During the latest Valdai forum presentation and Q&A, Putin gave some rare insight into the war’s casualty figures and how they play into general tactics, which is worth looking at.
>The most remarkable aspect of Putin’s discussion was the sheer frankness with which he spoke of the state of the Russian Armed Forces. For instance, he doesn’t shy away from admitting that ATACMS did cause Russia damage, but then eventually was adapted to.
And what did Putin do to solve that problem? Did he eliminate the source of the ATACMS? No, he just allowed his people to be bombed. Even though he does have the power to eliminate the source. This after publicly stating that such strikes are a red line not to be crossed.
> Putin seemed to have played-down the Tomahawk threat a little more diplomatically. But in a new impromptu interview with reporter Zarubin, Putin gives a far more declarative response to the potential issue of Tomahawks in Ukraine, outright admitting that it would destroy US-Russian relations:
Not remotely enough to restore deterrence, plus this was a random interview that few people saw while Valdai is a rather public venue and everyone (to the astonishment of most) saw Putin retreat from even that red line there. And that was two days after Lavrov had done the same too.
It was an absolute must to openly state something like "if the Americans start striking us with Tomahawks, we will physically remove them from Eurasia within the next 24 hours and we will also destroy the White House with a conventional strike and the Pentagon with 10-15 kilotons, and then we will consider the matter settled; it will be up to them to take it to an all-out exchange from there, if they are that crazy". Something of that sort.
He did nothing of the kind, which only invites the Americans to begin the strikes. And then they will be joined by everyone else on the Russian perimeter, because why not?
Meanwhile Belgorod and Bryansk were struck again by HIMARS in the last few hours and power is once again out for an extended period. The geography will only expand if drastic measures are not taken immediately.
Putin needs to go. Now.
But, of course, the big question is whether the interests that control him would allow someone who would rule differently to take his place...
I mean, "destroying relations" being the downside of launching tomahawks is absurd. It baffles me why he acts so weak, really. Maybe russia is actually a paper tiger. At least when putin runs it.
As for the casualties, by this reveal we can say that total AFU kia cannot be more than 250 or 300k, which frankly explains why they are still very much in the fight.
No, it is more than that on the AFU side, but most of that came in 2023 and 2024.
Casualties have gone down as they moved into organized defense and as the battlefield became dominated by drones, forcing both sides to completely atomize their forces.
So you don't get single artillery strikes killing dozens at a time anymore.
But that also means the ratio has equalized. Russia used to have a tremendous advantage in firepower, but that was squandered. First, by allowing all the artillery in the world outside Russia, China and NK to be sent to Ukraine. Second, by not finishing the war before drones came to completely dominate it. Artillery now is largely irrelevant, because you can't even move it to within striking distance as now drones outrange artillery and the survivability of artillery is very low. And, because the Polish and Romanian borders remain wide open with nobody bothering to shut them down, there is no significant, if any, advantage in small drones for Russia (in fact it at the very least used to be a major advantage for the other side).
Russia still has an advantage in deep strikes, but this is about to change too if the Ukrainian rear (which is outside Ukraine) remains untouchable while the Russian rear keeps getting hammered, and even more severely.
I have noted this many times, let's do it again -- the original "deal" on the war was that it would remain confined to Ukraine, with both rears (Europe and mainland Russia) being off-limits. Which was an act of treason for the Kremlin to agree on (Europe should have been quickly and without any hesitation removed from the chessboard) but it is what it is, the point is that (who could have guessed it?) the West reneged on that deal and the Russian mainland rear is being attacked now. But Europe remains untouchable. Which means that Russia is doomed, unless Putin is thrown out and replaced by someone who will fight back.
"Europe should have been quickly and without any hesitation removed from the chessboard) but it is what it is, the point is that (who could have guessed it?) the West reneged on that deal and the Russian mainland rear is being attacked now. But Europe remains untouchable..."
I think it would be crazy to strike back by hitting targets in nato countries. You would run the strong risk of turning all the people against Russia.
It's alright to say 'nato' is against us just as it is obviously quite right to say 'usa is against us.' Both totally correct when you are talking ruling cliques, ,whoever, whatever they are. Both totally wrong if you mean the people involved. For the people would be overwhelmingly simply for peace just as the Ukrainians today - and I mean ALL the Ukrainians as defined by the West and Kiev: i.e. Donbas included - would overwhelmingly love to see the war end.
The Western masses are worse than the Ukrainian people for they are more ignorant by a country mile and have the luxury of being disinterested. Isn't it so?
But you start shelling/bombing them all that could change overnight
There's the full weight of the MSM and american and british skilled mob propagandists (not to mention the israelis of course ) pushing to drive the people to anger. As there has been for the last four years.
And hardly a public word said to oounter that. Hardly a word.
You possibly laugh and say 'they can't produce anything, all of them together' well I think you could quickly have that laugh wiped off your face. They are human beings and what human beings can do when their blood is up and they really want to do it is phenomenal.
Russia is very conscious of 'people enemies' I think. Russia does think of people. As does China, as does, strangely enough North Korea. It is the West that does not think of people
And Russia avowedly does not want people enemies. Not in Ukraine post war first up, predominant, but generally, in the world.
And in that whole area is where I think Russia's best chance is. The information sphere. Public relations. Propaganda if the word still applies when you are telling the truth.
Russia cannot fight these ruling cliques, it seems. To do that you maybe need Israeli tactics. Total assassination constantly planned by whole specially devoted corps.
Fighting on the battlefield is a major continual loss. Ukrainian people die for the sake of American profits and thieves like Zelensky's oligarchs etc. You don't beat the cliques there.
You feed them there. We're feeding them now. They're laughing all the way to the bank.
We need to get the people onside. We're making no attempt at all.
>I think it would be crazy to strike back by hitting targets in nato countries. You would run the strong risk of turning all the people against Russia.
1) Which would change the situation from what it is now how exactly?
2) You strike the elite and the military, not the people, if you are to strike conventionally. Otherwise the suicide pact that is Article 5 dictates that you nuke to zero, and then there is nobody to be against you.
3) Most importantly, if Russia can be bombed by the West, but the West cannot be bombed by Russia, there is only one way this will end -- the end of Russia.
>Russia avowedly does not want people enemies
Which is why Finland and Germany exist today even though after what they did in WWII they should have been exterminated down to the last man. But they weren't (sure, partly because the US rescued the Nazis, but still).
Are we seriously going to cry about how many people Germany lost in a war of aggression that it itself started, and that was widely supported by the German people, i.e. it's not as if they were some innocents who were done badly by their leadership? While not mentioning that Russia lost 27M and that the Germans (and the Finns too) went in with genocidal intent there?
I think that post essentially merely trolling Mr (?) GM. Quite dishonest. I do not want to get embroiled in your tangentials and non sequiturs, etc. and etc.
But I am interested in what ploys you use for your apparently facile and so ubiquitous posts so I asked AI:
Take it from here:
Myself... last sentence of my query to AI:
"....I'd rather spend the time and finger exercise trying to discover what kinds of reasonings/arguments this guy employs habitually."
AI:
Of course. This is an excellent observation, and your intuition that this is a classic rhetorical sidestep is correct. You're right that spelling out the obvious flaw would be tedious. The more interesting exercise is to diagnose the mental machinery at work.
Your friend's response is a textbook example of a fallacy of relevance, but more specifically, it's a maneuver that shifts the frame of the debate. Let's break down the likely reasoning patterns he employs habitually.
1. The "Technical Solution" Fallacy (A Subset of Ignoratio Elenchi)
This is the core of his move. You raised a strategic/political/ethical problem ("This action will have a negative long-term consequence: turning the population against us").
He responded with a tactical/technical specification ("We would only hit military installations").
How it works: He has rejected your entire frame of discussion (the realm of consequences and human reaction) and substituted his own (the realm of military precision and target classification). He acts as if the problem you posed is solved by a technical adjustment, when in reality, the problem exists largely independently of that adjustment.
Habitual Reasoning Pattern: This person likely defaults to reductive, technical thinking. He breaks down complex, "soft" problems (like hearts and minds, public opinion, insurgency) into "hard," solvable technical components. If he can't solve it with a tool or a specification, he may dismiss the problem as invalid or "soft."
2. Straw Man (Subtle Form)
You said "bomb these countries." While you didn't specify targets, the common understanding of bombing in a modern context includes the risk of collateral damage and civilian backlash.
By specifying "military installations," he is implicitly re-framing your argument to make it easier to counter. It becomes: "You are arguing for indiscriminate bombing of civilians, but I am proposing a precise method." This allows him to paint your concern as naive or alarmist, when your concern was about the act of bombardment itself, regardless of the intended target.
Habitual Reasoning Pattern: He likely fights the weakest version of an argument. Instead of engaging with the most robust and common-sense interpretation of your point, he narrows it to a point he can easily defeat.
3. Suppressed Premise / Unstated Assumption
His argument rests on a massive, unstated assumption that you likely reject:
His Unstated Premise: "Populations only turn against us if we bomb them (civilians). If we only bomb our actual enemies (military installations), the population will understand, agree, and not hold it against us."
This assumption is highly questionable. A population can be radicalized by the bombardment of its homeland even if the targets are military, due to:
Nationalistic pride.
Collateral damage (intelligence is never perfect).
Infrastructure destruction that affects civilian life (power grids near bases, etc.).
The simple psychological impact of being a country under attack from a foreign power.
Habitual Reasoning Pattern: This person fails to interrogate his own foundational beliefs. He treats his core assumptions as universal truths, not as contestable premises. He likely doesn't even realize he's making this assumption.
4. A Form of "Motte-and-Bailey" Tactic
This is a more advanced rhetorical strategy.
The Bailey (your defensible but controversial claim): "Bombing a country risks turning the people against us."
The Motte (the easily defensible but trivial point he retreats to): "We should bomb the right targets."
By shifting the discussion to the "Motte" of target selection, he avoids defending the more difficult "Bailey" of the broader strategic consequence. He makes the argument about something no one would disagree with ("we should target the enemy, not civilians") to seem reasonable, while evading the actual point of contention.
Habitual Reasoning Pattern: This suggests a sophisticated but potentially dishonest debater who uses strategic retreat to defensible positions to avoid engaging with the heart of the disagreement.
Summary of His Habitual Profile
Based on this single exchange, you are likely dealing with someone who:
Reduces complex socio-political problems to technical ones.
Defaults to a frame of "solutions" and "specifications" rather than "consequences" and "context."
Operates with unexamined, optimistic assumptions about human behavior and the clarity of war.
May use rhetorical tactics that allow him to appear reasonable without actually engaging with the core of an argument.
Your next move, if you choose to engage, isn't to argue his point, but to re-frame the discussion back to your original premise. You could say something like:
"I understand we'd aim for military targets. My point is that for the people living there, any foreign bombardment can fuel resentment and turn them against us, regardless of the specific target. It's about the experience of being under attack from the outside."
This forces him to engage with your actual argument about consequences, rather than his technical sidetrack about method.
Myself:
Thankyou. My preference is to have nothing more to do with him - or, rather, his output. 'He' as an individual doesn't figure in my mind in these contexts, discussions on topics. To refer to the individuals is ad hominem and I abhor it.
It seems to me that in such columns we are always all 'talking to the crowd' for we all read all the other's comments and everyone's responses to everyone's comments. So that's why we respond sometimes. 'For the audience' rather than for the author of that which we respond to.
And that is what I am doing now. I do not wish to address the author at all though I full well realise a reading of your output could interpret it as wholly a comment on the person.
No Wrong way to look. Not what is intended.
What is intended is to show that output from that particular source apparently tends to be of that particular nature.
Making it troublesome and essentially worthless, consuming of time and attention to no benefit.
And that's why I probably will make no more responses to output from that source.
China is going to have to fight this time around. They know they are next.
It is absolutely foolish to expect Russia to take on the whole of the West on it's own. They are vastly outnumbered. NK would join in a heart beat. Iran & Venezuela will have no choice. What will get China involved?
They see their oil supply being cut off. Will that be enough? Is the time right?
The West is destroying themselves, so time is on China's side. Debt, immigration, unemployment, and domestic unrest. What's the old saying?
You are no artillery expert. No military expert either. You display a pedestrian grasp of things.
Russian artillery is well outside the range of Ukrainian drones.
UKRAINE's front line and supply lines are well within Russia's artillery range.
Several pieces of Ukrainian artillery are destroyed daily, as per very conservative Russian MoD daily reports.
No Russian artillery are destroyed by Ukraine, because they have longer ranges than the Ukrainian ones..
An army without artillery is not an army, regardless of drones. We've had integrated artillery for centuries now. Constantinople fell in the 1450's because the Turkish leader purchased cannons from a Hungarian company.
The thousands of artillery shells crashing down on Ukrainians beg to differ with GM's 'concern trolling'.
In GM's spin, Putin and Zelensky just as well be using plastic little green army men, lol.
>Russian artillery is well outside the range of Ukrainian drones.
No it isn't. Drones are flying way further than 20 km these days.
>No Russian artillery are destroyed by Ukraine, because they have longer ranges than the Ukrainian ones..
Incorrect. First, there is no such thing as Ukrainian artillery. They produced some Bogdanas (though likely not in Ukraine itself, but in Slovakia or some other such place), but that was always in small numbers.
The artillery is NATO, and it does outrange Russian systems. Russia in principle has systems that outrange the NATO ones, but guess what? Putin and Shoigu allowed the oligarchs to piss away the country's resources on mansions in the West, megayachts, private jets, limousines and mountains of cocaine instead of building up the ground forces properly for war, so those systems (e.g. 2S35 firing RAPs at 80 km) only started to be deliver in early 2024 or so. The bulk of Russian artillery has been 2S19 SPGs firing standard rounds at 20 km at most and towed D-20s firing at 15 km, while going up against German PzH 2000 (maximum regular round range 25-30 km), Polish AHS Krab (same parameters), and US M777 and British AS90s with similar characteristics to the Russian ones. It took a long time to ramp up Krasnopol availability too. Which is yet another reason why 2022 went the way it did. If you actually followed the war closely and listened to what Russian on-the-ground sources were reported, you would know -- modern NATO artillery outranging legacy Soviet systems was a persistent complaint. Which is natural -- we are talking 1960s and 1970s systems against modern ones, while the Russian modern systems, better though they might be, were not available in numbers.
yes, it's very easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback (as my father used to say, peering over his reading glasses). and being an avid pedestrian I agree that 'a pedestrian grasp of things' is very apt.
Remember it's not pure KIA that matters but total 'irretrievable' losses. Using the figures discussed herein: At 350+350 (700) x days of the war (~1300) you'd get 910,000 soldiers out of action permanently. Then add 200-250k desertions on top of that.
"As for the casualties, by this reveal we can say that total AFU kia cannot be more than 250 or 300k"
Matey, Ukraine low end numbers of total mobilised numbers is well over 3 millions by now.
If Ukraine had taken zero losses, they should have a military of around 4 million.
And that's the LOW count. That's the count that relies on the closest we have to hard confirmed numbers.
And those numbers are essentially confirmed by statements from Ukraine itself.
In 2024 they complained about how mobilisation was down to less than half, at just 55 thousand per month(with a USA investigation in 2023 finding that Ukraine was mobilising at least 115-120 thousand per month from March-22 to July-23). Then late 2024, oh dear down to just 35 thousand per month. And then spring 2025, oh horror, down to 25 thousand per month, which DOES NOT EVEN REPLACE THE KIAS.
And if we instead look at the high count mobilisation, that's another TWO MILLION.
Ukraine is pressganging victims into service at a massive rate. They openly admitted that their kidnappers had over 400 cars BURNED just in 2024, and yet that did not really affect their pressganging rate. How many do you think they have kidnapping people every day if the loss of 400 cars isn't even noticeable to the overall rate?
Why do you think they're kidnapping people anywhere from 14 years old to 80+?
It's not because there's such a plentiful of people 25-45.
General Zaluzhny already in DECEMBER-22 stated indirectly but openly that the total losses by then were over 800 thousand. And we have other Ukraine sources from then, saying that the ratio of KIA to WIA was roughly 50%.
We have the Russian command briefing that leaked from a LPR general's staff in August-22 that Ukraine had taken over 300 thousand "sanitary losses", which means mostly KIA.
We have the leaked notes from Ukraine govt in July-22 that stated that they had lost 191 thousand KIAs by end of JUNE-22.
We have the Mozart colonel after he fled from Bakhmut in Dec-22, he stated without any ambigiouty that Ukraine was taking over 1 thousand KIA per day just in Bakhmut, and that this was "almost half" the total losses Ukraine was taking.
Or in other words, Ukraine was taking OVER 2 thousand KIA per day at the time.
We have a reasonably confirmed statement by a Russian local official in Donbass in August 2022, that everyone of the "over 60 thousand" Ukraine soldiers they had buried most certainly had their own proper graves.
"total AFU kia cannot be more than 250 or 300k"
Ok, why don't you explain to us why Ukraine desperately needed a military graveyard for over 600 thousand burials in 2023.
And then had to make another one for 130+ thousand in 2024.
AND at the same time ALSO have every graveyard in the country overfilled with military graves from the last 3.5 years.
ALSO, for some battles, we have NUMBERS.
Kherson battle, 55 thousand UA vs 8 thousand RF.
31 thousand Ukraine KIA, rest of the force WIA. Less than 250 RF KIA.
Oskil/Kharkov advance, 10k UA advancing supported by another 10k, zero defense(but LOTS of bombardment) by RF until they reached Lyman, where 500 volunteers held them off for 2 weeks.
Roughly 4 thousand KIA and WIA each for Ukraine. The Lyman force had an unstated number of walking wounded, but everyone that went there, left there on their own.
The other losses for Russia was a few hundred Roskvadria milita that volunteered to assist the evacuation.
Bakhmut. 73 thousand UA KIA. Over 150 thousand WIA. Russia, about 1500 Wagner KIA, about 8 thousand ex-cons KIA.
The Great summeroffensive of 2023... Ukraine had started blocking information seriously by now so less reliable numbers. Over 100 thousand Ukraine KIA. No reliable numbers available for Russia, but less than 10 thousand KIA. And very likely closer to half that.
Kursk incursion. At least 75 thousand Ukraine KIA. Over 5 thousand vehicles destroyed. No reliable information on injured.
Russian losses, probably somewhere between 3 and 8 thousand KIA.
That's 280 thousand Ukraine KIA just from the battles we have the most reliable information on. Against 10-20 thousand Russian KIAs.
Reading your whinging about "Putin needs to go" in every post gets a bit tiresome.
None of us are privy to the back channel discussions between Russia and the USA, only the performance pieces like the Alaska summit.
Want regime change in Russia? Join the long queue.
It should be obvious that Russia's (not Putin's) measured approach to Ukraine is to ensure that they have enough resources in reserve should NATO, with or without the USA, decide to officially join the front lines.
Can you explain why the Russian army had to bang its head against "fortified hard nuts" (one of which it had abandoned largely without a fight and which wasn't really a fortified hard nut even after that) when it had 1000 km of wide open space between Kiev/Chernigov and the Oskol river to attack through?
What kind of genius stategy is that? Enlighten us.
Your deep strikes into Russia are inevitable in a war against all NATO. If thugs like you were heard by the Russian leaders, the country would be Gaza now. Come on, tell me that the country ALREADY is Gaza 😄
Pokrovsk has been on the verge of falling for almost two years now. What happened to the bunny ears? Notice how Simp hasn’t mentioned territory in the last month or so? The war is never about territory unless Russia manages to take over a 3 horse town nobody has ever heard of.
Bakmut had 60 k people before the war. The battle for the city took 6 months. 40 k KIA. Pokrovs 82 k. The Pokrovs aglomeration is 120 k. Sure you would conquer Stalingrad with a finger snap…
I’m not saying it’s easy or that any other army would have done better, but then don’t claim it’s been captured and the Donbass is all but liberated as Simp and you simps have done for two years.
This part of my comment is not, by any means, directed exclusively at you, but at many members of this informal forum: why so much personal antagonism directed at GM? He seems earnest to me, and while I think the call for nuclear strikes would be disastrous and kill countless people unnecessarily, there is a context and purpose to what he says, and it isn't that far from widely accepted nuclear doctrine in all the nuclear powers. It's an insane world.
I think you're understating the impact of Ukrainian attacks. I'll zero in on just one thing: You say: "Half the rest doesn't cause any noticeable damage.
Of the remaining ones, less than 1% actually cause any form of major damage. And even major damage is repaired within a month.... zero effect on the city, zero effect on the people."
They are killing people with these strikes, and that's having the ultimate effect on those who are killed, with significant ripples throughout their families and communities. The fact that it's happening with impunity (to the weapons suppliers) also seems very significant to me, both in Russia and the west. I think it enables more and more death-causing actions.
And again, there's Syria and Lebanon, where Russia was neutralized as an ally because Ukraine is permitted to keep on keeping on.
Most people here think Russia is winning more and more easily, but there's a whole, very profitable I'd guess, cottage industry of people saying exactly the opposite, just as passionately. I think they're in a fantasy world, but there are a lot of them in it.
No need to be rude. I’m going to treat your question as a real one, ignoring the insult.
Did I say Russia was a pushover in West Asia? No, I did not. But they lost an ally that, under ideal circumstances they would have defended, an ally that made a big difference in the subsequent strikes on Iran and Lebanon. That was an L. Are you with me so far? or do you disagree about that?
Russia was unable to protect Syria because it’s tied down in Ukraine. This was not an accident. The US is fighting a global war, and its strategy is obviously to tie down Russia for just such purposes.
In the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the US “brokered” the peace agreement and secured the Zangezur Corridor. THAT was an L for Russia.
Some have accused Russia of being controlled by Zionists. About that I have no knowledge, but I do know that Russia has been extremely soft on Israel despite its provision of weapons to Ukraine and its participation in the destruction of Syria. A “strong” Russia, I hope at least, wouldn’t have been such a pussy.
The US knows that Iran is a close ally of Russia, yet it brazenly and in conjunction with the monsters in Israel, attacked it in a cowardly and despicable way. That suggests the US policy makers aren’t exactly in awe of Russian strength or resolve.
So tell me why you think it’s a bastion of strength when it allows the US to bomb it at will without repercussions, destroy allies and take over air strips in the Caucasus.
Why the antagonism against GM? He comes in with the same "Putin is a traitor, Russia should nuke NATO" multiple times in every article. His diatribes are both voluminous and repetitive. Once in a while he does come up with something interesting and different -- which is why I haven't blocked him -- but rarely.
It’s the internet, I guess. I won’t disagree with your specific criticisms, and it’s certainly true that he hasn’t moderated his views in response to those criticisms.
Not everybody on this board has a sense to understand long-term strategical considerations. If they ever remove Putin from his position, most likely they will end up with a more radical leader. On the other side of the coin: If Zelensky is removed, he will be likely followed by a more sophisticated military strategist. Maybe this is the exact reason why he is still running around.
No he's not and it's pure cope to excuse that Russia has not taken him out.
Zelensky's job is to be a recruiter and networker for Ukraine and he has done a phenomenal job of it. Ukraine does not want for money and they increasingly get more and better weapons systems.
They cross more and more Russian "red lines" every month. And Zelensky is a big part of that.
The decision to not take out Z will cost Russia enormously, even after this war is over.
Interesting take. I think he's bad as a general and can't refrain from meddling, but as to the rest I'd agree. And I think he should be taken out along with the whole lot of them. There would be value in the chaos that created. This business of western leaders traipsing over to Kiev every week is an affront to me personally.
I think you say some of the things you do because you're either confident the US won't go nuclear, or you don't worry about the consequences of that (enough, in my view). I think you're wrong, and that many in the US would love for things to go nuclear, and that if it happened it would be disastrous for everybody. They won't be defending Europe, which they plainly are willing to sacrifice - it'll just be another thing to do that hurts Russia.
But I agree that Putin should have issued some sort of ultimatum or, as I've suggested before, institute an obvious, but plausibly deniable, series of sabotages or insurgent strikes. I don't think anything changes until Americans start seeing bodybags.
I'd also agree with others that the numbers cited don't suggest an overwhelming or inevitable victory in a war of attrition, at least in the near to middle future. I think the SMO should graduate to a "war."
The only solution to that problem is removing the proxies from the chess board, and the only way to do that is using nukes. Conventionally Russia does not have the strength -- it is vastly outnumbered -- which is precisely what the whole strategy relies on in the first place.
In terms of imposing deterrence on the US, an all-out nuclear exchange is to avoided, of course, but US elites have to made to fear for their own lives. Which means they should have been targeted with conventional precision strikes a long time ago in order to cut off the escalation cycle
In any case, something should have been done, because the current trajectory leads to Russian defeat.
I think you’re the only one on this site who thinks the current trajectory leads to Russian defeat. For most, it’s just the opposite. I’ve long since been arguing they need to take the gloves off and either remove the US and Europe from the fight or bring them in. Letting the US bomb Russia at will seems a fool’s errand.
I had suggested targeting numerous European sites with Oreshniks - the west is now apparently saying they consider them functionally equivalent to nuclear, so that might provoke a nuclear response. On the other hand, at least the Russians wouldn’t pull that trigger first, and unlike you I think they should NOT pull that trigger first.
Note that the Oreshnik only makes sense as a nuclear delivery missile, and the more information that comes out about it, the more certain that is, i.e. there was a supposed picture/model of the TEL the last few days:
It just makes absolutely no sense to build giant MRBMs of the exact same type that were once designed only to carry a single megaton-range warhead or MIRVs in the hundreds of kilotons range and to use them to deliver conventional munitions. All that anyone has proposed as an alternative is fantastical exotic tech and hopium deriving from total failure to learn most basic physics.
While what we have as hard facts is 6x6 MIRVs/MaRVs in a demonstrative strike. So what I see is a nuclear bunker buster capable of delivering 36 warheads with a single missile, which, depending on how successful the Soviet/Russian miniaturization effort has been over the decades, could be as much as 100 kt each. And that makes sense, and it is also how you take out Europe -- 50-100 Oreshniks with 36 warheads each will do it.
>I think you’re the only one on this site who thinks the current trajectory leads to Russian defeat
I am not the only one, there are several others here, but of course you should consider that the posters here are a self-selected group.
And that applies to the "alternative media" in the West in general. Which is under strong financial incentives to distort the truth to only slightly lesser extent than the mainstream -- the alternative media is supported by small donations, so the successful channels are the ones that tell people what they want to hear, not necessarily what the truth is. Thus the birth back in 2022 of the niche industry serving a certain online audience either disillusioned with the US empire or dissatisfied with how it is run, which sees in Putin its metaphorical savior knight on a white horse; those people have been happily financially supporting the niche industry telling them that Russia is invincible and Putin a genius who is always many moves ahead of the West, and they will often react quite viciously to suggestions otherwise (you see it here all the time).
Meanwhile Russia got kicked out of Syria and is having its sensitive infrastructure bombed all the way to the Urals, and the invincible grand genius dares not fight back at all. Which is in stark contrast with the legend about him, but when you point it out you get angry denial...
And the most basic logis says that if you are bombed constantly while the enemy suffers zero damage, you will be defeated. This is so self-evident and obvious that I don't understand why there is even any discussion...
About that last point, the logic and the reaction, I’d obviously agree. I would agree that most of the niche sites covering the war are pro-Russian and hostile to the suggestion that it could lose. It amazes me how little people seem to regard what happened in Syria as significant.
You do surprise me with what you say about Oreshnik. I thought it was designed to be a non-nuclear strategic weapon. I don’t know enough about the materials involved to evaluate your position that it only makes sense as a nuclear weapon. Didn’t Putin specifically say it wasn’t and would never be?
Well, at least you appear to actually think about what is happening. Which is to be applauded.
Regarding Oreshniks, why do you consider Putin a reliable source on this matter? One has to always consider whether the source has reasons to lie, and in what direction.
This is the same person that only really withdrew from the INF treaty full 8 years after the US did.
I can easily imagine the more patriotic forces in the military and the MIC forcing the matter and resurrecting those 1980s projects but then Putin still maintaining the pretense that it isn't what it looks like. Or, let's hope, Putin is playing a deception game while serious preparations for decisive action are ongoing.
Also, I can imagine the missile having a non-nuclear version for certain special occasions. But it simply makes no sense to be producing a triple digit number of super expensive heavy missiles to then deliver three tons of conventional explosive (or inert) warheads. Even as a bunker buster, it makes absolutely no sense (Kinzhals and Zirkons will do the job for a fraction of the cost).
But as a nuclear hyper-MIRV-ed delivery method (100 Oreshniks x 36 = 3,600 warheads) it makes perfect sense.
Russia decided to cut Syria loose because it was too busy with its next-door war in the Ukraine. The US&A is the one that thinks it can attack Russia, China, and Iran all at the same time.
"And that makes sense, and it is also how you take out Europe -- 50-100 Oreshniks with 36 warheads each will do it. "
As a previous poster pointed out, you are advocating for genocide, in this case all of Europe. It's a good thing that Putin and the Russians in general are not as insane as you.
The generals would have done it three years ago, it is Putin and his traitor oligarch masters that are responsible for it not having been done.
Which is good for you, but very much not good for the 130,000 dead Russian soldiers, all the others who have been maimed, the thousands killed civilians, and, of course, the many times that on the other side, who are also mostly ethnic Russians after all.
All those people would be well and alive today had Putin rolled out the nukes in mid-2022.
Oreshniks are not really comparable to nuclear devices. Their advantage is their very high speed and deep penetration that magnifies their force of destruction with traditional explosives.
Putin said it on a few occasions that to him it seems America is trying to push Russia into starting a nuclear conflict. I think he is right, the US Deep State Industry is thinking in terms of major population reductions on a planetary scale some decades ago. After the Covid hysteria did not work out for them it is logical to push this war to an extreme.
Also, the Deep State just might send a few Tomahawk missiles secretly loaded with nuclear bombs instead traditional explosives and hand them over with a loving smile to Zelensky.
It is that last point that concerns me the most and should, in my opinion, be very high on everybody’s worry list. It’s insane for the US to send them, and I’m inclined to believe insane on Russia’s part to allow them to reach a functional Ukraine.
>very high speed and deep penetration that magnifies their force of destruction with traditional explosives
It actually doesn't substantially do that.
Do the math, it's not that hard.
The kinetic energy only doubles the explosive power once you reach M10. But you are not even hitting the ground at that speed, because friction has slowed the RVs down somewhat from the peak missile speed.
>Also, the Deep State just might send a few Tomahawk missiles secretly loaded with nuclear bombs instead traditional explosives and hand them over with a loving smile to Zelensky.
I would not put it past western intelligence agencies to have already acquired the fission material from Ukrainian nuke reactors and are enriching it for a nuke that will be given back to Ukraine. They have had 3 years to develop this program and if not ready yet maybe in another year or two.
Ukraine does not even really need to use it, they could announce they have it and the delivery means and that announcement alone might bring Russia to the table.
Elena, be very-very careful! His MO is to dazzle you and take you into the deep forest like you were Little Red Riding Hood to be eaten by the wolfs. He is mixing a cocktail of AI generated stuff with some human input to prepare you for a mental slaughter. His most ‘brilliant’ recent operation was spreading the 'news' back in July that the nationwide anti-corruption, anti-war and even anti-Zelensky demonstrations mostly by women were organized and paid by the Soros Mafia. The event was way oversized and widespread to be centrally organized by a small gang operating under the watchful eyes of Zelensky. Soros would do anything to fan the flames of this war and nothing serious to oppose it. I was watching the videos, this was a spontaneous storm of emotionally highly charged individuals who realized the hopelessness of the situation and wanted an end to the whole circus. GM was able to convince and feed this narrative most surprisingly to the general public on this board here. People just did not take the time to sort out the event and followed him like a bunch of sheep.
"But I agree that Putin should have issued some sort of ultimatum or, as I've suggested before, institute an obvious, but plausibly deniable, series of sabotages or insurgent strikes. I don't think anything changes until Americans start seeing bodybags."
Agreed, sadly. This is the downside of Putin being not only such a blatant LAWYER, but also trying to be the "good guy".
"go nuclear, and that if it happened it would be disastrous for everybody"
The really serious part about this, is the scary part. If it goes nuclear, Russia HAS A CHANCE to survive with "minor damage". Because they have the best airdefense in the world, and USAs nuclear arsenal mostly consists of what Russia considers "woefully obsolete munitions".
While Nato has zero chance, because we don't have ANY airdefenses good at shooting down nukes. In Ukraine, not even a single Russian strike that is above mach 1 has been intercepted by anything from Nato, and only very few with the best upgraded S-300s Ukraine had left.
And unlike Nato, Russia's nuclear arsenal to a large extent consists of MODERN weapons. The kind where the warheads maneuver during final approach, the kind that extensively uses the best MIRV technology and also includes plenty of decoys. Technology we have seen used against Ukraine with devastating efficiency. Literally, most Ukraine's claims of shooting down Russian missiles, are hitting the decoys they drop.
"I'd also agree with others that the numbers cited don't suggest an overwhelming or inevitable victory in a war of attrition, at least in the near to middle future. I think the SMO should graduate to a "war.""
I truly have no idea where people are getting this from.
Russian losses are DECREASING. Ukraine losses are NOT.
The last SIX exchanges of bodies had an average ratio of 50 to 1 to Russia's advantage.
And it's constantly increasing.
If Ukraine had taken zero losses, they should by now have around 4 million troops. By the low account on how much they mobilise.
By the high count, they should have at least 6 million.
Russia currently has 600-700 thousand along the frontlines, and that is stated to "massively outnumber" the Ukraine forces(by a Ukraine source).
Ukraine is also noted to have great difficulty to create any form of strategic reserves.
So, where's the other 5 million Ukraine soldiers then? Taking a vacation?
Hiding?
Well yes, they are hiding 6 feet under.
Also, we have LOTS of 3rd party(but supporting UA) sources already from 2023 commenting about how EVERY GRAVEYARD in Ukraine is overcrowded with military graves.
And yet Ukraine was forced to create a new military graveyard outside of Kiev Summer 2023, for 600 thousand, or more, graves.
And then in late -24 or early 25, they had to create ANOTHER military graveyard for at least another 130 thousand. Beacuse the one outside of Kiev was FULL.
What does it take for a nation of 40M to run out of graveyards in 1 year?
Several hundred thousand dead MINIMUM.
And then in less than 18 months, another 600 thousand, minimum, probably more, filling up the first new military cemetary.
My personal tracking, based on all kind of sources, point towards current Ukraine KIA count being somewhere between 2 million and 2.5 million.
And it needs to be said that a big part of that high number, is because of the TERRIBLY poor level of medevac Ukraine has, which results in a KIA to WIA ratio usually no better than 1 to 1.
I have no doubt that Ukraine has lot higher numbers of KIAs. However, part of the calculation should be the fact that Russia is slowly but constantly advancing, therefore they often take possession of both, their own and the Ukraine KIAs as well.
Your repeated insistence on Russia getting world war three going by nuking the US is starting to get annoying. Even if all ten thousand nukes were blown up before launch its game over for everybody. Most people just don't care about Ukraine enough to want to see everybody in the world eventually die just to prove some point about it.
Not quite clear what you meant by your last sentence. Did you mean "just don't care"?
I don't see anybody on the Russian side, even and maybe especially GM, talking about "just to prove some point." GM sees Russians dying and Russia itself existentially threatened. I'm obviously not eager to see the nuclear threshold crossed and think, instead, it needs to be avoided at (almost) all costs, but I think the west is trying to put Russia into exactly that dilemma.
Russia is winning and at an ever increasing rate. So it is not currently facing an existential threat that it can't manage (from the war). It hasn't even gone to a war economy or mass conscription.
It isn't a world war. Three quarters of the world's population is totally indifferent to the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict. And probably even half of Europe's population is opposed to their direct participation in it as well.
I note that you include almost in your comment about avoiding a nuclear holocaust. Then you go on to say it has already started. So what follow from that is ......what can anyone do anyway but just finish the damn thing and get it over with.
We’ll have to agree to disagree with just about everything we’ve discussed. I agree the world’s population is indifferent, but the relevant leaders seem monomaniacal to me. I think they’ll institute direct and obvious involvement unless Russia takes action to prevent it. And I think the conflict is an existential threat that remains existential both to Russia and western hegemony.
About WW3, I don’t equate nuclear armageddon with ww3, and I certainly don’t want us to go there. Russian doctrine does say that it will go nuclear if faced with existential danger, and the US has obviously been, and is now obviously, willing to go there well short of existential threat. Israel is Israel. So I’d say the risk is substantial.
Ron, The incremental gains of the Russian army cannot be considered a victory in any way. There are too many variables like the rearmament of EU/NATO and new weapons that can turn things around for Russia – and the whole planet. Russia really needs to use the present window of opportunity that they have, a year or two before the EU armament factories can gear up. After this period they are walking into a swamp where anything can happen.
"The incremental gains of the Russian army cannot be considered a victory in any way. "
An absurd overstatement. I see you haven't been to Crimea or the four New Territories.
Are Russia's tremendous gains a *final* victory? No. But they already are such massive gains that they are a thorough defeat for the West. Russia has demonstrated that a trillion dollars of expenditure cannot defeat Russia but has only made Russia stronger while inflicting a permanent reverse in the fortune's of the US's stooges.
Where do I get "a trillion" dollars? That's the round-number sum of the West stealing 350 billion of Russia's funds plus the far more than 350 billion of their funds they've burned up in Ukraine, plus additional pocket change for unrecognized expenses like the vast costs to the US of US military activities related to Ukraine since 2014.
A trillion bucks actually undercounts the expenditure, since the knock-on effects of high energy and loss of other resources to US-stooge controlled parts of Europe, as well as impacts on the US (like a vast decline in the real value of the dollar against gold) easily exceed another trillion.
At the same time Russia has killed or maimed over a million Ukrainian nazis and their helpers, putting a significant dent into the size of the extremist nazi population within Ukraine. The insufficient replacement rate of births among nazis in Ukraine make that demographic dent a real factor for many decades to come.
"like the rearmament of EU/NATO and new weapons"
Ah... the "wunderwaffen" fantasy. That didn't work for Hitler and it's not going to work for his successors in the US and EU.
I'd also respectfully note that it takes a truly tone deaf ear (or extreme susceptibility to Western propaganda) not to notice that the US and US stooge ecosystem's track record in new weapons is producing truly awful, poor price/performance turkeys like the F-35. It's no accident the US is nearly two decades behind Russia in hypersonics. If new weapons make any difference that will come as a result from the world leaders in effective new weapons, Russia and China.
"a year or two before the EU armament factories can gear up"
That's really funny. "Gear up" you say? How, exactly, are they going to do that without having the money and resources to gear up without triggering revolts by their welfare state constituencies? The reality is that Russia's military industries outproduce the US and all US stooges combined by significant factors.
I suppose its more comforting knowing that every single dead Ukrainian was a nazi. That paragraph reads like it was written by the IDF. Just substitute Ukrainian Nazi with Hamas. Looks like Russia is just mowing the Ukrainian grass right?
'At the same time the IDF has killed or maimed over a million Palestinians and their helpers, putting a significant dent into the size of the extremist Hamas population within Gaza. The insufficient replacement rate of births among Palestinians in Gaza make that demographic dent a real factor for many decades to come.'
Nobody in Washington, nobody in Brussels, nobody in Kiev cares about the Ukrainians killed, just as a chicken farmer doesn't mourn the death of his poultry.
‘The reality is that Russia's military industries outproduce the US and all US stooges combined by significant factors.’
I think you will have a problem to prove that. It is also a fact illustrated by satellite data that weapon producers in Western Europe expanding rapidly as I type this. NATO pressure will increase in a year or two so I still stick to the idea that Russia has to finish this conflict and create a sustainable, fully controlled military situation by excluding the flow of Western arms to Ukraine within a year or two or else they might run into serious issues. They will have to take Odessa with the complete Black Sea segment of Ukraine and advance to close the Romanian and Polish borders with Ukraine would be the final solution.
'How, exactly, are they going to do that without having the money and resources to gear up without triggering revolts by their welfare state constituencies?'
They will force the welfarians to work for food and shelter and simply print the money as usual. When they run out of paper to print they will simply create the money by entering ‘1’ into a computer system and follow it with a few dozen zeroes.
@KenMan: winter's coming, so probably best to wait and see how far Russian > < Ukr forces succeed (or not) in getting where they aim to be in the coming months.
Sorry, I am unable to follow these events. Computers are not allowed for five year olds at the YMCA. Are you trying to convince me to send my own toy nukes to Putin?
Helps set up believability if a nuclear false flag is used. Removing Putin via internal pressure is the top goal and appealing to more hawkish elements amongst Russian supporters is part of the method. At the least stir up some instability.
Read the available Rand documents, listen to Kelly's and other EU/NATO officials.
The problem with having a good leader is if they are eliminated/removed its a real loss. In Western countries it barely matters, one crappy leader is just as good as the next. The decisions are made behind the scenes and the leaders just give the illusion of democracy.
By “playback” in your first sentence, do you mean their strategy or plan?
Who is setting up a false flag, GM? Because his advocating it might cause someone (who?) to do something? I don’t follow this. I don’t think GM is important enough to set up anything (sorry GM if you’re listening and offended) - he seems to be a strongly opinionated advocate for Russia, generally criticized by other advocates for Russia - how would that move any needle?
What I hear you saying is you strongly disagree, think there’s a difference in values (I’m not sure there is), and therefor you don’t like him. Well, it’s the internet, so I guess it’s your right. And thanks for answering.
I would say this, too - I think some of the criticisms made are valid, perhaps most of them, though I still believe Putin is an excellent leader. I expect the way he’s waging this war is annoying quite a bit of the military, though. Just because westerners want him out doesn’t necessarily mean that would be a bad thing for Russia. They’ve been wrong before, and from what I can see they almost always are. Cheers.
Putin or is his name pussy? For no money in the world I would see him replaced, there are other pussies in scapegoat and underneath they’re tigers, bears…or just Chinese dragons, and their ways or arts of war are of a total different nature…selling Chinese cars or IPads or IPhones.
GM knows what he's doing. Look at GMs spectrum dominance here. He's everywhere saying anything to fit his narrative. It's a bit excessive. Simplicius has warned him.
Utterly tiresome propaganda, if it is as you say , and I largely agree, then I see no reason why he shouldn’t be kicked off. Let him start his own commentary rather than leeching off this site , which is exactly what he is doing
The biggest question is why are you not nuking everyone? Well the ATACMS did cause some damage but mostly military. Military targets come with that risk. The Russian president has done fine, the world is not having a world war and much less Russians are dying than if they were in WW3. The fact is from most of the information I have garnered the ATACMS, though they did some damage, it was not enough to even evoke a major response, in other words they failed. Everyone screams Russia is in a general war yet you merely speak of black outs in Briasnsk and Beldorod, border Oblasts, where the power will soon be returned if not already returned. Well like a movie, everything becomes clear in the end. So all the irrational fear and paranoia being attempted by fear mongers will be just noise and nonsense.
>Well the ATACMS did cause some damage but mostly military.
Yes, the dead and maimed children on that beach in Sevastopol are certainly comforted by that thought.
>Military targets come with that risk.
Yes, and the military is supposed to defend the country and fight back when attacked. But in this case it is strictly forbidden from doing so by political leadership. How fucked up is that?
>though they did some damage, it was not enough to even evoke a major response, in other words they failed
That is because you don't understand what is happening.
They succeeded in their actual goal -- to move the red line needle -- and if they had done too much damage, they would have failed in that goal, because then the Kremlin would have been forced to react. You clearly don't get the whole concept of boiling the frog. And moving the needle they did, which is how now we are talking Tomahawks (while Russian refineries and heavy industry are already blowing up all over the country by drone strikes) and the Kremlin will just take that too.
BTW, the Great Ukrainian Counteroffensive in 2023 and the Kursk incursion in 2024 served the same function -- to move the red line needle. Do you really think NATO had no idea the offensive is doomed without air cover, with the insufficient forces allocated, and with the set Russian defenses there? Of course they knew, but that was the whole point -- for it to fail while establishing the precedents that NATO armor, artillery and MLRS will be attacking Russia without Russia fighting back. Had the offensive been sufficiently well supplied to succeed and to threaten Crimea, then the nukes would have had to come out, i.e. the frog would have jumped out of the cauldron.
It wasn't so that didn't happen. And that allowed the next step to be taken in Kursk the next year -- outright NATO invasion of official Russian territory. Had that been done in the summer of 2022 (let alone in 2021), the nukes would have likely come out, but in 2024 they didn't, so another set of previously unacceptable precedents was set.
Which is how we end up in the situation where right as we speak the US is shutting down the grid in Bryansk and Belgorod with HIMARS strikes while Putin is talking about the "improved relationships" between the countries.
Yes but there is the concept of proportionality, not just paranoia, to put fourth a response. I wonder how you claim to know/assume so much but appear to understand so little? I am not afraid to admit I don't know or say I don't understand as I don't claim to be all knowing. Which frog is boiling? In the end the European countries with all their bellicose language will economically collapse without Russia energy, commodities and market with Russia having the largest population in Europe. The US is facing a bond, crisis, spending crisis, real estate crisis, deficit crisis, commercial real estate crisis, budget crisis, currency crisis, employment crisis, consumer confidence crisis, national debt crisis etc. it gets exhausting. Why would Russia overreact when the inevitable Western collapse is imminent from an economic perspective. The challenge for the west is what will happen when the global majority is unwilling to trade their natural resources, energy, and manufactured goods for Western fiat currencies? The difference between us my friend is you see a boiling frog from the perspective of irrational fear and paranoia while I look from the lens of rational economics and geopolitics.
>in the end the European countries with all their bellicose language will economically collapse
1) When will that happen and how much damage to Russia will have been done?
2) The Europeans are fully disposable proxies, just as the Ukrainians. Nobody cares about them, their role is to destroy Russia so that the Anglo-Saxons can get their hands on Russia's riches.
>Why would Russia overreact when the inevitable Western collapse is imminent from an economic perspective
How is that collapse going to stop the missiles from raining on Russia?
See what is happening in Yemen. The Houthis happen to be the only unquestionably good and noble people on this planet (maybe we can add the North Koreans), but the point is that you will be hard pressed to find a more economically destroyed place on the planet than Yemen. And yet they fire a ballistic missile on Israel every other day, from 2,000 kilometers away.
Europe has 30x the people and 1000x the economic potential that the Houthis have, and is not 2,000 km away from Moscow, the current line of contact is 450 km from Moscow, and 100 km from St. Petersburg.
The whole proxy strategy relies on the assumption that the victim will not/cannot destroy the proxy. Destroy the proxy and you break the scheme. Which Russia has the power to do, though maybe not for very much longer.
Well you made the anology of the boiling frog, I merely put fourth a probability based on economic indicators that I mentioned in relation to the western world.
What missiles will rain upon Russia? 70 year old minute man 3s and Trident D5s from almost obsolete Ohio class submarines with the Colombia class not slated for sea trials until 2035 if not again delayed? Or do you mean gravity dropped B61s, carried by F35s totally dependent on 60 year old stealth technology to penetrate Russian airspace? Or are you just again attempting to hype up pin pricks in relation to the size of Russia as a country? Does it matter the distance of the battle lines from Moscow and St. Petersburg when the direction of travel is westward and away? I am happy the Russian leadership is not over reacting. I live on planet earth and I have no other alternative and living with nuclear winter and radioactive fallout while I starve are not outcomes I eagerly welcome. I fail to see why you mentioned AlsarAllah and the North Koreans yes they are a symbol of the resistance to western hedemony, but it is Russia, the global majority draw the most strength as they dismantle the facade of western strength.
HIMARS, ATACMS, Storm Shadows, Tomahawks, Taurus, Flamingos, and who knows what else. Until the second strike capability is sufficiently degraded for the coup de grace.
>the direction of travel is westward and away
Is it? In 2022 Russia was much further west than it is now.
Agree. ”West” has played the game very well by moving the red line eastwards, action by action, forcing the Russian to react. And most of the times taking it from behind.
You should send a stamped petition to the Kremlin... The closest the victory, the fastest Putin needs to go? LOL. You need to go ! But wait, dont..If you stay we will know the state-of-the-art Ukranian propaganda, which sounds more and more desperate.
" "if the Americans start striking us with Tomahawks, we will physically remove them from Eurasia within the next 24 hours and we will also destroy the White House with a conventional strike and the Pentagon with 10-15 kilotons, and then we will consider the matter settled; "
"I’m leaving," Trump said. "There’s no reason to be here any more": inside the meeting that brought Nato to the brink
Former secretary general Jens Stoltenberg recalls the rollercoaster ride of dealing with Donald Trump – and how close the US president brought the alliance to the point of collapse
Trump: “The US doesn’t need Nato. Why should I continue to pay for this organisation when I don’t need it?”
There was silence around the table. Trump continued to talk at length about the trade imbalance with the EU, another hobby-horse. “The EU sends its BMWs and Mercedes into the United States, almost tariff-free. It can’t go on like this. It won’t go on like this.”
This is an edited extract from "On My Watch: Leading Nato in a Time of War" by Jens Stoltenberg.
Well, it turns out that the great Russian summer offensive was, for the most part, an insignificant footnote, more noteworthy as a harbinger of failure to decapitate Ukraine, leading up to a costly forever war just as the US intended, to weaken Russia. Russian casualties can be up to 300,000 or more dead and incapacitated, with no end in sight. She may be winning the attrition rate, yet it hasn't even regained the 4 oblasts it has committed to after over 3 years, which the SMO had not anticipated. Russia falsely perceives its war as an SMO. Could this be the result of a Zionist friendly Kremlin's way of undermining Russia? Why is it criminal to criticize the SMO in Russia? Why are most combatants white? Will immigrants replace them? (It's the trend) Greater Israel?
Oh, but the Russians are winning because they're attriting the enemy and moving slowly to minimize losses. No, they're not. They've been winning for over three years and haven't won anything. lol In fact, they've emboldened the enemy. No one fears Russia because she has no intention of expanding beyond the 4 oblasts. That's called telegraphing your intent to the enemy. Russian losses are not minimized; they are extended over a much longer time frame than what could have been if it had the will to do what needed to be done in the first place. Responsibility rests on the Kremlin. Either they are stupid, incompetent, or Zio-sympathetic traitors, and that's why it's illegal to criticize the SMO in Russia. They screwed up big time in the initial SMO, a plan doomed to fail from the outset. You need to start with an air campaign. (Not done) (Anti-drone), not done and so on. So what should Russia do to truly win this war with limited losses? I will explain below.
>the great Russian summer offensive was, for the most part, an insignificant footnote
There was never any offensive. Which is arguably even worse than it going nowhere.
>No one fears Russia because she has no intention of expanding beyond the 4 oblasts.
They are right now striking Bryansk and Belgorod with HIMARS from point blank range, taking the power out. Are they going to stop with some more pleading from Putin for "rationality" and "coming to the table"? No, of course they are not. Which means that the border regions of Russia will start depopulating (that has already been going for a while now, but, of course, nobody dares acknowledge it). The only solution to this problem is to make it physically impossible for them to strike across the border, which means taking Kharkov, Sumy and Chernigov. There is no other choice. And the operation had to seriously begin a long time ago, now it's already too late to prevent serious further damage. But there has been no mobilization of the necessary manpower, and clearly absolutely no intention on the part of the botox midget to do anything about it.
I don't even know what to say at this point...
>Responsibility rests on the Kremlin
It does indeed.
>Zio-sympathetic traitors
Bingo.
How is it that for four years now nobody dares discuss the obvious -- the US is run by Zionist Jews, mostly originating from the former Russian empire, and they started the war on Russia. But Putin is surrounded by what kind of people? Zionist Jewish oligarchs, of course. And Putin dares not say anything negative about Israel (you saw it once again at Valdai when Prof. Marandi asked him about the Gaza genocide) and every other action of his clearly points to that association not being merely accidental.
So we are supposed to believe that the man surrounded by the same kind of people that are waging a war on his country will actively and sincerely defend against that aggression? Something doesn't quite compute here, does it?
How Russia can neutralize Ukraine's AFU forces, decapitate its government and capture up to 200,000 prisoners without needing to occupy Kiev or any other major city.
Setting the stage for invasion
Day 1
Russia commences smart bombing and destroying anti-air, radar, communication links and command and control and political centers. (Destroy enemy eyes, ears and intelligence) Get them scrambling, confused or dead.
Day 2 and on
Commence air operations, blowing up fuel depots, ammo and weapons storage sites, high-value targets and all the bridges on the Dnieper that unite Kiev right down the middle and split that city in half.
Day3
Day 3 assumes that Russian forces (300,000) have moved to their staging areas and are breaking through enemy lines directly above Kiev, heading down the east side of the Dnieper, advancing with the most expendable yet turtled top (anti-drone) mechanized units, 4 wheelers, motorbikes, customized roof-opened trucks, advancing drone operators as well as anti-drone units with high powered double barrelled shotguns spread out throughout the invasionary force with KA52 Aliigator and Mi288's flying above.
At the same time, 200,000 have broken through the enemy lines from the northeast salient closest to and heading towards Kyiv, but fan out along the East side of the Dnieper south of Kiev.
So what Russia has done here is completely surrounded the entire AFU front which now lies behind enemy lines and no means of re-supply. That's over 100,000 prisoners of war in one big scoop while Russia controls the entire east side of the Dnieper north and south of Kiev and splits the city in two by destroying all the adjoining bridges. I have much more detail but I'll stop here. Now look at this map and see how amenable kiev is to being under siege, split by water and lots of trees for cover. I see Kiev as one big logistical trap, no needing to occupy it or any other city, just surround it and block the lines of supply along the 13 routes in and out of it.
Maybe he had a laugh. I was surprised also cos I was poking fun at Denis. Life can sometimes be very black and I strongly believe a little humour can help. And apologies @Denis for taking the piss.
Here is the flaw in your plan -- there are no 300,000.
Also:
>moved to their staging areas
There are no staging areas anymore -- the border is ringed with HIMARS systems and those staging areas will be destroyed.
The whole point of the SMO was to prevent NATO from setting up camp in Ukraine so that it can directly attack Russia from point blank.
What was the outcome of the SMO? NATO set up shop right at the border and is already attacking Russia from point blank.
Fantastic success.
Here is a more realistic plan:
Putin comes out and issues an ultimatum to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania to shut down the borders with Ukraine and allow Russian forces to patrol them. They are given 48 hours to agree to this and a week to implement it. If they refuse, the general populations of those countries are given the rest of that week to overthrow their governments and agree to it. If they do not agree, the countries get wiped out with strategic nuclear strikes. Hungary and Slovakia will agree with near-100% certainty, if Poland and Romania do not agree, you then do wipe them out.
After that is done you issue an ultimatum to the rest of the countries in NATO in Europe to dissolve the alliance or suffer the same fate.
While, of course, stating that if any American missile is seeing flying towards Russia, nukes will be launched at the US mainland while that missile is still in the air.
And you change the nuclear doctrine to not just allow but mandate strategic nuclear bombing for full annihilation of any unfriendly country on the perimeter that attempts to develop nuclear weapons (Sweden, Germany, etc.), so that Europe remains not a problem.
Shouldn't have come to this, but there is no other way out at this point.
And 15 minutes later, we find out exactly who is crazy enough to undertake the first use of tactical nuclear weapons to prevent their loss of political/world economic power.
30 minutes after THAT, we begin the process of finding out what % of the human race actually can survive the aftermath of a global thermonuclear war.
And about a year after all of the above, we will have effectively solved the Fermi paradox (insofar as it concerned H. sapiens).
Have a nice day... Even concern trolls gotta enjoy themselves.
Or you could do the Gringo Way of War and blow up the power grid, water supply and waste water treatment facilities, along with the rest of the critical infrastructure (ports, bridges, natgas and liquid fuels network, etc.) as the US did to Iraq and see how the Ukrainians fight under 19thC conditions.
Yeah, but the problem is that those are your own power grid, water supply etc. infrastructure. Russia built all that and it will (hopefully) be Russian again.
It was total insanity to ever begin the infrastructure campaign while still not touching the Banderite elite. If the goal was imposing deterrence, given that Ukraine is a fully disposable proxy, only the latter approach would have made a difference.
If the goal was to break AFU logistics, well, the infrastructure campaign was only ever taken up to the breaking point but no further (every time it got to that point the order came from the Kremlin to stop), which meant it had zero effect on the war.
Absolute utter self defeating stupidity of the highest order...
Well, historically Russia has not had many second thoughts about doing scorched earth policies in its own territory….
But yes I agree the actual Russian infrastructure campaign has been moronic, it has handed PR victories to the Ukrs, has made life more miserable for the common Ukrainian folk and hasn’t have a real impact on military logistics or made the puppet masters afraid of being next in line…
You seem very conflicted about the SMO, Denis. There is an old saying about a fat singer. My guess is that the Russian general staff are up to the task. Taking on the Empire and winning seems to be quite a feather in their cap. I give them decent odds of a win in the biggest battle of the future order.
Call it what you want. The SMO, as it stands, is a failure of Russia to do what was needed to do a long time ago. The SMO is a joke, killing off more Russian soldiers over a prolonged period rather than dealing with what really needed to be done. Russia is Zio-influenced and its really starting to show. I'm not the only one who sees this.
I'd say the Russians are happy about taking millions of Eastern Ukrainians in and offering them protection from the RS and Azov crew. One person's failure is another's success. Relativism rules.
Look wannabe expat (I suppose from Ukraine)... No matter what I could tell you. Your mind is hopelessly petrified. Good luck with your expatriation. Otherwise you will die in the former country known as Ukraine.
I disagree. Russia has exhausted the weapon systems and munitions of all of NATO, US, S. Korea, Japan. And the treasuries of the US snd Europe.
They are systematically killing off the Nationalist skin head nazi units along with the trained veteran AFU regulars.
There are no 3rd columns or sketchy civilians on the Russian side of the Line of Contact. No sabotage, IEDs, or chaos caused by Kiev regime loyalists.
Russian losses are tragic, but attempting to accelerate the advance with arrow offensives would create massive casualties.
Once the Kiev regime forces collapse the rapid advances can happen.
Russia must always be prepared to face NATO or US units at any time, or an invasion of Karelia and Belarus by NATO. Keeping their powder dry is essential.
The likelihood of the collapse of the EU and NATO becomes ever more likely as this drags on. And complete economic and social chaos in Britain and France. Germany is also cooked.
Long term goals to achieve lasting peace need the collapse of the parasitic states of Britain, France and Germany. This factor must be included in an analysis of the war.
Brian, there will be no rapid advance. Russia has already limited itself to 4 Oblasts. That's it, man. Hundreds of thousands of dead Russian soldiers and the enemy will live to fight again. There will be no peace unless Ukraine is defeated. 3 years ago, many said the war is over within a year, two years ago, the war is over within a year. All the same hype and more dead Russians every year.
Russia has not limited itself to the 4 oblasts. It has repeatedly indicated (and you never listen) that the 4 oblasts are a MINIMUM. They will settle for a minimum of 4 oblasts IF Ukraine surrenders; otherwise, they will progress further into Ukraine as needed and take as much territory as desired. But in the end, the 4 oblasts are necessary as well as the destruction of the fighting capability of the Ukrainian military and the elimination of nazi power.
I simply do not understand why you can not take in what is going on rather than pontificating over your own military strategic expertise. Russia is winning. In her own chosen way, she is winning. As long as she is winning, I can't fault her.
At some point, one must consider the internet forum obfuscation & neutralization (of actual humans) techniques disclosed in that infamous MI6 cyber warfare manual? And start to disregard/ignore certain profiles. Don't feel bad, they'll get a new screen name and come back quite soon.
There is no pontification of my strategic military expertise.
It's a misconception.
It's just an opinion open to criticism.
I wish others would share ideas instead of the passive echo chambering and anyone thinking outside the box is castigated as a villain.
I read authors with opposing opinions about the Ukraine conflict.
.Sooner or later, everyone is bound to disagree about something.
And that is fine with me. I don't make it personal because, in the end, none of our opinions matter. It's just a comment section that gets taken way too seriously. The world will make its course no matter what anyone thinks. lol
I like to jest, make it fun, amusing. I am jovial and happy, no matter the world's problems which none of us can control. The world's problems are not mine but it does amuse me to see people act like what they think really matters. It doesn't mean a thing, man. It really doesn't. Be well, Victor.
You are correct, Denis. And as you rightly point out, sometimes I go a bit over-the-top. For a healthy society we need, as you say, more than an echo chamber - we need intelligent dialogue.
But as to your last point, I can't agree - what we think does matter - perhaps not on an individual basis, but certainly it matters on a collective basis. It's not just me, or you, or any person on this site, but we as a collective matter, and we feed into other platforms, and other platforms feed into national opinion, and national opinion places pressure (whether the PTB admit it or not) on the political environment. This is what the internet has accomplished, which is a major reason the elite want desperately to restrict and control it.
So though you and I disagree on many points, we OTOH also agree on several things (can't think of an example offhand...LOL) and our dialogue leads others perhaps to think a bit, which is what both of us want, I believe.
I enjoy your over-the-top comments, which bring out the comedian in you.
We are more similar than not, king of firsts. 😂
We as a collective do matter, but the Overlords have seen to it to create divide and conquer methods, which destroy the collective in every way possible. Where was the collective will during convid? The collective was herded to take the toxic shot then the collective thought the anti-vaxers should be denied basic rights and put in camps for the safety of the brainwashed collective. My spouse had to quit nursing for refusing the collective. It worked out for the better, though, for in every adverse situation comes greater opportunity.. I have no faith in the collective. How is the collective making out in our countries? You are in the UK and I am in Canada. It's worse where you live, but it's coming to Canada, globally, for that matter. Loss of free speech, thought crimes, sustainable development. Agenda 2030 (glovally), 15 min cities, and so on knocks at our door. And the collective opposition was non-existent. Yet I consider myself blessed, things are great at an individual level. I can have whatever I want within reason. So I can still enjoy life and have fun, yet knowing what lies ahead for that collective won't be pretty. I think that the collective is a lost cause until the moment of awakening, when everything is lost, maybe too late to change. No matter what we think won't change a thing and better to protect yourself from the zombified collective. lol
You want the enemy to be as far away from your strategic areas and to have as little manpower as a resource to mobilize as possible.
>There are no 3rd columns or sketchy civilians on the Russian side of the Line of Contact. No sabotage, IEDs, or chaos caused by Kiev regime loyalists.
But guess what there is on the other side? Ukrainian military and NATO weapons.
Guess what would there not be in that other side did not exist? Ukrainian military and NATO weapons.
Imagine that Putin simply hadn't done the goodwill gestures of April 1st 2022 (what a joke that was in retrospect, huh?). What would that have meant? Chernigov would have been taken at the very least (it was fully encircled), likely Sumy too, and Kiev and Kharkov would have been blockaded. That is at least 5 million people not available for conscription.
Would it have been easier to win the war or more difficult?
Also, how much sabotage and IEDs do you thunk there has been in e.g. Kherson? Kherson was actually quite Banderized, don't forget that -- Nikolaev and Odessa are strongly pro-Russian, but Kherson was a bit of a problem (look at those infamous electoral maps from prior to 2014 and pay attention to what shade Kherson is in on those).
>The likelihood of the collapse of the EU and NATO becomes ever more likely as this drags on
What collapse? The EU is fully vassalized and disposable. Nobody cares. And the US is decisively winning the war, so what exactly would collapse it? Did you miss the gigantic geopolitical defeat for the other side in the Middle East, that was a direct consequences of the shit show in Ukraine?
This. Is something that most people completely fail to understand. The Gringo Empire saw how in the 2000’s Europe was slowly sliding away from its grasp and becoming more and more of an economic/financial counterweight, and decided that it was enough. Better to plunder your colony and use it like a kamikaze drone against your bigger geopolitical enemy than to do nothing and let it switch sides, making your opponents even stronger.
We've been hearing for years now that NATO is out of everything from catnip to burrito coverings.
Yet NATO keeps on escalating.
It beggars the imagination that, if NATO were in fact out of everything, that there is nobody in the Pentagon, nobody in Whitehall, nobody in Rammstein who can tell the politicians to stop, already. Yet this never seems to happen.
And if the politicians refuse to listen, it beggars belief that the generals have suddenly forgotten how to get the word out, when they were so good at this before.
Great insight. I never considered that. I guess the EU strategy is solely to drag the US in. They must believe that could up end the Russians. After the Yemeni debacle I doubt the combined West could defeat a defensive Russia. Putin's strategic move to check them with the DPRK bishop was masterclass. The Oreshnyk knight has been placed in the middle of the board and the Chinese queen still sits on row 1.
Don't they do low-altitude terrain following? And they have a pretty good range and are nuclear capable. They might be old, but they present a serious threat to whoever they are aimed at.
‘terrain following’ is about their only interesting capability. If you get an AA missile in range of it, even a handheld one, you can shoot one down fairly simply. Nuclear capability is meaningless, it was designated as such for arms control treaty verification purposes. Like putting stuff on B-52s so you can see which ones are carrying nuclear cruise missiles in satellite shots.
Putting a warhead on a missile is nothing special. Every one of the other medium range missiles the Ukrainians have fired at Russia could have been tipped with a warhead. The ultimate protection against that is Russia’s own nuclear arsenal.
They're made by Raytheon, which is on China's 'Naughty List' and prohibited from receiving more rare earth elements or high performance magnets, so that "low number" is going to be pretty close to zero for now.
The most authoritative number for Tomahawks in the US arsenal is "3,750". However the official number is classified. What we do know is that the most there ever were was 4,000. We also know about 2,000 are used or have been taken offline because they've become defective. 80 alone were used against the Houthis. Simple math should make the true number of Tomahawks in US arsenals at around 1,750.
Considering that the US has given/ transferred up to a third, in some categories, of its weapons to Project Ukraine, one could assume around 400 of them could be made available.
However since the Pentagon knows that most of these slow movers will be shot down, I would think only half (200) would find it's way to Kiev..the missile would only be good enough to prove a political point. That's if they're sent.
You cannot guarantee 100% will be shot down. I'm sure Moscow/ St Petersburg/ Murmansk would be the prime targets.
However, its primary value is as a sheathed sword. It's there to keep Russia from using Oreshniks. A MAD promissory note. It may work.
We're still in middle game now. The Ukrainians have lost most of their pawns, and by next summer the SMO will enter the endgame.
Meanwhile, the SMO has deindustrialized the EU, re-industrialized Russia.
Spread thin, the US has been unable to focus on any of its war goals.
If by next summer the US is in the middle of a raging recession, then that too.
Don't understand the logic of "to keep Russia from using Oreshniks. A MAD promissory note. It may work."
So, a missile that Russia can shoot down (maybe not all of them, but certainly many) and that can only cause minimal damage to the largest country on this planet, is a way to prevent Russia from firing Oreshniks, the most powerful and devastating non-nuclear missile that exists ?
That makes no sense. The only thing stopping russians from firing Oreshniks, is the Oreshnik production itself. I'm pretty sure it's expensive to produce and its production is not able to make 1000 of them every month. Which means they are rare, expensive and thus should only be fired when really needed.
If tomahawks are fired against Russia, you can be sure Oreshniks wll fly...and I'm not sure that they will be fired only at Ukraine.
Tomahawks are simply another way for the ukrainian nazi regime to try and pull USA directly into the war. USA is 1000% involved in the war. USA created it. USA provoked it. But nazi dictator Zelensky needs USA official involvement, so that he can shift the fighting to USA itself, where USA soldiers start dying, instead of ukrainians, who are less and less every day. If and when USA loses the war directly, Zelensky will "wash his hands", since it's USA's war now. And this is exactly Zelensky's problem. USA IS the real paper tiger. They cannot win a conventional war against a powerful country. They can't even win a war they created against sheep herders with sandals. And this is why USA moved to the proxy tactic. They corrupt a country to become their slaves / meat shields that will fight for them. They tried it with Afghanistan, but afghans are smart...unlike ukrainians. Now that the amount of meat shields in Ukraine is decreasing rapidly, if USA involves itself directly, it will be USA soldiers dying by the thousands every month and that will destroy the myth USA created for itself, that "it's the best ever, no one comes close". USA will lose and lose badly. Period. USA doesn't want this. They want their myth to remain alive in the brains of the hundreds of millions of idiots in north america and europe. And thus something Zelensky will never have.
That won't happen, not for Ukraine and much less for tomahawks. Supremacists / fascists - USA, NATO, European Union - love themselves, they think they are better than everyone and they love saying it. They can't do that if they are all dead and that's what nuclear means. Everyone's dead. Tomahawks from western perspective is yet another "wonder weapon", while making sure not to even mention the previous "wonder weapons" that failed to achieve anything significant. That's USA's entire MIC strategy. 24/7 propaganda about how their weapons are the best and then hide the fact that their weapons are crap when in actual use. That way the idiots in Europe and other USA vassals can continue buying USA's useless and much more expensive weapons til infinity.
For Ukraine however, tomahawks mean another opportunity to pass the "war torch" to someone else. The nazis are being defeated, they are losing territory, they have no economy, they have about half the population they had before the SMO started. Ukraine is over as a country. It still floats because USA, NATO, European Union pour billions into it, at our expense. It's also an opportunity to continue the grift that makes nazi dictator Zelensky and his nazi entourage, very rich. I'm sure you've seen the mansions in USA and elsewhere, that the nazi leadership of Ukraine have.
That is one of the most dangerous and already debunked line of thought.
Yes, none of the decision making centers want Armageddon. But they want to get their way with as vehemently as possible, which resulted in some near misses back in the cold war.
And sheer luck prevented the end of the world. Only sheer luck.
1. The captain of a attacked UdSSR sub wanted to follow his orders (triggered by an attack on the sub) to launch his nukes (the attacking US destroyer didn't know of those nukes) - only he needed his CO to fire, and he refused.
2. Stanislav Petrov had the order to launch his nuke in Czech after a computer malfunction detected an attack - he refused and got a slap on his head for it.
3. The misunderstandings regarding the Nato Arrow exercise 1983, which Nato was shocked thereafter how they actuality made the UdSSR believe that they really wanted to first strike.
So we NEED to deescalate and have a red phone. And we MUST take nuclear war seriously, because it very much could happen without anyone actually wanting it.
Perhaps Simplicius could make an actual article for that matter, because both sides need to know about all near misses. At least we could do that for our bubble.
And he is much better in pointing out the facts than my faulty memory.
Not sure I get what part of what I wrote was debunked ?
That the supremacists / fascists don't want to die ? They don't and that's a fact. These people love the smell of their own farts, they love themselves and think they are superior to anyone else...they don't want to die. But they are arrogant and think they can't be touched too. And that is indeed dangerous...We need to look no further than the orange psychopath Donald Trump. That piece of trash is the type of extremely dumb "person", that thinks he's above everyone and no one can touch him. If he continues making things worse, worse even than Biden - something I never thought was possible, but here we are - for sure nuclear war is a serious possibility, because russian restraint can only go so far. Putin is viewed as weak, because he constantly avoids making comments and approving actions that could escalate things, even though he has every reason to do so, since USA / NATO is literally attacking Russia and Russia is not attacking USA / NATO.
And I somewhat agree with that view. Russia should respond in the same way against USA / NATO, by sinking air craft carriers, by destroying their military bases in Europe, etc. But on the other hand, I appreciate the restraint, because it's Russia and only Russia, that has prevented a world nuclear war. The psychopaths in USA and Europe, are doing everything to get there, even if they don't want to die. Their arrogance simply makes them think they can destroy Russia, before Russia destroys them. Which is another dumb thing to think, especially when Russia can strike them and they can't defend against it, while Russia has means of defense against western strikes.
So to sum up, for sure nuclear war can happen and it's a danger only caused by USA / NATO / Europe. Russia has shown a lot of restraint and it's unfair. But with the exception of the orange psychopath, none in the west are crazy enough to destroy the world, just because they are sore losers. They love themselves too much to do that. Trump also loves himself too much, but he's dumb enough to destroy the world, just because he's a sore loser.
You misunderstand. I'm only giving out theoretics. MAD tactics work only if NOT used: Tomahawks are being threatened, not used. That way, so the theory might go, Russia won't use Oreshniks if the US/ Ukraine doesn't use Tomahawks.
What am I dealing with here? I get it if they're foreigners and the translation from English is off. I hope this is not an American with that kind of jump-to-conclusion logic. I thought I was clear enough, sheesh
No jump to conclusion, just based on what you wrote. And you continue to say it: "Tomahawks are being threatened, not used. That way, so the theory might go, Russia won't use Oreshniks if the US/ Ukraine doesn't use Tomahawks."
Again, incorrect, because the use of Oreshniks has literally nothing to do with tomahawks. Tomahawks are nothing more than the latest "wonder weapon" from the west, out of the 300 other weapons that idiots in the west touted as being a "game changer". They weren't. Tomahawks, if ever used, won't be either. The use and/or threat of tomahawks, is just the same game over and over, because the west has nothing, unless they go nuclear...and at that point, they will be destroyed too.
As for Oreshniks and as I said, their use is limited to their production. Being the most powerful non-nuclear missile on planet Earth, it's for sure expensive, not many can be produced per month and perhaps even its launchers require specifics that are not linear to setup, etc. All this contribute to a system that is lethal and there is no defense against it, but being expensive and complex, means Russia won't use it "because the west's 314th wonder weapon is being threatened". It will use it when it has to, for example to level the Dnper bridges when the time comes.
Tomahawks are nothing more than another "wonder weapon" from the many failed wonder weapons from the west. Oreshnik is very real and indeed a game changer, because there is no defense against it. Same goes for Khinzals and Tzircons, to a lesser extent when compared to Oreshnik - in power, speed and range - but also against which there are no defenses. And if Russia wants to destroy something completely anywhere in Europe, it can. The west has nothing against this, which is why saying that the use of Oreshniks depends on the use of tomahawks, is absurd. That was my point.
An excellent summation. When the UK destroyed the Nordstrom Pipeline at the USA's bidding they temporarily hamstrung their only real ally, the EU. France will not be able to rehab their nuclear reactors for years and Germany is not going to be able to remilitarize due to the high cost of natural gas. Unless the fools abandon their global warming initiatives and begin piping Dutch gas, they'll be left in an energy shortage for quite some time. Spain may become the energy titan of the EU but not for at least a couple of decades. Isn't it strange how the North Sea oil isn't making its way to continental Europe in sufficient supplies during this period of low prices due to Russia and OPEC+ pumping so many barrels?
The enormous deficit spending of The Empire of Washington and the legalization of 90% fractional reserve banking have left the dollar in a death spiral of hidden inflation. It is entirely possible that in less than a decade the USA will be too weak to fight anything except the mobs of its own citizens clamoring for food outside of packed grocery stores too high-priced to patronize. The leadership of my country is composed of maleficent morons and unless The Don shows more than he has to date I'm happy to say nothing seems to have changed.
Hope springs eternal like any other thorny weed. :):)
You're way off here, imo: if the Ukrainians are equipped with Tomahaks (and after Putin made it clear what the understandable results of that decision would be, I can almost gaunrantee they won't be), they wouldn't use them on major Russian cities; they would be used on strategic military and energy assets that had been out of reach prior to Tomohawk acquisition. Why? Because the Ukes know that within 12 hours of any Tomohawk even attempting to hit major Russian cities, Kiev, Lviv, and Odessa would be hit by multiple Oreshnik right in the nerve centers. It's academic though: Tomohawks will never be given to, or launched by, Ukraine - if they were, Russia's global south partners would greenlight devastating counterattack.
I agree the Tomahawk is old technology, as Putin mentioned at Valdai, but Putin is also right that it nonetheless is a threat.
This is going too far: "with zero attempts to be stealthy in any way."
Older Tomahawks use aluminum skin, but block 4 and later versions use carbon fiber reinforced plastic for the body surface and wing/fin surfaces. They also apply a "stealth coating" to reduce radar returns.
But the internals, including of the wings and fins, are still aluminum and there's a lot of metal inside with the engine and such. Coatings can't deal with that except in very specific bands that multispectral Russian radar easily gets around. Tomahawks are also huge missiles. The size of the thing works against coatings and other "stealth" tactics.
The hope is that by flying low and using some "stealth" materials and coatings the thing can make radar detection sufficiently harder to enable a higher proportion to get through. That's the real problem, because each one getting through is 450 kg (1000 lbs) of high explosive hitting reasonably near the aim point. Using it Kiev-terrorism-against-civilians style means that instead of a nuisance attack hitting one apartment in a high-rise building in Moscow with few or no injuries the entire building could be toppled with many fatalities.
Tomahawks are where I'm on the edge of parting company with Putin's diplomatic refusal to turn up the heat in the dialog with the US.
On the one hand he's right, when discussing conflicts with unstable hot heads there is no profit in dialing up the heat of the conversation, since it is actions that matter in a military conflict and not words.
But on the other hand I'd like to hear him say when asked about Tomahawks, "Look, the US is already at war with us. The question for Americans is whether they want to expand that war from the current theater to include their homeland. Americans have to decide if they want this war to be fought with thousand pound warheads exploding in Russian cities and American cities. That's what American missiles striking Russia will do. We would prefer that not be the case but if America wants to fight the war that way we will fight the war that way. Are Americans ready for Russian thousand pound warheads exploding in their cities the way American thousand pound warheads explode in Russian cities?"
Why is it so hard for my fellow Americans or "Westerners" to admit Tomahawks were created and used to terrify 3rd world Nations without any real means to defend itself. In a real Peer to Peer conflict they are just like the rest of the overpriced junk. Defense contractors got fat, rich and lazy forcing "allies" and US taxpayers to buy. I worked for years in a tool and die shop subbing to Raytheon, General Dynamics, etc.. and you didn't need to be an aerospace engineer to realize what was happening.
Upvoted because what you wrote is basically correct, but still, you should give credit where credit is due.
The Tomahawk was designed starting in 1972, 53 years ago. It was a response to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), which didn't cover submarine-launched cruise missiles. It wasn't intended to strike third world nations but to strike the USSR. From the beginning the main focus was on a long range, sub-launched cruise missile that carried a nuclear warhead.
For missile technology half a century ago it's actually a very good design, and the deliberate modularization of it to enable a wide variety of non-nuclear payloads is solid thinking. That in the form of upgraded, modernized versions it still is in the arsenal, like other living fossils like the B-52 and F-16, is a testament to it being a useful weapon.
That it has mainly been used against third world or second world nations which could not defend themselves is a consequence of how US imperial power has evolved, as well as the common sense of prior generations of US leaders who knew it was really, really stupid to cross swords with a nuclear power like Russia.
It is still dangerous against Russa, as Putin correctly and openly noted. It's not a "wonder weapon" but it is dangerous, especially as it can carry a nuclear warhead.
Although supposedly no nuclear-tipped versions of Tomahawks have been fielded since 1991, the B80-1 version (150 kilotons) of the original Tomahawk nuclear warhead (a B80-0) is still in the arsenal and could be dropped into current Tomahawks with little or no work. A W88 warhead (nearly half a megaton) would easily fit into a Tomahawk, both size and weight, but it probably would take a month for Sandia to adapt the existing W88 fusing package for use in a Tomahawk.
There's reason to believe all the parts required for nuclear Tomahawks using a drop-in B80-1 are in the Ready Reserve, ready for immediate deployment if necessary. It would be no surprise if contingency plans for using other warheads in Tomahawks have also been moved forward.
All the above means if a Tomahawk is fired at Russia, Russia cannot assume away the chance that it is carrying a nuclear payload.
I do agree with you that it is a dangerous system. No air defense can guarantee 100% shoot down rate. What bothers me the most is not that the US possesses an arsenal of offensive weapons. The issue is what the U.S. Govt. does with those weapons in my name. IF those weapons make it to Ukraine, I know without a doubt, they will be used to kill Russian civilians, there are not enough numbers to make a military difference. That is 1 reason I do not like these discussions, it is not about our weapons winning a conflict but inflicting civilian casualties.
Yes Russia can assume away a nuclear warhead, for the obvious reason. A nuclear strike on Russia itself is tantamount to inviting a full scale response. It might be that a devastating response wouldn't be offered immediately, but I cannot imagine tolerating a nuclear strike on Russia without a deterrent attack on the West to clearly make the point. The target would be carefully weighed for size and impact to what was struck within Russia.
A terrorist type fission weapon smuggled in is way more likely, and that is a very unlikely possibility.
A smuggled weapon unlikely? I believe it be a high probability considering the state of nuclear proliferation. The Washington Empire has many enemies due to its success. Everyone, even our closest allies hate or are jealous of us. For all we know someone might nuke Washington during the State of the Union in order to cause us to launch a full nuclear strike against our current enemy of the day: Russia. If China joined in on the retaliation who would that leave as the superpower? Think suspiciously, follow the dots and it leads to dark places.
A smuggled five-megaton, seemingly obsolete, would destroy the entire civilian high command and leave our affairs in the hands of politically promoted generals. Identifying the culprit depends on whether a not a sample from the reactor responsible for generating the fissile material was given to the IAEA. Even a small test or secret research reactor by a nuclear power could produce an untraceable weapon.
Welcome to my nightmare and the reason I'm on this stack.
5MT is a multistage thermonuclear device. Unlikely.
Shrinking a fission weapon down is only feasible to a certain point. The Hiroshima bomb was about 106lbs of critical mass. About half that is about the lower limit, but half that doesn’t result in half the ~15kt yield.
So you’d expect an independent fission device to be 10-100kt in size depending on the quantity of nuclear material available.
Radiological detectors would be likely to find such a critical mass in urban areas. A lot of things would have to go right for such a weapon to be placed somewhere where it could do harm. I wouldn’t recommend trying to park it in the Pentagon parking lot.
"Yes Russia can assume away a nuclear warhead, for the obvious reason. A nuclear strike on Russia itself is tantamount to inviting a full scale response."
Respectfully disagree that reduces the risk close enough to zero that Russia could safely assume any Tomahawk flying towards Moscow did not have a nuclear warhead.
That's a problem for the US and its stooges, and it's a problem the US and its stooges have created for themselves. They've come to believe that they can keep pushing "the nibble" with Russia without Russia reacting as, previously, everyone was certain it would.
"The nibble" is a negotiating style where an antagonist does something that in general would be refused but he does it in such a small chunk that he gets away with it. For example, a seller delivers on a commodities contract but shorts the weight just slightly so that for the buyer it's more convenient to just release funds in escrow instead of blowing up the deal.
Conventional wisdom was that stealing 350 billion of Russia's money would result in immediate war. But it didn't. Likewise, during the first Cold War the US understood that being directly involved in the killing of Russian civilians would trigger general war. But not now.
The problem with the US and its stooges is that they are calling for actions they think they can do with impunity, not realizing that there's a tipping phenomenon in play with Russia's reactions, when suddenly when Russia tips from patience with idiotic nibbles to action they will indeed have general war.
There is also a large Deep State contingent in the US that is truly delusional who are privately calling for decapitation strikes on Russia. A flight of Tomahawks headed towards Moscow fit that profile. They don't seem to realize that Russia had *two* ultimatums in late 2021, one of them being the US back off in Ukraine and the other that the US back off from its emplacement of nuclear weapons systems on Russia's border.
When the US ignored the first ultimatum Russia responded with military technical means in Ukraine. They've put the second ultimatum on the back burner but it's still there, and shooting Tomahawks at Moscow is one reasonably plausible way for the US to bring it to the front burner with that burner set to very high heat.
It's not likely the decap strike contingent in the US will win out, but with Trump and the erratic people he has put into power you never know. If they did deliver a nuke into Moscow I don't see a "measured" response. I think at a minimum the response would be annihilation of the US's military assets around the world (all of the carrier task forces, Diego Garcia, etc), eradication of the UK and France as nuclear powers (or, as any sort of powers), eradication of all US nukes in Europe, and counter-city strikes on major cities in the US like Washington and New York. Russia might even go all the way with an all out strike, knowing that unlimited nuclear war could not be stopped.
The thing will prove of some use as the obsolete ones are transferred to Ukraine but then Raytheon will begin making the Tomahawk II. Smaller, really stealthy and far more agile. That is if they can obtain the necessary silver which is fast approaching the status of unobtanium. The stupidity of supporting the dollar with our gold and silver and the decades long practice of keeping the price down using naked short-selling on the COMEX will bite them in the ass. Supplies of the Great Commodity and its Sparkling Companion are already getting low on British and American exchanges.
World War Three (The Cold War) has been raging for eighty years now. The only ending in sight is the defeat of the West and by now, I'm ready for it to happen.
If the Pantsir and other SAM systems have reasonable coverage, I don't have much hope for Tomahawk missions to critical areas within Russia. One might get through, but the majority will get shot down. They are really easy to shoot down. I presume the competence of Russian air defense.
The stealthing of what amounts to a metal tube is kind of futile and was some bullet point on a vendor's glossy. The shape of the object is key to trying to reflect away emissions - you see the shape of the F-117 and B-2. Not so easy with a missile which in addition needs the limited control surfaces it has.
Ironically there was a proposal to put a ramjet in the Tomahawk, that was shelved due to size limitations. You see, all those box launchers and tube launchers are sized for a 21" missile. A ramjet powered Mach 3 Tomahawk couldn't be made to fit in the same form factor. Even if it could, fuel was an issue. But it's clear the USN saw the problem with the existing Tomahawk already.
The only actual improvement to the Tomahawk I will grant over the years is the improvement to the seeker. They did incorporate the moving target seeker common in naval weapons into the Block IV and above. How much use that is in land attack is another question. But now you could use it to attack a ship. With naval AAMs being what they are, not sure how useful that is in truth. It isn't 1982 again with limited ineffective SAMs (thinking Exocets taking out Brit ships in the Falklands).
The US types already know he's not attacking them over supplying weapons to the Ukraine. It would cause an escalation to no advantage to Russia. So saying as much would be analogous to the constant war threat propaganda in Europe. Best to keep your powder dry until you can do something successfully.
I wonder why the endgame of individual actions by Putin isn't considered. He obviously considers this carefully, hence his actions. It's the admirable quality about him from my perspective. A kind of mindfulness that is sorely lacking elsewhere. The only actor in this drama who I think has played the game correctly at every turn.
Agreed, Putin is one smooth operator. I call him The Magician. Prestidigitation only no fake magic. His stage assistants in The Kremlin, have a great deal of applause due as well. No man and especially no national leader is an island.
Ironically, the TASM was discontinued in the 1990s. The TLAM, the land attack version, is the one that is still in service. They re-added the maritime strike capabilities afterwards, but it’s primarily a land attack missile and has been used in that capacity almost exclusively.
The Tomahawk is nuclear capable. Russia would have to treat any detected incoming Tomahawk as a potential nuclear weapon.
This would be a huge escalation, and I sincerely hope that there are still those who love their own children in the Pentagon and that they will tell the neocons to pound sand.
By that logic, every missile fired by the Ukrainians is a potential nuclear weapon. Besides, what are you going to do about it? You try to shoot them all down, but you can't. You don't sit in theater being paranoid. You deal with the threats and hope you don't get incinerated.
The pragmatism of actual soldiers is not something seen much on this board. Where I was in Iraq, we were getting rockets and mortars fired at us all the time. You figured out pretty quick that you weren't going to sleep in your body armor and helmet. Not possible. So you set them up in a corner of your hooch and hope you woke up fast enough after the first inbound (presuming you weren't killed) to run to the bunker. You weren't going to waste time getting in protective gear - there were usually only 3 fires from any location at most and they'd change position because of automated trajectory responses...they'd fire right down the direction of incoming. The EOD guys on the team were always happy when a dud came in that didn't explode, so they could clean the fill out and hand it around at the TOC later on. Their love for freon and risking blowing their hands off was legendary. Holding the rocket that got fired at us in my hands a couple hours after it was inbound was always fun. Always Soviet, too.
Anyway the point is that all the inbounds are the same. Threats until they aren't.
I wouldn’t be too quick doubt its effectiveness nonetheless. The Ukronazis AF spokesman Yurih Inhat (sp) admitted in an interview with the Kiev Post in late Dec 2023 that they had failed to shoot down one single KH-22 to date. KH-22 is a Soviet era cruise missile, which is likely every bit as outdated as the Tomahawk, if not moreso.
I'm not as good with Russian/ex-Soviet weapons systems as I am with the US equivalents - job related reasons. However, this blurb on the KH-22:
"The Kh-22 uses a Tumansky liquid-fuel rocket engine, fueled with TG-02 (Tonka-250) and IRFNA (inhibited red fuming nitric acid), giving it a maximum speed of Mach 4.6 and a range of up to 600 km (320 nmi). It can be launched in either high-altitude or low-altitude mode. In high-altitude mode, it climbs to an altitude of 27,000 m (89,000 ft) and makes a high-speed dive into the target, with a terminal speed of about Mach 4.6. In low-altitude mode, it climbs to 12,000 m (39,000 ft) and makes a shallow dive at about Mach 3.5. The missile is guided by a gyroscope-stabilized autopilot in conjunction with a radio altimeter. "
This has very little relationship to the Tomahawk, which does not have a high altitude mode (flying at under 50m) and doesn't exceed just under 600mph, very much less than Mach 1. The only advantage it has over the KH-22 is in terms of range. Tortoise vs hare. But tortoises can be shot down more easily.
About those attrition numbers... I have some questions. First an observation: Putin may not be saying what's true for his own purposes, although I'm not sure what, in this case, those purposes might be. But how does he account for casualties inflicted by gravity/glide bombs, for instance? Aren't we just talking about guesses? And finally, how do you account for roughly 22,000 non-irrecoverable losses on the one hand and speak of 14,000 returning from injury? Do they count some as injured even if they never leave combat? Do they count some as recoverable even if they never come back?
There are many techniques used to gain damage and casualty assessments, one of them being from intercepted communications, which is very often the case. I.e. you hit something with glide-bombs and then listen to captured UA radio comms which cry about exactly the number of casualties at the blast site.
That said you're right there's a bit of disparity in the figures wherein Putin lists about 22-24k 'lightly wounded' (i.e. *retrievable* losses) per month, yet only ~14k which return from hospital per month. These numbers, presumably, should be equal.
Thanks. I note that just about everybody in the fight has a reason to lie, from generals or others lamenting about how many casualties to various people minimizing them, to Russians perhaps exaggerating, or sometimes minimizing… I regard any numbers provided as inconclusive.
President Putin is certainly plenty smart and fully alert. That disparity in retrievable losses might suggest he was trying to convey a picture more than the actual facts. Or people giving him the numbers may have been doing so. I can’t really do more than speculate on the reason for the disparity, but if it was obvious to me, I’d guess it was obvious to him.
Couldn't it be quite simple? 22k are wounded in this month and will come back to the battle once cured. 14k where wounded 3 months ago and are now healed to come back to the battle. And, may be, 3 months later when the 22k are returning the number of retrievable wounded will be 28k.
There is no way to have exact numbers. And the numbers of deserters may well be a try to hide KIA - how one can know whether a certain person disappeared because of being dead or because of AWOL. Rarely, they will write a postcard to their superiors.
Just judging from the way it was said, I’d say not simple in the way you describe. The difference is too big to gloss over without explanation, and it doesn’t read the way you suggest it does, to me. But you could be right. No doubt you are right about there being no way to have exact numbers.
These figures are estimates at best. Guesses in many cases. What matters is that the ukies can still field soldiers for their needs. For 3 years we were told outrageous casualty figures allegedly suffered by the ukrainian side. I remember seeing 1 million mia/kia figures as early as 2023.
As usual, I can’t state anything with assurance. The stories from opposite sides all brim with confidence and bravado, exactly opposite of each other. I do get the distinct feeling that not all the soldiers Ukraine is mustering are Ukrainian, and that they are thin on the ground such that sometimes they simply cannot occupy territory they supposedly hold. For what that’s worth.
I had been hoping he would record his own death, like so many other arrogant mercenaries on the LOC who film themselves for glory, imagining they’ll one day watch it back over a beer, showing off their supposed bravery. I’ve seen plenty of that kind of footage on various Russian Telegram channels. It’s grimly fitting that Russian soldiers often recover these GoPros from the rotting corpses of the glory chasers & upload them.
One video that still sticks with me showed two retreating AFU fighters, obviously over taken with fear, running across an open field. An American merc was waving & shouting for them to stop & return, but as they rapidly closed the distance approaching him and his comrade, one of the Ukrainians suddenly opened fire on full auto, cutting them both down. The merc’s camera captured his last breath falling to the ground as the fleeing Ukrainian sprinted past his body. I make no apologies for sounding callous about the loss of life, as I detest these cowboys of war. I have a certain sympathy for the many different South Americans who have become mercs out of sheer poverty, leaving their families behind, but they are not in the rear; they are more often than not in the very dugouts that are heavily attritted and targeted by Russian artillery. Ironically, I was actually a young Cpl in the real Legion Etrangere back in the eighties, joining when I was 18 looking for adventure, it opened my eyes too many things & I am very anti-war and feel nothing but contempt for the West and its “Rules Based Liberal New World Order” (Ruse-Based Order) I have nothing but shame and disgust for my government belicosity and the puppeteers pulling the strings.
Good for you, for getting out of the Foreign Legion. The men there may be honorable, but their puppet masters are not. My father joined the Foreign Legion in Algeria after WW II, out of desperation. He said the main language used then and there was German, from all the former SS guys. He saw it was bad, and left.
Clearly they feel confident because the war is going in their favor, they aren't losing enough men to alarm the general populace (albeit it's a tragedy for the families, just like the GWOT), and they feel time is on their side. The constriction strategy is very slow (as your commentators seem quite bitter about), but it must be going well enough given how firmly Stavka is sticking with it.
It isn't just very slow. It is also dangerous because it gives various elements in the west more time to escalate against Russia and force Russia to do something it doesn't want to do. Russia did not want war with the Ukraine, but it was forced upon them. Russia does not want war with nato or some of the former Soviet states, but that too may be forced upon them by the anglo-american-zionists.
It looks like the Russian long war strategy is paying big. The US arsenals are depleted, Germany is exhausted, France has lost its African colonies, the Polish-Sweedish dreams for a 3C new confederation are gone, a Mittle Europa axis of Hungary-Slovakia-Serbia and possibly Austria and Czechia is blosomming and project Ukraine is ready for a total collapse. Putin was right.
There are many "Tolstoys" in Russia (including two well known writers with the same surname, one of them being the famous Tolstoy) but Pyotr Tolstoy is the direct descendant of Lev Tolstoy: he is the great-great-grandson of the famous writer.
He's also a very, very smart man and an example of the depth of Russia's bench when it comes to leadership. He's only 56 and, I think, would be a candidate for President when Putin ages out but for his specialization in the legislative and not executive side of the Russian government.
So he's still young, but it would be good if he could take on a governorship and then step up to a major ministerial position in the Federal administration. Add ten years for that and he's no longer so young to step into a longer term role as President.
I still remember his interview in Moscow with French TV. The French journalist looked like he was about to wet his pants and couldn't wait to get back on a plane to Paris ASAP haha.
Putin took power at 48? Year 2000? It should be somebody younger and they need a long term mandate. Yeltsin's mandate was to integrate with the West after the collapse of the USSR. This was a disaster. Putin's mandate was to restore a balance of military power and reform the economy away from Western interests. The next president's mission should be to develop strong military deterence and turn BRICS into a viable economic bloc outside of Western influence and Western interests.
A Bismarck might be sympathetic to what Tolstoy is saying, since the famous Bismarck said: "The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia." A more satisfying exchange would perhaps involve a surviving Hapsburg.
Watching the situation closely my guess is that the Russians are about to change pace of the SMO markedly. They are in a position where all fronts (perhaps with the exception of Konstantinivkha) are collapsing. They have pivoted to massive strikes on power and transport infrastructure in the North East just as the weather cools dramatically. Perhaps they will attempt another push for Kiev. Some people believe shock and awe wins wars but the US proves this view mistaken. The Russian obviously want Ukraine firmly back in their camp. Killing and mass destruction is no winning of hearts and minds.
Russia is interested in a long war to settle their Ukranian pain in the ass for good. The new drone paradigm has neutralized two of the Russian army industrial pilars: armour and airborne. I doubt a deep breakthrough is coming.
“Sparrow Park Lvov”, I can imagine a Ukrainian saying, "This is why we can't have nice things." It is unbelievable that our (Western) leaders are so careless with lives and resources to foster the death and destruction that their arrogance and stupidity breeds. We can't have nice things.
For the price of (not!) defeating the Russian Federation in Ukraine since 2013, we in USA could have had free secondary education for EVERYONE? It would be too bad about those employed by student loan providers, we would have needed to re educate them for some other (viable) industry
But what stock options might have benefited from such a chouce? Who (of import) could have profited from that?! Those expenditures would clearly have been a waste of public money.
Not just the domestic US, but the whole world would have benefited from the Americans not killing their people and blowing up their infrastructure. This Barbarism is unbelievably cruel.
I can imagine Charlie Brown charging to kick at a football held by Lucy, who jerks it away at the last second. Charlie falls with an "ugh". Even Snoopy his dog laughing at him.
Yet we know that the Westerners will give more millions to build yet more future kinzhal targets.
And the Russians are kind enough to wait until exactly it is finally built to sink a missile into it.
One wonders how many millions were siphoned off by Kiev leadership into Abu Dhabi accounts?
I see that the usual suspects are becoming increasingly agitated that Russia is not playing ball and blasting its way to a cease fire along some Kelloggian partition behind which the west can get on with investing its flagging resources in rearming Ukraine for another go: 'This cannot go on! Russia must escalate!!!! FINISH IT (finish what? Mankind?)
The western mouth breathers can escalate all they want, and Russia will respond as it has responded to feeders of western military personnel who have been taken out bloodily, proving to Macron that the threat to do so, was real. If Moscow suffers any serious missile hit then Putin has already told them what Ukrainian cities will go and they know what that will mean in terms of refugees heading west over the winter. Which is why this war is not going here.
Russia is fighting western europe because western europe has decided to fight Russia. So this is not about a land grab for some to be 'agreed' portion of Ukraine, much as the west is increasingly frantic to turn it into that. Russia says it will settle for a lump of territory only on the basis of complete demilitarisation of the rest etc etc, which is precisely the opposite of what the west wants out of this. Meanwhile, Russia will dig in and make such advances as make sense in attritional terms even if it is just a village and even if they periodically step back to drag in more enemy forces on a counter advance and annihilate them, as is the current pattern. And of course the degradation of vital infrastructure across all Ukraine, continues.
Russia is not going to be taunted into ending this on any terms that leave a western threat machine in place in Ukraine and it does not need a bigger missile war fired both ways to achieve its objectives, so the west is going to have to cold start WWIII all on its ownsome.
Russia comfortably envisages its long term plan may take a decade. It does 'ten year plans'. It is a big place with a long view. But you can all imagine what europe is going to look like if this continues even for just three more years, and even that is a hard ask of the western mouthfoaming euro warmongers with what actual army-materiel? As Putin said, Russia hasn't started yet. It has a vast force perched in the wings- as the Ukrainians know. This is unwinnable for the west, and the only way they come out of it with any hope, is to force Ukraine to surrender right now, springboarding Russia to the table to do a deal they can hope to cheat down the line.
Or its plan A, as appears on this board. Talk the Russians into overthrowing Putin so that Russia can collapse into a chaos of infighting. After all the west managed to get slavs fighting each other beyond Russia's borders...... And this is the preferred western way- remote war through various means. Same old.......
Our commentator frens, above all Anglophonis, are used to constant braggadocio loud mouthing that they cannot comprehend that not all cultures are like that. The louder you scream the tougher you are, and vice versa.
Russia must this, Russia must that. They never post anything about what they could do. I do not see, for example, Canadians on the streets objecting their Banderite-infested policies.
"Ask not what Russia must do for you—ask what you must do for Russia (normal world / multipolarity)."
After all, aren't them Anglophonis the freest of them all to assemble and exercise free speech?
Maybe the only way to get regime change in western countries is to Nazify to such an extent that Russia pays attention and needs to come and de-nazify you. So, really people in the west should embrace Nazism and not shun it or else they will have to endure another 100 years of painful democracy.
Here in Canada we are just getting around to realizing Israel may not be so great and are deeply in the Ukraine camp of fantasy and delusion. I just strolled past a car with the vanity license plate "Crimea." We long ago frittered away the Lester B Pearson era reputation for peacekeeping. Sad to admit but true.
it's the EU's pretend leaders that are trying to make everyone believe that "we", i.e. its citizens should want to fight Russia. nice rant though, thnx.
Thank you for taking a strategic approach to these questions that prioritizes the policy ends for which the war is fought . It’s far too rare.
On the other side, the West’s real strategy was to break up Russia and use its resources as their new collateral base. That has failed, though they still hold out “never say never” hope.
The fallback is to weaken Russia by eroding it at its demographics weak point, by diversion of its outlays to non-productive sectors, and by sanctions. Sanctions have gone beyond failure and backfired twice-over, the latest defense minister is very focused on giving defense outlays collateral productivity, and the “offensive defense” operational approach is minimizing but not erasing the demographic problem. If the long-term effects of the SMO get more Russian males off the societal sidelines than they lose, Russia can still squeak out ahead there.
Ukraine plays into this strategy by compensating drones for manpower to slow Russian advances and maximize casualties, and is hitting industrial infrastructure deep within Russia to try and raise the friction in its economy and military machine.
Russia is still winning, but costs are rising, and Europe is going full Nazi to rearm at whatever cost. Separating the USA from Europe is Russia’s biggest potential strategic lever, so they won’t abandon it except under great duress. But the US security state remains partly outside of civilian political containment. Here we are.
"Europe is going full nazi to rearm whatever the cost!"
No it is not (beyond the hysterical public babble) and unlike the US with the reserve currency, Europe cannot transcend the costs (and debt). Its feeble attempts at reindustrialising (at the same time as it is running out of affordable fuel) and switching capacity to military output, (hey, if you can make a car you can make a tank, right?) are a place we all go for laugh, Joe. And God knows we need some light relief.
As for Russia driving a wedge between europe and the US, european leaders did that when they tried to politically neuter Trump and get him locked up.Their death warrant was signed when he won the presidential election landslide style. And he hasn't that short a memory!
Russia does not have to scrape the shit off the US shoe for it- and won't. If you are trying to explain away why Putin appears to be so accommodating of Trump which is a current grumble, or from the west's point of view something the western media is trying to talk up as part of its 'Russia is weak' sing-a-long, he isn't accommodating Trump. It is just that the west has lost the ability to understand Kremlin-speak.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, while Russia is still in f.Ukraine and moving forward however slowly, it is winning and it will not be distracted by some invitation to become a star turn in a fireworks display.
Russia doesn’t have to drive the Europe |/ US wedge - just cement the wedge in by bringing the arrangement home. Dividing alliances is just classic Clausewitz. But a Praetorian State that isn’t fully within civilian control is the wild card here.
I do know how fragile Europe’s base is. I also know that poverty never stopped, say, North Korea from militarizing. If their regimes survive, which is in legitimate question, there will be some level of real rearmament in Europe.
But N Korea did not have a western economic model and had external support never acknowledged/discussed in the west. So I suppose it must seem baffling to western citizens that NK has not just survived but grown in strength- walking on water!
Same with Russia, only the story has never got the grip in the public psyche it got with NK. I am speaking about european economies entirely subborned now to the logic not of real wealth but made up money, and so totally subordinate to the dictates of the bond markets and having to use increasing quanta of real money harvested from citizens to keep up the payments. The UK in particular is dependent on keeping hold of the highly mobile international financial sector which is how that gets to run this state built on other nations' resources and slavery.
But it must seems strange to western citizens that Russia-India-China-NK (and even Iran) can possibly be so powerful. Eeek, how did that ever happen??
As for rearmament within europe, that really depends on the US willingness to do the the heavy lifting- with what return? Colonisation presumably, turning europe into a dumping ground for US goods and services and propelling its people on to the front line with Russia to fight the good fight- as any puppet regime is expected to do.
The US will in the end do whatever it must to stop europe realising the power of friending up with Russia and becoming a real big powerful bloc with Russian resources at its core. Which of course is what all this is really all about. I do not mean from Russia's point of view. It is big enough and powerful enough already, to stand up to the US bloc and choose its friends.
Putin tried to persuade the europeans that their freedom resided with it not with the US. Maybe they will come to realise that when the current crop of cuckoos quits the nest. But for the time being, only the US can rearm europe, and it will only do that if it is in control of the war it will want europe to prosecute with those arms, which does not mean just lobbing missiles at Russia with the US risking retaliations on US bases. It means getting stuck in on the Russian front.
Yes, the most interesting part being the precision strike on that truck 30 km north or Rylsk.
Let's hope that they took the road that runs north to south parallel to the official border, i.e. it was 30 km north of Rylsk but also still only 30 km from the border and it wasn't some place northeast of Rylsk.
Either way, instead of a buffer zone being established inside Ukraine so that Russia is safe, we have an ever growing exclusion zone inside Russia itself, because Putin refuses to mobilize forces to push the line away.
And that, presumably, is one of the main reasons why the pace of Russian advances is so slow. Traditional mobile armoured warfare is impossible because of drones. For the same reason neither side can mass troops near the front lines. So they send soldiers out in two's and three's to probe for weak spots in the Ukrainian defences. Perhaps fair to say that it's a whole new kind of war.
Nothing new, Russia is winning the war of attrition, its only a matter of when the Green Goblin and associates hop on a plane(assuming Azov doesn’t shoot them first)
Unfortunately, that is military math. Nothing sentimental, shuffling numbers of everything, also personnel. :S
This is what makes posts demanding arrow offensives, usually from Anglophonis that are eternally disconnected from atrocities caused by their governments, nauseating.
Indeed. Most amateur Western analysts totally leave out any mention of human costs. They're so far removed from the war crime scenes.
My belief has strongly been that there is simply a Nazi racism involved in this bloodletting of Slavs. Macron, Mertz, Starmer etc never mention them as lives lost. But those guys are all Germanic.
Who else do the West hate so much? Olive Iranians, bronze Chinese and North Koreans, dusky Gazans.
When Trump bombs or starts a war, or Gazan massacres happen, no one cares that those are people being unalived. It's the shame of the age. Where's CNN? Crickets.
As the Trumpian War Age progresses it will have a numbing effect on average people. We'll become more insensitive to fellow humans. That in turn will give a carte blanche to the leaders, to screw us.
It's the "colliseum effect". Hardening hearts. The more we view it as mere bagatelle, entertainment, the more mad our emperors will get.
I do like these reveals. See the West squirm.
>The most remarkable aspect of Putin’s discussion was the sheer frankness with which he spoke of the state of the Russian Armed Forces. For instance, he doesn’t shy away from admitting that ATACMS did cause Russia damage, but then eventually was adapted to.
And what did Putin do to solve that problem? Did he eliminate the source of the ATACMS? No, he just allowed his people to be bombed. Even though he does have the power to eliminate the source. This after publicly stating that such strikes are a red line not to be crossed.
> Putin seemed to have played-down the Tomahawk threat a little more diplomatically. But in a new impromptu interview with reporter Zarubin, Putin gives a far more declarative response to the potential issue of Tomahawks in Ukraine, outright admitting that it would destroy US-Russian relations:
Not remotely enough to restore deterrence, plus this was a random interview that few people saw while Valdai is a rather public venue and everyone (to the astonishment of most) saw Putin retreat from even that red line there. And that was two days after Lavrov had done the same too.
It was an absolute must to openly state something like "if the Americans start striking us with Tomahawks, we will physically remove them from Eurasia within the next 24 hours and we will also destroy the White House with a conventional strike and the Pentagon with 10-15 kilotons, and then we will consider the matter settled; it will be up to them to take it to an all-out exchange from there, if they are that crazy". Something of that sort.
He did nothing of the kind, which only invites the Americans to begin the strikes. And then they will be joined by everyone else on the Russian perimeter, because why not?
Meanwhile Belgorod and Bryansk were struck again by HIMARS in the last few hours and power is once again out for an extended period. The geography will only expand if drastic measures are not taken immediately.
Putin needs to go. Now.
But, of course, the big question is whether the interests that control him would allow someone who would rule differently to take his place...
I mean, "destroying relations" being the downside of launching tomahawks is absurd. It baffles me why he acts so weak, really. Maybe russia is actually a paper tiger. At least when putin runs it.
As for the casualties, by this reveal we can say that total AFU kia cannot be more than 250 or 300k, which frankly explains why they are still very much in the fight.
No, it is more than that on the AFU side, but most of that came in 2023 and 2024.
Casualties have gone down as they moved into organized defense and as the battlefield became dominated by drones, forcing both sides to completely atomize their forces.
So you don't get single artillery strikes killing dozens at a time anymore.
But that also means the ratio has equalized. Russia used to have a tremendous advantage in firepower, but that was squandered. First, by allowing all the artillery in the world outside Russia, China and NK to be sent to Ukraine. Second, by not finishing the war before drones came to completely dominate it. Artillery now is largely irrelevant, because you can't even move it to within striking distance as now drones outrange artillery and the survivability of artillery is very low. And, because the Polish and Romanian borders remain wide open with nobody bothering to shut them down, there is no significant, if any, advantage in small drones for Russia (in fact it at the very least used to be a major advantage for the other side).
Russia still has an advantage in deep strikes, but this is about to change too if the Ukrainian rear (which is outside Ukraine) remains untouchable while the Russian rear keeps getting hammered, and even more severely.
I have noted this many times, let's do it again -- the original "deal" on the war was that it would remain confined to Ukraine, with both rears (Europe and mainland Russia) being off-limits. Which was an act of treason for the Kremlin to agree on (Europe should have been quickly and without any hesitation removed from the chessboard) but it is what it is, the point is that (who could have guessed it?) the West reneged on that deal and the Russian mainland rear is being attacked now. But Europe remains untouchable. Which means that Russia is doomed, unless Putin is thrown out and replaced by someone who will fight back.
"Europe should have been quickly and without any hesitation removed from the chessboard) but it is what it is, the point is that (who could have guessed it?) the West reneged on that deal and the Russian mainland rear is being attacked now. But Europe remains untouchable..."
Agree absolutely it's time for this to change.
“Noted many times” - broken record and he admits it , cretin
I think it would be crazy to strike back by hitting targets in nato countries. You would run the strong risk of turning all the people against Russia.
It's alright to say 'nato' is against us just as it is obviously quite right to say 'usa is against us.' Both totally correct when you are talking ruling cliques, ,whoever, whatever they are. Both totally wrong if you mean the people involved. For the people would be overwhelmingly simply for peace just as the Ukrainians today - and I mean ALL the Ukrainians as defined by the West and Kiev: i.e. Donbas included - would overwhelmingly love to see the war end.
The Western masses are worse than the Ukrainian people for they are more ignorant by a country mile and have the luxury of being disinterested. Isn't it so?
But you start shelling/bombing them all that could change overnight
There's the full weight of the MSM and american and british skilled mob propagandists (not to mention the israelis of course ) pushing to drive the people to anger. As there has been for the last four years.
And hardly a public word said to oounter that. Hardly a word.
You possibly laugh and say 'they can't produce anything, all of them together' well I think you could quickly have that laugh wiped off your face. They are human beings and what human beings can do when their blood is up and they really want to do it is phenomenal.
Russia is very conscious of 'people enemies' I think. Russia does think of people. As does China, as does, strangely enough North Korea. It is the West that does not think of people
And Russia avowedly does not want people enemies. Not in Ukraine post war first up, predominant, but generally, in the world.
And in that whole area is where I think Russia's best chance is. The information sphere. Public relations. Propaganda if the word still applies when you are telling the truth.
Russia cannot fight these ruling cliques, it seems. To do that you maybe need Israeli tactics. Total assassination constantly planned by whole specially devoted corps.
Fighting on the battlefield is a major continual loss. Ukrainian people die for the sake of American profits and thieves like Zelensky's oligarchs etc. You don't beat the cliques there.
You feed them there. We're feeding them now. They're laughing all the way to the bank.
We need to get the people onside. We're making no attempt at all.
Dh now making violent threats.
Oh what a lovely board this is.
I know you have difficulty with comprehension jew so you can go back to swinging chickens and sucking baby d##ks now....
>I think it would be crazy to strike back by hitting targets in nato countries. You would run the strong risk of turning all the people against Russia.
1) Which would change the situation from what it is now how exactly?
2) You strike the elite and the military, not the people, if you are to strike conventionally. Otherwise the suicide pact that is Article 5 dictates that you nuke to zero, and then there is nobody to be against you.
3) Most importantly, if Russia can be bombed by the West, but the West cannot be bombed by Russia, there is only one way this will end -- the end of Russia.
>Russia avowedly does not want people enemies
Which is why Finland and Germany exist today even though after what they did in WWII they should have been exterminated down to the last man. But they weren't (sure, partly because the US rescued the Nazis, but still).
And what did that bring Russia 80 years later?
Que? Germany lost 7 millions in WW2 and you mean Morgenthaus plan should have been realized 10 times over after the War? Killing 72 million germans?
Are we seriously going to cry about how many people Germany lost in a war of aggression that it itself started, and that was widely supported by the German people, i.e. it's not as if they were some innocents who were done badly by their leadership? While not mentioning that Russia lost 27M and that the Germans (and the Finns too) went in with genocidal intent there?
If they FAFO long enough this time, then we might se Morgentavski plan ;)
I think that post essentially merely trolling Mr (?) GM. Quite dishonest. I do not want to get embroiled in your tangentials and non sequiturs, etc. and etc.
But I am interested in what ploys you use for your apparently facile and so ubiquitous posts so I asked AI:
Take it from here:
Myself... last sentence of my query to AI:
"....I'd rather spend the time and finger exercise trying to discover what kinds of reasonings/arguments this guy employs habitually."
AI:
Of course. This is an excellent observation, and your intuition that this is a classic rhetorical sidestep is correct. You're right that spelling out the obvious flaw would be tedious. The more interesting exercise is to diagnose the mental machinery at work.
Your friend's response is a textbook example of a fallacy of relevance, but more specifically, it's a maneuver that shifts the frame of the debate. Let's break down the likely reasoning patterns he employs habitually.
1. The "Technical Solution" Fallacy (A Subset of Ignoratio Elenchi)
This is the core of his move. You raised a strategic/political/ethical problem ("This action will have a negative long-term consequence: turning the population against us").
He responded with a tactical/technical specification ("We would only hit military installations").
How it works: He has rejected your entire frame of discussion (the realm of consequences and human reaction) and substituted his own (the realm of military precision and target classification). He acts as if the problem you posed is solved by a technical adjustment, when in reality, the problem exists largely independently of that adjustment.
Habitual Reasoning Pattern: This person likely defaults to reductive, technical thinking. He breaks down complex, "soft" problems (like hearts and minds, public opinion, insurgency) into "hard," solvable technical components. If he can't solve it with a tool or a specification, he may dismiss the problem as invalid or "soft."
2. Straw Man (Subtle Form)
You said "bomb these countries." While you didn't specify targets, the common understanding of bombing in a modern context includes the risk of collateral damage and civilian backlash.
By specifying "military installations," he is implicitly re-framing your argument to make it easier to counter. It becomes: "You are arguing for indiscriminate bombing of civilians, but I am proposing a precise method." This allows him to paint your concern as naive or alarmist, when your concern was about the act of bombardment itself, regardless of the intended target.
Habitual Reasoning Pattern: He likely fights the weakest version of an argument. Instead of engaging with the most robust and common-sense interpretation of your point, he narrows it to a point he can easily defeat.
3. Suppressed Premise / Unstated Assumption
His argument rests on a massive, unstated assumption that you likely reject:
His Unstated Premise: "Populations only turn against us if we bomb them (civilians). If we only bomb our actual enemies (military installations), the population will understand, agree, and not hold it against us."
This assumption is highly questionable. A population can be radicalized by the bombardment of its homeland even if the targets are military, due to:
Nationalistic pride.
Collateral damage (intelligence is never perfect).
Infrastructure destruction that affects civilian life (power grids near bases, etc.).
The simple psychological impact of being a country under attack from a foreign power.
Habitual Reasoning Pattern: This person fails to interrogate his own foundational beliefs. He treats his core assumptions as universal truths, not as contestable premises. He likely doesn't even realize he's making this assumption.
4. A Form of "Motte-and-Bailey" Tactic
This is a more advanced rhetorical strategy.
The Bailey (your defensible but controversial claim): "Bombing a country risks turning the people against us."
The Motte (the easily defensible but trivial point he retreats to): "We should bomb the right targets."
By shifting the discussion to the "Motte" of target selection, he avoids defending the more difficult "Bailey" of the broader strategic consequence. He makes the argument about something no one would disagree with ("we should target the enemy, not civilians") to seem reasonable, while evading the actual point of contention.
Habitual Reasoning Pattern: This suggests a sophisticated but potentially dishonest debater who uses strategic retreat to defensible positions to avoid engaging with the heart of the disagreement.
Summary of His Habitual Profile
Based on this single exchange, you are likely dealing with someone who:
Reduces complex socio-political problems to technical ones.
Defaults to a frame of "solutions" and "specifications" rather than "consequences" and "context."
Operates with unexamined, optimistic assumptions about human behavior and the clarity of war.
May use rhetorical tactics that allow him to appear reasonable without actually engaging with the core of an argument.
Your next move, if you choose to engage, isn't to argue his point, but to re-frame the discussion back to your original premise. You could say something like:
"I understand we'd aim for military targets. My point is that for the people living there, any foreign bombardment can fuel resentment and turn them against us, regardless of the specific target. It's about the experience of being under attack from the outside."
This forces him to engage with your actual argument about consequences, rather than his technical sidetrack about method.
Myself:
Thankyou. My preference is to have nothing more to do with him - or, rather, his output. 'He' as an individual doesn't figure in my mind in these contexts, discussions on topics. To refer to the individuals is ad hominem and I abhor it.
It seems to me that in such columns we are always all 'talking to the crowd' for we all read all the other's comments and everyone's responses to everyone's comments. So that's why we respond sometimes. 'For the audience' rather than for the author of that which we respond to.
And that is what I am doing now. I do not wish to address the author at all though I full well realise a reading of your output could interpret it as wholly a comment on the person.
No Wrong way to look. Not what is intended.
What is intended is to show that output from that particular source apparently tends to be of that particular nature.
Making it troublesome and essentially worthless, consuming of time and attention to no benefit.
And that's why I probably will make no more responses to output from that source.
China never fights, Arthur. It cunningly infiltrates and lets others do the fighting. lol
And that's what america can be seen to have been doing since Vietnam, I think, isn't it?
Correct.
they did good by uk and israel.
le: as in i think china will do shit for anyone; hope i'm wrong.
North Korea? Attack against Vietnam? WW2 fighting against Japan for 8 years by themselves?
China is going to have to fight this time around. They know they are next.
It is absolutely foolish to expect Russia to take on the whole of the West on it's own. They are vastly outnumbered. NK would join in a heart beat. Iran & Venezuela will have no choice. What will get China involved?
They see their oil supply being cut off. Will that be enough? Is the time right?
The West is destroying themselves, so time is on China's side. Debt, immigration, unemployment, and domestic unrest. What's the old saying?
preach!
You are no artillery expert. No military expert either. You display a pedestrian grasp of things.
Russian artillery is well outside the range of Ukrainian drones.
UKRAINE's front line and supply lines are well within Russia's artillery range.
Several pieces of Ukrainian artillery are destroyed daily, as per very conservative Russian MoD daily reports.
No Russian artillery are destroyed by Ukraine, because they have longer ranges than the Ukrainian ones..
An army without artillery is not an army, regardless of drones. We've had integrated artillery for centuries now. Constantinople fell in the 1450's because the Turkish leader purchased cannons from a Hungarian company.
The thousands of artillery shells crashing down on Ukrainians beg to differ with GM's 'concern trolling'.
In GM's spin, Putin and Zelensky just as well be using plastic little green army men, lol.
>Russian artillery is well outside the range of Ukrainian drones.
No it isn't. Drones are flying way further than 20 km these days.
>No Russian artillery are destroyed by Ukraine, because they have longer ranges than the Ukrainian ones..
Incorrect. First, there is no such thing as Ukrainian artillery. They produced some Bogdanas (though likely not in Ukraine itself, but in Slovakia or some other such place), but that was always in small numbers.
The artillery is NATO, and it does outrange Russian systems. Russia in principle has systems that outrange the NATO ones, but guess what? Putin and Shoigu allowed the oligarchs to piss away the country's resources on mansions in the West, megayachts, private jets, limousines and mountains of cocaine instead of building up the ground forces properly for war, so those systems (e.g. 2S35 firing RAPs at 80 km) only started to be deliver in early 2024 or so. The bulk of Russian artillery has been 2S19 SPGs firing standard rounds at 20 km at most and towed D-20s firing at 15 km, while going up against German PzH 2000 (maximum regular round range 25-30 km), Polish AHS Krab (same parameters), and US M777 and British AS90s with similar characteristics to the Russian ones. It took a long time to ramp up Krasnopol availability too. Which is yet another reason why 2022 went the way it did. If you actually followed the war closely and listened to what Russian on-the-ground sources were reported, you would know -- modern NATO artillery outranging legacy Soviet systems was a persistent complaint. Which is natural -- we are talking 1960s and 1970s systems against modern ones, while the Russian modern systems, better though they might be, were not available in numbers.
yes, it's very easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback (as my father used to say, peering over his reading glasses). and being an avid pedestrian I agree that 'a pedestrian grasp of things' is very apt.
Thanks for sharing the Cocaine Cowboy of Kiev's spin on the war.
It certainly contradicts the multitude of more credible and data driven sources on casualties.
Remember it's not pure KIA that matters but total 'irretrievable' losses. Using the figures discussed herein: At 350+350 (700) x days of the war (~1300) you'd get 910,000 soldiers out of action permanently. Then add 200-250k desertions on top of that.
Excuse Mr. StT.
Don't you mind that virulent racists and paid trolls are running amok on your boards?
Just wondering.
"As for the casualties, by this reveal we can say that total AFU kia cannot be more than 250 or 300k"
Matey, Ukraine low end numbers of total mobilised numbers is well over 3 millions by now.
If Ukraine had taken zero losses, they should have a military of around 4 million.
And that's the LOW count. That's the count that relies on the closest we have to hard confirmed numbers.
And those numbers are essentially confirmed by statements from Ukraine itself.
In 2024 they complained about how mobilisation was down to less than half, at just 55 thousand per month(with a USA investigation in 2023 finding that Ukraine was mobilising at least 115-120 thousand per month from March-22 to July-23). Then late 2024, oh dear down to just 35 thousand per month. And then spring 2025, oh horror, down to 25 thousand per month, which DOES NOT EVEN REPLACE THE KIAS.
And if we instead look at the high count mobilisation, that's another TWO MILLION.
Ukraine is pressganging victims into service at a massive rate. They openly admitted that their kidnappers had over 400 cars BURNED just in 2024, and yet that did not really affect their pressganging rate. How many do you think they have kidnapping people every day if the loss of 400 cars isn't even noticeable to the overall rate?
Why do you think they're kidnapping people anywhere from 14 years old to 80+?
It's not because there's such a plentiful of people 25-45.
General Zaluzhny already in DECEMBER-22 stated indirectly but openly that the total losses by then were over 800 thousand. And we have other Ukraine sources from then, saying that the ratio of KIA to WIA was roughly 50%.
We have the Russian command briefing that leaked from a LPR general's staff in August-22 that Ukraine had taken over 300 thousand "sanitary losses", which means mostly KIA.
We have the leaked notes from Ukraine govt in July-22 that stated that they had lost 191 thousand KIAs by end of JUNE-22.
We have the Mozart colonel after he fled from Bakhmut in Dec-22, he stated without any ambigiouty that Ukraine was taking over 1 thousand KIA per day just in Bakhmut, and that this was "almost half" the total losses Ukraine was taking.
Or in other words, Ukraine was taking OVER 2 thousand KIA per day at the time.
We have a reasonably confirmed statement by a Russian local official in Donbass in August 2022, that everyone of the "over 60 thousand" Ukraine soldiers they had buried most certainly had their own proper graves.
"total AFU kia cannot be more than 250 or 300k"
Ok, why don't you explain to us why Ukraine desperately needed a military graveyard for over 600 thousand burials in 2023.
And then had to make another one for 130+ thousand in 2024.
AND at the same time ALSO have every graveyard in the country overfilled with military graves from the last 3.5 years.
ALSO, for some battles, we have NUMBERS.
Kherson battle, 55 thousand UA vs 8 thousand RF.
31 thousand Ukraine KIA, rest of the force WIA. Less than 250 RF KIA.
Oskil/Kharkov advance, 10k UA advancing supported by another 10k, zero defense(but LOTS of bombardment) by RF until they reached Lyman, where 500 volunteers held them off for 2 weeks.
Roughly 4 thousand KIA and WIA each for Ukraine. The Lyman force had an unstated number of walking wounded, but everyone that went there, left there on their own.
The other losses for Russia was a few hundred Roskvadria milita that volunteered to assist the evacuation.
Bakhmut. 73 thousand UA KIA. Over 150 thousand WIA. Russia, about 1500 Wagner KIA, about 8 thousand ex-cons KIA.
The Great summeroffensive of 2023... Ukraine had started blocking information seriously by now so less reliable numbers. Over 100 thousand Ukraine KIA. No reliable numbers available for Russia, but less than 10 thousand KIA. And very likely closer to half that.
Kursk incursion. At least 75 thousand Ukraine KIA. Over 5 thousand vehicles destroyed. No reliable information on injured.
Russian losses, probably somewhere between 3 and 8 thousand KIA.
That's 280 thousand Ukraine KIA just from the battles we have the most reliable information on. Against 10-20 thousand Russian KIAs.
Reading your whinging about "Putin needs to go" in every post gets a bit tiresome.
None of us are privy to the back channel discussions between Russia and the USA, only the performance pieces like the Alaska summit.
Want regime change in Russia? Join the long queue.
It should be obvious that Russia's (not Putin's) measured approach to Ukraine is to ensure that they have enough resources in reserve should NATO, with or without the USA, decide to officially join the front lines.
>None of us are privy to the back channel discussions between Russia and the USA
But all of us see how much stuff is blowing up inside Russia.
We had another strike in Perm a couple days ago (the Azot factory in Berezniki).
Perm...
There had never been war in Perm for five centuries except for the Russian Civil War. It is so deep in the untouchable Russian rear.
Its sabotage from within, the drone was launched from the back of a car well inside Russia. This sort of thing has existed for millenia.
Take your pills and calm down. Pokrovs, Siversk and Kupyansk are about to fall.
Total pre-war population <150,000.
Amazing success four years into this.
And how will that stop the deep strikes into Russia?
Fortified hard nuts that your beloved NATO wouldnt take in a thousand years.
Can you explain why the Russian army had to bang its head against "fortified hard nuts" (one of which it had abandoned largely without a fight and which wasn't really a fortified hard nut even after that) when it had 1000 km of wide open space between Kiev/Chernigov and the Oskol river to attack through?
What kind of genius stategy is that? Enlighten us.
Your deep strikes into Russia are inevitable in a war against all NATO. If thugs like you were heard by the Russian leaders, the country would be Gaza now. Come on, tell me that the country ALREADY is Gaza 😄
If this is a war against all NATO, why is NATO striking Russia but Russia is not striking NATO?
And what can the only possible outcome be in a war in which one sides strikes the other but the other does not strike back even once?
Enlighten us, please.
Pokrovsk has been on the verge of falling for almost two years now. What happened to the bunny ears? Notice how Simp hasn’t mentioned territory in the last month or so? The war is never about territory unless Russia manages to take over a 3 horse town nobody has ever heard of.
Bakmut had 60 k people before the war. The battle for the city took 6 months. 40 k KIA. Pokrovs 82 k. The Pokrovs aglomeration is 120 k. Sure you would conquer Stalingrad with a finger snap…
I’m not saying it’s easy or that any other army would have done better, but then don’t claim it’s been captured and the Donbass is all but liberated as Simp and you simps have done for two years.
"But all of us see how much stuff is blowing up inside Russia."
Yeah, western propaganda shows it all several times over to make sure useful idiots like you believe every single video is of a different one.
Russia destroys over 95% of all drone attacks Ukraine attempts against it.
And that's a statement from Ukraine.
Half the rest doesn't cause any noticeable damage.
Of the remaining ones, less than 1% actually cause any form of major damage.
And even major damage is repaired within a month.
Most damages caused to Russia is fixed within 1-4 days.
"We had another strike in Perm a couple days ago (the Azot factory in Berezniki)."
Yes, i know. I have a friend there that immigrated 20 years ago.
The total "lasting" damage amounted to scratching the paint.
Zero effect on the factory.
Zero effect on the city.
Zero effect on the people.
THAT, is the normal.
Yeah, that's how it started with the refineries and in Belgorod. Little damage initially. But the red line was moved.
And now there is a gasoline shortage and Belgorod is about to become uninhabitable in the coming months.
This is why you enforce red lines early and with extremely disproportionate force.
This part of my comment is not, by any means, directed exclusively at you, but at many members of this informal forum: why so much personal antagonism directed at GM? He seems earnest to me, and while I think the call for nuclear strikes would be disastrous and kill countless people unnecessarily, there is a context and purpose to what he says, and it isn't that far from widely accepted nuclear doctrine in all the nuclear powers. It's an insane world.
I think you're understating the impact of Ukrainian attacks. I'll zero in on just one thing: You say: "Half the rest doesn't cause any noticeable damage.
Of the remaining ones, less than 1% actually cause any form of major damage. And even major damage is repaired within a month.... zero effect on the city, zero effect on the people."
They are killing people with these strikes, and that's having the ultimate effect on those who are killed, with significant ripples throughout their families and communities. The fact that it's happening with impunity (to the weapons suppliers) also seems very significant to me, both in Russia and the west. I think it enables more and more death-causing actions.
And again, there's Syria and Lebanon, where Russia was neutralized as an ally because Ukraine is permitted to keep on keeping on.
Most people here think Russia is winning more and more easily, but there's a whole, very profitable I'd guess, cottage industry of people saying exactly the opposite, just as passionately. I think they're in a fantasy world, but there are a lot of them in it.
I think you're wrong Elena.
But please expand on how exactly why you think Russia is a pushover in West Asia.
And don't consult your BFF GM before you reply either.
No need to be rude. I’m going to treat your question as a real one, ignoring the insult.
Did I say Russia was a pushover in West Asia? No, I did not. But they lost an ally that, under ideal circumstances they would have defended, an ally that made a big difference in the subsequent strikes on Iran and Lebanon. That was an L. Are you with me so far? or do you disagree about that?
Russia was unable to protect Syria because it’s tied down in Ukraine. This was not an accident. The US is fighting a global war, and its strategy is obviously to tie down Russia for just such purposes.
In the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the US “brokered” the peace agreement and secured the Zangezur Corridor. THAT was an L for Russia.
Some have accused Russia of being controlled by Zionists. About that I have no knowledge, but I do know that Russia has been extremely soft on Israel despite its provision of weapons to Ukraine and its participation in the destruction of Syria. A “strong” Russia, I hope at least, wouldn’t have been such a pussy.
The US knows that Iran is a close ally of Russia, yet it brazenly and in conjunction with the monsters in Israel, attacked it in a cowardly and despicable way. That suggests the US policy makers aren’t exactly in awe of Russian strength or resolve.
So tell me why you think it’s a bastion of strength when it allows the US to bomb it at will without repercussions, destroy allies and take over air strips in the Caucasus.
Is this GM approved? Be sure to let me know.
Why the antagonism against GM? He comes in with the same "Putin is a traitor, Russia should nuke NATO" multiple times in every article. His diatribes are both voluminous and repetitive. Once in a while he does come up with something interesting and different -- which is why I haven't blocked him -- but rarely.
It’s the internet, I guess. I won’t disagree with your specific criticisms, and it’s certainly true that he hasn’t moderated his views in response to those criticisms.
Not everybody on this board has a sense to understand long-term strategical considerations. If they ever remove Putin from his position, most likely they will end up with a more radical leader. On the other side of the coin: If Zelensky is removed, he will be likely followed by a more sophisticated military strategist. Maybe this is the exact reason why he is still running around.
>If they ever remove Putin from his position, most likely they will end up with a more radical leader.
That is the idea, yeah.
of course, to ensure escalation and US boots on the ground, the only Ukro hope.
How would the US boots touch the ground if a serious person and not the current clown was in the Kremlin?
The US has invented teleportation already?
you are the clown here, not Putin
Try as hard as you might, you can't polish a turd. Ukraine is the turd.
Zelensky is Russia's best asset.
You mean the mighty ancient Chinese strategist Zelen-Tsu!
;)
"Zelensky is Russia's best asset."
No he's not and it's pure cope to excuse that Russia has not taken him out.
Zelensky's job is to be a recruiter and networker for Ukraine and he has done a phenomenal job of it. Ukraine does not want for money and they increasingly get more and better weapons systems.
They cross more and more Russian "red lines" every month. And Zelensky is a big part of that.
The decision to not take out Z will cost Russia enormously, even after this war is over.
Interesting take. I think he's bad as a general and can't refrain from meddling, but as to the rest I'd agree. And I think he should be taken out along with the whole lot of them. There would be value in the chaos that created. This business of western leaders traipsing over to Kiev every week is an affront to me personally.
The reason Zelensky hasn't been "taken out" is because he's a dollar store sockpuppet.
He's not worth a styrofoam drone let alone an Iskander.
That certainly seems to be the plan. Keep the Cokehead Zelenskyy alive so he can continue to fuckup.
If Zelenskii were removed today, nothing would change. Zelenskii is a puppet.
A bit tiresome? Just a bit? Congratulations.
Your resilience is extraordinary!
I think you say some of the things you do because you're either confident the US won't go nuclear, or you don't worry about the consequences of that (enough, in my view). I think you're wrong, and that many in the US would love for things to go nuclear, and that if it happened it would be disastrous for everybody. They won't be defending Europe, which they plainly are willing to sacrifice - it'll just be another thing to do that hurts Russia.
But I agree that Putin should have issued some sort of ultimatum or, as I've suggested before, institute an obvious, but plausibly deniable, series of sabotages or insurgent strikes. I don't think anything changes until Americans start seeing bodybags.
I'd also agree with others that the numbers cited don't suggest an overwhelming or inevitable victory in a war of attrition, at least in the near to middle future. I think the SMO should graduate to a "war."
The US wants to fight through proxies.
The only solution to that problem is removing the proxies from the chess board, and the only way to do that is using nukes. Conventionally Russia does not have the strength -- it is vastly outnumbered -- which is precisely what the whole strategy relies on in the first place.
In terms of imposing deterrence on the US, an all-out nuclear exchange is to avoided, of course, but US elites have to made to fear for their own lives. Which means they should have been targeted with conventional precision strikes a long time ago in order to cut off the escalation cycle
In any case, something should have been done, because the current trajectory leads to Russian defeat.
I think you’re the only one on this site who thinks the current trajectory leads to Russian defeat. For most, it’s just the opposite. I’ve long since been arguing they need to take the gloves off and either remove the US and Europe from the fight or bring them in. Letting the US bomb Russia at will seems a fool’s errand.
I had suggested targeting numerous European sites with Oreshniks - the west is now apparently saying they consider them functionally equivalent to nuclear, so that might provoke a nuclear response. On the other hand, at least the Russians wouldn’t pull that trigger first, and unlike you I think they should NOT pull that trigger first.
Note that the Oreshnik only makes sense as a nuclear delivery missile, and the more information that comes out about it, the more certain that is, i.e. there was a supposed picture/model of the TEL the last few days:
https://t.me/militaryrussiaru/38226
And it appears to be derived from the Kurier/Skorost projects from the 1980s:
https://t.me/militaryrussiaru/38298
It just makes absolutely no sense to build giant MRBMs of the exact same type that were once designed only to carry a single megaton-range warhead or MIRVs in the hundreds of kilotons range and to use them to deliver conventional munitions. All that anyone has proposed as an alternative is fantastical exotic tech and hopium deriving from total failure to learn most basic physics.
While what we have as hard facts is 6x6 MIRVs/MaRVs in a demonstrative strike. So what I see is a nuclear bunker buster capable of delivering 36 warheads with a single missile, which, depending on how successful the Soviet/Russian miniaturization effort has been over the decades, could be as much as 100 kt each. And that makes sense, and it is also how you take out Europe -- 50-100 Oreshniks with 36 warheads each will do it.
>I think you’re the only one on this site who thinks the current trajectory leads to Russian defeat
I am not the only one, there are several others here, but of course you should consider that the posters here are a self-selected group.
And that applies to the "alternative media" in the West in general. Which is under strong financial incentives to distort the truth to only slightly lesser extent than the mainstream -- the alternative media is supported by small donations, so the successful channels are the ones that tell people what they want to hear, not necessarily what the truth is. Thus the birth back in 2022 of the niche industry serving a certain online audience either disillusioned with the US empire or dissatisfied with how it is run, which sees in Putin its metaphorical savior knight on a white horse; those people have been happily financially supporting the niche industry telling them that Russia is invincible and Putin a genius who is always many moves ahead of the West, and they will often react quite viciously to suggestions otherwise (you see it here all the time).
Meanwhile Russia got kicked out of Syria and is having its sensitive infrastructure bombed all the way to the Urals, and the invincible grand genius dares not fight back at all. Which is in stark contrast with the legend about him, but when you point it out you get angry denial...
And the most basic logis says that if you are bombed constantly while the enemy suffers zero damage, you will be defeated. This is so self-evident and obvious that I don't understand why there is even any discussion...
About that last point, the logic and the reaction, I’d obviously agree. I would agree that most of the niche sites covering the war are pro-Russian and hostile to the suggestion that it could lose. It amazes me how little people seem to regard what happened in Syria as significant.
You do surprise me with what you say about Oreshnik. I thought it was designed to be a non-nuclear strategic weapon. I don’t know enough about the materials involved to evaluate your position that it only makes sense as a nuclear weapon. Didn’t Putin specifically say it wasn’t and would never be?
Well, at least you appear to actually think about what is happening. Which is to be applauded.
Regarding Oreshniks, why do you consider Putin a reliable source on this matter? One has to always consider whether the source has reasons to lie, and in what direction.
This is the same person that only really withdrew from the INF treaty full 8 years after the US did.
I can easily imagine the more patriotic forces in the military and the MIC forcing the matter and resurrecting those 1980s projects but then Putin still maintaining the pretense that it isn't what it looks like. Or, let's hope, Putin is playing a deception game while serious preparations for decisive action are ongoing.
Also, I can imagine the missile having a non-nuclear version for certain special occasions. But it simply makes no sense to be producing a triple digit number of super expensive heavy missiles to then deliver three tons of conventional explosive (or inert) warheads. Even as a bunker buster, it makes absolutely no sense (Kinzhals and Zirkons will do the job for a fraction of the cost).
But as a nuclear hyper-MIRV-ed delivery method (100 Oreshniks x 36 = 3,600 warheads) it makes perfect sense.
Russia decided to cut Syria loose because it was too busy with its next-door war in the Ukraine. The US&A is the one that thinks it can attack Russia, China, and Iran all at the same time.
Your "explanation" glosses over the fact that ICBM's and Oreshniks and Tomahawks are much different in size and therefore range.
I find much of what you just said to be hot air. You inflate and conflate at will to fit a conclusion.
"And that makes sense, and it is also how you take out Europe -- 50-100 Oreshniks with 36 warheads each will do it. "
As a previous poster pointed out, you are advocating for genocide, in this case all of Europe. It's a good thing that Putin and the Russians in general are not as insane as you.
The generals would have done it three years ago, it is Putin and his traitor oligarch masters that are responsible for it not having been done.
Which is good for you, but very much not good for the 130,000 dead Russian soldiers, all the others who have been maimed, the thousands killed civilians, and, of course, the many times that on the other side, who are also mostly ethnic Russians after all.
All those people would be well and alive today had Putin rolled out the nukes in mid-2022.
Oreshniks are not really comparable to nuclear devices. Their advantage is their very high speed and deep penetration that magnifies their force of destruction with traditional explosives.
Putin said it on a few occasions that to him it seems America is trying to push Russia into starting a nuclear conflict. I think he is right, the US Deep State Industry is thinking in terms of major population reductions on a planetary scale some decades ago. After the Covid hysteria did not work out for them it is logical to push this war to an extreme.
Also, the Deep State just might send a few Tomahawk missiles secretly loaded with nuclear bombs instead traditional explosives and hand them over with a loving smile to Zelensky.
It is that last point that concerns me the most and should, in my opinion, be very high on everybody’s worry list. It’s insane for the US to send them, and I’m inclined to believe insane on Russia’s part to allow them to reach a functional Ukraine.
>very high speed and deep penetration that magnifies their force of destruction with traditional explosives
It actually doesn't substantially do that.
Do the math, it's not that hard.
The kinetic energy only doubles the explosive power once you reach M10. But you are not even hitting the ground at that speed, because friction has slowed the RVs down somewhat from the peak missile speed.
>Also, the Deep State just might send a few Tomahawk missiles secretly loaded with nuclear bombs instead traditional explosives and hand them over with a loving smile to Zelensky.
Yes, exactly, and this is in fact the plan.
I would not put it past western intelligence agencies to have already acquired the fission material from Ukrainian nuke reactors and are enriching it for a nuke that will be given back to Ukraine. They have had 3 years to develop this program and if not ready yet maybe in another year or two.
Ukraine does not even really need to use it, they could announce they have it and the delivery means and that announcement alone might bring Russia to the table.
Elena, be very-very careful! His MO is to dazzle you and take you into the deep forest like you were Little Red Riding Hood to be eaten by the wolfs. He is mixing a cocktail of AI generated stuff with some human input to prepare you for a mental slaughter. His most ‘brilliant’ recent operation was spreading the 'news' back in July that the nationwide anti-corruption, anti-war and even anti-Zelensky demonstrations mostly by women were organized and paid by the Soros Mafia. The event was way oversized and widespread to be centrally organized by a small gang operating under the watchful eyes of Zelensky. Soros would do anything to fan the flames of this war and nothing serious to oppose it. I was watching the videos, this was a spontaneous storm of emotionally highly charged individuals who realized the hopelessness of the situation and wanted an end to the whole circus. GM was able to convince and feed this narrative most surprisingly to the general public on this board here. People just did not take the time to sort out the event and followed him like a bunch of sheep.
Thanks for the warning; I stay pretty cautious.
The leaked Ukie data says 1.5 million KIA.
Our best estimates of Russian KIA are 125K to 150K.
"But I agree that Putin should have issued some sort of ultimatum or, as I've suggested before, institute an obvious, but plausibly deniable, series of sabotages or insurgent strikes. I don't think anything changes until Americans start seeing bodybags."
Agreed, sadly. This is the downside of Putin being not only such a blatant LAWYER, but also trying to be the "good guy".
"go nuclear, and that if it happened it would be disastrous for everybody"
The really serious part about this, is the scary part. If it goes nuclear, Russia HAS A CHANCE to survive with "minor damage". Because they have the best airdefense in the world, and USAs nuclear arsenal mostly consists of what Russia considers "woefully obsolete munitions".
While Nato has zero chance, because we don't have ANY airdefenses good at shooting down nukes. In Ukraine, not even a single Russian strike that is above mach 1 has been intercepted by anything from Nato, and only very few with the best upgraded S-300s Ukraine had left.
And unlike Nato, Russia's nuclear arsenal to a large extent consists of MODERN weapons. The kind where the warheads maneuver during final approach, the kind that extensively uses the best MIRV technology and also includes plenty of decoys. Technology we have seen used against Ukraine with devastating efficiency. Literally, most Ukraine's claims of shooting down Russian missiles, are hitting the decoys they drop.
"I'd also agree with others that the numbers cited don't suggest an overwhelming or inevitable victory in a war of attrition, at least in the near to middle future. I think the SMO should graduate to a "war.""
I truly have no idea where people are getting this from.
Russian losses are DECREASING. Ukraine losses are NOT.
The last SIX exchanges of bodies had an average ratio of 50 to 1 to Russia's advantage.
And it's constantly increasing.
If Ukraine had taken zero losses, they should by now have around 4 million troops. By the low account on how much they mobilise.
By the high count, they should have at least 6 million.
Russia currently has 600-700 thousand along the frontlines, and that is stated to "massively outnumber" the Ukraine forces(by a Ukraine source).
Ukraine is also noted to have great difficulty to create any form of strategic reserves.
So, where's the other 5 million Ukraine soldiers then? Taking a vacation?
Hiding?
Well yes, they are hiding 6 feet under.
Also, we have LOTS of 3rd party(but supporting UA) sources already from 2023 commenting about how EVERY GRAVEYARD in Ukraine is overcrowded with military graves.
And yet Ukraine was forced to create a new military graveyard outside of Kiev Summer 2023, for 600 thousand, or more, graves.
And then in late -24 or early 25, they had to create ANOTHER military graveyard for at least another 130 thousand. Beacuse the one outside of Kiev was FULL.
What does it take for a nation of 40M to run out of graveyards in 1 year?
Several hundred thousand dead MINIMUM.
And then in less than 18 months, another 600 thousand, minimum, probably more, filling up the first new military cemetary.
My personal tracking, based on all kind of sources, point towards current Ukraine KIA count being somewhere between 2 million and 2.5 million.
And it needs to be said that a big part of that high number, is because of the TERRIBLY poor level of medevac Ukraine has, which results in a KIA to WIA ratio usually no better than 1 to 1.
I have no doubt that Ukraine has lot higher numbers of KIAs. However, part of the calculation should be the fact that Russia is slowly but constantly advancing, therefore they often take possession of both, their own and the Ukraine KIAs as well.
Your repeated insistence on Russia getting world war three going by nuking the US is starting to get annoying. Even if all ten thousand nukes were blown up before launch its game over for everybody. Most people just don't care about Ukraine enough to want to see everybody in the world eventually die just to prove some point about it.
Not quite clear what you meant by your last sentence. Did you mean "just don't care"?
I don't see anybody on the Russian side, even and maybe especially GM, talking about "just to prove some point." GM sees Russians dying and Russia itself existentially threatened. I'm obviously not eager to see the nuclear threshold crossed and think, instead, it needs to be avoided at (almost) all costs, but I think the west is trying to put Russia into exactly that dilemma.
And I think WW3 has already started.
Russia is winning and at an ever increasing rate. So it is not currently facing an existential threat that it can't manage (from the war). It hasn't even gone to a war economy or mass conscription.
It isn't a world war. Three quarters of the world's population is totally indifferent to the outcome of the Ukrainian conflict. And probably even half of Europe's population is opposed to their direct participation in it as well.
I note that you include almost in your comment about avoiding a nuclear holocaust. Then you go on to say it has already started. So what follow from that is ......what can anyone do anyway but just finish the damn thing and get it over with.
We’ll have to agree to disagree with just about everything we’ve discussed. I agree the world’s population is indifferent, but the relevant leaders seem monomaniacal to me. I think they’ll institute direct and obvious involvement unless Russia takes action to prevent it. And I think the conflict is an existential threat that remains existential both to Russia and western hegemony.
About WW3, I don’t equate nuclear armageddon with ww3, and I certainly don’t want us to go there. Russian doctrine does say that it will go nuclear if faced with existential danger, and the US has obviously been, and is now obviously, willing to go there well short of existential threat. Israel is Israel. So I’d say the risk is substantial.
Ron, The incremental gains of the Russian army cannot be considered a victory in any way. There are too many variables like the rearmament of EU/NATO and new weapons that can turn things around for Russia – and the whole planet. Russia really needs to use the present window of opportunity that they have, a year or two before the EU armament factories can gear up. After this period they are walking into a swamp where anything can happen.
"The incremental gains of the Russian army cannot be considered a victory in any way. "
An absurd overstatement. I see you haven't been to Crimea or the four New Territories.
Are Russia's tremendous gains a *final* victory? No. But they already are such massive gains that they are a thorough defeat for the West. Russia has demonstrated that a trillion dollars of expenditure cannot defeat Russia but has only made Russia stronger while inflicting a permanent reverse in the fortune's of the US's stooges.
Where do I get "a trillion" dollars? That's the round-number sum of the West stealing 350 billion of Russia's funds plus the far more than 350 billion of their funds they've burned up in Ukraine, plus additional pocket change for unrecognized expenses like the vast costs to the US of US military activities related to Ukraine since 2014.
A trillion bucks actually undercounts the expenditure, since the knock-on effects of high energy and loss of other resources to US-stooge controlled parts of Europe, as well as impacts on the US (like a vast decline in the real value of the dollar against gold) easily exceed another trillion.
At the same time Russia has killed or maimed over a million Ukrainian nazis and their helpers, putting a significant dent into the size of the extremist nazi population within Ukraine. The insufficient replacement rate of births among nazis in Ukraine make that demographic dent a real factor for many decades to come.
"like the rearmament of EU/NATO and new weapons"
Ah... the "wunderwaffen" fantasy. That didn't work for Hitler and it's not going to work for his successors in the US and EU.
I'd also respectfully note that it takes a truly tone deaf ear (or extreme susceptibility to Western propaganda) not to notice that the US and US stooge ecosystem's track record in new weapons is producing truly awful, poor price/performance turkeys like the F-35. It's no accident the US is nearly two decades behind Russia in hypersonics. If new weapons make any difference that will come as a result from the world leaders in effective new weapons, Russia and China.
"a year or two before the EU armament factories can gear up"
That's really funny. "Gear up" you say? How, exactly, are they going to do that without having the money and resources to gear up without triggering revolts by their welfare state constituencies? The reality is that Russia's military industries outproduce the US and all US stooges combined by significant factors.
I suppose its more comforting knowing that every single dead Ukrainian was a nazi. That paragraph reads like it was written by the IDF. Just substitute Ukrainian Nazi with Hamas. Looks like Russia is just mowing the Ukrainian grass right?
'At the same time the IDF has killed or maimed over a million Palestinians and their helpers, putting a significant dent into the size of the extremist Hamas population within Gaza. The insufficient replacement rate of births among Palestinians in Gaza make that demographic dent a real factor for many decades to come.'
Do you see what I mean?
Nobody in Washington, nobody in Brussels, nobody in Kiev cares about the Ukrainians killed, just as a chicken farmer doesn't mourn the death of his poultry.
‘The reality is that Russia's military industries outproduce the US and all US stooges combined by significant factors.’
I think you will have a problem to prove that. It is also a fact illustrated by satellite data that weapon producers in Western Europe expanding rapidly as I type this. NATO pressure will increase in a year or two so I still stick to the idea that Russia has to finish this conflict and create a sustainable, fully controlled military situation by excluding the flow of Western arms to Ukraine within a year or two or else they might run into serious issues. They will have to take Odessa with the complete Black Sea segment of Ukraine and advance to close the Romanian and Polish borders with Ukraine would be the final solution.
'How, exactly, are they going to do that without having the money and resources to gear up without triggering revolts by their welfare state constituencies?'
They will force the welfarians to work for food and shelter and simply print the money as usual. When they run out of paper to print they will simply create the money by entering ‘1’ into a computer system and follow it with a few dozen zeroes.
@KenMan: winter's coming, so probably best to wait and see how far Russian > < Ukr forces succeed (or not) in getting where they aim to be in the coming months.
This conflict started over 3.5 years ago. Russia will surely have to switch to a higher gear in order to stop weapon deliveries into Ukraine.
>Russia is winning and at an ever increasing rate
Right now the war is a catastrophic geostrategic loss, and at the tactical level the pace has decreased, not increased.
Do you even follow what is happening?
Sorry, I am unable to follow these events. Computers are not allowed for five year olds at the YMCA. Are you trying to convince me to send my own toy nukes to Putin?
GM
You didn't say who suffered the catastrophic loss and a slowing tactical progress.
Wars were also fought in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and soon Venezuela. Expect some attack against China. Maybe more India-Pakistan clashes?
"Russia is winning and at an ever increasing rate."
We've been hearing that one for years now, but the win never actually comes.
Right. WWIII started February 2022…it comes creeping on little feet.
GM isn't on Russia's side.
What makes you say so?
Following the NATO/Rand playback.
Helps set up believability if a nuclear false flag is used. Removing Putin via internal pressure is the top goal and appealing to more hawkish elements amongst Russian supporters is part of the method. At the least stir up some instability.
Read the available Rand documents, listen to Kelly's and other EU/NATO officials.
The problem with having a good leader is if they are eliminated/removed its a real loss. In Western countries it barely matters, one crappy leader is just as good as the next. The decisions are made behind the scenes and the leaders just give the illusion of democracy.
By “playback” in your first sentence, do you mean their strategy or plan?
Who is setting up a false flag, GM? Because his advocating it might cause someone (who?) to do something? I don’t follow this. I don’t think GM is important enough to set up anything (sorry GM if you’re listening and offended) - he seems to be a strongly opinionated advocate for Russia, generally criticized by other advocates for Russia - how would that move any needle?
What I hear you saying is you strongly disagree, think there’s a difference in values (I’m not sure there is), and therefor you don’t like him. Well, it’s the internet, so I guess it’s your right. And thanks for answering.
I would say this, too - I think some of the criticisms made are valid, perhaps most of them, though I still believe Putin is an excellent leader. I expect the way he’s waging this war is annoying quite a bit of the military, though. Just because westerners want him out doesn’t necessarily mean that would be a bad thing for Russia. They’ve been wrong before, and from what I can see they almost always are. Cheers.
Not to mention advocating for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine is so incredibly retarded it gives the game away.
I don't believe Spraytan Man has the balls to retaliate with nukes.
Putin or is his name pussy? For no money in the world I would see him replaced, there are other pussies in scapegoat and underneath they’re tigers, bears…or just Chinese dragons, and their ways or arts of war are of a total different nature…selling Chinese cars or IPads or IPhones.
Usual broken record bullshit from this braindead US Deep state cuck
GM knows what he's doing. Look at GMs spectrum dominance here. He's everywhere saying anything to fit his narrative. It's a bit excessive. Simplicius has warned him.
Utterly tiresome propaganda, if it is as you say , and I largely agree, then I see no reason why he shouldn’t be kicked off. Let him start his own commentary rather than leeching off this site , which is exactly what he is doing
The biggest question is why are you not nuking everyone? Well the ATACMS did cause some damage but mostly military. Military targets come with that risk. The Russian president has done fine, the world is not having a world war and much less Russians are dying than if they were in WW3. The fact is from most of the information I have garnered the ATACMS, though they did some damage, it was not enough to even evoke a major response, in other words they failed. Everyone screams Russia is in a general war yet you merely speak of black outs in Briasnsk and Beldorod, border Oblasts, where the power will soon be returned if not already returned. Well like a movie, everything becomes clear in the end. So all the irrational fear and paranoia being attempted by fear mongers will be just noise and nonsense.
>Well the ATACMS did cause some damage but mostly military.
Yes, the dead and maimed children on that beach in Sevastopol are certainly comforted by that thought.
>Military targets come with that risk.
Yes, and the military is supposed to defend the country and fight back when attacked. But in this case it is strictly forbidden from doing so by political leadership. How fucked up is that?
>though they did some damage, it was not enough to even evoke a major response, in other words they failed
That is because you don't understand what is happening.
They succeeded in their actual goal -- to move the red line needle -- and if they had done too much damage, they would have failed in that goal, because then the Kremlin would have been forced to react. You clearly don't get the whole concept of boiling the frog. And moving the needle they did, which is how now we are talking Tomahawks (while Russian refineries and heavy industry are already blowing up all over the country by drone strikes) and the Kremlin will just take that too.
BTW, the Great Ukrainian Counteroffensive in 2023 and the Kursk incursion in 2024 served the same function -- to move the red line needle. Do you really think NATO had no idea the offensive is doomed without air cover, with the insufficient forces allocated, and with the set Russian defenses there? Of course they knew, but that was the whole point -- for it to fail while establishing the precedents that NATO armor, artillery and MLRS will be attacking Russia without Russia fighting back. Had the offensive been sufficiently well supplied to succeed and to threaten Crimea, then the nukes would have had to come out, i.e. the frog would have jumped out of the cauldron.
It wasn't so that didn't happen. And that allowed the next step to be taken in Kursk the next year -- outright NATO invasion of official Russian territory. Had that been done in the summer of 2022 (let alone in 2021), the nukes would have likely come out, but in 2024 they didn't, so another set of previously unacceptable precedents was set.
Which is how we end up in the situation where right as we speak the US is shutting down the grid in Bryansk and Belgorod with HIMARS strikes while Putin is talking about the "improved relationships" between the countries.
Yes but there is the concept of proportionality, not just paranoia, to put fourth a response. I wonder how you claim to know/assume so much but appear to understand so little? I am not afraid to admit I don't know or say I don't understand as I don't claim to be all knowing. Which frog is boiling? In the end the European countries with all their bellicose language will economically collapse without Russia energy, commodities and market with Russia having the largest population in Europe. The US is facing a bond, crisis, spending crisis, real estate crisis, deficit crisis, commercial real estate crisis, budget crisis, currency crisis, employment crisis, consumer confidence crisis, national debt crisis etc. it gets exhausting. Why would Russia overreact when the inevitable Western collapse is imminent from an economic perspective. The challenge for the west is what will happen when the global majority is unwilling to trade their natural resources, energy, and manufactured goods for Western fiat currencies? The difference between us my friend is you see a boiling frog from the perspective of irrational fear and paranoia while I look from the lens of rational economics and geopolitics.
>in the end the European countries with all their bellicose language will economically collapse
1) When will that happen and how much damage to Russia will have been done?
2) The Europeans are fully disposable proxies, just as the Ukrainians. Nobody cares about them, their role is to destroy Russia so that the Anglo-Saxons can get their hands on Russia's riches.
>Why would Russia overreact when the inevitable Western collapse is imminent from an economic perspective
How is that collapse going to stop the missiles from raining on Russia?
See what is happening in Yemen. The Houthis happen to be the only unquestionably good and noble people on this planet (maybe we can add the North Koreans), but the point is that you will be hard pressed to find a more economically destroyed place on the planet than Yemen. And yet they fire a ballistic missile on Israel every other day, from 2,000 kilometers away.
Europe has 30x the people and 1000x the economic potential that the Houthis have, and is not 2,000 km away from Moscow, the current line of contact is 450 km from Moscow, and 100 km from St. Petersburg.
The whole proxy strategy relies on the assumption that the victim will not/cannot destroy the proxy. Destroy the proxy and you break the scheme. Which Russia has the power to do, though maybe not for very much longer.
Well you made the anology of the boiling frog, I merely put fourth a probability based on economic indicators that I mentioned in relation to the western world.
What missiles will rain upon Russia? 70 year old minute man 3s and Trident D5s from almost obsolete Ohio class submarines with the Colombia class not slated for sea trials until 2035 if not again delayed? Or do you mean gravity dropped B61s, carried by F35s totally dependent on 60 year old stealth technology to penetrate Russian airspace? Or are you just again attempting to hype up pin pricks in relation to the size of Russia as a country? Does it matter the distance of the battle lines from Moscow and St. Petersburg when the direction of travel is westward and away? I am happy the Russian leadership is not over reacting. I live on planet earth and I have no other alternative and living with nuclear winter and radioactive fallout while I starve are not outcomes I eagerly welcome. I fail to see why you mentioned AlsarAllah and the North Koreans yes they are a symbol of the resistance to western hedemony, but it is Russia, the global majority draw the most strength as they dismantle the facade of western strength.
>What missiles will rain upon Russia
HIMARS, ATACMS, Storm Shadows, Tomahawks, Taurus, Flamingos, and who knows what else. Until the second strike capability is sufficiently degraded for the coup de grace.
>the direction of travel is westward and away
Is it? In 2022 Russia was much further west than it is now.
And in 1989 it was 1500 km further to the west.
Agree. ”West” has played the game very well by moving the red line eastwards, action by action, forcing the Russian to react. And most of the times taking it from behind.
"why are you not nuking everyone?" fairly evident (even from a pedestrian level's outlook), so pray tell....
“it would destroy US-Russian relations”
This is so hilarious, mates!
No wonder the critters in Washington and our Eurotard leaders are itching to escalate things…
Let’s review the situation:
Risks:
1) “destroyed US-Russia relations”
2) some 100.000s of dead and maimed Ukrainians (actually, scratch this. This is rather a good point for “the Friends of Ukraine”)
Rewards:
1) the possibility of regime changing and Balkanizing Russia. (For the second time in 35 years)
If you were a random member of the Western elites, what would you choose when presented with this?
You should send a stamped petition to the Kremlin... The closest the victory, the fastest Putin needs to go? LOL. You need to go ! But wait, dont..If you stay we will know the state-of-the-art Ukranian propaganda, which sounds more and more desperate.
" "if the Americans start striking us with Tomahawks, we will physically remove them from Eurasia within the next 24 hours and we will also destroy the White House with a conventional strike and the Pentagon with 10-15 kilotons, and then we will consider the matter settled; "
that would certainly improve America...
Hey dh. You forgot to mention *jews*.
Your criticism of all Russian actions and Putin is a fucking broken record... Chip
GM: "Putin needs to go. Now."
"I’m leaving," Trump said. "There’s no reason to be here any more": inside the meeting that brought Nato to the brink
Former secretary general Jens Stoltenberg recalls the rollercoaster ride of dealing with Donald Trump – and how close the US president brought the alliance to the point of collapse
Trump: “The US doesn’t need Nato. Why should I continue to pay for this organisation when I don’t need it?”
There was silence around the table. Trump continued to talk at length about the trade imbalance with the EU, another hobby-horse. “The EU sends its BMWs and Mercedes into the United States, almost tariff-free. It can’t go on like this. It won’t go on like this.”
This is an edited extract from "On My Watch: Leading Nato in a Time of War" by Jens Stoltenberg.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/04/im-leaving-trump-said-theres-no-reason-to-be-here-any-more-inside-the-meeting-that-brought-nato-to-the-brink
Well, it turns out that the great Russian summer offensive was, for the most part, an insignificant footnote, more noteworthy as a harbinger of failure to decapitate Ukraine, leading up to a costly forever war just as the US intended, to weaken Russia. Russian casualties can be up to 300,000 or more dead and incapacitated, with no end in sight. She may be winning the attrition rate, yet it hasn't even regained the 4 oblasts it has committed to after over 3 years, which the SMO had not anticipated. Russia falsely perceives its war as an SMO. Could this be the result of a Zionist friendly Kremlin's way of undermining Russia? Why is it criminal to criticize the SMO in Russia? Why are most combatants white? Will immigrants replace them? (It's the trend) Greater Israel?
Oh, but the Russians are winning because they're attriting the enemy and moving slowly to minimize losses. No, they're not. They've been winning for over three years and haven't won anything. lol In fact, they've emboldened the enemy. No one fears Russia because she has no intention of expanding beyond the 4 oblasts. That's called telegraphing your intent to the enemy. Russian losses are not minimized; they are extended over a much longer time frame than what could have been if it had the will to do what needed to be done in the first place. Responsibility rests on the Kremlin. Either they are stupid, incompetent, or Zio-sympathetic traitors, and that's why it's illegal to criticize the SMO in Russia. They screwed up big time in the initial SMO, a plan doomed to fail from the outset. You need to start with an air campaign. (Not done) (Anti-drone), not done and so on. So what should Russia do to truly win this war with limited losses? I will explain below.
>the great Russian summer offensive was, for the most part, an insignificant footnote
There was never any offensive. Which is arguably even worse than it going nowhere.
>No one fears Russia because she has no intention of expanding beyond the 4 oblasts.
They are right now striking Bryansk and Belgorod with HIMARS from point blank range, taking the power out. Are they going to stop with some more pleading from Putin for "rationality" and "coming to the table"? No, of course they are not. Which means that the border regions of Russia will start depopulating (that has already been going for a while now, but, of course, nobody dares acknowledge it). The only solution to this problem is to make it physically impossible for them to strike across the border, which means taking Kharkov, Sumy and Chernigov. There is no other choice. And the operation had to seriously begin a long time ago, now it's already too late to prevent serious further damage. But there has been no mobilization of the necessary manpower, and clearly absolutely no intention on the part of the botox midget to do anything about it.
I don't even know what to say at this point...
>Responsibility rests on the Kremlin
It does indeed.
>Zio-sympathetic traitors
Bingo.
How is it that for four years now nobody dares discuss the obvious -- the US is run by Zionist Jews, mostly originating from the former Russian empire, and they started the war on Russia. But Putin is surrounded by what kind of people? Zionist Jewish oligarchs, of course. And Putin dares not say anything negative about Israel (you saw it once again at Valdai when Prof. Marandi asked him about the Gaza genocide) and every other action of his clearly points to that association not being merely accidental.
So we are supposed to believe that the man surrounded by the same kind of people that are waging a war on his country will actively and sincerely defend against that aggression? Something doesn't quite compute here, does it?
I heard Putin and Zelensky are in cahoots to eliminate as many young fighting aged slavs as possible who would resist Davos/NWO. WMMV.
How Russia can neutralize Ukraine's AFU forces, decapitate its government and capture up to 200,000 prisoners without needing to occupy Kiev or any other major city.
Setting the stage for invasion
Day 1
Russia commences smart bombing and destroying anti-air, radar, communication links and command and control and political centers. (Destroy enemy eyes, ears and intelligence) Get them scrambling, confused or dead.
Day 2 and on
Commence air operations, blowing up fuel depots, ammo and weapons storage sites, high-value targets and all the bridges on the Dnieper that unite Kiev right down the middle and split that city in half.
Day3
Day 3 assumes that Russian forces (300,000) have moved to their staging areas and are breaking through enemy lines directly above Kiev, heading down the east side of the Dnieper, advancing with the most expendable yet turtled top (anti-drone) mechanized units, 4 wheelers, motorbikes, customized roof-opened trucks, advancing drone operators as well as anti-drone units with high powered double barrelled shotguns spread out throughout the invasionary force with KA52 Aliigator and Mi288's flying above.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HOXuGZDePMs https://www.youtube.com/shorts/udxGwCkR8GY
At the same time, 200,000 have broken through the enemy lines from the northeast salient closest to and heading towards Kyiv, but fan out along the East side of the Dnieper south of Kiev.
So what Russia has done here is completely surrounded the entire AFU front which now lies behind enemy lines and no means of re-supply. That's over 100,000 prisoners of war in one big scoop while Russia controls the entire east side of the Dnieper north and south of Kiev and splits the city in two by destroying all the adjoining bridges. I have much more detail but I'll stop here. Now look at this map and see how amenable kiev is to being under siege, split by water and lots of trees for cover. I see Kiev as one big logistical trap, no needing to occupy it or any other city, just surround it and block the lines of supply along the 13 routes in and out of it.
That, my friends, is how you put an end to this so-called SMO turned into a war fiasco, set new defensive lines and hold. Ukraine becomes Kaput, finitos, decapitated instead of this forever poorly executed, never ending casualty war further enboldening Europe because nobody is afraid of https://sputnikglobe.com/20251002/russias-special-military-operation-in-ukraine-and-how-it-is-progressing-1105665248.htmlRussia. Not even the Baltic States. lol .
https://sputnikglobe.com/20251002/russias-special-military-operation-in-ukraine-and-how-it-is-progressing-1105665248.html
Has the Kremlin received your CV or is it still in the post?
they are still reading it, must be a document to behold.
Abcdefg.
You're "Liked by Simplicius"?
Why?
Maybe he had a laugh. I was surprised also cos I was poking fun at Denis. Life can sometimes be very black and I strongly believe a little humour can help. And apologies @Denis for taking the piss.
>Russian forces (300,000)
Here is the flaw in your plan -- there are no 300,000.
Also:
>moved to their staging areas
There are no staging areas anymore -- the border is ringed with HIMARS systems and those staging areas will be destroyed.
The whole point of the SMO was to prevent NATO from setting up camp in Ukraine so that it can directly attack Russia from point blank.
What was the outcome of the SMO? NATO set up shop right at the border and is already attacking Russia from point blank.
Fantastic success.
Here is a more realistic plan:
Putin comes out and issues an ultimatum to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania to shut down the borders with Ukraine and allow Russian forces to patrol them. They are given 48 hours to agree to this and a week to implement it. If they refuse, the general populations of those countries are given the rest of that week to overthrow their governments and agree to it. If they do not agree, the countries get wiped out with strategic nuclear strikes. Hungary and Slovakia will agree with near-100% certainty, if Poland and Romania do not agree, you then do wipe them out.
After that is done you issue an ultimatum to the rest of the countries in NATO in Europe to dissolve the alliance or suffer the same fate.
While, of course, stating that if any American missile is seeing flying towards Russia, nukes will be launched at the US mainland while that missile is still in the air.
And you change the nuclear doctrine to not just allow but mandate strategic nuclear bombing for full annihilation of any unfriendly country on the perimeter that attempts to develop nuclear weapons (Sweden, Germany, etc.), so that Europe remains not a problem.
Shouldn't have come to this, but there is no other way out at this point.
Nuclear is too extreme.
I thought 1.5 million Russian soldiers were rotating at regular intervals.
HIMARS can be destroyed in advance, right.
This guy is a troll who specializes in getting people arguing, endlessly. Stop feeding him.
The armchair warriors are on manoeuvres in force today.
Mr Putin must wonder how he can employ such such experts.
you are mistaking my friend, they went full on operational it seems.
@Denis
And 15 minutes later, we find out exactly who is crazy enough to undertake the first use of tactical nuclear weapons to prevent their loss of political/world economic power.
30 minutes after THAT, we begin the process of finding out what % of the human race actually can survive the aftermath of a global thermonuclear war.
And about a year after all of the above, we will have effectively solved the Fermi paradox (insofar as it concerned H. sapiens).
Have a nice day... Even concern trolls gotta enjoy themselves.
Thanks, Billy.
concern troll was for you. Dont thank him Denis.
But he was hypocritically polite. i respect that. lol
Or you could do the Gringo Way of War and blow up the power grid, water supply and waste water treatment facilities, along with the rest of the critical infrastructure (ports, bridges, natgas and liquid fuels network, etc.) as the US did to Iraq and see how the Ukrainians fight under 19thC conditions.
Yeah, but the problem is that those are your own power grid, water supply etc. infrastructure. Russia built all that and it will (hopefully) be Russian again.
It was total insanity to ever begin the infrastructure campaign while still not touching the Banderite elite. If the goal was imposing deterrence, given that Ukraine is a fully disposable proxy, only the latter approach would have made a difference.
If the goal was to break AFU logistics, well, the infrastructure campaign was only ever taken up to the breaking point but no further (every time it got to that point the order came from the Kremlin to stop), which meant it had zero effect on the war.
Absolute utter self defeating stupidity of the highest order...
Well, historically Russia has not had many second thoughts about doing scorched earth policies in its own territory….
But yes I agree the actual Russian infrastructure campaign has been moronic, it has handed PR victories to the Ukrs, has made life more miserable for the common Ukrainian folk and hasn’t have a real impact on military logistics or made the puppet masters afraid of being next in line…
I do not think there is a way Rus could score PR victories in the W.
Leaving everything aside, Kvartal 95 peeps are ruling UA, with the help of 150 PR agencies supposedly.
What can awkward Orcs do against them?
Hell, this "just the tip" style of warfare gets lots more brotherly Ukrainians killed.
You put words I did not write. I said surround the cities implying avoiding killing civilians. Read carefully before inventing things I never said.
I did propose an alternative to your plan. And, destroying infrastructure makes life very miserable but must not lead to mass casualties.
It works.
Another armchair general..Send your application to Ramstein.
Will do. lol
I was saying something like this, years ago.
If it were that simple, I think it would be long over. Liked comment because it was well thought out, and interesting.
Thanks, kindly. My intent was exactly as you deemed it.
I have no illusion that it's quite that simple either, but yet doable in whatever capacity. Humbly, Denis.
Actually your points have a lot of merit Denis. I think many in Russia are thinking along those lines. Great contribution!
Thanks.
You seem very conflicted about the SMO, Denis. There is an old saying about a fat singer. My guess is that the Russian general staff are up to the task. Taking on the Empire and winning seems to be quite a feather in their cap. I give them decent odds of a win in the biggest battle of the future order.
Call it what you want. The SMO, as it stands, is a failure of Russia to do what was needed to do a long time ago. The SMO is a joke, killing off more Russian soldiers over a prolonged period rather than dealing with what really needed to be done. Russia is Zio-influenced and its really starting to show. I'm not the only one who sees this.
I'd say the Russians are happy about taking millions of Eastern Ukrainians in and offering them protection from the RS and Azov crew. One person's failure is another's success. Relativism rules.
Absolutely. 12-13 million skilled new Russian citizens. The diaspora coming back was Putin's main goal.
A failure to Russia... A joke... Keep trying
The whole purpose of the SMO was to move NATO further away from Russia. Now NATO is a stone's throw away from St. Petersburg.
And Russian civilians are being killed daily by NATO.
Look wannabe expat (I suppose from Ukraine)... No matter what I could tell you. Your mind is hopelessly petrified. Good luck with your expatriation. Otherwise you will die in the former country known as Ukraine.
It's hot near the gaslight.
Hi, GM
I disagree. Russia has exhausted the weapon systems and munitions of all of NATO, US, S. Korea, Japan. And the treasuries of the US snd Europe.
They are systematically killing off the Nationalist skin head nazi units along with the trained veteran AFU regulars.
There are no 3rd columns or sketchy civilians on the Russian side of the Line of Contact. No sabotage, IEDs, or chaos caused by Kiev regime loyalists.
Russian losses are tragic, but attempting to accelerate the advance with arrow offensives would create massive casualties.
Once the Kiev regime forces collapse the rapid advances can happen.
Russia must always be prepared to face NATO or US units at any time, or an invasion of Karelia and Belarus by NATO. Keeping their powder dry is essential.
The likelihood of the collapse of the EU and NATO becomes ever more likely as this drags on. And complete economic and social chaos in Britain and France. Germany is also cooked.
Long term goals to achieve lasting peace need the collapse of the parasitic states of Britain, France and Germany. This factor must be included in an analysis of the war.
Brian, there will be no rapid advance. Russia has already limited itself to 4 Oblasts. That's it, man. Hundreds of thousands of dead Russian soldiers and the enemy will live to fight again. There will be no peace unless Ukraine is defeated. 3 years ago, many said the war is over within a year, two years ago, the war is over within a year. All the same hype and more dead Russians every year.
Anyone that said that should be boycotted by people seeking the truth. Perhaps you're still listening to them.
Russia has not limited itself to the 4 oblasts. It has repeatedly indicated (and you never listen) that the 4 oblasts are a MINIMUM. They will settle for a minimum of 4 oblasts IF Ukraine surrenders; otherwise, they will progress further into Ukraine as needed and take as much territory as desired. But in the end, the 4 oblasts are necessary as well as the destruction of the fighting capability of the Ukrainian military and the elimination of nazi power.
I simply do not understand why you can not take in what is going on rather than pontificating over your own military strategic expertise. Russia is winning. In her own chosen way, she is winning. As long as she is winning, I can't fault her.
@Victor
At some point, one must consider the internet forum obfuscation & neutralization (of actual humans) techniques disclosed in that infamous MI6 cyber warfare manual? And start to disregard/ignore certain profiles. Don't feel bad, they'll get a new screen name and come back quite soon.
See below, Billy.
For you, I will explain.
There is no pontification of my strategic military expertise.
It's a misconception.
It's just an opinion open to criticism.
I wish others would share ideas instead of the passive echo chambering and anyone thinking outside the box is castigated as a villain.
I read authors with opposing opinions about the Ukraine conflict.
.Sooner or later, everyone is bound to disagree about something.
And that is fine with me. I don't make it personal because, in the end, none of our opinions matter. It's just a comment section that gets taken way too seriously. The world will make its course no matter what anyone thinks. lol
I like to jest, make it fun, amusing. I am jovial and happy, no matter the world's problems which none of us can control. The world's problems are not mine but it does amuse me to see people act like what they think really matters. It doesn't mean a thing, man. It really doesn't. Be well, Victor.
You are correct, Denis. And as you rightly point out, sometimes I go a bit over-the-top. For a healthy society we need, as you say, more than an echo chamber - we need intelligent dialogue.
But as to your last point, I can't agree - what we think does matter - perhaps not on an individual basis, but certainly it matters on a collective basis. It's not just me, or you, or any person on this site, but we as a collective matter, and we feed into other platforms, and other platforms feed into national opinion, and national opinion places pressure (whether the PTB admit it or not) on the political environment. This is what the internet has accomplished, which is a major reason the elite want desperately to restrict and control it.
So though you and I disagree on many points, we OTOH also agree on several things (can't think of an example offhand...LOL) and our dialogue leads others perhaps to think a bit, which is what both of us want, I believe.
And you are correct, too, Victor.
I enjoy your over-the-top comments, which bring out the comedian in you.
We are more similar than not, king of firsts. 😂
We as a collective do matter, but the Overlords have seen to it to create divide and conquer methods, which destroy the collective in every way possible. Where was the collective will during convid? The collective was herded to take the toxic shot then the collective thought the anti-vaxers should be denied basic rights and put in camps for the safety of the brainwashed collective. My spouse had to quit nursing for refusing the collective. It worked out for the better, though, for in every adverse situation comes greater opportunity.. I have no faith in the collective. How is the collective making out in our countries? You are in the UK and I am in Canada. It's worse where you live, but it's coming to Canada, globally, for that matter. Loss of free speech, thought crimes, sustainable development. Agenda 2030 (glovally), 15 min cities, and so on knocks at our door. And the collective opposition was non-existent. Yet I consider myself blessed, things are great at an individual level. I can have whatever I want within reason. So I can still enjoy life and have fun, yet knowing what lies ahead for that collective won't be pretty. I think that the collective is a lost cause until the moment of awakening, when everything is lost, maybe too late to change. No matter what we think won't change a thing and better to protect yourself from the zombified collective. lol
Thanks for the chat, Victor.
>they will progress further into Ukraine as needed
There are blackouts in Belgorod and Bryansk once again after another round of HIMARS strikes.
If that isn't the time to "progress further into Ukraine" and place the grid out of range for such strikes, when will it be?
This is total insanity.
You want the enemy to be as far away from your strategic areas and to have as little manpower as a resource to mobilize as possible.
>There are no 3rd columns or sketchy civilians on the Russian side of the Line of Contact. No sabotage, IEDs, or chaos caused by Kiev regime loyalists.
But guess what there is on the other side? Ukrainian military and NATO weapons.
Guess what would there not be in that other side did not exist? Ukrainian military and NATO weapons.
Imagine that Putin simply hadn't done the goodwill gestures of April 1st 2022 (what a joke that was in retrospect, huh?). What would that have meant? Chernigov would have been taken at the very least (it was fully encircled), likely Sumy too, and Kiev and Kharkov would have been blockaded. That is at least 5 million people not available for conscription.
Would it have been easier to win the war or more difficult?
Also, how much sabotage and IEDs do you thunk there has been in e.g. Kherson? Kherson was actually quite Banderized, don't forget that -- Nikolaev and Odessa are strongly pro-Russian, but Kherson was a bit of a problem (look at those infamous electoral maps from prior to 2014 and pay attention to what shade Kherson is in on those).
>The likelihood of the collapse of the EU and NATO becomes ever more likely as this drags on
What collapse? The EU is fully vassalized and disposable. Nobody cares. And the US is decisively winning the war, so what exactly would collapse it? Did you miss the gigantic geopolitical defeat for the other side in the Middle East, that was a direct consequences of the shit show in Ukraine?
The EU is fully vassalized and disposable.
This. Is something that most people completely fail to understand. The Gringo Empire saw how in the 2000’s Europe was slowly sliding away from its grasp and becoming more and more of an economic/financial counterweight, and decided that it was enough. Better to plunder your colony and use it like a kamikaze drone against your bigger geopolitical enemy than to do nothing and let it switch sides, making your opponents even stronger.
100% spot on!
this is why the euro was invented: no more pesky forex valuta fluctuations and thus more control.
Europeans like being slaves.
We've been hearing for years now that NATO is out of everything from catnip to burrito coverings.
Yet NATO keeps on escalating.
It beggars the imagination that, if NATO were in fact out of everything, that there is nobody in the Pentagon, nobody in Whitehall, nobody in Rammstein who can tell the politicians to stop, already. Yet this never seems to happen.
And if the politicians refuse to listen, it beggars belief that the generals have suddenly forgotten how to get the word out, when they were so good at this before.
Great insight. I never considered that. I guess the EU strategy is solely to drag the US in. They must believe that could up end the Russians. After the Yemeni debacle I doubt the combined West could defeat a defensive Russia. Putin's strategic move to check them with the DPRK bishop was masterclass. The Oreshnyk knight has been placed in the middle of the board and the Chinese queen still sits on row 1.
@Denis
Was going to comment, but someone else already said exactly what I intended:
"We know that they are losing,
They know that they are losing.
They even know that we know they are losing.
They lie anyway, and claim they are not losing.
The 6th column admits they are losing, but complains they aren't losing fast enough.
But, they are still losing."
----------
Have a nice day.
(I will never post "First!" because I actually read the posts before commenting...)
Thanks again, Billy.
Good evening to you.
Another Russia is losing rant. The Ukroprop team in action.
GM, is that you? LOL... Chip
lol, Chipster.
I'll give you three guesses to get it right, ok?
By 2025 standards, the Tomahawk is a piece of shit. A subsonic, GPS and inertial guided cruise missile with zero attempts to be stealthy in any way.
KH-55 basically.
Don't they do low-altitude terrain following? And they have a pretty good range and are nuclear capable. They might be old, but they present a serious threat to whoever they are aimed at.
‘terrain following’ is about their only interesting capability. If you get an AA missile in range of it, even a handheld one, you can shoot one down fairly simply. Nuclear capability is meaningless, it was designated as such for arms control treaty verification purposes. Like putting stuff on B-52s so you can see which ones are carrying nuclear cruise missiles in satellite shots.
Putting a warhead on a missile is nothing special. Every one of the other medium range missiles the Ukrainians have fired at Russia could have been tipped with a warhead. The ultimate protection against that is Russia’s own nuclear arsenal.
It's also extremely expensive and produced in extremely low numbers.
@Simplicius
Cheap and effective weapons are the enemies of quarterly profits in the aerospace sector.
You could win wars quickly with cheap and effective weapons - they'd be no one to fight.
They're made by Raytheon, which is on China's 'Naughty List' and prohibited from receiving more rare earth elements or high performance magnets, so that "low number" is going to be pretty close to zero for now.
The most authoritative number for Tomahawks in the US arsenal is "3,750". However the official number is classified. What we do know is that the most there ever were was 4,000. We also know about 2,000 are used or have been taken offline because they've become defective. 80 alone were used against the Houthis. Simple math should make the true number of Tomahawks in US arsenals at around 1,750.
Considering that the US has given/ transferred up to a third, in some categories, of its weapons to Project Ukraine, one could assume around 400 of them could be made available.
However since the Pentagon knows that most of these slow movers will be shot down, I would think only half (200) would find it's way to Kiev..the missile would only be good enough to prove a political point. That's if they're sent.
You cannot guarantee 100% will be shot down. I'm sure Moscow/ St Petersburg/ Murmansk would be the prime targets.
However, its primary value is as a sheathed sword. It's there to keep Russia from using Oreshniks. A MAD promissory note. It may work.
We're still in middle game now. The Ukrainians have lost most of their pawns, and by next summer the SMO will enter the endgame.
Meanwhile, the SMO has deindustrialized the EU, re-industrialized Russia.
Spread thin, the US has been unable to focus on any of its war goals.
If by next summer the US is in the middle of a raging recession, then that too.
Don't understand the logic of "to keep Russia from using Oreshniks. A MAD promissory note. It may work."
So, a missile that Russia can shoot down (maybe not all of them, but certainly many) and that can only cause minimal damage to the largest country on this planet, is a way to prevent Russia from firing Oreshniks, the most powerful and devastating non-nuclear missile that exists ?
That makes no sense. The only thing stopping russians from firing Oreshniks, is the Oreshnik production itself. I'm pretty sure it's expensive to produce and its production is not able to make 1000 of them every month. Which means they are rare, expensive and thus should only be fired when really needed.
If tomahawks are fired against Russia, you can be sure Oreshniks wll fly...and I'm not sure that they will be fired only at Ukraine.
Tomahawks are simply another way for the ukrainian nazi regime to try and pull USA directly into the war. USA is 1000% involved in the war. USA created it. USA provoked it. But nazi dictator Zelensky needs USA official involvement, so that he can shift the fighting to USA itself, where USA soldiers start dying, instead of ukrainians, who are less and less every day. If and when USA loses the war directly, Zelensky will "wash his hands", since it's USA's war now. And this is exactly Zelensky's problem. USA IS the real paper tiger. They cannot win a conventional war against a powerful country. They can't even win a war they created against sheep herders with sandals. And this is why USA moved to the proxy tactic. They corrupt a country to become their slaves / meat shields that will fight for them. They tried it with Afghanistan, but afghans are smart...unlike ukrainians. Now that the amount of meat shields in Ukraine is decreasing rapidly, if USA involves itself directly, it will be USA soldiers dying by the thousands every month and that will destroy the myth USA created for itself, that "it's the best ever, no one comes close". USA will lose and lose badly. Period. USA doesn't want this. They want their myth to remain alive in the brains of the hundreds of millions of idiots in north america and europe. And thus something Zelensky will never have.
As for everything else, I mostly agree.
I hope you're right. Thanks.
More like the spur to make Russia use the Oreshniks, and then the only escalation available is nuclear. That's the progression Tomahawk, Oreshnik...
That won't happen, not for Ukraine and much less for tomahawks. Supremacists / fascists - USA, NATO, European Union - love themselves, they think they are better than everyone and they love saying it. They can't do that if they are all dead and that's what nuclear means. Everyone's dead. Tomahawks from western perspective is yet another "wonder weapon", while making sure not to even mention the previous "wonder weapons" that failed to achieve anything significant. That's USA's entire MIC strategy. 24/7 propaganda about how their weapons are the best and then hide the fact that their weapons are crap when in actual use. That way the idiots in Europe and other USA vassals can continue buying USA's useless and much more expensive weapons til infinity.
For Ukraine however, tomahawks mean another opportunity to pass the "war torch" to someone else. The nazis are being defeated, they are losing territory, they have no economy, they have about half the population they had before the SMO started. Ukraine is over as a country. It still floats because USA, NATO, European Union pour billions into it, at our expense. It's also an opportunity to continue the grift that makes nazi dictator Zelensky and his nazi entourage, very rich. I'm sure you've seen the mansions in USA and elsewhere, that the nazi leadership of Ukraine have.
That is one of the most dangerous and already debunked line of thought.
Yes, none of the decision making centers want Armageddon. But they want to get their way with as vehemently as possible, which resulted in some near misses back in the cold war.
And sheer luck prevented the end of the world. Only sheer luck.
1. The captain of a attacked UdSSR sub wanted to follow his orders (triggered by an attack on the sub) to launch his nukes (the attacking US destroyer didn't know of those nukes) - only he needed his CO to fire, and he refused.
2. Stanislav Petrov had the order to launch his nuke in Czech after a computer malfunction detected an attack - he refused and got a slap on his head for it.
3. The misunderstandings regarding the Nato Arrow exercise 1983, which Nato was shocked thereafter how they actuality made the UdSSR believe that they really wanted to first strike.
So we NEED to deescalate and have a red phone. And we MUST take nuclear war seriously, because it very much could happen without anyone actually wanting it.
Perhaps Simplicius could make an actual article for that matter, because both sides need to know about all near misses. At least we could do that for our bubble.
And he is much better in pointing out the facts than my faulty memory.
Not sure I get what part of what I wrote was debunked ?
That the supremacists / fascists don't want to die ? They don't and that's a fact. These people love the smell of their own farts, they love themselves and think they are superior to anyone else...they don't want to die. But they are arrogant and think they can't be touched too. And that is indeed dangerous...We need to look no further than the orange psychopath Donald Trump. That piece of trash is the type of extremely dumb "person", that thinks he's above everyone and no one can touch him. If he continues making things worse, worse even than Biden - something I never thought was possible, but here we are - for sure nuclear war is a serious possibility, because russian restraint can only go so far. Putin is viewed as weak, because he constantly avoids making comments and approving actions that could escalate things, even though he has every reason to do so, since USA / NATO is literally attacking Russia and Russia is not attacking USA / NATO.
And I somewhat agree with that view. Russia should respond in the same way against USA / NATO, by sinking air craft carriers, by destroying their military bases in Europe, etc. But on the other hand, I appreciate the restraint, because it's Russia and only Russia, that has prevented a world nuclear war. The psychopaths in USA and Europe, are doing everything to get there, even if they don't want to die. Their arrogance simply makes them think they can destroy Russia, before Russia destroys them. Which is another dumb thing to think, especially when Russia can strike them and they can't defend against it, while Russia has means of defense against western strikes.
So to sum up, for sure nuclear war can happen and it's a danger only caused by USA / NATO / Europe. Russia has shown a lot of restraint and it's unfair. But with the exception of the orange psychopath, none in the west are crazy enough to destroy the world, just because they are sore losers. They love themselves too much to do that. Trump also loves himself too much, but he's dumb enough to destroy the world, just because he's a sore loser.
You misunderstand. I'm only giving out theoretics. MAD tactics work only if NOT used: Tomahawks are being threatened, not used. That way, so the theory might go, Russia won't use Oreshniks if the US/ Ukraine doesn't use Tomahawks.
What am I dealing with here? I get it if they're foreigners and the translation from English is off. I hope this is not an American with that kind of jump-to-conclusion logic. I thought I was clear enough, sheesh
No jump to conclusion, just based on what you wrote. And you continue to say it: "Tomahawks are being threatened, not used. That way, so the theory might go, Russia won't use Oreshniks if the US/ Ukraine doesn't use Tomahawks."
Again, incorrect, because the use of Oreshniks has literally nothing to do with tomahawks. Tomahawks are nothing more than the latest "wonder weapon" from the west, out of the 300 other weapons that idiots in the west touted as being a "game changer". They weren't. Tomahawks, if ever used, won't be either. The use and/or threat of tomahawks, is just the same game over and over, because the west has nothing, unless they go nuclear...and at that point, they will be destroyed too.
As for Oreshniks and as I said, their use is limited to their production. Being the most powerful non-nuclear missile on planet Earth, it's for sure expensive, not many can be produced per month and perhaps even its launchers require specifics that are not linear to setup, etc. All this contribute to a system that is lethal and there is no defense against it, but being expensive and complex, means Russia won't use it "because the west's 314th wonder weapon is being threatened". It will use it when it has to, for example to level the Dnper bridges when the time comes.
Tomahawks are nothing more than another "wonder weapon" from the many failed wonder weapons from the west. Oreshnik is very real and indeed a game changer, because there is no defense against it. Same goes for Khinzals and Tzircons, to a lesser extent when compared to Oreshnik - in power, speed and range - but also against which there are no defenses. And if Russia wants to destroy something completely anywhere in Europe, it can. The west has nothing against this, which is why saying that the use of Oreshniks depends on the use of tomahawks, is absurd. That was my point.
It's not absurd, but I won't even try and penetrate the dense cloud of your smoke-screen. Life's too short.
Our war using Israel to regime change Iran has, and will require a lot more missile inventory, and likely the upcoming Venezuela project.
An excellent summation. When the UK destroyed the Nordstrom Pipeline at the USA's bidding they temporarily hamstrung their only real ally, the EU. France will not be able to rehab their nuclear reactors for years and Germany is not going to be able to remilitarize due to the high cost of natural gas. Unless the fools abandon their global warming initiatives and begin piping Dutch gas, they'll be left in an energy shortage for quite some time. Spain may become the energy titan of the EU but not for at least a couple of decades. Isn't it strange how the North Sea oil isn't making its way to continental Europe in sufficient supplies during this period of low prices due to Russia and OPEC+ pumping so many barrels?
The enormous deficit spending of The Empire of Washington and the legalization of 90% fractional reserve banking have left the dollar in a death spiral of hidden inflation. It is entirely possible that in less than a decade the USA will be too weak to fight anything except the mobs of its own citizens clamoring for food outside of packed grocery stores too high-priced to patronize. The leadership of my country is composed of maleficent morons and unless The Don shows more than he has to date I'm happy to say nothing seems to have changed.
Hope springs eternal like any other thorny weed. :):)
God Bless Us All
"Unless the fools abandon their global warming initiatives ..."
That's how you identify paid trolls.
Elaborate. I view any who hock climate initiatives as parrots and alarmists who love to cede all power to central authority
You're way off here, imo: if the Ukrainians are equipped with Tomahaks (and after Putin made it clear what the understandable results of that decision would be, I can almost gaunrantee they won't be), they wouldn't use them on major Russian cities; they would be used on strategic military and energy assets that had been out of reach prior to Tomohawk acquisition. Why? Because the Ukes know that within 12 hours of any Tomohawk even attempting to hit major Russian cities, Kiev, Lviv, and Odessa would be hit by multiple Oreshnik right in the nerve centers. It's academic though: Tomohawks will never be given to, or launched by, Ukraine - if they were, Russia's global south partners would greenlight devastating counterattack.
I agree the Tomahawk is old technology, as Putin mentioned at Valdai, but Putin is also right that it nonetheless is a threat.
This is going too far: "with zero attempts to be stealthy in any way."
Older Tomahawks use aluminum skin, but block 4 and later versions use carbon fiber reinforced plastic for the body surface and wing/fin surfaces. They also apply a "stealth coating" to reduce radar returns.
But the internals, including of the wings and fins, are still aluminum and there's a lot of metal inside with the engine and such. Coatings can't deal with that except in very specific bands that multispectral Russian radar easily gets around. Tomahawks are also huge missiles. The size of the thing works against coatings and other "stealth" tactics.
The hope is that by flying low and using some "stealth" materials and coatings the thing can make radar detection sufficiently harder to enable a higher proportion to get through. That's the real problem, because each one getting through is 450 kg (1000 lbs) of high explosive hitting reasonably near the aim point. Using it Kiev-terrorism-against-civilians style means that instead of a nuisance attack hitting one apartment in a high-rise building in Moscow with few or no injuries the entire building could be toppled with many fatalities.
Tomahawks are where I'm on the edge of parting company with Putin's diplomatic refusal to turn up the heat in the dialog with the US.
On the one hand he's right, when discussing conflicts with unstable hot heads there is no profit in dialing up the heat of the conversation, since it is actions that matter in a military conflict and not words.
But on the other hand I'd like to hear him say when asked about Tomahawks, "Look, the US is already at war with us. The question for Americans is whether they want to expand that war from the current theater to include their homeland. Americans have to decide if they want this war to be fought with thousand pound warheads exploding in Russian cities and American cities. That's what American missiles striking Russia will do. We would prefer that not be the case but if America wants to fight the war that way we will fight the war that way. Are Americans ready for Russian thousand pound warheads exploding in their cities the way American thousand pound warheads explode in Russian cities?"
Why is it so hard for my fellow Americans or "Westerners" to admit Tomahawks were created and used to terrify 3rd world Nations without any real means to defend itself. In a real Peer to Peer conflict they are just like the rest of the overpriced junk. Defense contractors got fat, rich and lazy forcing "allies" and US taxpayers to buy. I worked for years in a tool and die shop subbing to Raytheon, General Dynamics, etc.. and you didn't need to be an aerospace engineer to realize what was happening.
Upvoted because what you wrote is basically correct, but still, you should give credit where credit is due.
The Tomahawk was designed starting in 1972, 53 years ago. It was a response to the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), which didn't cover submarine-launched cruise missiles. It wasn't intended to strike third world nations but to strike the USSR. From the beginning the main focus was on a long range, sub-launched cruise missile that carried a nuclear warhead.
For missile technology half a century ago it's actually a very good design, and the deliberate modularization of it to enable a wide variety of non-nuclear payloads is solid thinking. That in the form of upgraded, modernized versions it still is in the arsenal, like other living fossils like the B-52 and F-16, is a testament to it being a useful weapon.
That it has mainly been used against third world or second world nations which could not defend themselves is a consequence of how US imperial power has evolved, as well as the common sense of prior generations of US leaders who knew it was really, really stupid to cross swords with a nuclear power like Russia.
It is still dangerous against Russa, as Putin correctly and openly noted. It's not a "wonder weapon" but it is dangerous, especially as it can carry a nuclear warhead.
Although supposedly no nuclear-tipped versions of Tomahawks have been fielded since 1991, the B80-1 version (150 kilotons) of the original Tomahawk nuclear warhead (a B80-0) is still in the arsenal and could be dropped into current Tomahawks with little or no work. A W88 warhead (nearly half a megaton) would easily fit into a Tomahawk, both size and weight, but it probably would take a month for Sandia to adapt the existing W88 fusing package for use in a Tomahawk.
There's reason to believe all the parts required for nuclear Tomahawks using a drop-in B80-1 are in the Ready Reserve, ready for immediate deployment if necessary. It would be no surprise if contingency plans for using other warheads in Tomahawks have also been moved forward.
All the above means if a Tomahawk is fired at Russia, Russia cannot assume away the chance that it is carrying a nuclear payload.
Thanks again.
I do agree with you that it is a dangerous system. No air defense can guarantee 100% shoot down rate. What bothers me the most is not that the US possesses an arsenal of offensive weapons. The issue is what the U.S. Govt. does with those weapons in my name. IF those weapons make it to Ukraine, I know without a doubt, they will be used to kill Russian civilians, there are not enough numbers to make a military difference. That is 1 reason I do not like these discussions, it is not about our weapons winning a conflict but inflicting civilian casualties.
Yes Russia can assume away a nuclear warhead, for the obvious reason. A nuclear strike on Russia itself is tantamount to inviting a full scale response. It might be that a devastating response wouldn't be offered immediately, but I cannot imagine tolerating a nuclear strike on Russia without a deterrent attack on the West to clearly make the point. The target would be carefully weighed for size and impact to what was struck within Russia.
A terrorist type fission weapon smuggled in is way more likely, and that is a very unlikely possibility.
A smuggled weapon unlikely? I believe it be a high probability considering the state of nuclear proliferation. The Washington Empire has many enemies due to its success. Everyone, even our closest allies hate or are jealous of us. For all we know someone might nuke Washington during the State of the Union in order to cause us to launch a full nuclear strike against our current enemy of the day: Russia. If China joined in on the retaliation who would that leave as the superpower? Think suspiciously, follow the dots and it leads to dark places.
A smuggled five-megaton, seemingly obsolete, would destroy the entire civilian high command and leave our affairs in the hands of politically promoted generals. Identifying the culprit depends on whether a not a sample from the reactor responsible for generating the fissile material was given to the IAEA. Even a small test or secret research reactor by a nuclear power could produce an untraceable weapon.
Welcome to my nightmare and the reason I'm on this stack.
God Bless Us All
5MT is a multistage thermonuclear device. Unlikely.
Shrinking a fission weapon down is only feasible to a certain point. The Hiroshima bomb was about 106lbs of critical mass. About half that is about the lower limit, but half that doesn’t result in half the ~15kt yield.
So you’d expect an independent fission device to be 10-100kt in size depending on the quantity of nuclear material available.
Radiological detectors would be likely to find such a critical mass in urban areas. A lot of things would have to go right for such a weapon to be placed somewhere where it could do harm. I wouldn’t recommend trying to park it in the Pentagon parking lot.
"Everyone, even our closest allies hate or are jealous of us."
1. Mostly they hate your war-mongering Politicians
2. If the American People could vote on war, you wouldn't have any wars.
3. Who, in this world, is jealous of a Bankrupt Country, who can't even find real money to pay a Bankruptcy Trustee to do the Liquidation Sale?
4. And what would you sell of any value? Trinkets, used office furniture, paper and electronic promises out the wazoo?
"Yes Russia can assume away a nuclear warhead, for the obvious reason. A nuclear strike on Russia itself is tantamount to inviting a full scale response."
Respectfully disagree that reduces the risk close enough to zero that Russia could safely assume any Tomahawk flying towards Moscow did not have a nuclear warhead.
That's a problem for the US and its stooges, and it's a problem the US and its stooges have created for themselves. They've come to believe that they can keep pushing "the nibble" with Russia without Russia reacting as, previously, everyone was certain it would.
"The nibble" is a negotiating style where an antagonist does something that in general would be refused but he does it in such a small chunk that he gets away with it. For example, a seller delivers on a commodities contract but shorts the weight just slightly so that for the buyer it's more convenient to just release funds in escrow instead of blowing up the deal.
Conventional wisdom was that stealing 350 billion of Russia's money would result in immediate war. But it didn't. Likewise, during the first Cold War the US understood that being directly involved in the killing of Russian civilians would trigger general war. But not now.
The problem with the US and its stooges is that they are calling for actions they think they can do with impunity, not realizing that there's a tipping phenomenon in play with Russia's reactions, when suddenly when Russia tips from patience with idiotic nibbles to action they will indeed have general war.
There is also a large Deep State contingent in the US that is truly delusional who are privately calling for decapitation strikes on Russia. A flight of Tomahawks headed towards Moscow fit that profile. They don't seem to realize that Russia had *two* ultimatums in late 2021, one of them being the US back off in Ukraine and the other that the US back off from its emplacement of nuclear weapons systems on Russia's border.
When the US ignored the first ultimatum Russia responded with military technical means in Ukraine. They've put the second ultimatum on the back burner but it's still there, and shooting Tomahawks at Moscow is one reasonably plausible way for the US to bring it to the front burner with that burner set to very high heat.
It's not likely the decap strike contingent in the US will win out, but with Trump and the erratic people he has put into power you never know. If they did deliver a nuke into Moscow I don't see a "measured" response. I think at a minimum the response would be annihilation of the US's military assets around the world (all of the carrier task forces, Diego Garcia, etc), eradication of the UK and France as nuclear powers (or, as any sort of powers), eradication of all US nukes in Europe, and counter-city strikes on major cities in the US like Washington and New York. Russia might even go all the way with an all out strike, knowing that unlimited nuclear war could not be stopped.
The thing will prove of some use as the obsolete ones are transferred to Ukraine but then Raytheon will begin making the Tomahawk II. Smaller, really stealthy and far more agile. That is if they can obtain the necessary silver which is fast approaching the status of unobtanium. The stupidity of supporting the dollar with our gold and silver and the decades long practice of keeping the price down using naked short-selling on the COMEX will bite them in the ass. Supplies of the Great Commodity and its Sparkling Companion are already getting low on British and American exchanges.
World War Three (The Cold War) has been raging for eighty years now. The only ending in sight is the defeat of the West and by now, I'm ready for it to happen.
God Bless Us All
Thanks for the technical explanations. Much appreciated.
If the Pantsir and other SAM systems have reasonable coverage, I don't have much hope for Tomahawk missions to critical areas within Russia. One might get through, but the majority will get shot down. They are really easy to shoot down. I presume the competence of Russian air defense.
The stealthing of what amounts to a metal tube is kind of futile and was some bullet point on a vendor's glossy. The shape of the object is key to trying to reflect away emissions - you see the shape of the F-117 and B-2. Not so easy with a missile which in addition needs the limited control surfaces it has.
Ironically there was a proposal to put a ramjet in the Tomahawk, that was shelved due to size limitations. You see, all those box launchers and tube launchers are sized for a 21" missile. A ramjet powered Mach 3 Tomahawk couldn't be made to fit in the same form factor. Even if it could, fuel was an issue. But it's clear the USN saw the problem with the existing Tomahawk already.
The only actual improvement to the Tomahawk I will grant over the years is the improvement to the seeker. They did incorporate the moving target seeker common in naval weapons into the Block IV and above. How much use that is in land attack is another question. But now you could use it to attack a ship. With naval AAMs being what they are, not sure how useful that is in truth. It isn't 1982 again with limited ineffective SAMs (thinking Exocets taking out Brit ships in the Falklands).
The US types already know he's not attacking them over supplying weapons to the Ukraine. It would cause an escalation to no advantage to Russia. So saying as much would be analogous to the constant war threat propaganda in Europe. Best to keep your powder dry until you can do something successfully.
I wonder why the endgame of individual actions by Putin isn't considered. He obviously considers this carefully, hence his actions. It's the admirable quality about him from my perspective. A kind of mindfulness that is sorely lacking elsewhere. The only actor in this drama who I think has played the game correctly at every turn.
Agreed, Putin is one smooth operator. I call him The Magician. Prestidigitation only no fake magic. His stage assistants in The Kremlin, have a great deal of applause due as well. No man and especially no national leader is an island.
God Bless Us All
I always considered the purpose of the Tomahawk to be an anti-ship weapon for naval combat.
It can be used on the ground but that would just be an adaptation, not what it does best, which is sinking enemy vessels.
Ironically, the TASM was discontinued in the 1990s. The TLAM, the land attack version, is the one that is still in service. They re-added the maritime strike capabilities afterwards, but it’s primarily a land attack missile and has been used in that capacity almost exclusively.
Wow crazy and edgy take! I have to follow you for your capt obvious comments!
You won't be able to because you just got blocked for being an asshole.
The Tomahawk is nuclear capable. Russia would have to treat any detected incoming Tomahawk as a potential nuclear weapon.
This would be a huge escalation, and I sincerely hope that there are still those who love their own children in the Pentagon and that they will tell the neocons to pound sand.
By that logic, every missile fired by the Ukrainians is a potential nuclear weapon. Besides, what are you going to do about it? You try to shoot them all down, but you can't. You don't sit in theater being paranoid. You deal with the threats and hope you don't get incinerated.
The pragmatism of actual soldiers is not something seen much on this board. Where I was in Iraq, we were getting rockets and mortars fired at us all the time. You figured out pretty quick that you weren't going to sleep in your body armor and helmet. Not possible. So you set them up in a corner of your hooch and hope you woke up fast enough after the first inbound (presuming you weren't killed) to run to the bunker. You weren't going to waste time getting in protective gear - there were usually only 3 fires from any location at most and they'd change position because of automated trajectory responses...they'd fire right down the direction of incoming. The EOD guys on the team were always happy when a dud came in that didn't explode, so they could clean the fill out and hand it around at the TOC later on. Their love for freon and risking blowing their hands off was legendary. Holding the rocket that got fired at us in my hands a couple hours after it was inbound was always fun. Always Soviet, too.
Anyway the point is that all the inbounds are the same. Threats until they aren't.
About the only thing going for it is that it makes a really big boom when it hits.
The range and accuracy aren't bad, but how long until a drone that costs 1% can match both of those?
I wouldn’t be too quick doubt its effectiveness nonetheless. The Ukronazis AF spokesman Yurih Inhat (sp) admitted in an interview with the Kiev Post in late Dec 2023 that they had failed to shoot down one single KH-22 to date. KH-22 is a Soviet era cruise missile, which is likely every bit as outdated as the Tomahawk, if not moreso.
I'm not as good with Russian/ex-Soviet weapons systems as I am with the US equivalents - job related reasons. However, this blurb on the KH-22:
"The Kh-22 uses a Tumansky liquid-fuel rocket engine, fueled with TG-02 (Tonka-250) and IRFNA (inhibited red fuming nitric acid), giving it a maximum speed of Mach 4.6 and a range of up to 600 km (320 nmi). It can be launched in either high-altitude or low-altitude mode. In high-altitude mode, it climbs to an altitude of 27,000 m (89,000 ft) and makes a high-speed dive into the target, with a terminal speed of about Mach 4.6. In low-altitude mode, it climbs to 12,000 m (39,000 ft) and makes a shallow dive at about Mach 3.5. The missile is guided by a gyroscope-stabilized autopilot in conjunction with a radio altimeter. "
This has very little relationship to the Tomahawk, which does not have a high altitude mode (flying at under 50m) and doesn't exceed just under 600mph, very much less than Mach 1. The only advantage it has over the KH-22 is in terms of range. Tortoise vs hare. But tortoises can be shot down more easily.
As I am back at my desk now, I can share the link that I referenced upthread for your edification:
Kyiv Post Dec 29 2023
Russia’s Kh-22 – the Missile Ukraine Has Yet to Shoot Down
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/26102
About those attrition numbers... I have some questions. First an observation: Putin may not be saying what's true for his own purposes, although I'm not sure what, in this case, those purposes might be. But how does he account for casualties inflicted by gravity/glide bombs, for instance? Aren't we just talking about guesses? And finally, how do you account for roughly 22,000 non-irrecoverable losses on the one hand and speak of 14,000 returning from injury? Do they count some as injured even if they never leave combat? Do they count some as recoverable even if they never come back?
There are many techniques used to gain damage and casualty assessments, one of them being from intercepted communications, which is very often the case. I.e. you hit something with glide-bombs and then listen to captured UA radio comms which cry about exactly the number of casualties at the blast site.
That said you're right there's a bit of disparity in the figures wherein Putin lists about 22-24k 'lightly wounded' (i.e. *retrievable* losses) per month, yet only ~14k which return from hospital per month. These numbers, presumably, should be equal.
Thanks. I note that just about everybody in the fight has a reason to lie, from generals or others lamenting about how many casualties to various people minimizing them, to Russians perhaps exaggerating, or sometimes minimizing… I regard any numbers provided as inconclusive.
President Putin is certainly plenty smart and fully alert. That disparity in retrievable losses might suggest he was trying to convey a picture more than the actual facts. Or people giving him the numbers may have been doing so. I can’t really do more than speculate on the reason for the disparity, but if it was obvious to me, I’d guess it was obvious to him.
Couldn't it be quite simple? 22k are wounded in this month and will come back to the battle once cured. 14k where wounded 3 months ago and are now healed to come back to the battle. And, may be, 3 months later when the 22k are returning the number of retrievable wounded will be 28k.
There is no way to have exact numbers. And the numbers of deserters may well be a try to hide KIA - how one can know whether a certain person disappeared because of being dead or because of AWOL. Rarely, they will write a postcard to their superiors.
Just judging from the way it was said, I’d say not simple in the way you describe. The difference is too big to gloss over without explanation, and it doesn’t read the way you suggest it does, to me. But you could be right. No doubt you are right about there being no way to have exact numbers.
These figures are estimates at best. Guesses in many cases. What matters is that the ukies can still field soldiers for their needs. For 3 years we were told outrageous casualty figures allegedly suffered by the ukrainian side. I remember seeing 1 million mia/kia figures as early as 2023.
As usual, I can’t state anything with assurance. The stories from opposite sides all brim with confidence and bravado, exactly opposite of each other. I do get the distinct feeling that not all the soldiers Ukraine is mustering are Ukrainian, and that they are thin on the ground such that sometimes they simply cannot occupy territory they supposedly hold. For what that’s worth.
It's so satisfying to see how British merc asshats shit their pants...
I had been hoping he would record his own death, like so many other arrogant mercenaries on the LOC who film themselves for glory, imagining they’ll one day watch it back over a beer, showing off their supposed bravery. I’ve seen plenty of that kind of footage on various Russian Telegram channels. It’s grimly fitting that Russian soldiers often recover these GoPros from the rotting corpses of the glory chasers & upload them.
One video that still sticks with me showed two retreating AFU fighters, obviously over taken with fear, running across an open field. An American merc was waving & shouting for them to stop & return, but as they rapidly closed the distance approaching him and his comrade, one of the Ukrainians suddenly opened fire on full auto, cutting them both down. The merc’s camera captured his last breath falling to the ground as the fleeing Ukrainian sprinted past his body. I make no apologies for sounding callous about the loss of life, as I detest these cowboys of war. I have a certain sympathy for the many different South Americans who have become mercs out of sheer poverty, leaving their families behind, but they are not in the rear; they are more often than not in the very dugouts that are heavily attritted and targeted by Russian artillery. Ironically, I was actually a young Cpl in the real Legion Etrangere back in the eighties, joining when I was 18 looking for adventure, it opened my eyes too many things & I am very anti-war and feel nothing but contempt for the West and its “Rules Based Liberal New World Order” (Ruse-Based Order) I have nothing but shame and disgust for my government belicosity and the puppeteers pulling the strings.
Good for you, for getting out of the Foreign Legion. The men there may be honorable, but their puppet masters are not. My father joined the Foreign Legion in Algeria after WW II, out of desperation. He said the main language used then and there was German, from all the former SS guys. He saw it was bad, and left.
Clearly they feel confident because the war is going in their favor, they aren't losing enough men to alarm the general populace (albeit it's a tragedy for the families, just like the GWOT), and they feel time is on their side. The constriction strategy is very slow (as your commentators seem quite bitter about), but it must be going well enough given how firmly Stavka is sticking with it.
It isn't just very slow. It is also dangerous because it gives various elements in the west more time to escalate against Russia and force Russia to do something it doesn't want to do. Russia did not want war with the Ukraine, but it was forced upon them. Russia does not want war with nato or some of the former Soviet states, but that too may be forced upon them by the anglo-american-zionists.
A Tolstoy reading the riot act to a von Bismarck - priceless!
It looks like the Russian long war strategy is paying big. The US arsenals are depleted, Germany is exhausted, France has lost its African colonies, the Polish-Sweedish dreams for a 3C new confederation are gone, a Mittle Europa axis of Hungary-Slovakia-Serbia and possibly Austria and Czechia is blosomming and project Ukraine is ready for a total collapse. Putin was right.
A great interview, for sure.
There are many "Tolstoys" in Russia (including two well known writers with the same surname, one of them being the famous Tolstoy) but Pyotr Tolstoy is the direct descendant of Lev Tolstoy: he is the great-great-grandson of the famous writer.
He's also a very, very smart man and an example of the depth of Russia's bench when it comes to leadership. He's only 56 and, I think, would be a candidate for President when Putin ages out but for his specialization in the legislative and not executive side of the Russian government.
So he's still young, but it would be good if he could take on a governorship and then step up to a major ministerial position in the Federal administration. Add ten years for that and he's no longer so young to step into a longer term role as President.
I still remember his interview in Moscow with French TV. The French journalist looked like he was about to wet his pants and couldn't wait to get back on a plane to Paris ASAP haha.
Putin took power at 48? Year 2000? It should be somebody younger and they need a long term mandate. Yeltsin's mandate was to integrate with the West after the collapse of the USSR. This was a disaster. Putin's mandate was to restore a balance of military power and reform the economy away from Western interests. The next president's mission should be to develop strong military deterence and turn BRICS into a viable economic bloc outside of Western influence and Western interests.
A Bismarck might be sympathetic to what Tolstoy is saying, since the famous Bismarck said: "The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia." A more satisfying exchange would perhaps involve a surviving Hapsburg.
Re: Ukraine
We know that they are losing,
They know that they are losing.
They even know that we know they are losing.
They lie anyway, and claim they are not losing.
The 6th column admits they are losing, but complains they aren't losing fast enough.
But, they are still losing.
I see what you did there.
Yes, but is Russia winning?
That is very much in doubt.
Watching the situation closely my guess is that the Russians are about to change pace of the SMO markedly. They are in a position where all fronts (perhaps with the exception of Konstantinivkha) are collapsing. They have pivoted to massive strikes on power and transport infrastructure in the North East just as the weather cools dramatically. Perhaps they will attempt another push for Kiev. Some people believe shock and awe wins wars but the US proves this view mistaken. The Russian obviously want Ukraine firmly back in their camp. Killing and mass destruction is no winning of hearts and minds.
Russia is interested in a long war to settle their Ukranian pain in the ass for good. The new drone paradigm has neutralized two of the Russian army industrial pilars: armour and airborne. I doubt a deep breakthrough is coming.
“Sparrow Park Lvov”, I can imagine a Ukrainian saying, "This is why we can't have nice things." It is unbelievable that our (Western) leaders are so careless with lives and resources to foster the death and destruction that their arrogance and stupidity breeds. We can't have nice things.
@Tedder130
For the price of (not!) defeating the Russian Federation in Ukraine since 2013, we in USA could have had free secondary education for EVERYONE? It would be too bad about those employed by student loan providers, we would have needed to re educate them for some other (viable) industry
But what stock options might have benefited from such a chouce? Who (of import) could have profited from that?! Those expenditures would clearly have been a waste of public money.
Not just the domestic US, but the whole world would have benefited from the Americans not killing their people and blowing up their infrastructure. This Barbarism is unbelievably cruel.
I can imagine Charlie Brown charging to kick at a football held by Lucy, who jerks it away at the last second. Charlie falls with an "ugh". Even Snoopy his dog laughing at him.
Yet we know that the Westerners will give more millions to build yet more future kinzhal targets.
And the Russians are kind enough to wait until exactly it is finally built to sink a missile into it.
One wonders how many millions were siphoned off by Kiev leadership into Abu Dhabi accounts?
I see that the usual suspects are becoming increasingly agitated that Russia is not playing ball and blasting its way to a cease fire along some Kelloggian partition behind which the west can get on with investing its flagging resources in rearming Ukraine for another go: 'This cannot go on! Russia must escalate!!!! FINISH IT (finish what? Mankind?)
The western mouth breathers can escalate all they want, and Russia will respond as it has responded to feeders of western military personnel who have been taken out bloodily, proving to Macron that the threat to do so, was real. If Moscow suffers any serious missile hit then Putin has already told them what Ukrainian cities will go and they know what that will mean in terms of refugees heading west over the winter. Which is why this war is not going here.
Russia is fighting western europe because western europe has decided to fight Russia. So this is not about a land grab for some to be 'agreed' portion of Ukraine, much as the west is increasingly frantic to turn it into that. Russia says it will settle for a lump of territory only on the basis of complete demilitarisation of the rest etc etc, which is precisely the opposite of what the west wants out of this. Meanwhile, Russia will dig in and make such advances as make sense in attritional terms even if it is just a village and even if they periodically step back to drag in more enemy forces on a counter advance and annihilate them, as is the current pattern. And of course the degradation of vital infrastructure across all Ukraine, continues.
Russia is not going to be taunted into ending this on any terms that leave a western threat machine in place in Ukraine and it does not need a bigger missile war fired both ways to achieve its objectives, so the west is going to have to cold start WWIII all on its ownsome.
Russia comfortably envisages its long term plan may take a decade. It does 'ten year plans'. It is a big place with a long view. But you can all imagine what europe is going to look like if this continues even for just three more years, and even that is a hard ask of the western mouthfoaming euro warmongers with what actual army-materiel? As Putin said, Russia hasn't started yet. It has a vast force perched in the wings- as the Ukrainians know. This is unwinnable for the west, and the only way they come out of it with any hope, is to force Ukraine to surrender right now, springboarding Russia to the table to do a deal they can hope to cheat down the line.
Or its plan A, as appears on this board. Talk the Russians into overthrowing Putin so that Russia can collapse into a chaos of infighting. After all the west managed to get slavs fighting each other beyond Russia's borders...... And this is the preferred western way- remote war through various means. Same old.......
"Russia is fighting western europe"
I'm not sure the US aren't still driving the conflict. The lines are so blurred between EUSUK.
The puppets have been backseat driving for sometime now, defying gravity.
Our commentator frens, above all Anglophonis, are used to constant braggadocio loud mouthing that they cannot comprehend that not all cultures are like that. The louder you scream the tougher you are, and vice versa.
Russia must this, Russia must that. They never post anything about what they could do. I do not see, for example, Canadians on the streets objecting their Banderite-infested policies.
"Ask not what Russia must do for you—ask what you must do for Russia (normal world / multipolarity)."
After all, aren't them Anglophonis the freest of them all to assemble and exercise free speech?
;)
Well said.
I think you put that rather well.
Maybe the only way to get regime change in western countries is to Nazify to such an extent that Russia pays attention and needs to come and de-nazify you. So, really people in the west should embrace Nazism and not shun it or else they will have to endure another 100 years of painful democracy.
Here in Canada we are just getting around to realizing Israel may not be so great and are deeply in the Ukraine camp of fantasy and delusion. I just strolled past a car with the vanity license plate "Crimea." We long ago frittered away the Lester B Pearson era reputation for peacekeeping. Sad to admit but true.
Well put.
it's the EU's pretend leaders that are trying to make everyone believe that "we", i.e. its citizens should want to fight Russia. nice rant though, thnx.
Thank you for taking a strategic approach to these questions that prioritizes the policy ends for which the war is fought . It’s far too rare.
On the other side, the West’s real strategy was to break up Russia and use its resources as their new collateral base. That has failed, though they still hold out “never say never” hope.
The fallback is to weaken Russia by eroding it at its demographics weak point, by diversion of its outlays to non-productive sectors, and by sanctions. Sanctions have gone beyond failure and backfired twice-over, the latest defense minister is very focused on giving defense outlays collateral productivity, and the “offensive defense” operational approach is minimizing but not erasing the demographic problem. If the long-term effects of the SMO get more Russian males off the societal sidelines than they lose, Russia can still squeak out ahead there.
Ukraine plays into this strategy by compensating drones for manpower to slow Russian advances and maximize casualties, and is hitting industrial infrastructure deep within Russia to try and raise the friction in its economy and military machine.
Russia is still winning, but costs are rising, and Europe is going full Nazi to rearm at whatever cost. Separating the USA from Europe is Russia’s biggest potential strategic lever, so they won’t abandon it except under great duress. But the US security state remains partly outside of civilian political containment. Here we are.
Excellent analysis. More sophisticated than mine!
I might just demur on the last para.
"Europe is going full nazi to rearm whatever the cost!"
No it is not (beyond the hysterical public babble) and unlike the US with the reserve currency, Europe cannot transcend the costs (and debt). Its feeble attempts at reindustrialising (at the same time as it is running out of affordable fuel) and switching capacity to military output, (hey, if you can make a car you can make a tank, right?) are a place we all go for laugh, Joe. And God knows we need some light relief.
As for Russia driving a wedge between europe and the US, european leaders did that when they tried to politically neuter Trump and get him locked up.Their death warrant was signed when he won the presidential election landslide style. And he hasn't that short a memory!
Russia does not have to scrape the shit off the US shoe for it- and won't. If you are trying to explain away why Putin appears to be so accommodating of Trump which is a current grumble, or from the west's point of view something the western media is trying to talk up as part of its 'Russia is weak' sing-a-long, he isn't accommodating Trump. It is just that the west has lost the ability to understand Kremlin-speak.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, while Russia is still in f.Ukraine and moving forward however slowly, it is winning and it will not be distracted by some invitation to become a star turn in a fireworks display.
Russia doesn’t have to drive the Europe |/ US wedge - just cement the wedge in by bringing the arrangement home. Dividing alliances is just classic Clausewitz. But a Praetorian State that isn’t fully within civilian control is the wild card here.
I do know how fragile Europe’s base is. I also know that poverty never stopped, say, North Korea from militarizing. If their regimes survive, which is in legitimate question, there will be some level of real rearmament in Europe.
But N Korea did not have a western economic model and had external support never acknowledged/discussed in the west. So I suppose it must seem baffling to western citizens that NK has not just survived but grown in strength- walking on water!
Same with Russia, only the story has never got the grip in the public psyche it got with NK. I am speaking about european economies entirely subborned now to the logic not of real wealth but made up money, and so totally subordinate to the dictates of the bond markets and having to use increasing quanta of real money harvested from citizens to keep up the payments. The UK in particular is dependent on keeping hold of the highly mobile international financial sector which is how that gets to run this state built on other nations' resources and slavery.
But it must seems strange to western citizens that Russia-India-China-NK (and even Iran) can possibly be so powerful. Eeek, how did that ever happen??
As for rearmament within europe, that really depends on the US willingness to do the the heavy lifting- with what return? Colonisation presumably, turning europe into a dumping ground for US goods and services and propelling its people on to the front line with Russia to fight the good fight- as any puppet regime is expected to do.
The US will in the end do whatever it must to stop europe realising the power of friending up with Russia and becoming a real big powerful bloc with Russian resources at its core. Which of course is what all this is really all about. I do not mean from Russia's point of view. It is big enough and powerful enough already, to stand up to the US bloc and choose its friends.
Putin tried to persuade the europeans that their freedom resided with it not with the US. Maybe they will come to realise that when the current crop of cuckoos quits the nest. But for the time being, only the US can rearm europe, and it will only do that if it is in control of the war it will want europe to prosecute with those arms, which does not mean just lobbing missiles at Russia with the US risking retaliations on US bases. It means getting stuck in on the Russian front.
Interesting convo with Krapivnik
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tGR2dFM86I
Yes, the most interesting part being the precision strike on that truck 30 km north or Rylsk.
Let's hope that they took the road that runs north to south parallel to the official border, i.e. it was 30 km north of Rylsk but also still only 30 km from the border and it wasn't some place northeast of Rylsk.
Either way, instead of a buffer zone being established inside Ukraine so that Russia is safe, we have an ever growing exclusion zone inside Russia itself, because Putin refuses to mobilize forces to push the line away.
Another marvelous success of Putinism...
We focus on different things.
Do not feed the troll.
And that, presumably, is one of the main reasons why the pace of Russian advances is so slow. Traditional mobile armoured warfare is impossible because of drones. For the same reason neither side can mass troops near the front lines. So they send soldiers out in two's and three's to probe for weak spots in the Ukrainian defences. Perhaps fair to say that it's a whole new kind of war.
Not to complicate things but keep in mind there are three 'front' lines:
1. Back front line. Closest to self. Massed infantry, artillery.
2. Advancing front line, the mentioned two or three man teams
3. The drone line. The reach of your drones.
The Ukrainians do not have #2 because they do not advance. They hold onto their trenches in #1.
No, the British, French and Germans did it in the Great War.
Wreck Ukrainian transport and there would be no drones.
They don't fly very far and they cannot assemble themselves.
Nothing new, Russia is winning the war of attrition, its only a matter of when the Green Goblin and associates hop on a plane(assuming Azov doesn’t shoot them first)
I find this coldly analytical description of killed and maimed offensive.
Not your brother. Brain and body shattered.....limbs blown off?
All good just numbers of dead and maimed
Carry on ...to the glorious end..victory ..for one side or the other ...or not at all..just stop and forget the dead and maimed..
Shit! We really do deserve to be in this Kali Yuga...the age of no reason ....no accidents in the Universe. Live this lie till you die.
Unfortunately, that is military math. Nothing sentimental, shuffling numbers of everything, also personnel. :S
This is what makes posts demanding arrow offensives, usually from Anglophonis that are eternally disconnected from atrocities caused by their governments, nauseating.
"I feel this and that..."
Indeed. Most amateur Western analysts totally leave out any mention of human costs. They're so far removed from the war crime scenes.
My belief has strongly been that there is simply a Nazi racism involved in this bloodletting of Slavs. Macron, Mertz, Starmer etc never mention them as lives lost. But those guys are all Germanic.
Who else do the West hate so much? Olive Iranians, bronze Chinese and North Koreans, dusky Gazans.
When Trump bombs or starts a war, or Gazan massacres happen, no one cares that those are people being unalived. It's the shame of the age. Where's CNN? Crickets.
As the Trumpian War Age progresses it will have a numbing effect on average people. We'll become more insensitive to fellow humans. That in turn will give a carte blanche to the leaders, to screw us.
It's the "colliseum effect". Hardening hearts. The more we view it as mere bagatelle, entertainment, the more mad our emperors will get.
"Who else do the West hate so much? Olive Iranians, bronze Chinese and North Koreans, dusky Gazans."
Anyone they can steal from, and a few with nothing thrown in.
Just close your eyes and plug your ears..Why do you read these articles?
Yes. It is truly horrorful that we are there again.