Putin's big set-back
I know that some people here denied that Russia actually tried to seize Kiev during the original invasion and failed. After this ongoing setback for Russia I think that opinion will have to be reconsidered.
Ukraine has essentially taken back all of the land near Kharkiv that Russia seized 6 months ago.
A large part of the reason for this is because of U.S. weapons and U.S. intelligence. A small part of the reason is because of Ukraine.
But the largest part of the reason is because of the lack of professionalism in Russian forces in that region. I'm not sure if it's because of morale, or logistics, or poor leadership, or something else. But one thing is for certain - Russian forces simply collapsed.
The frontline around Kherson has barely budged, but we are beginning to see some movement far to the north of Kherson.
This is the part that virtually every liberal in the United States will f*ck up and not be able to figure out - things can get worse!
It's not leftists in Russia that are getting angry. It's the right-wing.
If Putin gets kicked out it is better than even odds that a more authoritarian, more militaristic leader will take over for Putin.
If Ukraine's military actually does manage to take back Kherson and start driving into Crimea you can be almost 100% certain that there will be a right-wing coup in Russia and that they will drop nukes on Ukraine before giving up the home of the Black Sea fleet.
Comments
Haven't yet seen
reliable sources to explain this latest, except perhaps that it exposed the Putin special military operation's weakness, which was probably bound to happen, of trying to accomplish a major military goal in a fairly large country with strict limits on engagement and commitment.
Def there will be pressure on Vlad from the Kremlin right to finally get tough and take off the gloves, go for the jugular instead of the capillaries. If I know Vlad, and I don't, he won't wait until either the UKR forces threaten Crimea or until he's about to be ousted by rightist forces.
Right now I see this as a very mini-Battle of the Bulge, a temporary victory for the side which had been losing everywhere previously and which might in hindsight mark the lone high point for that side's military effort.
I'd give it more time to resolve the situation
This is a
SMOwar between Russia and NATO. Ukraine just supplies the "meat for the grinder". I expect Putin to escalate as is required.[video:https://youtu.be/7plcfdPommU?t=144]
I would caution...
not to believe any Intel from either side at this juncture.
I don't
I generally ignore any reports on the small movements, and almost everything coming from U.S. and U.K. media.
But this was a big move that even Russia had to acknowledge to its own people.
Not likely.
Myself and many others did not deny what you believed. We disagreed.
Same as you deny that Russia had no choice. That is your belief not mine so we disagree.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Uh, even
Mike Tyson took a few shots to the face
in his career
This was inevitable, it’s a war regardless of what you might want to call it
give it a week see where it ends up by friday
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
I believe the reference I made to the Saker
article in the Evening Blues definitely applies when reading this opinion. Because this is most certainly an opinion.
My biggest difficulty when seeing the current situation is reconciling the contradictions involved. For example I am vehemently anti-corporatist. I feel like the neolib/neocon anti-social movement since the 1970s has done our nation a most grevious injustice, a wound which even to this day drives us even further into an absolute dystopia. We have lost personal rights and protections. The wealth accumulated by the sweat of common peoples efforts and innovations has been stolen by the elitists. This "war" is beggaring our future by taking value that could be used to improve our lives and throwing it away.
In effect the value of our blood and sweat and efforts is being used to further an effort which steals those same values from us. In effect we are buying the rope being used to lynch us.
I find myself in a position where I cannot support the position of my "leaders".
When I look at the history of the russian state since the breakup of the USSR I see nothing more than a theft of their resources the same way our resources are stolen even to this day. I think that the big battle over Ukraine is not one of political ideology but more one of resource theft. Eg, Z is offering his country at bargain basement prices to our oligarchs. All he wants is the finders fee and he doesn't seem to care who dies along the way. I can't help believing that the corporations that have already invested in the Ukraine farmland are the loudest voices screaming for our intervention.
Z is in good company tho. I consider our current MIC (morons in charge) to be exactly the same with exactly the same motives. Not a nickesl difference between Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, Obama, McConnell, etc, and Z. They too have watched their own people die and not shed a tear.
On the other side is russia. That nation I was taught to hate and fear in my school days. Perhaps you might find russia to be your enemy but I think I would throw in my lot with a change in our direction.
A multi-polar world where a nation's word is its bond.
Darth Putin
No and NO
Russia had planned a withdrawal from that region so it really wasn't such a big deal...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQEOEoS9T5I]
Of course the dominate media in the west is trying to make it more than what it is... it is in no way a humiliating defeat... It is war. It sucks.
It was a feint by Putin which almost worked
There is no way Russia could have actually taken a city of 3 million with only 40,000 troops, especially as the majority was, by far, anti Russia. It was a feint to get Zelensky to capitulate. It almost worked. All Putin wanted at the time was the Minsk Agreement signed/honoured and to not have NATO in Ukraine.
Boris Johnson talked Zelenski out of it by promising more military support. NATO had by this time invested too much to let this opportunity for a military conflict with Russia to go to waste. The US neocons had spent more than five billion in creating a colour revolution followed by a successful coup in Ukraine for this very purpose.
The only mistake Putin made was to NOT have taken Donbass regions (along with Crimea) back in 2014 when they were begging him to do so. The neocons and NATO suckered him. BTW, the Kharkiv Oblast does not have a population that is willing to join Russia. It was simply a buffer area to be bargained and discarded so it's loss is not great in the scheme of things.
Yeltsin fucked over Russia big time. It's taken Putin over two decades to try and fix it. Fortunately he has made significant strides and the Russian people know it. You should not take Russian media pundits so seriously.
@CB Reg the mistake :
Reg the mistake :
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/08/26/book-review-alexander-zhuchkovsky-85-days-in-slavyansk/
Excellent backgrounder
Thank you...
A tiny sliver of reality seems to have slipped in
Still enough denial to compete with that river in Egypt.
Soon Russian opinion will shift also. Most people love a good war, look at the US with Iraq.
Naked imperialism puts a lot of people off and makes all of Europe nervous, expect a huge arms build up. Poland and the Baltic Republics will arm with the very real worry that they live next door to a ruthless fascist regime. Belarus is a puppet for now but they understand they could be next. Kazakhstan is buying as much armaments as it possibly can. It's like knowing the dog next door probably has rabies.
Crimea will be returned to Ukraine, and rightly so. No country in this day and age should be able to simply take pieces from a neighbor. The portions of Ukraine that thought they might like to be independent have learned just what it's like to live with Russia. All the men were pressed into service and used as cannon fodder. All those Russian passports they were issued aren't recognised at the border and the collaborators are forced to remain in Ukraine.
Anyone who wants to place a very small wager on Putin (or whoever runs the country then) dropping nukes when Ukraine takes back Crimea? Russian security and intelligence officials are selling houses there and moving out, they had it good for awhile. Ukraine's biggest headache is providing for all the POWs whose ranks are growing exponentially, and consolidate all the territory Russians have abandoned in one of the biggest routes in recent memory. Russia announced yesterday they are stopping sending more troops, all they do is give Ukraine more leverage as they immediately turn into POWs.
Strange…
I pretty much read that word for word yesterday on DK and like you have provided none I saw no links to back it up. Lukashenko is an ally of Russia and see no reason why Russia would invade Belarus. A few years ago America attempted a coup on Lukashenko, but he was warned about it by Russia intelligence and recently Russia put some bombing planes in the country. Or was that for when they decide…? Fck it I’m not going down this rabbit hole.
It’d be nice if you provided some links on this fantasy that someone pulled out of their hat.
As for Ukraine taking back Crimea would you like to place a wager on it? Loser donates to the site. I’m saying that it will never happen. Crimea belongs to Russia.
ETA link
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
WTF are you talking about?
Where do you get your talking points? Dkos???
Kazakhstan buys Russian S300 air defence systems and have a open contract for SU-30's. The only differences is that President Tokayev has to keep relationships open with Europe (vis-à-vis the status of Donetsk and Lugansk) to facilitate the possible billion dollar joint venture to supply Europe with green hydrogen within 5-10 years.
Why don't you ever back up your posts with links and data? If you hadn't noticed, C99% is a reality based web site unlike TOS.
Yep
See the link I posted that goes to a diary on dk about Belarus. I read it yesterday and just laughed at how the echo chamber took it as gospel even though he provided no links. Take a look.
Oh yeah and kos should get a Pulitzer for his coverage that comes from some of the best Ukraine propaganda sites.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
You don't get it
Syria says "Hey! Remember us?"
We're currently occupying 1/3rd of their country. Illegally, even by our own laws.
While we steal their oil.
Or maybe we should consider the case of Kosovo.
If you are looking for a nuclear war, one in which those nukes start by dropping on Kiev, then this is how to do it.
Do you really want Ukraine to get nuked? Think about it carefully.
Then think about how the people of Crimea don't want to be part of Ukraine, as proven by every referendum and poll since 1991.
WFT are you talking about? Where did you get that koolaid?
Weird how Americans keep forgetting that America has over 800
bases in other countries and many against the will of the people and leadership. Japan and Iraq have both asked Americans to leave their country, but Americans refuse to do so. And how about Guam and Gitmo! What about the huge base in the former Yugoslavia? And what gives America the right to invade countries against the will of the UN? Americans really need to buy a mirror and look into it before bitching about other countries.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Interesting prospect on our occupation of Syria
From this essay.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
That would make sense
Syria has all of the makings for a proxy war.
The U.S. has the Kurds and several head-chopping jihadists groups.
Russia has the Syrian government forces and multiple Iran-backed militias.
And Russia certainly wants to get back at us.
@gjohnsit I don't know Gjohnsit,
I don't know Gjohnsit, last neighbor I can think of we took over was back before the civil war. You know, TX, NM, and all that. Not sure what you are on about Syria and Kosovo, last I looked we had 50 states. Of course I might be wrong, me and the rest of the free world. And Kim of N Korea might have the inside dope on what is free and fair, or maybe Xi. I'll stick with liberal democratic democracies thank you very much, and the topic is Russia's unprovoked invasion of their neighbor Ukraine.
But why I logged back on was to thank you for the vid, I haven't watched Saagar and Krystal Ball in a long time, they are two commentators I can actually watch. I'd urge all to watch from about the 2:00 mark to 20:00.
Saagar and many others can't get over the genius of the Ukrainian strategy. Comparisons go all the way back to WWII. In the Atlantic, "The overall planning by the Ukrainian government and armed forces worked well on so many levels that it produced one of the greatest military-strategy successes since 1945" Ukraine came out with more tanks than they went in with, even accounting for losses.
I wouldn't place bets on what the outcome of a free and fair election in Crimea would be without Russians. The two largest Russian speaking cities in Ukraine, Kharkiv and Odessa, turned out to be the bulwarks against the Russian invasion. Putin and nukes is the last thing I worry about, Putin knows he is likely to be Gaddafied if he isn't careful. I've been hearing Putin and nukes since he got his ass handed to him trying to take Kiev. Russia can always just go home and quit invading neighbors. Any wagers on the # of POWs?
Russia itself announced they weren't sending more troops in. Today's news.
Good vid, starts at the 2 min mark.
@ban nock From what source,
From what source, ban...That seems to be your problem.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
@on the cusp The vid is from
The vid is from the original post. I don't even respond to things a simple google search would pull up or common knowledge. I see many links which are simply to wherever they pulled the propaganda source from which is useless. Just because it's on the internet doesn't make it true. So there are sources, and then there are sources.
People make disparaging remarks about the MSM, but generally they all use the same sources, and the straight news is fairly accurate. Russians, Ukrainians, Europeans, they all have the same facts. Opinion and propaganda is where they vary.
Same facts?
WMDs? White Helmets? Gulf of Tonkin? But just this once, all facts from both sides of the Ukrainian conflict are the same?
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Babies being thrown out of incubators…
‘Remember the Maine' and 'Saddam has WMDs'
Good grief no wonder he’s been wrong on Russia since the conflict started if he only gets his news from the lying mainstream media and calls all other sources propaganda. There’s no way to reason with this mindset.
What’s that Gloebells said?
"This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it." ~ Joseph Goebbels
"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself." ~ Joseph Goebbels
"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play." ~ Joseph Goebbels
"The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it." ~ Joseph Goebbels
Hermann Goering said it best:
“Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
I would normally give you the benefit of the doubt
But you've gone so far out of the way to "not understand" my point, that you would have to be a complete moron to come up with useless reply, and I don't believe that you are a moron in any way.
Therefore, your reply is simply disingenuous hand-waving.
I would because there was plenty of referendums before 2014, and Crimea always voted against Ukraine.
But you knew that, because you've read my essay on this. So once again, you are being disingenuous.
Do Crimeans get a say?
Rightly so!?!?! To who you and Zelensky? What about the Crimeans? You must not give a flyin' rats rear about the actual people there. You want to impose foreign rule on them. That is what being in Ukraine was to them. They have already suffered 60 years of that.
Glad to you see back with more BS.
Russia did not take Crimea. Crimea VOTED themselves (90%+) to end the brief assignment they had shoved up their arses by Kruschev, to be part of Ukraine. Do you not know basic history, or choose to ignore it for the propaganda? Crimea has only been part of Ukraine since 1954, and that against their will. Kruschev gifted his Ukie buddies with it. They never agreed or wanted or asked to be part of Ukraine. They are ethnic Russian, not Ukrainian. They mostly hate the Ukies. Nice to see you want to dictate how they live with total disregard for their wishes.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
And how kimosabe!
tell it like it is
Testify!
Kick it, Dysto!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Another good essay on what happened
Link
Gilbert Doctorow said that Russia evacuated 40,000 people from the area before Ukraine took over so hopefully they will find few people to murder for being pro Russia. Unless they just go on a witch hunt and kill people like they did in Bucha and torture others like when they taped people to lampposts and invited others to beat them…and more. I wonder if the people supporting the Ukraine Nazis even know about those events? Not if they only get their news from the mainstream media. Gosh I thought that lesson was learned long ago. Hey remember when babies were being thrown out of incubators and we all fell for it? Good times.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
An excellent read on the Germany/Russia relationship
DIANA JOHNSTONE: The Specter of Germany Is Rising
Never forget which countries supported Hitler’s dreams and how many people in America had no problem with his eugenics program. Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie….
Maybe Germany should remember that it’s still occupied by Americans and that Russia was the one that let east and west Germany reunite. And then Clinton pooped in the punch bowl and started moving NATO East.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Germany Has ‘Crossed Red Line’ – Russia
For which they will pay dearly.
Fun fact
Hitler modeled his on ours.
They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore
Even the Nazi salute originally came from the US
Amazing, isn't it?
History, as they say, is (re)written by the victors.
And let's not even talk about how we shoehorned the whole "under Gawd" thing into the Pledge, and splattered him all over all the cash, back in the 40s and 50s. Free Market Jaysus and all that jazz. Lots of stuff happened back then that has been carefully wallpapered over. Look, it's Halley's Comet! Nothing to see here...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
The US Civil War comes to mind:
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange
What strikes me as absurd
is Russia steps over the border not even 100 miles and the whole Western world freaks out in the most cowardly fashion with "Oh Noes, the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!
Home of the brave. Yeah right.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Another excellent blogger has joined substack
bigserge has 3 excellent essays on the Ukraine Russia conflict and his recent one seems to look at the issue with open eyes. He’s getting kudos from lots of people others here follow.
“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt
Don't quit your day job.
Populations don’t like wars. They have to be lied into it.
That means we can be “truthed” into peace. — Julian Assange