Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The corruption in Ukraine (thanks to the US taxpayer) is mindboggling...

That's Russian propaganda. Don't be fooled.

There is and always was corruption.
Just like in any post Soviet country.
Emphasizing it is propaganda but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://twitter.com/mylordbebo/status/1680850601779900416/mediaviewer

Even Eric Schmidt on Zakaria — pro Ukraine slant people - are waking up that the “counteroffensive” is a nothing burger

Unless we see something significant by September, prepare for another ten years of stalemate.

I can't see Putin withdrawing fully any time soon with NATO now essentially saying yes to Ukraine.

Nothingburger? Stalemate? You're looking in all the wrong places.

Look carefully at this video. It was taken outside of Soledar near the salt mine. There is only one place near Soledar with railroad tracks, which is parallel to T0513. At [2:40 / 6:17] one of the reporters was shot. It looks like the Russians in Bakhmut will be surrounded soon?

https://www.1tv.ru/news/2023-01-20/445679-s_emochnaya_gruppa_pervogo_kanala_i_drugie_zhurnalisty_popali_pod_obstrel_pod_soledarom

The bridge attack will also do much to bog down Russian logistics.



I don't think Putin can last 10 years. I'm betting on two. It's not a military 'win' thing, it's a 'domestic turmoil' thing. There's just too much churn inside Russia.

The internal Russian witch hunt fallout from Wagner seems to be turning the Ministry of Foreign Affairs against the Ministry of Internal Affairs? The only reason why they'd do something like this is if Internal Affairs wasn't reporting who had foreign passports or residence permits.

"The Minister of Foreign Affairs published a draft order, according to which citizens of the Russian Federation who have received a residence permit or citizenship of another country will be required to notify Russian embassies and consulates within 60 days. Previously it was necessary to notify only the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and only if the Russian came to the Federation. Since 2014 there has been an article in the criminal code according to which untimely notification is punished by Correctional Labor."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI7iyttNSvo

I believe this information would be useful for only one reason - 'house-cleaning' - e.g. house-by-house sweeps of 'disloyal' Russian families. (e.g. "the family member of an Enemy of the State"). Hilter learned this tactic from Stalin's Cheka when he swept through the Jewish Polish slums in 1939; Röhm Purge, the “Night of the Long Knives." Hope I'm wrong.

The Russian propaganda is still in disarray. Russian's are not used to mixed messaging. It's like a whip and glove show.

Iron Beaver (Simonyan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKkOkt4NDAQ
"Why couldn't you live with us? What was so bad about it?"
"Who mistreated you? Who bothered you? Here is a question - why do they hate us so much? Why? Unlike them, we did not wage any wars of conquest. We didn't subjugate anyone, we didn't threaten anyone!"

Iron Maiden (Skabeeva): https://twitter.com/VladaKnowlton/status/1665240710038327296
"The Ukrainian question has to be solved once and for all. What comes to mind right now, I will say it again, is to destroy every living thing in the Kharkiv region as a punishment and as a deterrent."

They are not required to notify of another citizenship! They MAY if they want to.
The requirement exists too but only if you arrive in Russia, stay there long enough and are a resident (which isn’t defined in this case but there are interpretations). Many people don’t report and don’t get in trouble, and the law was in existence for a few years now.

What I am saying is that you have no understanding of how the sausage is made in Russia.
There will be no internal turmoil.
Putin will die in 5-10 years and that’s the only hope. It will take about the same time as russia being economically incapacitated enough which is another hope.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The strike killed both parents of a 14-year old girl who is currently in intensive care with a skull injury.

Which begs the question. Are there situations where terrorism (and that’s what the bridge attack essentially is) is justified?
I think Ukraine has been doing extremely well in the PR war so far. Yet this is something that might (or might not?) harm their image of an innocent victim of a brutal attack of a big bad wolf. Or is anything that hurts the bad guy justified?

This was not terrorism. Russia invaded Ukraine. The Kerch bridge is used by Russia to supply its occupying troops in Crimea. It is very much a legitimate military target. Have you said a word about the thousands of Ukrainian civilians that Russia has deliberately murdered?

I thought we already agreed Russia is a bad, bad guy.
I am more interested in Ukrainian tactic. I have a feeling the world will agree with you. It’s ok to kill civilians if they are from the bad bad country.

Nobody (or at least very few) is saying it's okay to kill civilians. I feel terrible for this girl. I feel terrible for all the kids that have been impacted by Putin's ego/idiocy. But this isn't terrorism. The bridge is a legitimate military target that Ukraine should continue to pound. Russia shouldn't be encouraging its citizens to vacation in a war zone.

My goal is not to argue or counter what you said; I am just interested in how this is painted to the world and perceived by an average US person. I know now.

Anonymous wrote:The corruption in Ukraine (thanks to the US taxpayer) is mindboggling...

That's Russian propaganda. Don't be fooled.

The ISW conflict maps show little change in over a year of controlled territory. That is over a year that Russia has maintained a 50 mile land bridge to Crimea, no shoreline for Ukraine east of Odessa.

Anonymous wrote:The corruption in Ukraine (thanks to the US taxpayer) is mindboggling...

Meh, no evidence of this story available from any credible source. This Twitter account (seems to be a Serbian) seems to post a lot of questionable stuff that hasn't panned out to be true, and only 0.3% of his followers are Ukrainian. https://fedica.com/!djuric_zlatko Ukrainians seem skeptical of him.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ratio of UKR to RUS KIA and tank loss is pretty bad right now.

I haven't seen any credible info showing Ukraine suffering bigger losses than Russia.

Russian troop and artillery losses have been significant. And at this point, Russia is already down to having fewer tanks and other pieces of equipment still functional than Ukraine does.

please explain how the Ukrainians with hundreds of thousands of men aged 15-60 or thereabouts are now faced with a shortage of manpower after more than a year of intense war?

Most of them are dead. Those who aren't have either fled or have connections.

Those are catastrophic numbers in a war that has turned into a quagmire of artillery, drones and missile warfare.

Suffices to say numbers are propaganda on all sides

Most of them are dead? That's quite a ridiculous assertion. Ukraine is a country of 43 million. "Most of them are dead" would mean MILLIONS dead. Please, check your propaganda and spin for reality.

You do mass mobilization of the young and middle aged win you winning bigly!! Press gang of youth means your military full of veterans!

NY times say that 20% of Ukraine armor gone and have yet reach 1st line of russian!

Bigtime winner. Ukraine about to beat nasty Putin today!

The Russian military has already cannibalized it's military academies of equipment and seasoned combat personnel, so the Russian candle is burning fast. 20% of Ukraine armor might be gone. Might not. But there will be more. And what will Russia have? Do tell..

Mass mobilization of the young and middle aged? What about those fleeing Russia? Or the Russians that now have to traverse the Ukrainian front lines to return home from vacation?

"After the first incident, authorities insisted that ordinary people had nothing to fear: (they claimed) that military dolphins, jellyfish, shrimp, and plankton are guarding the bridge around the clock,"
“Just yesterday, I was contemplating how foolish one must be to vacation in Crimea right now,”
“Well, the trip will certainly be memorable when they return home via the frontlines, while disrupting of our [Russian] military's logistics, absolute fools.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russians-appalled-suggested-routes-crimea-204200765.html

"Russian tourists - more than 9 million of whom visited in 2021"
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-tourists-flee-crimea-after-attack-landmark-bridge-2023-07-17/

Background: In 2022, Turkey used to be the primary go-to beach for 5M Russians. UAE, Abkhaziaand, and Egypt were runners up at around 1M visitors. Thailand, Maldives, Israel, Serbia, Dominican Republic and Sri Lanka were all less than 0.5 M visitors.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1149368/leading-outbound-travel-destinations-russia/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20Turkey%20was%20the,amounted%20to%20roughly%201.2%20million.

However, I'm pretty sure Crimea is one of the only options available for most Russians unable to afford a beach / water vacation or blocked from leaving Russian-influenced territory?

February article:
"Crackdown on ‘birth tourism’ as pregnant Russians flock to Argentina
This article is more than 5 months old"
"South American country has seen rise since Ukraine invasion in Russian women arriving to have children and thus gain citizenship"
"Some 10,500 pregnant Russians have arrived in the South American country in the past year"
“5,800 of them [were] in the last three months, many of them declaring they were in the 33rd or 34th week of pregnancy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/10/argentina-pregnant-russians-birth-tourism-crackdown

"Russian officials and employees of state-owned companies are increasingly being told to surrender their passports to members of the security services to ensure they cannot flee the country"
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/03/10/russian-officials-face-almost-total-foreign-travel-ban-a80448

How happy will Russians be year, after year, after year? And how will that unhappiness spread? Before, it was the "stans" and the "A's" but it's spreading.

"Reactions in Georgia have been mixed after Russia announced it was abolishing visas for Georgian nationals and lifting a ban on direct flights"
"Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 10 signed two decrees, one allowing Georgian nationals to enter Russia without visas starting from May 15, unless they are coming to work in Russia for more than 90 days. The second decree lifted a ban on direct flights by Russian airlines to Georgia that Moscow unilaterally imposed in 2019 after a wave of anti-Kremlin protests in Georgia."
"Hours after that announcement, Russia's Transport Ministry said Russian airlines would operate seven flights weekly between Moscow and Tbilisi. It said Russia wanted "to facilitate the conditions for communication and contacts."
https://www.rferl.org/a/georgia-russia-visas-direct-flights-relations/32407620.html

If this action by Russia doesn't make sense, 1. it's a way to put pressure on Georgia, and 2. look at this diagram:
https://www.euractiv.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/02/Ukraine-airspace-800x450.jpg

The corruption in Ukraine (thanks to the US taxpayer) is mindboggling...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ratio of UKR to RUS KIA and tank loss is pretty bad right now.

I haven't seen any credible info showing Ukraine suffering bigger losses than Russia.

Russian troop and artillery losses have been significant. And at this point, Russia is already down to having fewer tanks and other pieces of equipment still functional than Ukraine does.

please explain how the Ukrainians with hundreds of thousands of men aged 15-60 or thereabouts are now faced with a shortage of manpower after more than a year of intense war?

Most of them are dead. Those who aren't have either fled or have connections.

Those are catastrophic numbers in a war that has turned into a quagmire of artillery, drones and missile warfare.

Suffices to say numbers are propaganda on all sides

Most of them are dead? That's quite a ridiculous assertion. Ukraine is a country of 43 million. "Most of them are dead" would mean MILLIONS dead. Please, check your propaganda and spin for reality.

You do mass mobilization of the young and middle aged win you winning bigly!! Press gang of youth means your military full of veterans!

NY times say that 20% of Ukraine armor gone and have yet reach 1st line of russian!

Bigtime winner. Ukraine about to beat nasty Putin today!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://twitter.com/mylordbebo/status/1680850601779900416/mediaviewer

Even Eric Schmidt on Zakaria — pro Ukraine slant people - are waking up that the “counteroffensive” is a nothing burger

Unless we see something significant by September, prepare for another ten years of stalemate.

I can't see Putin withdrawing fully any time soon with NATO now essentially saying yes to Ukraine.

Ukraine is making progress, but they are being very strategic about it and are making cautious tactical choices. They continue to make numerous surgical strikes taking out Russian artillery (where Russia has one of its few remaining advantages) along with strikes to take out command and leadership, and to demoralize Russia. They are doing a great job with that.

But if you think all this should be going faster or want them to go charging full tilt with all their armor and infantry "LEEEEEEROY JENKINS" style into fields littered with thousands of Russian mines then you're either uninformed or foolish.

Even with improving capabilities... possibly (they got some new equipment, doesn't mean they are more effective or better fighters), it's pretty clear that the Ukrainians have challenges with capacity. So I don't expect anything to happen very quickly. A return to stalemate wouldn't seem to be that bad. Not that many people were dying prior to Putin's escalation.

Ukraine is being trained by experienced NATO trainers. They are turning out cohort after cohort. However, any Russians with military experience who could do any training are already fighting and dying on the front. Russia is running out of pilots, as one example - so even if they still have jets, there's not enough pilots to fly them. And there is report after report that many newly conscripted Russian troops are often just sent straight to the front without any training at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ratio of UKR to RUS KIA and tank loss is pretty bad right now.

I haven't seen any credible info showing Ukraine suffering bigger losses than Russia.

Russian troop and artillery losses have been significant. And at this point, Russia is already down to having fewer tanks and other pieces of equipment still functional than Ukraine does.

please explain how the Ukrainians with hundreds of thousands of men aged 15-60 or thereabouts are now faced with a shortage of manpower after more than a year of intense war?

Most of them are dead. Those who aren't have either fled or have connections.

Those are catastrophic numbers in a war that has turned into a quagmire of artillery, drones and missile warfare.

Suffices to say numbers are propaganda on all sides

Most of them are dead? That's quite a ridiculous assertion. Ukraine is a country of 43 million. "Most of them are dead" would mean MILLIONS dead. Please, check your propaganda and spin for reality.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://twitter.com/mylordbebo/status/1680850601779900416/mediaviewer

Even Eric Schmidt on Zakaria — pro Ukraine slant people - are waking up that the “counteroffensive” is a nothing burger

Unless we see something significant by September, prepare for another ten years of stalemate.

I can't see Putin withdrawing fully any time soon with NATO now essentially saying yes to Ukraine.

Nothingburger? Stalemate? You're looking in all the wrong places.

Look carefully at this video. It was taken outside of Soledar near the salt mine. There is only one place near Soledar with railroad tracks, which is parallel to T0513. At [2:40 / 6:17] one of the reporters was shot. It looks like the Russians in Bakhmut will be surrounded soon?

https://www.1tv.ru/news/2023-01-20/445679-s_emochnaya_gruppa_pervogo_kanala_i_drugie_zhurnalisty_popali_pod_obstrel_pod_soledarom

The bridge attack will also do much to bog down Russian logistics.



I don't think Putin can last 10 years. I'm betting on two. It's not a military 'win' thing, it's a 'domestic turmoil' thing. There's just too much churn inside Russia.

The internal Russian witch hunt fallout from Wagner seems to be turning the Ministry of Foreign Affairs against the Ministry of Internal Affairs? The only reason why they'd do something like this is if Internal Affairs wasn't reporting who had foreign passports or residence permits.

"The Minister of Foreign Affairs published a draft order, according to which citizens of the Russian Federation who have received a residence permit or citizenship of another country will be required to notify Russian embassies and consulates within 60 days. Previously it was necessary to notify only the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and only if the Russian came to the Federation. Since 2014 there has been an article in the criminal code according to which untimely notification is punished by Correctional Labor."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI7iyttNSvo

I believe this information would be useful for only one reason - 'house-cleaning' - e.g. house-by-house sweeps of 'disloyal' Russian families. (e.g. "the family member of an Enemy of the State"). Hilter learned this tactic from Stalin's Cheka when he swept through the Jewish Polish slums in 1939; Röhm Purge, the “Night of the Long Knives." Hope I'm wrong.

The Russian propaganda is still in disarray. Russian's are not used to mixed messaging. It's like a whip and glove show.

Iron Beaver (Simonyan): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKkOkt4NDAQ
"Why couldn't you live with us? What was so bad about it?"
"Who mistreated you? Who bothered you? Here is a question - why do they hate us so much? Why? Unlike them, we did not wage any wars of conquest. We didn't subjugate anyone, we didn't threaten anyone!"

Iron Maiden (Skabeeva): https://twitter.com/VladaKnowlton/status/1665240710038327296
"The Ukrainian question has to be solved once and for all. What comes to mind right now, I will say it again, is to destroy every living thing in the Kharkiv region as a punishment and as a deterrent."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ratio of UKR to RUS KIA and tank loss is pretty bad right now.

I haven't seen any credible info showing Ukraine suffering bigger losses than Russia.

Russian troop and artillery losses have been significant. And at this point, Russia is already down to having fewer tanks and other pieces of equipment still functional than Ukraine does.

please explain how the Ukrainians with hundreds of thousands of men aged 15-60 or thereabouts are now faced with a shortage of manpower after more than a year of intense war?

Most of them are dead. Those who aren't have either fled or have connections.

Those are catastrophic numbers in a war that has turned into a quagmire of artillery, drones and missile warfare.

Suffices to say numbers are propaganda on all sides

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Economists now saying Ukraine will need 4.5 million new workers to rebuild

But Ukrainians given wage differentials will keep rushing west

So there is gonna be mass immigration from the Maghreb and Pakistan to Ukraine due to labor needs

That’s gonna make the Slavic world big mad 😂 since Slavs are super racist

Nothingburger. How do you think Germany rebuilt? With Turks and other imported gastarbeiter.

The sexual divide between German women and Turkish men is a lot wider than between Ukrainian women and Arab/Pakistani men.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://twitter.com/mylordbebo/status/1680850601779900416/mediaviewer

Even Eric Schmidt on Zakaria — pro Ukraine slant people - are waking up that the “counteroffensive” is a nothing burger

Unless we see something significant by September, prepare for another ten years of stalemate.

I can't see Putin withdrawing fully any time soon with NATO now essentially saying yes to Ukraine.

Ukraine is making progress, but they are being very strategic about it and are making cautious tactical choices. They continue to make numerous surgical strikes taking out Russian artillery (where Russia has one of its few remaining advantages) along with strikes to take out command and leadership, and to demoralize Russia. They are doing a great job with that.

But if you think all this should be going faster or want them to go charging full tilt with all their armor and infantry "LEEEEEEROY JENKINS" style into fields littered with thousands of Russian mines then you're either uninformed or foolish.

Even with improving capabilities... possibly (they got some new equipment, doesn't mean they are more effective or better fighters), it's pretty clear that the Ukrainians have challenges with capacity. So I don't expect anything to happen very quickly. A return to stalemate wouldn't seem to be that bad. Not that many people were dying prior to Putin's escalation.