Nota bene for the 80 IQ contingent, once their fingers come out of their ears:
This does not therefore = "Ukraine Is Winning", something which we've never said, unless you think France "won" WWI, after having its countryside obliterated, sacrificing 40% of its domestic production, as well as 1.4M military dead, 4.2 million wounded, with 1M of those crippled for life, as well as another 250K civilian casualties, and thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance from both sides littering the countryside, still going off to the present day. Furthermore scarring the French national psyche to the point it has never really recovered, and tilting the economic slope straight into Depression as soon as the euphoria of the end of the conflict wore off, and teeing up an even bigger battlefield do-over in just 20 years. That's the "winning" Ukraine has to look forward too, even if Putin retreated tomorrow unilaterally.
It simply points out that Putin's ongoing megalomaniacal folly has Russia headed to the exact same place now, and at warp speed. The dictionary is going to have to make "Putinic victory" the upgrade from merely "pyrrhic".
But hey, what's a little thing like 40-60x the casualties of their ill-advised 1980s Afghanistan debacle in only 1200 days, between friends? Keep huffing that hopeium hookah, kids.
Related: Russia is now tying ending their latest Ukrainian invasion with NATO withdrawing troops from the Baltic NATO-member states. Sh'yeah, that'll happen, when monkeys fly outta Trump's butt.
This is like a surrounded third-strike bank robber saying he'll only release the hostages if the police throw down their guns and go home. Clearly, Put-poleon isn't the only delusional psychotic in the Russian government.
Their "solutions" aren't simple, they're simplistic.
Which is what you get with simpletons.
They know just enough to be dangerous (mostly to anyone standing close to them), but not quite enough to be really bright.
So, you're going to bottle up the cities?
Let's try that with just one example.
The population of the metro area of Kansas City MO is 2.3M.
The population of the metro area of St. Louis MO is 2.8M.
That's 5.1M people, right there.
The entire population of the state of Missouri is only 6.2M.
Which means the population of just the two largest cities in the state, the ones you're going to "bottle up" (on flat land, mind you!) is the exact 82:18 ratio we mentioned.
Those two cities outnumber every swinging Richard in the entire rest of the state by over 4:1.
I think they might have something to say about being "bottled up".
I think they might even be inclined to say it with guns. (And ropes. And so on.)
Let's be generous, and spot you the farcically optimistic killing ratio of 2:1.
So a week later, there are only 2.9M of them.
And there are exactly 0 of YOU.
You've been removed from the gene pool forever, down to your grandkids, to the last toddler.
Long before they're even getting hungry, let alone starving.
Well played, Checker Champions.
40% of the population now has 100% of the resources. Including what used to be yours.
But you won't care, because you're all dead.
Recruiting converts to your cause is going to be quite the uphill slog there.
So perhaps you might consider ways to get potential allies onboard with a brighter campaign strategy (which would be Any One But Your Plan A), instead of becoming The Assholes That Everyone Else Wants To Kill Off By Day Two.
Just a suggestion, mind you.
Word To Your Mother: As we just pointed out in Comments to the prior post, there are more Trump supporters in the L.A. metro area than the population of any one of 36 entire states.
There are more actual Trump voters in NYFC than the total number of troops in the U.S. Army: active, reserve, and Nasty Guard, combined.
So there aren't any "blue hives."
That nonsense is for idiots who think the maps made by your enemies are the actual terrain.
The reality is that the entire country is different shades of purple.
And the greatest trick the Leftards ever pulled was to make you think our side doesn't exist.
Using maps that wipe out the existence of 25-49% of entire cities and states.
The Truth is, there are one helluva lot more people out there who think like you do than they're comfortable with. If it weren't true, they wouldn't be so pants-wettingly obsessed with trying to derail another election.
Don't be the thousands of morons obediently getting on the train boxcars under the watchful eyes of a paltry half-dozen armed troops.
So if you can't grasp this reality easily in times of quiet contemplation, you're really going to get your ass kicked by it when shit's blowing up all around you and other people's body parts (and random pieces of same), along with bullets and shell fragments are flying all about hither and yon, alternately whizzing, or screaming.
People who think there are rules in a contest like war amuse people who know there aren't.
Just movies, but both illustrative of the greater point. Rules do not exist. There are certainly tactics. Tactics are but the grease that makes things move more smoothly. Tactics change, and are subject to time and place.
At other times and places, they're pointless.
Replace Sesue Hayakawa's Col. Saito with a Roman centurion from the 1st century , and Alec Guiness' Col. Nicholson is nailed to a cross in about the time it takes to whistle up some stout timbers and a few nails.
If Gandhi had tried non-violence as a tactic against the Nazi occupation, Stalin, Mao, or Tojo, instead of the upper-crust pinkie-extended British Empire, they would have made short work of him, and slaughtered millions if necessary, and still gotten their way.
You pick your tactics, certainly.
But imagining that war - any war, anywhere - is governed by rules is among the quickest ways to lose one.
There are certainly tactics that will be more successful, and ones that will be less successful.
The same is true for strategies.
History is replete with examples of either type, for both strategies and tactics.
But it contains exactly zero "Rules Of War", as such.
Rules are for games.
War isn't a game.
If you told Vince Lombardi to get the football into the end zone of the other team, he'd have used both ground and air attacks, within the rules of football, and accomplished that mission. Touchdown.
If you told George Patton the same thing, in a war, he'd have also used ground and air attacks, and gotten the football into the end zone as well. After killing or capturing the entire enemy team. If they'd lined up against him like it was a football game, they'd all have been killed in the first burst of machinegun fire. There would have only been one side left afterwards.
War Is Not A Game.
Some people who want to think otherwise should probably write that last sentence on their hand with a Sharpie, so they don't forget it.
There may very well be things you can do that will ease the progress of such an enterprise. Those are not rules, they're tactics.
We tried to aid wounded enemy soldiers after the battle. Even in the Solomon Campaign in 1942. Until enemy wounded kept trying to kill our troops unto their dying breath. For them, the battle was never over. Okay, noted.
We didn't take a helluva lot of Japanese prisoners after that, and no one questioned that behavior, nor cited it as a violation of the imaginary Rules Of War. Not because the rules had changed, but because that tactic was foolish, self-injurious, and suicidal.
This leaves people who insist rules exist dumbfounded, and attempting gymnastics to explain the obvious reality:
You use the tactics that work.
When they don't work, you don't use them any more.
That's why nobody court-martialed Dudley "Mush" Morton for machinegunning Japanese survivors in the Pacific. Because the little bastards hadn't surrendered, and never would, even if captured. That hand got played out long before. The Japanese played by bushido, which prohibited surrender, and demanded fighting to the death, even if captured, on penalty of ultimate dishonor.
They lost the war, for a host of reasons, but not because of that tactic. (In fact, we think of that level of total commitment as pretty bad-ass when we discuss Leonidas and the Spartans, or the folks at the Alamo, don't we? We could cite further examples as late as Vietnam or even more modern times. So much for "rules".)
Victory neither proves nor disproves one side's self-imposed rules as superior. One may fight "honorably" as their own side sees it, and still lose. Armies may fight "dishonorably", and be ultimately victorious.
Santa Anna didn't lose because he was dishonorable; he gave the occupants of the Alamo every chance to surrender and depart. He didn't ultimately lose because he killed them without quarter when they refused, no matter what Texans then or now think. He lost because he wasn't as good a general as he needed to be, and because Texas wanted independence more than Mexico wanted to keep it. Imaginary "Rules of War" had Jack and Shit to do with that.
In fact, seeing that Mexico could be bested in Texas led directly to peeling off most of the Southwest a couple of years later, because we could take it. We stole California, and most of Arizona and New Mexico in 1848, fair and square because we could. Not because of manifest destiny, the divine right of kings, or the designated hitter rule. It sure as hell wasn't because we followed a better code of conduct in war. We simply killed enough of them to induce them to concede the point.
QED
That's Curtis LeMay's Theorem, not St. Augustine's, in action.
So yet again, I remind people cluelessly lost in delusion, there are no "rules" in war.
There are things you won't do. You decide that.
There may be some things a given enemy won't do.
And then again, there may not be.
When you don't get this, you wake up Sunday morning, and half your battleships are sitting on the bottom in the mud of their harbor, without warning.
Your tallest buildings may lie in a heap of rubble, intermingled with the molecules of the bodies of the former occupants.
Hundreds of your citizens may have been raped, slaughtered, mutilated, and kidnapped by an enemy that doesn't see you, and reality, the way you see it, concerning the proper conduct of warfare.
True on the American frontier any number of times from 1600-1900; true on Israel's border with Gaza last October.
The question, every single time, isn't "Why did this happen?"
And it sure as Hell isn't "How could anyone break the "Rules Of War" and do this to us?"
The only question is "How could you be so effing stupid as to let this happen, because you were so blindly and stupidly unprepared for it?!?"
People bleating about "rules" are generally the reason a given group gets caught with their pants around their ankles, and bent over, when Trouble comes calling.
Because comforting delusions are no substitute for using every tactic that works, and being ready for your enemies to do the exact same thing to you.
When you aren't ready, you pay for that lapse. In blood.
As we've happily shown our enemies a time or three ourselves:
Don't be delusional.
I repeat this lesson, because we're on the cusp of a real honest-to-God war. You're living through a slow-rolled communist takeover of this republic. There may be some things your enemies won't do.
Imagining that your pretend "rules" are any part of that, or are somehow magically binding on your enemies is delusionary twaddle. It's going to get you killed, enslaved, or worse.
"Victory Or Death" isn't just a cute slogan. It's been the way of the world since about Ever.
You're not voting your way out of what's to come. At best, that might be another brief reprieve in the continuing onslaught.
And if (let's be serious, when) this gets ugly and kinetic, like every other time in world history to date, comforting delusions will be an anchor around your neck in the middle of a flood.
I know that, no matter how many times I say this, some people will continue digging in their pile of delusional horsesh*t, absolutely convinced against all evidence to the contrary that they're still going to find a pony underneath it all, somehow.
This is like Christians in the arena, as the lions are released, with no other defense or recourse than resolving to taste very bad.
"But there must be rules!"
Tell that to the cartels just before they put your head in a duffel bag; or to the jihadi getting ready to saw your head off with a dull knife.
"But we'll still be playing by the rules, so we'll be Right! Because no rules would be just icky!"
As if no one had ever come to that conclusion long before you did:
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
an' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
- Rudyard Kipling, Barracks Room Ballads
In other words, there's absolutely nothing I'm revealing now that Kipling hadn't figured out and set to verse by 1890.
(MOSCOW) Russian President Vladimir Putin has [inadvertently] admitted to the significant losses Russia has suffered in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which has been raging since February 2022.
“Putin literally admitted irretrievable losses in the amount of 363 thousand people,” said a military analyst. The purported losses would be orders of magnitude beyond those previously claimed by Russia, with the Kremlin having only officially admitted to around 6,000 troop deaths.
Despite the losses, Putin has maintained that peace with Ukraine will only be achieved “when we achieve our objectives”. This was stated during his first marathon news conference since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
The invasion was met with fierce resistance from the Ukrainian forces, backed by the international community. The severity of the Kremlin’s recent military reversals in Ukraine has been acknowledged by Putin. Mr. Putin insisted that Russia could “move forward” despite Western economic sanctions and political isolation stemming from its Ukraine invasion.
“Practically along the entire line of contact our armed forces are improving their situation, to put it modestly,” he said at his marathon news conference. There has been very little movement on the front line in recent months, but Russia is targeting two eastern towns in the Donetsk region, Mariinka and Avdiivka.
Russia has claimed that Ukraine is suffering a high number of troop deaths during the war, with Putin stating in October that Kyiv had lost 90,000 troops since starting its latest counteroffensive in June. Putin also mentioned that the Ukrainian death toll was “simply huge” and at “approximately one to eight as a ratio” to Russian deaths.
Ukraine’s military success in a “small area” is described by President Putin as a last-ditch attempt to break through to Crimea. He explained that Russian forces decided to withdraw several meters into wooded areas “to save our lads” and suggested that Kyiv’s main motive is to show the West that it needs more military funding.
If you're keeping score at home, this latest series of admissions (overt and accidental)
2) Undoes all the fanboys claiming "Russia has already won", and shoots that stupid lie right in the ass, as Putin admits they still haven't achieved any of their objectives.
3) Points out that Putin's only plan is more of what has failed for the last 22 months, just with 90% less ground military to do it.
Suck it, simps. Belly up to your party-sized sub sandwich of crow. With extra crow. Your beloved KGB-thug hero just admitted this is a generational-level fuck-up of biblical proportions for a hopelessly incompetent and ineffective Russian military. Russia has killed more of its own troops in two years in Ukraine, a country 1/4th its size and 1/10th its military strength, than the U.S. has lost in all its wars and conflicts worldwide combined from 1946-now.
And he further admitted they've been stalemated for nearly two years, despite simultaneously floating the bullshit that they've killed Ukrainian troops at an 8:1 ratio.
This is like the NY Yankees admitting they tied a Little League team 0-0, even though 7 of the other team's grade school-aged players had to go home for curfew before the game was called after maxxing out on innings.
You can keep rootin' for Putin all you want. But you'll need an entirely new line of horseshit to peddle to keep fooling yourselves. But go ahead and keep digging into it; there's got to be a Christmas pony for you under it somewhere.
Pisser for those still carrying a torch for that codswallop.
Ukraine doesn't want to return to Moscow's tender loving embrace, and never will. Like we told you nearly two years ago. And Moscow has gutted its own minimal military power in pursuit of an epic level of failure. While the entire world sees them for the Potemkin nation, in every respect, that they've always been.
As Patton noted, "All glory is fleeting." But this level of national faceplant will last for ages.
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.
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.
The Dog That Hasn't Been Barking - MOAR RUSSIAN WINNING!:
"Russia’s ruble slipped past 100 per U.S. dollar on Monday morning, a nearly 17-month low that has sparked internal discord over monetary policy as economic pressures from its ongoing war in Ukraine mount and international sanctions erode Moscow’s income streams."
Crayon drawing for the slow learners:
Dear hardcore retards:
Currencies go up and down. I haven't cock-a-doodle-dooed about this before now, even as the ruble slipped back to reality (starting last winter), for the same reason you shouldn't have been doing it when the ruble temporarily went up last year (for about seven months).
The dollar is shit, because we've inflated it beyond reality. That's bound to come in for a landing one day, sooner or later. And yet it's still better off than the ruble (currently by 10% overall), compared to five minutes before Pootie-poot got all grabby about other people's countries. Suck on that. There's also more USD being held as the world's reserve currency than there was several months ago. So news of the dollar's utter demise is a wee bit early, even if it's fundamentally less sound than Emperor Poopypants' memory.
The ruble is shit, because all Russia has to back it with isn't gold (they're not handing that over for rubles, jackholes, never were, and never will), it's commodities. Which revenue stream has been halved since Putard's asinine invasion, and which they're only selling (at fire sale prices) to India and China, both of whom are ecstatically happy to profit from Russia's stupidity, and get cheap energy while they can.
Whether there are long-term consequences and punishment from the rest of the world towards India and China when the dust settles remains to be seen, but neither has anything long-term to look forward to.
But FFS, stop pointing to the ruble as some bastion of stability. It's the Mexican peso in Cyrillic writing, with the inherent worth of Zimbabwean dollars. Even more so as long as they're an international pariah. Their economy is currently a fraction of what it was 20 months ago, and it isn't going to get better until they end this war, withdraw from Ukrainian territory in haste and for good, and probably pay hefty reparations on top of that. That's what they've bought themselves. Get over it, snowflakes.
So do most other people, and we applaud your ceaseless willingness to do faceplants to entertain the entire internet. You have the right to remain silent, but you lack the ability.
In today's example, by cock-a-doodle-dooing over the speedy conclusion to the Prigozhin insurrection in Russia.
Believe me when I say leaving your mostly anonymous rants in the spam bin was an act of sheerest mercy on my part.
So as the tiny-minded among the population strut their lack of basic perception and geopolitical ignorance, a few pointers.
1) Putin won second place in yesterday's insurrection.
Everybody who can walk and chew gum at the same time knows this, because strong leaders winning wars and uniting countries behind their cause don't have armed insurrections marching on their capitols.
This can be disproven:
Remind the class how Washington was forced to turn around, and hang the Continental Congress because of Valley Forge.
Then tell us about the time Andrew Jackson surrendered New Orleans, because President Madison had left him with nothing to defend it from the British.
Recount for us the stirring tales of McClellan seizing Washington D.C. after the debacles in Virgina because of Lincoln's incompetence.
And that time Stonewall Jackson held Jefferson Davis hostage until he had properly equipped Jackson's Brigade with arms, food, clothing, and shoes.
Who can forget the rapid capitulation at the Alamo, when the defenders there, realizing Sam Houston had sold them out, captured Travis, Bowie, and Crockett, turned them over to the Mexican Army, switched sides, and declared their undying allegiance to Presidénte/General Santa Anna.
That time Teddy Roosevelt charged up Capitol Hill, and laid waste to the Congress for the disastrous Cuban campaign.
The Lost Battalion in France surrendering en masse.
Admirals Stark and Nimitz threatening to shoot FDR after Pearl Harbor.
MacArthur's mutiny after the fall of the Philippines.
The 101st Airborne's tragic surrender while surrounded at Bastogne.
The Marines who converted to communism at the Chosin Reservoir.
And on and on.
Oh, wait. None of those things ever happened.
Vlad has been sucking ass since he set off on this futile quest, and yesterday only underlined it in red ink.
"Vladimir Putin is far weaker than his propagandists in both Russia and the West would have us believe.
And how could he not be the target of withering scorn and derision?
He’s driven Russia off a cliff and has no idea of how to bring about a soft landing. Given the disastrous shape of his army, economy, and realm, it would be a downright miracle for no opposition to his self-destructive misrule to have emerged."
2) Putin negotiated with terrorists.
What else do you call such a 180° whiplash-inducing switch as was seen from Friday to Saturday?
QED
3) The Russian military is weak.
So weak they negotiated, rather than stand and oppose Wagner Group and its warlord.
They lost men, two helicopters shot down, and Wagner took a regional military HQ intact, with hardly a shot fired. Nobody was dying for Putin on home turf.
And Putin negotiated, because they genuinely didn't think they could stop Prigozhin before his forces got to Moscow. Nor were they entirely sure the military would fight Prigozhin to defend them, neither far away nor near to Kremlin HQ. (Being a dick-tater is all hell.)
When you're strong, you crush the opposition, and hang the traitors.
You don't cut them any slack, let alone cut them deals worthy of a Hunter Biden plea bargain.
4) Russia's Ukraine campaign is further weakened.
Russia only has about 500K ground forces.(Or did, before last February. Now, it's more like 300,000.) And now the 50,000 mercenaries of Wagner Group are no longer an option.
Supposedly, they'll be contracted directly into the Russian forces.
As. If.
If they remain as a group, they remain the same threat to state security they were to Moscow and Putin the minute Prigozhin decides to renege on the deal, and turn the insurrection back on.
If Putin breaks them up and parcels them out, he spreads unreliable elements into every command in the army to which they're detailed, sowing the seeds of a bigger mutiny next time. And guarantees a next time.
And if Putin tries to eliminate them and/or Prigozhin, and Russia reneges on the deal, the original causa revolutionis is restored, front and center.
Heads they win, tails Putin loses.
5) Prigozhin is a Russian rock star and folk hero.
Nobody was protesting him when he took the HQ in Rostov-On-The-Don. They were cheering the man who told the government where to head in. They were posing for selfies with him, FFS. Putin and Shoigu, by contrast, are the LBJ and McNamara of this war. People don't pose with them, they throw bombs at them if they get the chance.
Prigozhin:"The president is wrong about the betrayal of Motherland. We are the patriots of our homeland; we fought before and we are fighting now. All the fighters of the Wagner private military company. And no one is going to surrender at the request of the president, the FSB or anyone else. We do not want the country to continue to live in corruption, deception and bureaucracy....”
Average Russians are eating that shit up, with a ladle.
6) Every other Russian Federation republic, especially the troublesome ones, noticed 1-5.
Putin just invited the next dozen insurrections. When you give a mouse a cookie...
7) China saw how weak, fragmented, and dysfunctional Russia is. And Putin's precarious perch atop the crumbling edifice. And the Russian Army's inability to end the insurrection on the terms demanded early on by Putin and the Ministry of Defense. India saw it too. So did Iran. So did 160 UN member nations. Putin pulled his pants down, showed his ass, and slapped his bare ass cheeks in front of the world, and Prigozhin made him do it. Everyone knows Putin, the government, and the Russian army are paper tigers. (As if getting kicked in the dick daily for 16 months by a country and people a fraction of Russia's size and power wasn't enough proof in that regard.)
8) There is no walking any of that back. Witless wonders think Friday's coup will be memory-holed by those of us who pointed it out, now that it's "over". As. If.
Friday was Von Stauffenberg bombing Hitler's meeting. When you're winning a war, your own side doesn't try to take out your leadership.
And even Hitler didn't send the plotters on R&R, nor forgive and forget the attempt. Putin did. Because he had no other choice.
The only thing that'll be memory-holed is the Putards trying to pretend this isn't the glaringly obvious proof that Putin, the war, and the Russian Federation are a failed leader, a failed effort, and a failed state.
Gaslighting that reality is what they do when reality pisses them off.
"Putin's playing the Long Game."
"Any Day Now™" Russia will show you!"
Recall, nota bene, that I told you on Friday this was the beginning of the Russian devolution. It's the biggest crack to date - so far - in a shattered pile of festering shite.
You will see this material again.
"Russia today increasingly resembles Russia in 1917, a comparison that even Putin made in his address. An unwinnable war, a collapsing economy, a demoralized population, a fragmented elite, an incompetent leader, and an ineffective and demoralized army led to regime collapse and revolution then, and are very likely to lead to similar outcomes today."
9) And knowing that is what has Putin, 100 toadies nearest him - including every military leader thereabouts - and ten other Russian sub-states and other sovereign nations at minimum now paying attention, and they'll be looking for ways to shake Putin's tree, like a chimp-out mob rocking a police car before they finally flip it over.
You ain't seen nothin' yet.
10) So for those of you who couldn't help half-wittedly creaming yourself over the speedy conclusion of the first bog-obvious and indisputable armed mutiny inside Russia, maybe stop thinking with your little heads, and use whatever stump you've got protruding from your collar as something besides a hat rack. Because if you don't, that stinging sensation down there is going to be you, the next time you jump all over your junk, with cleats on, like you're doing this time. And like beating your heads against a brick wall, it'll feel so good to stop.
He's absolutely right about laughable propaganda, but not in the way he thinks.
E.g.:
"Until recently, Putin left the Ukraine alone except for the Donbass area."
And the guy who wrote that, sourced at the OP, is calling those who disagree with his crackpot analysis "delusional"? It is to laugh.
Other than illegally seizing Crimea outright in 2014 (because he could) amidst the chaos of the Ukrainian uprising, and then immediately afterwards doubling down, and sending Spetsnaz and airborne troops into the Donbas in wholesale batches, minimally camouflaged in civilian clothes, and then claiming they were "popular uprisings" against Kiev, Putin left Ukraine alone.
Which would be like saying that "Except for seizing California and Texas, and annexing them back into Mexico, Mexico has left the United States alone."
Anyone who can support that level of psychosis can rationalize anything.
"the newspaper's delusional writers claim that Russian attacks are no longer effective as Ukraine's Western allies have shored up Ukraine's air defenses. Why then is half of Ukraine without electric power?"
This is like me saying I have a credit card, and then you asking me why my tires are flat.
One statement has nothing to do with the other, and ignores the obvious.
For the terminally clueless, I'd go out on a limb and say it's because before Ukraine's Western allies shored up their air defenses, Russian saturation missile attacks, with only 25% effectiveness at the height of the bombardments, still managed to knock out a lot of Ukrainian power grid infrastructure. In other news for the criminally stupid, water is wet, and fire burns.
Thus half of Ukraine is without power because prior Russian strikes hit electrical infrastructure that's hard to replace (the fragility of the world's power grids has only been covered in Ukraine's specific case, and for the U.S., about a million times in the last ten years, from Hell to breakfast by everyone in creation), and necessary replacement parts are available from a very limited number of sources. Much of which is Russian itself. Gee, let me think why it's still dark in the areas of the Ukraine where Russia has landed drone and missile strikes...
Meanwhile, that effort has affected Ukraine's battlefield campaigns...how, exactly?
Talk turkey, not b.s.: Is the front moving towards Kiev, or towards Moscow?
And in which direction has it been moving, inexorably, since late August?
Get back to us, and tell us who's really being delusional.
How it ends remains an open question (Retards, Pay Attention: Russia nominally has 10 times the military and resources of Ukraine, and yet, they continue to flail endlessly to no good result), but failure to acknowledge the currently obvious situation is the textbook definition of outright insanity.
You want to argue Russia will make a comeback? That's fine.
First, explain why they need to, and on the way there, own up to their serial failures to date.
Then explain how they've learned from their colossal blunders thus far, and made needed reforms, and from what bodily orifice they're suddenly going to pull a military that's powerful, competent, motivated, and intelligently led, rather than a bunch of drunken buffoons led by prevaricating nitwits who keep falling out of windows, or shooting themselves in the head six or seven times, back at HQ.
That would be a fascinating read, if it's not all fairytales running on pure hopeium.
Russia's going to win? Already won?? Show your work.
Buuuuut, that necessarily requires an explanation of why they're still they're if they've already won, why they're moving towards Moscow and not Kiev if they're "winning", or barely breaking even, why they keep scraping the bottom of the barrel for more conscripts and convicts if they're slaughtering the Ukrainians in job lots, and owning up to everything that's gotten them where they are, which is back-pedalling towards the Rodina in haste, leaving their dead and wounded behind in droves, and how they're going to pull off this hitherto impossible military triumph in order to get where you think they're going to get.
I repeat: Show. Your. Work.
I get that Emperor Poopypants egged this on to cover his clan's criminal corruption there. I get that you think Zelensky's just as crooked. (But undeniably, whatever else he is, he isn't Putin's bitch, unlike every prior Ukrainian leader since 1990, and that's what rankled Putin the most.) I'll even give you a pass on your delusion that Putin's anything but a jumped up KGB thug and mass-murderer with delusions of grandeur. That's nice, but I don't give a fuck about any of that in this context, and it has no bearing on the topic under discussion. IDGAS about what you fondly wish would happen, I care about objective reality. If thinking is hard for you, this is where you're going to trip on your dick, and step all over it with sharp cleated spikes.
Bluff and bluster in service of your narrative is just so much bullshit and spin. Try facts. Verifiable sources. Actual data. If only for the novelty. Hyperbole and horseshit in equal measure is selling in Moscow at ₱2/metric fuckton. Actual evidence is pretty thin on the ground, largely because it's non-existent. Bring us a Bigfoot carcass, or a unicorn skull, and we can talk this out like grownups.
Can't do that? (And that would be the entire Rootin' For Putin contingent, web-wide, since March of last year to date, just to be accurate.) Letter grade of F. Obviously.
The narrative from the Rootin' For Putin side since August has been "Any day now, Russia is going to do...something!"
It's January. It's been 300+ days already. In seven weeks, this will be a full year of military debacle for Russia.
For a war Putin was going to win in three days.
And for nearly half of which, Russia's military has been in full-scale retreat. And still no "something".
Russia's been the Black Knight to Ukraine's King Arthur in this conflict for ten months. Sorry, but there it is. Suck on it.
Please explain how you can be "winning", and yet take 10,000% longer than initial expectations. The rough equivalent would be WW II lasting until the year 2345. I'll wait while you work that out.
Just saying.
FTR, We'll leave this topic alone when people stop spewing bullshit with snowblowers.
The Usual Gang Of Idiots are astonished that anyone could think the Russian Army has failed, repeatedly, because of a centuries-long practice of both corruption, and official lying to cover it up, and suffering real-world consequences when they face an actual opponent willing to contest the struggle. (They should look up how well this systemic drawback served Russia from Sept. of 1941 until 1943, or from 1914 until the Russian Revolution.)
As the video above belabors, this is hardly a new thing, and once this became more than a 3-day war, and Russian leadership, political and military, realized they'd been caught believing their own press releases, Reality started bitch-slapping them around pretty hard.
The cardinal problem is that modern combined-arms warfare is the ultimate trust-based system, and it depends on brutal honesty to make decisions, penetrate what Von Clausewitz called "the fog of war", and overcome its "friction" in order to achieve victory. (In American forces, "friction" is called Murphy, and he's a sonofabitch to the foolish or careless, with the subtlety of a JDAM dropping in your foxhole.)
Commanders, as the video notes, don't get perfect God's-eye-view intelligence, at least not until it's too late to help, in most cases. So they have to be flexible, and at some point, if they want to win, they have to trust downwards, and let lesser ranks at each level have the freedom to work the problem in order to win. But the reports back up the chain have to be scrupulously truthful to inform decisions, logistics, and follow-on actions.
One Courtney Massengale being the douche he is fusterclucks the whole system. One fouled up company screws up a whole attack. And when units don't know what they don't know, think they know it all, and believe their own press releases, the outcome is generally unforgiving, and people die with surprised looks on their faces.
The Russian army is made up of an entire hierarchy of Courtney Massengales, bottom to top, and they haven't faced a near peer since 1945. And all of NATO, with 20 years in the sand box for combat ops experience, has been feeding first rate intel to Ukraine, while the Russians can't even organize getting fuel to the vehicles on the attack, or socks and boots to their men at the training depot. That's third-world level competence, right there.
Russia has spent eight months proving that to the world, day after day.
And the certified idiots yapping about "any minute now" sound like Hitler in the bunker, ordering units to attack that don't exist. Except less sane than that.
Translation: No nuclear war today, thanksverymuch. NATO took a vote, and they're not going to start Armageddon over one Russian "Aw shitski!"
Because sometimes, it's better to be a live sh*tweasel, than a vaporized truth-teller floating to earth as radioactive fallout particles.
So much for the ongoing line of horsesh*t about anyone trying to poke Russia into a nuclear war. Vlad just got a mulligan, and some fuck-up missile programmer in Belarus just got a dirt nap.
As if, at this point, anyone in the country is surprised that the banana republic poser in the White House can't even put his pants on frontside to the front without copious assistance.
The expression on the guy behind Emperor Stumblefuck Poopypants looking at the zipper on his backside is priceless.
But at least it's faster to take care of business when he's about to sh*t himself again. Which, we're guessing, is just about hourly, both metaphorically or literally.
Turns out you could make a "Hitler Rants" parody about Nazi Germany blowing up the NordStream pipelines that would be miles more accurate than any codswallop about "Biden did it".
For all those "America Worst" folks busy shoving the U.S. forward as the Most Likely Suspect in the Baltic shenanigans, comes another inconvenient bit of harsh reality, this one from the Asia Times.
Far more plausible than "the U.S. did it" knee-jerk slobbering nominations, this article notes the copious number of old explosive relics and modern-day military exercises in direct proximity, and - color us shocked - it turns out multiple nations, including Russia, regularly hold military exercises, with live ammunition, very near the pipelines and the immediate vicinity, even after the article's discussion of tons and tons of UXO from WW2 scattered hither and yon from Russia to the Kattegat strait.
Oopsie. The universe of what could have happened just got a lot wider than those trying to paint this as inevitably the US, in a clown wig and floppy shoes, acting all by itself on a bare white plain of obviousness.
Looks like some folks' knee-jerk "theory" just took another direct hit.
But the low IQ contingent wants you to believe that we did it, after we explicitly warned Germany that intelligence pointed towards some nefarious third-party op, which might be planned for the pipelines, and yet with everyone watching, we went in there and sabotaged the pipelines ourselves, and expect Germans to starve to death and freeze this winter, while their government, together with Danish, British, Norwegian, and Swedish militaries and governments keep the secret of our responsibility from the whole world, in perpetuity, because that regional conspiracy sounds more plausible to them. And for not going along with that delusional codswallop, I'm the unreasonable one.
Which is proof of the adage "Where there's smoke, there's a bong."
{For a second time, for the flood of low-comprehension readers, this is not nor ever was intended to explain everything that happened. It simply points out that there are a lot of balls in play on this pinball machine, multiple navies from interested parties in the local region, and many, many more ways for pipelines to go "Boom" than does pretending that only the US Navy's undersea capabilities are likely to own the blame. If this was too hard for anyone to grasp without being this explicitly told, please spend less time licking the short bus windows, and more time looking out of them. Complex problems seem simple -- for simpletons. Don't be That Guy. The level of mouth-frothing psychosis to defend "The U.S. did it!" position would be embarrassing even to incarcerated delusional psychotics. - A.}
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow multiple actual individuals' handwritten blogs. (Bot news aggregators don't thrill me.) Looking them over, many are current serving or former military and a couple are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. Or just funny as all. Because life without humor is just despair. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
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