WASHINGTON (Wall Street Journal) --The war in Ukraine has devastated Russia's pre-invasion military machine, with nearly 90% of its pre-war army lost to death or injury, and thousands of battle tanks destroyed, according to a newly declassified U.S. intelligence assessment shared with Congress.
The intelligence assessment, according to a congressional source, says that 315,000 Russian personnel have been killed or injured since the February 2022 invasion, or 87 percent of Moscow’s prewar force of 360,000. Russia has also lost nearly two-thirds of its tank force, or 2,200 out of its 3,500 pre-invasion stock, the source said.
While it is widely known that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military has sustained vast losses in Ukraine, the assessment provides new details about the extent of those setbacks.
If you still want to keep huffing hopeium, and/or kissing Vlad's ass, go ahead on; we don't care. If you're convinced the intel from any twenty Russian shill blog sites are giving the straight poop, shovel it down with both hands with our enthusiastic blessing.
Your delusions are your own problem, not ours.
Note this estimate, nor this blog, doesn't hereby conclude that Ukraine must therefore be "winning", for any value of that word. {Google France post-WWI if the greater concept eludes you.} And as we told you as early as May of last year, IIRC, Ukraine having shifted to dependence on the West for support continues to leave them at the entire mercy of the West not to withdraw that support.
But as we told you from days of the outset of Russia's asinine exercise in futility, the likelihood that Russia ever can score anything like a win is less likely than Bigfoot swooping onto the Capitol steps on a winged unicorn to crown Trump Emperor For Life next Novermber.
So if you'd like your reality just like your whiskey - straight up - this estimate of Russia's situation is likely a metric f**kton closer to the real story than anything else you can cobble together from your underpants.
For those of you inclined to froth and gnash your teeth at any suggestion that Russia Could Be Eating A Big Shit Sandwich despite all available evidence, and jonesing because you haven't had anything to gibber and caper about here lately, consider this your Christmas present.
But when your Any Day Now™ delusions all come crashing down, and there's nothing left to scrape out of your underpants and fling at the wall in response to the voices in your head, remember: you were given fair warning.
Related:
This figure closely aligns with data from the Dutch open-source intelligence firm Oryx, which tracks military equipment and vehicle losses through verifiable photo and video evidence.
Oryx's findings indicate that Russia's verifiable tank losses stand at 2,541, with a significant portion destroyed, damaged, abandoned, or captured by Ukrainian forces. The U.S. intelligence report also highlights the loss of 4,400 out of 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles, representing a 32% loss rate for the Russian Armed Forces. These figures are in close agreement with Oryx's documented losses of 3144 infantry fighting vehicles. The enormity of these losses has compelled Russia to take extraordinary measures to sustain its military efforts. This includes a partial mobilization of 300,000 personnel and the relaxation of recruiting standards to include convicts and older civilians.
This new intelligence from the United States not only confirms the extensive material and human losses suffered by Moscow but also provides a clearer context for understanding Russia’s setbacks in the Ukraine conflict.
As Warren Strobel of The Wall Street Journal points out, while it was assumed that Russia had incurred significant losses, these latest revelations offer a more detailed picture of the extent of the impact on Russian military capabilities.
Suck it, crybabies.
47 comments:
Time will tell.
I'm not picking a fight with you on this situation. I just don't entirely trust what our "intelligence community" is saying about -anything- I mean it's not like the CIA/FBI etc are not monitoring Americans more and more and running false flag ops.
Again I am not arguing what you have found. I don't trust the sources anymore. Remember these were the same sources that insisted Iraq had massive stock piles of WMD. Did they have some, yeah. But other than a couple convoys of stuff being shifted to Syira it was not what we were lead to believe. (I know there are various reasons but I digress)
Again I don't know or believe for a second that the actual info our idiots in the intel community is either right, or they are getting their own facts straight OR even if fed info they are pulling the right conclusions from it anymore.
I have no doubt that both countries are grinding their militaries in to oblivion and that the Kraine will continue receiving billions of dollars that goes to... where???? I'd be far less against just giving them hard materials instead of billions of dollars in untraceable cash. If nothing else pay for our war industries to build new stuff for the US and give them our obsolete worn out shit.
Lets say Russia attacked Poland, a NATO member. Lets also assume that NATO is unable to get their air forces off the ground for some reason. Now lets see how NATO fares in the war. I pose that scenario for the simple fact that the combine arms mantra predisposes the control of the air has been obtained.
But that is essentially what we are doing with Ukraine with the restrictions we have placed on certain assets we have given them. Frankly the Ukes have done well considering.
One other thing vis a vis Ukraine. If you consider the history of warfare there has been a ying-yang swing between the offense or defense having the upper hand in conflicts. It appears with the tools now available the momentum has swung in favor of defense for the time being.
This is why the Neocons are full of crap when they want Americans to fight Russia. I think Poland could knock them over.
Dude (just to set the mood), to my, admittedly, limited intellectual capacity, you seem wicked smart on a huge amount of subjects and properly skeptical about Uncle Sam's military intelligence abilities/honesty. Plus, trusting the WSJ? I don't understand what looks like a giant cog dis when it comes to the Ukie/Ivan conflict.
I joined the military in '69 to kill Commies and get a good career. I hated Commies as far back as I can remember. Likely because my older brothers went to Korea when I was in diapers, but I learned their hate for Communism. Post Soviet Russia is a different critter. Everything Putin has said has been recorded, at least since '90. Compared to clown world, Putin is the adult. Our "rulers" are "bad guys", the ukie's are literally Notzees. Apparently I have a cog dis with you. Anyway, I like yer site and out look/input on most subjects, you're educational. I see your comments in lots of the sites I follow and arguably, I would venture that you're quite rational. I'm able to make that determination with some confidence. Hope catch my humor. Anyway, read ya later.
It looks like the Russo-Ukrainian War has moved to the static trench lines and costly infantry attack phase. Just like WW1 in 1915 and Korea in 1952.
I think the two key supply issues in 2024 will be number of men and the artillery tubes and ammunition that pulverize them.
Quoting the WSJ? The current administration control the press. The WSJ is passing on its BS intel for the purpose of extracting more taxpayer funds to support a war that the shit for brains U.S. government supports for one reason. That is to shift taxpayers to the money grubbing Ukrainian Zman Nazi and his cohorts. Then funnel back to the crooks in DC their 10%. You believe your BS, I’ll believe mine.
Wow.
Somebody better tell Putin.
How many comments have you deleted. There used to be sycophants that would post attaboys for you. Now it seems empty here.
If you can take the heat, here is the challenge. One of us is right, if Russia comes to the negotiations quickly and settles for just the territory it holds or less - you win! We can call that a Russian defeat.
I think none of what you believe is true. Russia will ask for more territory than they hold, will require economic reparations from the west, absolute demilitarization and neutral regarding NATO.
Ukraine is running out of manpower, ammo and equipment. Doing fine on drones though. It won't be long, why not post this and let me make a fool of myself pretty darn quick.
Wait...wut? Newly declassified government docs...hmmm, the same government that told us the vax was safe & effective, wear masks(the primary culprit in 1918-Fauci wrote the study), we can pour trillions of fiat dollars into our economy, those are just clouds not chembombs, FDA saying high processed foods are healthy, NIH saying diabetes is genetic...need I go on?
I guess you missed the red line we crossed in 2014. Putin wasn't kidding. At least you got the fact right that without support aka laundering billions, Ukraine would be helpless.
Please tell me while you're at it, Putin's "real" reason for this mmmK?
@MM,
Putin's a delusional megalomaniac with delusions of restoring his beloved Soviet Empire to its former glory. He's not even good for Russia, let alone anyone else. Just another KGB thug knocking off his opposition, leaving him nothing around but "Yes!" men.
Next question.
Trumpeter,
1) Not counting one of the Usual Suspects that goes straight to Spam, the only comments deleted were one anonymous screed, and your two prior snotty ones. Try courtesy the first time instead of coming in and shitting on the carpet, and you'll have no problem.
2) What I believe is that Russia has invaded Ukraine at least four times since their 2014 puppet was removed. This last time, the dog they've been kicking bit back, and it's cost them mightily. After nearly two years, they're still not able to do much beyond static defense, and haven't had an offense worthy of the name since July the first year after this started.
Which bespeaks that the US mil estimate and the WSJ based on it are spot-on.
3) A country 1/4 Russia's size and 1/10th their invasion might has brought them to complete stalemate, using nothing but NATO's leftovers and sheer guts.
I couldn't give two shits about Zelensky, except that for the first time since their independence in 1991, Ukraine has a leader that clearly isn't Moscow's little sock-puppet bitch. This has vexed them mightily. Putin missed the memo that he isn't running the former Soviet Union, he's got the Russia he started with.
This is why the former involuntary members of the Warsaw Pact are the most strident anti-Russians, who voluntarily joined NATO. No one had to hold a gun to their heads nor invade to get them to join. Conversely, Putin has made war on three other former Soviet states, and threatened several others, just to hold on to the cobbled-together rump empire Stalin created, and staunch the bleeding. He's only holding on to what he has with a whip and a chair, and his military is obviously a Potemkin Army.
You cheer for that all you want, and I'll cheer for anyone who tells Russia where to head in, until that message sinks in at the Kremlin. It's not 1950 anymore.
So far, Putin's been the Salesman Of The Year for NATO membership, just like Obozo was Salesman Of The Year 8 years running for domestic gun purchases.
Both of them for exactly the same reasons: people dislike and distrust dick-taters.
4) The central truths remain:
Both sides can lose the Russia-Ukraine War.
Russia can lose the Russia-Ukraine War.
Russia can never "win" the Russia-Ukraine War, for any honest value of that word except Pyrhhic, and even then, probably requiring a Ukrainian genocide on a biblical scale. Putin's already made great strides in that direction.
No one, anywhere, will miss him when he's gone.
And all the Russian propaganda, and all those spouting it for him, can't put Humpty Putin back together again.
The recent Putinphiles are crowing that Russia is about to turn a small town into “a graveyard for Ukrainian soldiers,” and then pointing to a map where the Russians have advanced less than a mile in several days. It’s like watching wehraboos proclaim Germany military superiority after the 1918 spring offensive, and remaining blissfully unaware of the 100 days offensive which actually accomplished its goals.
I don't for a moment believe that Russian losses have been in the 90% range, intelligence report or no. If that were true, Putin would have eaten a bullet long before now.
I do believe that the losses have been much higher than Putin and his generals expected they would, and much too high to justify whatever "gains" they end up with.
@Tree Mike,
It's not "just" the WSJ.
It's literally everyone not on the FSB payroll.
It's a 658-day (now) stalemate.
Russia's been moving nowhere but backwards for the last 400+ of them.
But we get Edition 658 of Any Day Now™ from the Usual Suspects, and no one calls them on their bullshit. Any Day Now is 400+ days in the rear view mirror. They need a new schtick. Instead, they double and triple down, rather than trimming their sails and trying a new tack.
Presumably, you can do hindsight.
We wiped out the Afghani Army in 6 weeks, and the organized Iraqi Army resistance in 6 months. And then spent nearly twenty years losing in both those countries, because huffing hopeium and smoking crack.
In Afghanistan, we persisted in that just like the Soviet Union did, without learning a single goddam lesson, and wasting thousands of lives to no effect.
Just like Russia is doing now in Ukraine.
People who can figure A and B out can't see C for shit. It's like they have a blind spot in their brains, and can't shit on reality fast enough.
Putin's been getting his army killed, has been bombing civilians deliberately since Day Zero, and getting his ass handed to him abroad and at home, to no discernable benefit, for months upon months.
He's not playing 57-dimensional chess, he's just a blind delusional asshole.
Like 5000 other world leaders throughout history, and damned near every one from Russia since ever. This ain't rocket science.
It's no more complicated than that.
We haven't had a happy ending to a conflict since Grenada.
Before that, nothing since Korea, which was a deliberate tie.
Russia hasn't had a military victory since 1945. Ever. Anywhere. They've pushed around disarmed civilian populaces. That's it. It's all they can manage. The Russian generals who knew how to win on a peer-to-peer battlefield retired forty-fifty years ago, and died twenty-thirty years ago. The new clueless ones are dying by the dozens in Ukraine. That alone should be a major cluebat.
This isn't hard to conclude based on all available evidence.
But people keep digging in the pile of Russian horseshit, figuring that there must be a pony under there somewhere, and stretching like Elastigirl to conflate Putin's interests with our own domestic ills.
It's Trump Derangement Syndrome in reverse.
If Emperor Poopypants declared oxygen was good, half the jackassical Idiot Right would put plastic bags over their heads the next day out of reflex.
FFS man, stop listening to the retards who claim to be on your side. They should be riding the short bus, not trying to drive it.
@T-Rav,
Granted for argument's sake.
Their losses have been high enough for a country 1/4 their size and 1/10th their military strength to not only stalemate them for nearly two years, but majorly push them backwards six months in, with nothing but NATO hand-me-downs.
So what level of losses would account for that outcome, IYHO?
(BTW, Putin eating a bullet assumes his underlings have as clear a picture of reality as Putin or those outside do, something never in evidence in Russia for some centuries.)
As Oscar Wilde told a lady once, we've already settled the central question, now we're merely discussing the price.
I don't know why but the RU MIC is a one trick pony, and has been since the Czars. Just watching the skirmish at Avdiivka the RU thrusts have been nothing short of banzai charges, throw bodies at it and hope for the best. 7000 causalities and 250 vehicles lost by UK estimates in 30 days of fighting.
I don’t have a dog in the fight and frankly I’m not sure why you think you do sir. That aside, nothing the US or NATO has done in funding and promoting this conflict seems to result in increasing our security or supporting our national interest. What we have accomplished is strengthening this man you despise, bolstered his MIC output and unified the Russian people against Western powers.
I just want to see our support cease, we cannot afford it financially or geopolitically.
@Tobias,
Tell the class how Moscow dragging Ukraine back into the fold kicking and screaming, while we look the other way, increases our security or promotes our national interests.
Show all work.
Then display all UKR expenditures on a bar graph next to welfare, medicaid, or money spent on illegal aliens in the same span of time.
When people make 500 posts about social welfare boondoggles to every one on Ukraine, I'll listen to them.
When it's the other way around, they've got their heads up their asses.
Every dead Russian soldier is another nail keeping Vlad inside his cage.
If we could spend as little on those problems as we have on Ukraine, and in exchange for that pittance kill (or imprison or deport for-life) as many illegal aliens as Zelensky has Russians with that amount, I'd be marching in the streets to triple that funding.
Ditto if it was dead Russians vs. incarcerated felons currently allowed to free range in society.
People have zero fiscal sense in this country, and get their panties in a wad over the plankton, while they swallow the whales.
There used to be sycophants that would post attaboys for you. Now it seems empty here.
1. He doesn't need anyone's help to apply the clue bat where needed
2. When he covers the material as thoroughly as he does, nothing to be added
I comment when I feel I can add something (even if it's only snark or a poor attempt at humor), or when I disagree with something he said or have a factual correction to bring up, usually based on experience I have that he doesn't.
But even then, some of us don't have a compulsive need to jump into comments because "somebody on the internet is wrong!". For instance, I let his Air Force comments slide because, what can you expect from a Jarhead? ;-)
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2022/10/plus-ca-change.html
Russia can't even hold onto the territories they'd infiltrated since 2014, and will hold even less than they do now by the time this conflict hits 40 weeks. (Common Core grads: that would be in 5 weeks from now.) They stand a very good chance of even going backwards, and having to cough up Crimea as well, for the second time since 1989, perhaps as a Christmas present to Zelensky and the people of Ukraine.
Posted Oct 24, 2022. That's 59 weeks ago, for you Common Core grads. This is week 94 of the war.
Oct 26 2022:
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/images/map-russo-ukraine-20221026-1.jpg
Today:
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/images/map-russo-ukraine-20231208-1.jpg
Wow. What loss. Such green.
You're assuming Global Security's estimates are authoritative.
Things slowed down after October, after Russia was retreating headlong tens of miles per day for two months before that, which you were careful not to address. Thanks for finally responding to a 15-month old post.
Now do the same for all the Any Day Now™ posts, and we can see who's closer to correct over time.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has already crossed the Dnieper River, and infiltrated Russia-held territory on the other side, as well as running guerrilla ops in Crimea for weeks to months.
So, how close is Moscow to Kyiv, after losing an entire airborne brigade in the first month?
How far have they advanced on it in the last year, despite flinging another 100,000 casualties into Russian cemeteries (when they even bother to police up their dead)?
Nothing...?
How close is Kiev to Crimea, after their entire failed "summer offensive"?
They stand a very good chance of even going backwards, and having to cough up Crimea as well,
That was the very good chance outcome.
My little brother contacted me with in two weeks of stepping foot in Ukraine. By the end of his first sentence he apologized, told our father & I that he wished he would of listened. Fortunately, after a lot of prayers he and six of his buddies all GWOT combat veterans made it home. Unfortunately he personally knew or just had just met FOURTEEN others that did not, about half of which were also combat veterans, the remaining all run of the mill geardo's. Regardless they're now dead with most leaving children and broken families behind. No funerals, no life insurance, not one fucking penny, left to rot away with the barley. Fact is not one of those that made it out alive with all their appendages including my brother blame Putin, nope, they blame themselves for being stupid enough to trust their own, sadly consisting of ill informed, talking head know it all's, spreading the narrative. Disgusting.
@Phelps,
Is Crimea more safe and secure in Russia's clutches now than it was in January of 2022, or less?
Show your work on that.
Then Google "Russian evacuations of Crimea" and the status of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea. And get back to us.
@deplorable1,
"Mercenaries disillusioned when hit by reality."
Stop the presses! That's quite the news flash you've got there.
But at least they're putting the blame in the right place. You've even hit upon the correct one-word descriptor.
Which "talking heads", exactly, told them to run and join Kyiv's foreign legion?
And how many of them sold the family cow for magic beans?
Just curious.
All of what you say about the incompetence of the Russian Army is probably true. It would certainly appear so based on their apparent inability to quickly and decisively defeat a thrown together Ukrainian military.
The Pyrrhic victory they could get by cluster bombing Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkiv would accomplish nothing but genocide. You're also very right there.
So, why do you think they started this adventure in futility? Were they really THAT afraid of NATO expansion? Did they misjudge the nascent Ukrainian nationalism? Or did they rightly believe that America and Europe were ill prepared for a traditional land war?
Putin is everything you call him, a corrupt ex-KGB thug. He's also a dictator who has embraced historical Russian Orthodox Christianity. You remember his outreach and attempted infiltration of Evangelical Christianity here. It's paid off in the right wing and "moral" Christian support we now see. Why do you think Speaker Johnson, our new pillar of virtue, has stalled the money Ukraine needs?
Putin rightly believes the West is morally bankrupt, will soon be economically bankrupt, and is on the verge of internal strife and disintegration. I think he's playing a waiting game while the burial fields of Ukraine fill with the human fodder our leaders are willing to waste. Damn them all.
@RandyGC,
Up until the 1940s, the Marines employed flying sergeants.
They only stopped the practice because it made the Air Farce uncomfortable to know there wasn't anything their officers could do that couldn't be handled equally well by a competent Marine NCO. Bad for AF morale, and all. (The Army's solution was to commission the sergeants, make them warrant officers, and to only let them fly the helicopters. The WPPA still thinks they all pee in the potted plants at the O Club, and faints dead away whenever one of them climbs into the full officer ranks. I think we got a better deal: Marine NCOs get to train all our officers.)
Nonetheless, I have always viewed the Air Farce as an honorable alternative to military service. They mostly delivered the mail on time, didn't give me too much trouble when I picked up the monthly crypto package or dropped off the certified letter attesting to the burning of said items at the end of the month at Kadena, and generally kept us well supplied with plenty of MREs and crayons to eat anywhere we went. And the Osan AFB enlisted mess hall was one helluva lot better than the cold MREs we were offered by our own clueless overlords at the end of Team Spirit, even if your brethren were so afrighted by our fresh-from-the-frozen-rice-paddies appearance that they all unassed said chow hall the minute we entered, to a man, leaving skidmarks, and made us sleep in tents at the end of the runway, in December. In front of the quad .50s for airbase defense, no less. Blatant profiling, right there. We may have peed in their potted plants, but I'm not saying. ;)
@Anon 10:19P,
I think it was a convergence of several things:
1) Putin is a megalomaniac with delusions of the former Soviet Empire's grandeur.
2) His generals and their staffs gun-decked and pencil-whipped efficiency reports and yes-manned Putin for literal decades, and dared not give an honest assessment of their manifest shortcomings in every single item regarding competence, readiness, or capabilities, from the lowest ryadovyye to their most senior general-polkovniki.
3) They misjudged the depth of Ukrainian hatred for their former masters, the resolve with which they would resist, and Zelensky's determination not to flee in terror when they attacked.
4) They grossly underestimated how vehemently NATO, the West in general, and the entire world would respond to such unnecessary and blatant aggression and territory-grabbing behavior. They have single-handedly added both Finland and Sweden to NATO, with Sweden breaking a literal centuries-long neutrality to join. Oly the Swiss and Austrians, the latter by constitutional mandate, haven't climbed aboard the bandwagon, and it's likely that if Ukraine were to fall, Austria would amend their constitution and join in about a hot minute.
5) Putin's purely imaginary "embrace" of Orthodox Christianity is solely and entirely because the Russian Orthodox Church has been thoroughly and totally penetrated and run by the FSB, and the KGB and Cheka before that. Every Orthodox priest in the Russian Orthodox Church owes their position to being an informer for the state security apparatus, since Stalin's time and before. Period. Full stop.
Which is why the entire Orthodox Church within Ukraine has been repudiated and put on the "foreign agents" list by Ukraine. Their first allegiance has ever been to the Kremlin, not to God, nor even the Patriarch of Moscow.
People like to forget that, but it's been admitted in open sources for literally decades.
And once you spy for the state, just like with virginity, it's impossible to grow your purity back.
6) Putin believes no such thing. If he does, he's high on his own supply of propaganda. What he believes is that Western resolve will flit to something else, and can be outlasted, and that he'll still have any army left to do anything with when it falters. He's liable to be grossly overestimating at least one of those things, if not both.
If Ukraine quits, they cease to exist.
If Putin quits (or dies), the war ceases to exist.
My money's on the latter happening first.
And the Russian debacle couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of shitbags.
You decry "Russian blog sites) Fair enough, and then quote "congressional sources" As if they were the gospel. Something Off there. can't quite put my finger on it.
I'll make a testable prediction. Within the next 12 calendar months. Russia will have unambiguously won by any objective metric of the stated Russian goals (Free the ethnic Russians from the eastern bit of Ukraine the want. Said area will be under Russian control, and any plebiscite will be highly favorable to the Russian presence and control.
The only caveat is if the wimpy west manages to finally assassinate Putin, or the west goes dropping sunshine packages, or the US opens direct war with Russia, Or manages to prod the eastern bits of NATO to attack Russia. Highly unlikely as that one would be.
Dec 14 2024. is the failed prediction date.
See you in 12 months, if you haven't memory holed your post or it's comments of course.
I eagerly await your insults and fact free rant in response.
tag to ensure emails.
The Russians have already won. You sound like a deluded fool.
Is Crimea more safe and secure in Russia's clutches now than it was in January of 2022, or less?
Map is still red.
Q.E.D.
Ahhh memories. Osan in winter. Cold, but the smell was much better.
TEAM SPIRIT. Good times...
Just to be clear, you weren't being treated as second class citizens, more like third class.
The second class were those of us who weren't aircrew, so we also got to sleep in tents. But our Tent City was near the golf course (not ON the course, priorities you know) and we got to eat at the Golf Club restaurant. Paying out of pocket.
The Quad Fifties on the hill were just below where my unit was located when I was there a few years later as permanent party. Next to the fuel tanks that blew up when I was there. Someone decided to do some welding in an "empty" tank without fully venting it first. That was a sporty day.
"For instance, I let his Air Force comments slide because, what can you expect from a Jarhead? ;-)" -- RandyGC
I suspect the Jarhead will be smart enough, if he is gonna F with you, to do it before the aircrew crawls into the cockpit. Just a guess on my part.... :)
@JimR,
1)I didn't "decry" Russian web sites. They are what they are.
Source something originating anywhere but Moscow, Beijing, or Minsk, and get back to us.
2) If we're going to define "victory" as the Russian's current state of sorry affairs, I can only wish them another decade of such "winning". {cf. Charlie Sheen's exit from Hollywood}. Otherwise, defining "future" victory as something the Russians obtained way back on Day 30, when they're still fighting on Day 659, is risibly ludicrous. You're trying to call the Derby race a victory if your horse is standing on all fours in the starting gate and the jockey hasn't fallen off before the starting bell. Nice try, but fail. Try putting some actual skin in the game.
3) Feel free to tell the class when any plebiscite in Russia ever went against TPTB, particularly since Putin's ascent to dick-tater for life. By those standards, Biden was elected actual president. Tread gently on that precedent, lest it bite you in the ass.
@midwest mike,
If the Russians have "already won", why do they continue to expend untold amounts of both blood and treasure in pursuit of nothing additional?
Take your time while you unstump yourself with that answer.
Victors go home when the war is over. You could look it up.
Instead, Putin continues throwing waves of cannon fodder into the war's gaping maw, and throwing his country's treasury into the fireplace with both hands.
Ergo, he isn't "already" victorious, and therefore your contention is unequivocally F.O.S.
Now who sounds like a deluded fool?
If all you came here to do was show everyone what you could scrape out of your underpants as the only substitute you could muster for reasoned opinion, mission accomplished.
How sad for you.
Ok, US Intelligence Evaluation (based on Ukrainian sources) YES of course I believe every single word, absolutely no reason to ever doubt it. The clouds parted and the bright ray or truth shining down from the shining city on the hill, Washington DC!
Yes, I will never, ever doubt or even question this. Who would?
Ok then, I'd love to comment further on this but the new real Rolex I bought from that delightful Puerto Rican guy on 7th Ave tells me that it time for me to check the transfer of $300 million into my new joint account with the Nigerian Minister of Finance. I am using my share to finished paying off that beautiful brick faced bridge I bought spanning the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. I need the income it will provide because I had to buy $8,000 of Target gift cards to pay the IRS bill that Indian sounding agent Kevin called me about.
Anyway have a great day and print more good stuff from the Intel Community and Super Spy Chris Steele Agent Double O- Zero to help counter act all that Russian disinfo on Faacebook and Hunters laptop.
Don't forget to make an appointment for Booster #6 to avoid the rush and Diversity is Our Strength!!
You can't really believe this propaganda. Clearly made up to try and convince Congress to fork over billions more to flush down the Ukraine black-hole. The WSJ is as much a mouthpiece of the government as any of them.
@alex and MYOB,
Link to your far-more-reliable sources, or you're just gainsaying out your ass.
"It's ALL propaganda!" agnosticism is not an option either.
Either you have vastly better sources, or it's just ass-gas dressed up as certainty.
Tell the class the current Russian casualty count, and provide your unimpeachably authoritative links, which must intrinsically and self-evidently explain why Russia is still failing to end this thing after 660 days.
{Bonus points if you can explain how we were actually winning in Vietnam by 1967, and how we were crushing it in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2004, which explains our next 15 years in both countries, and the current situation.}
RT news, the Saker, the Beijing press corps, or Sumdood-who-swears-he's-scooped-the-entire-world don't fly. Actual sources, with skin in the game, or it doesn't fly.
For such soopergeniuses as yourselves, this should be child's play.
So tell us whether you actually know anything, or whether you're simply suckling the teats that tickle your confirmation bias.
This is your big chance.
I'll bet cash money you've got nothing...
"Tell the class the current Russian casualty count" From what source?
Surely you don't mean to use Ukrainian or US "Intelligence" sources?
and do your numbers separate Russian armed forces from thee militias in the Russian dominated eastern Ukraine, the ones Putin said he wanted back in the fold. He specifically said Russia has no interest in ruling/conquering the whole of Ukraine. Look at the actions of the Russian forces. Advance beyond their hold line to clear out nests of UKR assets, then pull back to the strong prepared defensive line at the river, sit behind 100s of Km of minefields pre sited artillery targets, and roaming Lancet drones, and watch Zelensky and his puppet masters throw their meat puppets into the grinder. Exactly what Putin said the Russians would do. De-Nazify the Ukraine, break up the eastern half's infrastructure and make the Ukr no benefit to NATO. Forcing the west to more or less abide by the Minsk agreement of 1991, said accords the US signed, then quickly ignored as they pushed for NATO to gobble up more wayward nations newly escaped from the former Soviet bloc. No Russian surprises there, exactly what they said they'd do, and they have done it.
I mean pick your source, and place your bet.
While you're up, explain the loss of an entire Russian airborne brigade in a failed to attempt to take Antonov Airport in the opening days of this Russian invasion in light of "no interest ruling/conquering the whole of Ukraine". Much like Russian troop transports in that catastrophe, that line of codswallop won't fly.
But good luck squaring that circle.
They didn't advance to clear out UKR assets; they advanced until their supplies failed, then got thrown back 100 km in as many days, and were in headlong retreat all of last fall. And by all accounts, the Russians are the ones throwing meat puppets into the grinder to no effect, not the other way around.
The Minsk Agreement, as well as the founding independence agreement of Ukraine, called for Russia to respect the territorial sovereignty of all of Ukraine's 1991 borders. Russia's invaded Ukraine three times prior to the Minsk agreements, violated every single one of them, and this last invasion to win by force what they couldn't by subterfuge got their face caught in a bear trap. Boo hoo. And BTW, the U.S. was never a signatory to Minsk or Minsk II. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
If you're going to take the rosiest shading of every one of 500+ days of Russian screw-ups, you've already called the coin toss before you've flipped it.
And NATO hasn't "gobbled up" any nations; every nation admitted has clamored loudly and outright begged to be allowed to join. That's the difference between nations leaving Russia's orbit, and those Putin has clawed back into it: we've never had to enforce change at gunpoint. Russia's exact grasping is what has driven former members of the artificial Warsaw Pact to join NATO voluntarily, and landed NATO on Moscow's doorstep.
Putin's the best membership recruitment tool NATO ever had.
If he hates NATO so much, he should stop creating the conditions that have lead every country between the NATO of 1990 and Moscow but Belarus to flee Moscow's tender embrace. He's the only guy that shows up to a date with a shotgun, and that has doubled NATO membership while Russia has endured his loving dictatorship. Truth be told, if average Russians could vote legitimately, they'd love to join NATO too, provided Putin and his apparatchiks were deposed and exiled to Siberia.
I mean pick your source, and place your bet.
You placed your bet on Ukraine taking Crimea in 5 weeks, 60 weeks ago.
When will you pay up?
No, I didn't.
I said it looked likely at the time, given their progress the preceding three months.
But they ran out of offensive, and then winter set in.
Russia placed their bet on taking Ukraine in three days 660 days ago.
They've paid up 90% of their troops and 2/3rds of their functional tanks.
And they just keep paying, with nothing to show for it but filled body bags.
And at last look, you were still betting on Any Day Now™.
Howzat working out for you nearly two years in?
In the Minsk accords the west agreed to move NATO no further east and Russia agreed to accept the Ukr as a defense obligation. The ink was barely dry on that when the west began making moves to push NATO membership further east. Russia complained and the west basically said "Deal with it." and in 2008 or so, with much further provocation, Russia started "Dealing with it" which the west bitched mightilly about, then in 2014 IIRC? the west engineered a coup to ovethrow the pro Russian govt with what led to Zelensky.
I am not going to Monday morning quarterback every military move the Russians have made since then, no point to it.
I have made a testable prediction, along with an end date, and we shall see where we are then.
I note that you never make predictions, if your prognostications fail you hand wave them away with statements like "I didn't say this would or would not happen" but if you're right, well that's a different story.
Unless/until you memory hole this thread, (which I have copied in email as has become my SOP with you) we shall see. Until then...
Neither the U.S. nor NATO was a signatory to the Minsk Accords.
At that point, Russia had already invaded and seized Crimea, Donbas, and Luhansk, in violation of Ukraine's independence agreement.
The Minsk accords were breached by all signatories within days of their signing, and they expired February 21, 2022.
Five days before Russia invaded Ukraine for the fourth time since its independence from the former Soviet Union.
You're either massively mis-remembering reality, or just ranting delusionally now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
Life moves pretty fast; you should pay attention and check your "facts".
I'm not betting on Any Day Now, I'm betting on Whenever Russia Wants.
They said that their goal at the start was to demilitarize Ukraine. By Ukraine's own admission, their average front line soldier's age is 42. That looks a lot like demilitarization to me.
Again, you're eating a hamburger and complaining that it's the worst pizza you've ever had.
So Russia is filling body bags on both sides for nearly two years because they haven't figured out yet they've already won?!?
GENIUS!!!!
Now explain our debacle in Vietnam using the same calculus.
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