Putin Recognizes Donbass Republics, Sends Russian Military to 'Denazify' Ukraine
- Thread starter bjorb
- Start date
Snow
Jedi Master
I think you are closest to some kind of truth: it is 2 powers (one waning, one upcoming) fighting for control, with all the dirt and evil it brings. There is no good side, only a "lesser evil". It has happened before and is happening again. History is just a repeat button in that regard, only with more sophisticated weaponry. In the end even "they" are puppets of an even larger (interdimensional) board game. We, the onlookers, are getting distracted from our true purpose and reason we incarnated on this plane of existence.
As for the ongoing pissing contest here. Please, all of you paticipating remind yourself why you get triggered by the other and work on those programs. (goes for me as well...)
BHelmet
The Living Force
Thanks, I appreciate it. It is an art trying to be pointed, vague, serious and humorous all at the same time.
And I agree. America is great for celebrating our Viet Nam vets and their sacrifice. Nobody celebrates the people who tried to advocate for peace. (“Blessed are the peace makers.” Maybe in Gods eyes but not the eyes of this world) I was one of those. I’ve been blown up in enough past life scenarios to know that war is a horrific game. As a kid when we played war I always loved acting out the death scene. Finally. Now there is peace. It’s over. I’ve been killed. And I’d just lay there motionless. (After the academy award histrionics, of course!)
I have to massively self-sensor every time I hear one of those “let’s honor our vets” moments of pseudo-thanksgiving.
(I do apologize to the vets out there who have served. I don’t mean to offend.) My position was always “this is yet another dumb-ass war that only serves the corporate state, not we the people”
BHelmet
The Living Force
I’m just trying to tap dance on thin ice while throwing a thimble full of water at the fire. I must admit I’m quite disturbed to now see my name up in lights on the marquis. In USA this is called a “tar baby” from an old fable. If you touch it, it will stick to you. It’s a trap! And to think, I could have kept my mouth shut! Woe is me!
But I’m not wishing to be pass absolute judgement on anyone. Not my job!
During the 'shock and awe' days, I was standing vilgil with Doctors for Humanity and other peacemakers. There was a very cool Catholic priest with us, who asked if any of his congregation wanted to make a confession.
One woman stood up and said, "I am deeply sorry for voting because of one political platform, the anti-abortion stance by the Republicans (GW Bush admin) because these people are actually deeply anti-life."
We were also screamed at by a group of military wives across the street from us. Little did they know that we were holding a prayer vigil, reading out loud from a list of fallen soldiers.
I come from a family of military men from WW1 to WW2 to Viet Nam to Now....Dad was a WW2 POW Germany...a medic...And I marched with Vetrans Against War...they believed they were doing the right thing.
Little boys play with toy guns and I never took that play away from my son....Just redirected it with him, in his coonskin hat, going to hunt us up some grub.
Well, nothing. What happened happened.
I am also not at all a supporter of condemning anyone, and in this case, in my opinion, i am not talking about condemnation. Just an assumption, and in any case it is not "unequivocally". What-what and "reservations" that is, any words in this case with an abundance.
Ну ничего. Что случилось-то случилось.
Я тоже совсем не сторонник кого либо осуждать и в данном случае, по моему речь не идет об осуждении. Просто предположение и уж во всяком случае оно не "безоговорочное". Чего-чего а "оговорок" сиречь всяких слов в данном случае с избытком
Я тоже совсем не сторонник кого либо осуждать и в данном случае, по моему речь не идет об осуждении. Просто предположение и уж во всяком случае оно не "безоговорочное". Чего-чего а "оговорок" сиречь всяких слов в данном случае с избытком
Wandering Star
The Living Force
How curious. Me exactly the same, the most natural thing for me in those games was to pretend that they killed me.
I think they have killed me a few times in battle.
It's pretty well understood why the Russians don't advance at lightning speed and take the whole country. Also, no one with any sense is saying hundreds of thousands of Ukrops dead. The figure is something like 160-170k. Russians killed is probably 25% of that, again, for well-known reasons related to ammo. Added: what Michael B-C said in the post below.
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Rolo. Your reasoning lacks any serious understanding how this war is being actually waged on the battlefield.
The estimates from highly experienced independent military experts with reliable sources range from a low of 130,000 (Berletic) to an extreme high of around 280,000 Ukrainian KIA (Macgregor). Anyone suggesting 600,000 KIA is out of line with any realistic observations though that figure is likely very close to total Ukrainian casualties.
Figures sourced from Mossad in February 2023 itemized Russian casualties by then as being 18,480 KIA and a further 44,500 injured. The BBC - not exactly a source renowned for its lack of bias on the matter - recently again invested considerable resources in analyzing burial notices, social media announcements, local media coverage, and a wide range of other sources and announcements right across the Russian Federation in an effort to prove the inflated figures but struggled to find evidence for more that 16-18,000 Russian deaths. These figures remain wholly in line with announcements on the matter made by the Russian Defence Ministry.
The idea that somehow 100's of thousands of missing Russian dead could be covered up is simply ludicrous and juvenile, especially with regard to the size of Russian forces committed during the SMO (that have essentially not changed in size over the course of the year) and the single call up of minimal (300,000) reservists thus far announced. Considering the size of the Ukrainian forces at the time of the start of the SMO - circa 450,000 - and the 8 or so desperate call ups since, culminating now in scenes of boys and old men being pulled from the streets in places like Odessa - and the widely accepted figure of around 180-200,000 Ukrainian battle ground forces still in operation, the massive casualty disparity is obvious ( it should also be noted that it is widely accepted among military analysts that few if any of these Russian reservists have as yet been committed to battle).
So simply put there are and never have been enough Russian combat troops committed to the battlefield to make up these absurdly inflated numbers whilst the depletion of the higher Ukrainian force over the year and the repeated call ups tells its own story, as does the vast new graveyards popping up all over Ukraine and well documented on social media etc.
The figure of around 16-18,000 Russian KIA may not include those of the Donetsk Militia its true, but they do include those of the Wagner Group who remain the most heavily engaged direct action force to date. Essentially the various break away militia's, the Wagner Group, the Chechens and the select if comparatively small numbers of regular Russian military such as the paratroopers committed to actual battle have born the brunt of the majority of the fighting to date, with the bulk of the Russian infantry held back in reserve.
So a figure of no more than 20,000 seems in line with all available evidence that is not propaganda derived.
That is absolutely correct. The enormous disparity in KIA is due to the use of methodical attritional tactics dictated and driven by the heaviest tactical use of precision artillery since WWI, hyper enhanced by an unparalleled accuracy and integration with other firepower due to technological advances. Ukrainian soldiers themselves increasingly report that they rarely get to engage Russian forces in direct fire fights, rather find themselves being hunted down by surveillance drones etc whereupon they are targeted by unrelenting high accuracy, high volume shelling that is almost beyond comprehension in its kill rate. This is a deliberate and unprecedented tactic that places destroying the ability of the Ukrainian army to self-sustain itself over the capture of territory, whilst minimizing Russian battlefield casualties, hence the deliberate creation of cauldron's to entice the Ukrainians - who are politically forced to focus on territory - into the trap of throwing more and more resources into what all sides admit is a form of unrelenting meat grinder.
This is indeed a completely different form of warfare to those you find imagined in western minds or indeed in any of the unbalanced Hollywood style wars the US instigated over the last 20 years.
This argument is thus a fallacy because you do not understand the nature of how this war is being tactically managed by both sides. It is not like for like in capacity or in tactics, hence the massive disparity.
The point is killing ukies over territory. That is the tactic. Non tactical advances in themselves - and the capture therefore of meaningless territory - are of the lowest priority and only then when relevant to battlefield needs. If it suits the Russians to engage up close to large Ukrainian forces and lock them into a hugely unbalanced attritional state then that's the priority. If the priority is giving up territory so as to conserve manpower, then that is the tactic. Only children brought up on the most basic idea of warfare think war is about territory. War is about destroying your opponent's ability to fight by whatever means you can leverage. When that is accomplished, territory follows without further effort.
What you also seem to fail to grasp is that the Russians are waging war on the basis of the reality that they are actually fighting all of NATO not just Ukraine. The point of the war is therefore to also attritionally degrade and defeat NATO in Ukraine in the here and now by prolonging the need for NATO to pour in more and more of its weaponry, so depleting its stocks to a level by which it simply cannot again confront Russia over the short to medium term. Senior military sources in the UK, Germany and the US have already going public to express their great concern that the current level of material loss means their military's will not operationally recover within the next 5-10 years. That's why there is such pressure on Ukraine to launch a spring offensive - that's why there are increasing concerns being expressed that Ukraine only has until the summer to somehow pluck victory from the jaws of defeat - that's why the propaganda is getting more and more desperate and divorced from reality - because come the summer the west completely runs out of essential supplies such as artillery shells.
For example, the recent call by the EU to provide 1 million shells over the next 12 months equates to way less than the daily needs of Ukraine as things stand today which is itself already 10x less than is being fired at them by Russian artillery. The EU has no existing capacity to reach that target and even if it manages it all existing stocks will be gone. Furthermore, experts in the delivery of mass manufactured weaponry calculate it would take the EU 3-5 years to reach that annualize output and even then only if the whole alliance goes onto an industrialized war footing, which is politically impossible. So once whatever they do supply by mid summer is expended, that's it - Ukraine becomes defenseless. And only at that point will the Russian forces go on all out attack to clean up the remnants.
If there is one word you need to think about it is the word attrition. Attrition is a winning tactic fought by the side with the resources, expertise and the time on its hands to do it. It is not a two way process. As even the liar of liars Obama put it back in 2016, you don't attempt to wage war on Russia via Ukraine because it has escalational dominance.
Both Ukraine and NATO are being attritioned. That's the new warfare. That's why the disparity in the figures. The contrary suggestion is outdated, outmoded wishful thinking propaganda.
I don't remember anything like that, but as a child I heard this song and it stuck to me. Below I will give the translation, it is unfortunately machine-made.
Vladimir Vysotsky
The Ballad of Struggle
Among the guttered candles and evening prayers,
Among the spoils of war and peaceful bonfires
There lived bookish children who did not know battles,
Languishing from their minor catastrophes.
Children are always annoyed
Their age and way of life —
And we fought to the point of abrasions,
To mortal insults,
But the clothes were patched up
We are mothers on time,
We swallowed books,
Getting drunk on lines.
Our hair stuck to our sweaty foreheads,
And it sucked sweetly in the pit of my stomach from the phrases,
And the smell of struggle was spinning our heads,
From the pages yellowed flying down on us.
And tried to comprehend
We who have not known wars,
For the war cry
Who took the howl, —
The secret of the word "order",
the appointment of borders,
The meaning of the attack and the clang
War chariots.
And in the boiling cauldrons of the former slaughterhouses and troubles
So much food for our little brains!
We are in the role of traitors, cowards, Judas
In children's games, they appointed their enemies.
And the villain 's footsteps
They didn 't let it cool down,
And the most beautiful ladies
Promised to love;
And, reassuring friends
And loving your neighbors,
We are in the role of heroes
They introduced themselves.
Only in dreams it is impossible to escape forever:
A short century of fun — so much pain around!
Try to unclench the palms of the dead
And take weapons from overworked hands.
Try it by seizing
With a still warm sword
And wearing armor, —
What's how much, what's how much!
Figure out who you are: a coward
Or the chosen one of fate,
And taste it
A real struggle.
And when a wounded friend collapses nearby
And over the first loss you will howl, grieving,
And when you will be left without skin suddenly
Because they killed him, not you, —
You will understand that you have learned,
distinguished, found
He took it by the grin —
This is death's grin!
Lies and evil — look,
How rude their faces are,
And always behind
Crows and coffins!
If the meat is from a knife
You haven't eaten a bite,
If your hands are folded
Watched from above,
And he did not join the fight
With a scoundrel, with an executioner, —
So, in life you were
Nothing to do with it, nothing to do with it!
If the path is cut by the father 's sword,
You've got salty tears on your mustache,
If you've experienced what for how much in a hot battle, —
So, you read the right books as a child!
1975
The Ballad of Struggle
Among the guttered candles and evening prayers,
Among the spoils of war and peaceful bonfires
There lived bookish children who did not know battles,
Languishing from their minor catastrophes.
Children are always annoyed
Their age and way of life —
And we fought to the point of abrasions,
To mortal insults,
But the clothes were patched up
We are mothers on time,
We swallowed books,
Getting drunk on lines.
Our hair stuck to our sweaty foreheads,
And it sucked sweetly in the pit of my stomach from the phrases,
And the smell of struggle was spinning our heads,
From the pages yellowed flying down on us.
And tried to comprehend
We who have not known wars,
For the war cry
Who took the howl, —
The secret of the word "order",
the appointment of borders,
The meaning of the attack and the clang
War chariots.
And in the boiling cauldrons of the former slaughterhouses and troubles
So much food for our little brains!
We are in the role of traitors, cowards, Judas
In children's games, they appointed their enemies.
And the villain 's footsteps
They didn 't let it cool down,
And the most beautiful ladies
Promised to love;
And, reassuring friends
And loving your neighbors,
We are in the role of heroes
They introduced themselves.
Only in dreams it is impossible to escape forever:
A short century of fun — so much pain around!
Try to unclench the palms of the dead
And take weapons from overworked hands.
Try it by seizing
With a still warm sword
And wearing armor, —
What's how much, what's how much!
Figure out who you are: a coward
Or the chosen one of fate,
And taste it
A real struggle.
And when a wounded friend collapses nearby
And over the first loss you will howl, grieving,
And when you will be left without skin suddenly
Because they killed him, not you, —
You will understand that you have learned,
distinguished, found
He took it by the grin —
This is death's grin!
Lies and evil — look,
How rude their faces are,
And always behind
Crows and coffins!
If the meat is from a knife
You haven't eaten a bite,
If your hands are folded
Watched from above,
And he did not join the fight
With a scoundrel, with an executioner, —
So, in life you were
Nothing to do with it, nothing to do with it!
If the path is cut by the father 's sword,
You've got salty tears on your mustache,
If you've experienced what for how much in a hot battle, —
So, you read the right books as a child!
1975
Я ничего подобного не припомню, но в детстве я услышал эту песню и она ко мне приросла. Ниже я приведу перевод, он к сожалению машинный.
But "denazification" is a much better term for its emotional load, so why not use it? And let's be honest, the last people that tried to screw over Russia in a military campaign were the Nazis, so why not call those making the latest attempt Nazis?
I think you're missing the bigger picture. You know when the proverbial one kid stands up to the schoolyard bully? You know what happens, right? You know the story ISN'T that the kid beats the crap out of the bully, and the bully apologizes and amends his ways, right?
It's a bit crass, but I think it's still a fairly accurate analogy for the broad dynamics of this situation.
I would say, especially since many of them identify themselves with no abstract ones, namely with the very Nazis of the Third Reich. There are already a lot of examples of this.
Я бы сказал, тем более, что многие из них сами отождествляют себя ни с какими то абстрактными, а именно с теми самыми нацистами третьего рейха. Примеров тому уже скопилась большая куча.
True, but I don't think it's an official 'thing' for them. I think it's more like them being of the same 'mind' as the Nazis, which allows them to speak out against Nazism while simultaneously embodying the same broad mindset, i.e. aligned with the naughty side of the information field (as we like to say around here). All such people are tools for forces they know almost nothing about. So calling them 'Nazis' is too era-specific. That was just the moniker used back then.
This is still the case, but already now it is on the very edge and I would not be surprised if this line is passed. When the president of the country does not hesitate to take pictures with soldiers carrying unambiguous symbols of the SS troops on their uniforms, when Wehrmacht identification marks are drawn on military equipment, when the commander of the Ukrainian troops wears a bracelet with a swastika, when public holidays are celebrated in full analogy with the torchlight processions of the German Nazis, then it is clear to me that the transfer of all this to the official plane is only restrained outside. The owners of this farce are not yet profitable to stick out like this. As soon as the owners need it, it will happen at the click of their fingers.
Пока еще это так, но уже сейчас это находится на самой грани и я не удивлюсь, если грань эта будет пройдена. Когда президент страны не стесняется сниматься с солдатами несущими на форме недвусмысленные символы войск СС, когда на боевой технике рисуются опознавательные знаки вермахта, когда командующий войсками Украины носит браслет со свастикой, когда государственные праздники отмечаются в полной аналогии с факельными шествиями немецких нацистов, то мне понятно, что перевод всего этого в официальную плоскость сдерживается только снаружи. Хозяевам этого балагана пока не выгодно выпячивать подобное. Как только хозяевам это станет нужно, это произойдет по щелчку пальцев.