERT: Even before Joe Biden* sat in that chair the first day it would have cost me a lot more than $106.98 for all that wood if I'd paid full asking price for it when Trump was still President.
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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Not at all a legitimate reply to my post.
Ignored, just as anything you ever post should be.
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Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.
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Quote:You act like someone who shamefully crossed over from Star Trek's Mirror Universe. 6ix, you, Signym, and the Russians lived in a perverse version of reality and you hate this version that doesn't need you. You cry that you are the good guys in the original universe and that if you got your way here, all would be well but what you have accomplished so far on your mission is making life worse.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Not at all a legitimate reply to my post.
Ignored, just as anything you ever post should be.
Here are the Russians comparing their Mirror Universe version of WWII to their version of the Ukrainian War's events:
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, January 10, 2024
The Kremlin’s effort to use the mythos of the Great Patriotic War (Second World War) to prepare the Russian public for a long war in Ukraine is at odds with Russia’s current level of mobilization and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetorical attempts to reassure Russians that the war will not have lasting domestic impacts.
St. Petersburg outlet Fontanka published an interview with Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Andrei Kartapolov on January 9 wherein Kartapolov stated that even in the “victorious years of 1944 to 1945” the Soviet forces faced difficulties, prompting the interviewer to ask Kartapolov if Russia was now figuratively in 1944-1945 (i.e. nearing the end of the war in Ukraine).[1] Kartapolov attempted to expand the erroneous analogy between the Soviets’ fight against Nazi Germany and Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by claiming that Russia is currently figuratively somewhere in December 1943 and moving into 1944.[2] The Soviet military launched a series of successful offensive operations following its defensive victory at the battle of Kursk in July 1943 and by December 1943 had reached the banks of the Dnipro River and Kyiv in Ukraine. Kartapolov explained his logic by claiming that Ukrainian forces failed in the summer 2023 counteroffensive in Zaporizhia Oblast in a way similar to Nazi Germany’s losses in battles in 1943.[3] Kartapolov’s analogy makes little sense, particularly given the fact that the Russian forces have not gained notable ground in recent months as the Soviet forces did in the months before December 1943.[4] The interviewer asked Kartapolov if his analogy suggests that Russia’s war in Ukraine will end in 2024, forcing Kartapolov to admit that Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Second World War cannot be literally compared.[5] Kartapolov nevertheless continued to use allusions to the Second World War to claim that the Russian military would continue the war in Ukraine until it installed a “banner over the Reichstag” (i.e. complete victory in Ukraine that achieves all of Putin’s maximalist objectives).[6]
Kartapolov also alluded to the Second World War in response to a question about demobilization for Russian servicemen called up during Russia’s partial mobilization by arguing that mobilized Soviet personnel did not go home in 1942 just because they had been fighting for a year.[7] Kartapolov characterized Russian calls for demobilization as part of operations by Ukrainian and Western intelligence services.[8] The interviewer pushed back against Kartapolov’s allusion and stated that the entire Soviet Union was mobilized during the Second World War whereas only one percent of the Russian population is mobilized today (likely referencing Putin’s December 1 decree alleging that the Russian military has a total of 2.039 million personnel, 1.32 million of whom are combat personnel on a population of roughly 145 million).[9] The interviewer argued that either Russian officials should mobilize the entire country or mobilized personnel unwilling to sign contracts should be able to conclude their military service.[10] Kartapolov responded by reiterating the Kremlin’s rhetorical line that there is no need for general mobilization now or in the near future.[11]
This exchange prominently highlights the disconnect between Russian force generati
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