Trump and Rubio continue to claim that a ceasefire deal is “very close” to happening, with Reuters having published the full Trump “plan”, after a week or two of teasing ‘leaked’ versions of it:
Yes, you can click the navy link for the official report. Apparently it was in the middle of being moved by the tractor in the underbay compartment 'hangar' and flew out the bay doors.
"The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard."
>Russia needs to start thinking of ways to respond
Yeah, we will be waiting for them to start thinking, forget about finishing thinking and starting real action, for a very long time to come.
Today Zelensky publicly bragged about assassinating Russian military leadership and promised much more to come.
Which, as if everything that has happened so far was not already more than sufficient as a justification for doing it, should have resulted in the appropriate munitions targeting the relevant locations and exterminating all of the Ukrainian leadership in the next few hours. But it did not happen and will not happen.
Because the people making the decisions in Moscow are not making those decisions in the interests of the Russian state.
The question is how long the military is going to put up with being sitting ducks for NATO and the Ukronazis to do target practice on while the political leadership has placed a veto on defending against it. There has to be a point where the "enough of this shit" decision is made in the General Staff, or perhaps at the lower levels, and they take the matter in their own hands.
No. You just stated the western objective of overthrowing Putin. You have not said what action beyond destroying the current political structure in Russia bringing about an internal civil war (to benefit who, exactly?) you would promote.
>the appropriate munitions targeting the relevant locations and exterminating all of the Ukrainian leadership in the next few hours
Given that Putin refuses to issue that order, yes, Putin has to go.
And yes, I am well aware of how destabilizing that would be. It is why it hasn't been done so far. But there are limits beyond which not doing it will be even more destabilizing. The question is where we are with respect to those limits.
? That is just a version of a Russian death wish, of which Putin is not guilty. Thank God. If Russia wiped out the Ukkie leadership we would indeed get a ridiculous destabilisation launched within Russia by western operatives, Russia's allies throwing up hands etc etc, that would NOT ADVANCE THE OBJECTIVES OF THE SMO but distract massively from it.
... which is precisely what the west wants to happen now, to bail it out of a war it is losing- some massive lurid Russian over-action that will also weaken Russia's own allied support. The west has been angling for this since the Ukkie counter offensive failed. It is their plan B. Why are you so intent on furthering western objectives?
His country is surrounded by enemies from nearly all sides, and is now bombed daily thousands of kilometers inland, while Putin sits on his hands and does not fire a single shot back.
"And yes, I am well aware of how destabilizing that would be. It is why it hasn't been done so far. But there are limits beyond which not doing it will be even more destabilizing. The question is where we are with respect to those limits."
You're right, of course, with that. The question indeed is where Russia is with respect to those limits. I happen to agree with you that exterminating the Nazi leadership (including their foul, fake "Rada") would be productive.
But you're also wrong when you use "destabilizing" to casually write copium (on your side) like "Putin has to go" as if there's the slightest possibility of that happening.
As readers of that excellent physics text, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" well know, there is indeed a slight chance as a result of quantum theory that a cat sitting on one side of a room will instantly teleport to the other side of the room. It's a very slight chance, like a fraction of a percent with the number of zeros beyond the decimal point like the number of grains of sand in the universe. The chance of Putin being removed (the implication of your "has") by the Russian population, by any coup, or by any outside agency is less than that.
He could be killed, of course, but not by Russians, and he might die of natural causes, like a stroke. But that's the risk all of us mortals take.
The real destabilization would come in escalating to hotter war with the US and the US's stooges. That's something that Putin judges should be avoided. How the war is going right now is exactly what Russia wants, steering a path that enables Russia to defeat the US and NATO while strongly growing the Russian economy and deepening and broadening Russia's ties with the new majority of the world's countries which are replacing the US and colonial powers.
Putin grew up in an impoverished St. Pete that was still far behind economically as a result of WW2. He knows, to the marrow of his bones, that if he follows a path that leads to nuclear conflict that poverty will be the experience throughout Russia for the next 200 years. Russia will become a shattered, third world ruin and it will stay that way for literally hundreds of years. That's what a full nuclear exchange means.
The US would too, but nobody gives a flying hoot about the US. Putin is the President of Russia, and that's what he cares about. He'll eat whatever crow he has to follow a middle path that makes Russia stronger and better for centuries while avoiding a nuclear war that would destroy Russia for centuries.
His problem is that there is no one in leadership positions in the US or US stooge nations that understands what it means to have their countries totally destroyed in either a major conventional war or in a nuclear war.
When cretins in Washington pushed to expand NATO eastward, contrary to all the promises made to the USSR and then Russia, there were still genuinely experienced, hard core cold warriors left in the US. Almost every one of them, from George Kennan on down, actively opposed such an act. They knew it was insane to commit what are basically acts of war against Russia. They were ignored. Since then there's a US full of utterly ignorant people who have no idea what it means to have their country destroyed in war and who are led by leaders who think committing acts of war against the world's strongest nuclear power is a perfectly acceptable risk.
>The real destabilization would come in escalating to hotter war with the US and the US's stooges. That's something that Putin judges should be avoided.
He hasn't avoided it though.
NATO has been striking as deep as Kirov, Kazan and Orenburg. Some drones even reached Ufa. At rather sensitive objects too. When that is happening regularly, the time to be concerned about "avoiding a hot war" has passed. The hot war is a reality already.
By not striking back you just ensure you are going to lose.
I haven't brought this up forcefully in a while, so let me remind you:
1) "Drones" are really cruise missiles and at this point drones heavy enough to carry even megaton-sized nukes have flown almost to the Urals. Anything of the sort flying all over the country should be completely, absolutely inadmissible. It should be treated as a potential nuclear attack and responded to as if it is a nuclear attack.
But it is not.
2) Air defense deep inside Russia, unless it was deliberately kept turned off most of the time, has now been thoroughly mapped, and NATO has well worked out routes for mass attacks with low flying cruise missiles, in between the gaps. Again, we know that because heavy drones have successfully reached as far as Ufa and Orenburg.
3) Storm Shadows have confirmed hit targets as deep as Lipetsk and Oryol. Unconfirmed quite a bit deeper with other missiles and at much more sensitive targets.
That means launch-on-warning no longer exists for Russia. Because whatever launch-on-warning systems existed have been turned off given that cruise missiles flew towards Moscow, passed through the whole of Kursk, and hit targets around Oryol and Lipetsk, and there was no second strike launched while they were flying.
4) Russia air defense around Ukraine has been pushed back by HIMARS strikes. You see how F-16s are flying all the way immediately to the border to launch AASM Hammers and nobody is shooting them down. Because the S-400 are 150-200 km deep inside now, which is too far to deal with low flying targets. Similarly, aviation has been pushed back to air fields several hundred kilometers deep by the ATACMS threat, and that means its air defense role has been seriously compromised because most of the time it too is too far too late.
This is catastrophic in terms of guarding against a decapitating strike from that direction. It won't take all that many NATO planes to annihilate Moscow.
All commonly understood prior to the SMO criteria for erasing most of Europe from the map were met a very long time ago, but there has been not a single missile fired to defend against these constant attacks.
Russia has been effectively reduced to a much bigger Syria.
General Moron still refuses to be educated. Ukie leadership are puppets (sometimes they go rogue and off script), killing them will change nothing as new puppets will be put in place.
My opinion: GM has the strategic high ground. These kinds of in-your-face attacks must be savagely answered. What happens down the road is what happens down the road, which is probably baked in already.
Again, my opinion: the ONLY justification for Putin (and I am a major fan) is that he is playing the very long game—five more years of grinding up the enemy and bankrupting the West. But Russia’s enemies show no sign of slowing down—now developing war plans to churn up the Black Sea!
On one level this is true, and it would or will be intensely gratifying to see some of the wicked get punished in this world for a change.
Unfortunately on another level given the psychopathic bloodlust of globalist puppet leadership in place in the West, it'll take only the smallest provocation for them to go full-on ape-shit. Think, chimps brandishing thigh bone in Space Odyssey. "Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven" type mentality.
Maybe you'll get your wish anyway pretty soon, because there are so many fuses waiting to be lit, or maybe already lit, burning their way to the big pop. As in, the psycho Zios. Sigh...
>Unfortunately on another level given the psychopathic bloodlust of globalist puppet leadership in place in the West, it'll take only the smallest provocation for them to go full-on ape-shit.
It is the exact opposite. The West understands only power. As long as you keep taking hits without fighting back, they will keep escalating and coming back for more. And vice versa -- the moment they are genuinely afraid for their own safety, they will back off.
GM nails it here. Why would anyone in London or Washington or Paris give a shit how many Ukrainians and Russians are dying when they are absolutely perfectly safe.
How, exactly, would these Western leaders go ape-shit? Issue a scathing condemnation? NATO is powerless at this point, with few soldiers, no ammunition, no materiel, not even the logistics to transport them if they had any. Poland, the loudest dog of them all, has an antiquated military trained and organized to follow Guderian's and Goering's century-old doctrines, no AD to speak of, no ammo for more than a week of fighting, no drones, and most of their artillery already attrited in Ukraine. The others are much worse.
The only ape-shit thing they can do is make a nuclear first strike, and they are ill-equipped even for that, with no effective missile defense and ICBMS falling apart from old age. They will not dare.
So rather than go ape-shit, the West would just end up shitting itself. But this is now; appease them for a few more years, and they could possibly get their shit together.
>But this is now; appease them for a few more years, and they could possibly get their shit together.
Which is exactly why they are pushing for a ceasefire.
Putin fanboys will reassure you that Russia will be preparing in that time too, but we already saw that movie in 2014 -- in the 8 years between 2014 and 2022 what happened was that the relative gap in capabilities between Ukraine and Russia was closed, at least within the self-defeating constraints on the rules of engagement that the Kremlin imposed on itself. So Russia's strategic position deterriorated rather than improving.
Same thing now.
Russia has the technical and deployment lead on a few things, but give it a few years, and that advantage will be similarly gone.
I was chatting with Pres Putin earlier and he was complaining bitterly about the spineless turncoats that he is surrounded by. I dropped your name and he sounded real keen. Expect a call from him soon.
"... exterminating all of the Ukrainian leadership..."
would not change anything. This is a US vs Russia war using Ukraine as a sacrificial proxy. Kill any Ukrainian political leader and another one pops up immediately. Kill the green gnome and you get an Azov member that is immediately propped up to "military genius" status. Kill a Ukrainian general and a previously unknown Ukrainian Lt. Col. gets an immediate promotion. And it doesn't matter because Kiev does exactly what Washington/Langley orders it to do, and the Ukrainian army receives all its orders from a US Army/CIA command center in Germany.
Ukraine is a puppet and the puppeteer is thousands of kilometers away and acting as though it just wants "to stop the killing".
Russia is not wasting any missiles. And that's good.
Ukrainian leadership is the middlemen between the Ukrainian cannon fodder and Western weapons. Take them out and, most importantly, make it abundantly clear that the same fate awaits anyone in their place, and the scheme will suffer a lot.
Sure, some Azov member will replace Zelensky. That Azov member gets an Iskander up his ass during the ceremony when he is sworn in, together with everyone else present. Do that persistently and there will be no Ukrainian state structures to organize resistance.
And yes, destroy the command center in Germany too. In fact, Germany should have ceased to exist two years ago. It forfeited the right to existence (granted to it by the combined force of unreasonable mercy on Stalin's part and the American army occupying the west of it) the moment it sent the tanks. Review the official conditions on which German unification was allowed.
Also, Ukraine should have been derecognized as an independent country already by the end of 2022 and an official claim made on the whole of it, accompanied by an officially state intent of de-Ukrainization as an added goal of the war. By that time it was clear to everyone with a brain that there will never be peace without that being done.
The Israelis clearly didn't listen to your advice, because they used just this tactic to turn Hezbollah into a headless chicken, running in circles. Yes, new leaders sprung up to take place of the assassinated ones, and were eliminated in turn, until Hezbollah ended up enable to take any initiative, just reflex defense and retaliation. And that against a military as inept as the IOF.
The basic idea is this: keep eliminating the leadership, and observe the replacements. If you see an incompetent rise as a replacement, leave him alone; concentrate on the capable ones. Soon you will have the enemy's leadership filled with opportunists and warm bodies.
Syrsky is reasonably competent; his major mistakes are due to trusting and following instructions from his UK masters. He manages to somehow hold the long front line, in spite of the drain that the Kursk boondoggle must have been on his reserves. He is a prime target: if he is lost, his successor may be unable to prevent collapse of the front. Budanov, a total scoundrel, would also be better six feet under.
Interestingly, both Budanov and Syrsky's predecessor have been targeted by Russian missiles, but survived. It seems the Russians have since realized it is better to target the "advisors" that really run the AFU.
Hezbollah's tragic case also illustrates the use-it-or-lose-it principle.
Hezbollah supposedly had a sufficient arsenal to kill the Israeli's air force, shut the country down completely, and do a substantial decapitation of Israeli leadership on its own.
Much of that ended up destroyed by Israeli bunker buster strikes, and what remains in the depths of the Lebanese mountains there is apparently nobody to utilize as intended.
I'd suggest that Russia's main deficiency is lack of Air Power. They don't have the means or doctrine to achieve air superiority over Ukraine. This means the kind of strategic campaign on Ukrainian rear areas, communications and supply links is not possible. Little Geran drones with 100 pound war heads will not do it. Ballistic missiles and cruise missiles numbered in the mere 100's will not do it. The Russian posture is air defense which they are very good at, but defense doesnt win the war. It's in this area that Russian budgets work against it. They do what they can with the limited resources they have to work with but it's a hard reality. Russian military spending is 120 billion/year while the west spends 1.1 trillion. The Russians may spend more efficiently, but a nearly 8x deficit is real nonetheless.
The lack of air dominance is also apparent on the line of contact. If Russia had the means to suppress air defenses on the line of contact and the aircraft and doctrine to practice true close air support, Russian advances would be more than just incremental and Ukraines ability to quickly move fire brigades at will and plug holes would be interdicted.
Is the Russian Air Force adequate in size to go toe to toe with the US? No, the USSR collapse and the oligarchization of post-Soviet Russia meant that the resources went towards buying private jets for Russian billionaires instead of fighter jets to defend the country.
Does Russia have enough ballistic missiles? No, the INF treaty ensured that it doesn't.
Is that the reason for the failure in Ukraine? No, the rules of engagement that the Kremlin continues to observe are the reason.
The US would be doing no better under these rules of engagement -- their planes would still run into the buzz saw of 1980s Soviet S-300 later supplemented with Patriots, and they don't have enough missiles either.
The difference is that the US would hit what has to be hit to win the war from the very start -- it would cut off logistics and carry out decapitation as first and topmost priority.
Putin hasn't done that. It is not for lack of military-technical means
It certainly is open to question if the US Army would be doing any better than the Russians are in the Ukraine. I wouldn't come to any conclusions with any confidence. Im also not saying that the Russians are dummy's for not focusing more on air power. I think their choices make perfect sense given the financial asymmetries.
I do think an American effort would be different. As I said, Russian Air Defense is powerful. The American way would be to first conduct a sustained SEAD campaign. The Russians don't posses that same sort of capacity.
I'm also not saying that the Russians dont have any offensive air capacity. Im only suggesting it's relatively limited and that limits their strategic and tactical options over Ukraine. In one 6 day period the IDF put 6000 500/1000/2000 pound bombs on targets in Gaza - many of them as service calls from front line assault forces calling for close air support in more or less real time.
This has nothing to do with supporting Israel or not, it's just warfare. Gaza is about the battle space size of any one of several combat zones where the Russian army active offensively in Ukraine. Assaults carried out by Russian forces in similar space that could call in real time on 6000 heavy, precision bombs placed on active targets in a 6 day period in a focused area might have different results than current Russian tactics.
Of course this presupposes a successful SEAD campaign in the battle zone which is an untested assumption. But, who was it, Lenin, who said, "sometimes quantity has a quality all of it's own".
None of this is to say disparaging things about the Russian Army. It lives and operates within the resource and financial limits it has. It's going to have to come up with it's own solutions. What they are doing now, works, but not impressively or decisively so. They are going to have to do better to WIN.
I would say that the difference is that when the US goes in like a bull in a china shop it leaves nothing but ruin and failed countries in its wake. Some of these have been reconstituted in another form after the departure of the US, but not along the lines the US went in for in the first place. Russia does not want to leave Ukraine in ruins, both because it is probably going to do the reconstruction after it is all over and because something worse could arise from the ruins -- and on its own doorstep. That is something the US has not had to deal with.
” As locked mutual points out, the activation of the treaty with the DPRK is a genuine escalation on Russia's part, probably the first serious one since the beginning of strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure (which began after the Kerch Bridge attack).
It gets a bit lost because of two factors:
1) Russia generally stepping back from the escalation spiral and letting her enemies escalate without retaliation (how many steps have been announced as 'red lines' by Russia after which Western countries will be seen as active participants in the war, and then Western countries just did it anyway with no consequences?);
2) her enemies making up such insanely exaggerated fantasy stories about everything (100,000 North Koreans overrunning the entire front line but also all of them dying, while eating dogs and getting addicted to porn, etc. You remember the headlines!) that the actual event becomes quite underwhelming by the time it is confirmed.
I also agree that it is good. All diplomatic overtures must be backed by massive kinetic force and threat of escalation. This would not necessarily be the case if Russia had reacted to Western escalations earlier and forced them to turn it down a notch (avoiding the one-sided escalation spiral that makes Russian threats look fake and hurts Russia's negotiating position), but we are where we are now -- no deal is possible at this point without putting real fear into our enemies.”
Maybe now, Russia will start taking this war more seriously. As I've said from the beginning, there is no easy way out, only total victory. NATO and proxy Ukraine do not fear Russia because Russia has shown itself to be too accommodating to make peace. NATO only understands that might is right. NATO is too weak for all out war right now. It would be a good time to ask North Korea for 50,000 or more well-equipped soldiers and mechanized equipment, as well as 30,000 or more Belarusian forces to enter the battle. Russia should say NATO has given it no choice, and now Ukraine will be soundly defeated. The gloves are off, no more Mr. Nice guy.
They have been serious up until now, but with too much balance on adhering to international law, what their BRICS and other allies think, and ignoring provocations meant to cause them to escalate with an exchange of nukes a real threat.
I understand what you say, Grr. Russia is trying to be reasonable with an unreasonable enemy that doesn't adhere to international law. This has emboldened NATO. Even puny Estonia is acting bold. BICS are unreliable, but I'm certain North Korea would send 50,000 well-equipped soldiers and armaments to reinforce Russia. Nuclear exchange is always a threat, but you can't let that dissuade a country fighting for its survival from doing what needs to be done- force Ukraine to surrender. Russia is fighting an enemy that only understands that might is right. There is no alternative for Russia unless it prefers to hold the line and see what happens, which, so far, has not worked.
So since you lack the intellectual capacity to grasp what's actually happening you automatically assume the Russians don't know what they are doing? Yet another armchair general with zero understanding of military strategy.
He isn't defending the 'chicken swingers'. He is talking about your repetitive comments. I do think we understand your position. You've made it clear often enough. Amazingly enough, other than the irritation factor -- or, the way I look at it now, comic relief -- nobody cares.
Apparently not when Russian general is still getting killed in the heart of Moscow. the FSB and MoD keep thinking they are fighting a gentlemen war while the truth is not. Cant wait to see the Ukro pulled a stunt during the May 9th Parade with one of the nuke carriers and see how Putin or his brass keep muttering about brotherly bullshit with the Ukro. Will be a nice sight to see.
Rus have their own way of doing warfare. Did general want to have protection? Kirillov didn't want protection, its in soldiers' JD that they can get killed.
With all the constant whining within our NATO, they must be doing something right warfare-wise. For 1000+ years I guess.
So just because a general does not want protection is a good enough reason for the FSB to neglect the security of the top brass of the Russian armed forces? No no brother, call it for what it is, the FSB fucked up and they need to pick up their slack or Gerasimov is next on the list.
The FSB has traditionally had a bone to grind with the military. The see them, especially the GRU, as competitors. This is not unlike the attitude of the SS towards the Wehrmacht, and especially towards the Abwehr. It was terribly destructive of the war effort then, and remains so now.
Much like how the IJN and IJA fucked up Imperial Japan war effort during WW2 because of their rivalry. They practically never worked together and never see eye to eye on almost every matter that's vital to the Jap war effort. Not that it's the bad thing, they lost the war in the end.
Dude it is impossible for a country the size of Rus to control everything at all times. What you talk about is maaaaybe possible in my country of 2 mil people and 20k km2.
Would you elaborate more. I keep coming across all sorts of peeps, especially anglosaxons who project their views on how things should be done. Peeps are different, have different worldviews, including different ways of waging war. One diff with our NATO cowards is that they fight their own wars.
Sure. Certain supporters of Russia like to tell themselves that there is a "Russian way of war" that involves extremely slow movement and gradual progress, ignoring, to name a few examples, the Brusilov Offensive, Bagration, August Storm, the Invasion of Czechoslovakia, or the defeat of Georgia in 2008.
They do this to try and excuse Russian dithering and indecision. FWIW, these commentators are themselves not Russians, as far as I can tell, and are mostly anglosaxons.
Brusilov offensive: WWI, "war to end all wars" (500k dead and wounded? Half of a Rus army at the beginning of SMO?)
Bagration: WWII - total mobilization (how many soldiers at USSR's disposal?)
August Storm: WWII, total mobilization
Czechoslovakia: less soldiers needed than for Ukraine (Warsaw Pact Armies not just Rus / Sovier?)
Georgia: Military non-entity, pinprick attack
None of these are comparable to what we have today with SMO, and keep in mind it is an SMO (Jacque Baud nicely explains why it is an SMO and not a war in his "The Russian Art of War"). Ukraine is by far the biggest, best trained NATO proxy there ever was and Rus have trashed how many iterations of their army? 4? 5? Plus how many foreign "mercs", "chefs" and "drivers"?
Quite a few people whining about Rus army getting better, bigger, outproducing combined west etc. Trump would have never tried for peace if there was a chance of a win.
It's Clausewitz/Russo. The Banderan invasion into Kursk appeared as the Russian tactic; 'reyd'. Then they overstayed their advantage and it began to look like Krinky.
Yeah...I don't think Gerasimov was too worried about western optics while the Banderan army occupied an operationally useless position in Kursk. Everyday the Banderans spent in Kursk allowed Russia to speed up liberating the Donbas.
One thing I did correctly (for a change) predict was when the Banderan army retreated from Kursk, the RUF would follow it into Sumy to open another front for the diminished Banderan army to deal with. Of course, that was more of a common sense decision than a brilliant operational plan
Then you will see Putin speed up the end of the Banderan state and will kill tens of thousands of Banderan civilians doing it.
It's been a while since Russia has unleashed a series of hyper-sonic missile attacks. Do you suppose that's because Russia ran out of them for the umpthteen time or they are being stockpiled so morons such as yourself can enjoy watching Banderan cities (Lviv) being destroyed?
Putin doesn't consider your Banderan friends to be anything other than what they are, trash to be carried to the curb.
It takes quite some time to properly equip and train a brigade.
Time is on Russia's side. The more NATO materiél and Banderan men are destroyed today means fewer of each to hold the Dnieper lines tomorrow.
If the OSINT is correct, Russia has three CAA in Kherson/Zaporizhe areas and one headed to Sumy and one in Kharkov. The last two are more for threat and future exploitation than action today I believe.
Any break on the Banderan main line will force the whole line to readjust.
Russia is probably ready to start exploiting the advantage this year, unlike prior years.
I am wrong all the time trying to predict Gerasimov. He might decide to start a diversionary offensive in the south so he can make bigger grabs in Sumy and Kharkov or do the opposite.
A Sumy grab has some psychological merit. Moves the RUF closer to Kiev.
Decide to roll up the center through Donetsk to try to split the line so the separated Banderan forces can be defeated individually. Has some operational value, but will create higher casualties.
Good diversionary offensives have to be responded to or they can turn into primary offensives.
Then there Ruskies have been adding rail into the Donbas and Zaporizhe for a couple of years for a reason.
I want to see an airborne/air assault using twelve divisions to land west of the Dnieper. That would be an awesome spectacle.
Ukraine is already destroyed and will cease to exist within the next two generations.
Everybody recognizes that "Project Ukraine" has failed catastrophically. Russia and China are both stronger militarily and economically in 2025 than they were in 2022, whereas the US and the "Collective West" are crumbling and NATO has been exposed as a paper tiger.
“Glory Nuland-Kagan, Bandera, and the City of London.”
The war will go on until the money-bags-deciders are summoned for karma meeting.
The NATO (North Atlantic Terrorist Organization ) acts on orders from the banking cartel and fascist mega corporations. The cannibalistic banking families must be exposed. They have destroyed western civilization and brought death, suffering, and destruction to the tens of millions of human beings.
There are too many dishonorable cheneys and arbuthnots among the “deciders,” with the well organized global jewry leading the charge for the full spectrum financial-military dominance.
Yep, exactly. Let's name the Pindar ("tip of Satan's penis," i.e. top minion, who is the top Rothschild, right? There are satanic forces at work, obviously. Not "edgy" but "inversion of morality" satanic, therefore, hard to even imagine. The bloodline thing, the chosen people thing. We laugh it off while apparently for them it's deadly serious.
That's why we need to fight for principles and morality, regardless of the cost. Them's the rules; it's spiritual battle.
I have no clue what the Russian leadership will do. I trust your opinion because I read that you lived in Ukraine and have a good understanding of the politics in the region. I'm at a distance in occupied Canada, trying to figure things out. There's a lot more history there than here.
Thank you for the kind words. I have explained my basic theory of the Russian and Ukrainian leadership elsewhere, and so far it is the only way I can make sense of what Russia is doing.
The reality is simple: no serious nation sacrifices hard-won strategic advantages for vague promises of future cooperation. Russia has every incentive to press forward now, while the momentum and conditions favor it, rather than freeze the conflict just to allow its adversaries time to rearm, regroup, and come back stronger. Trump’s proposed ceasefire, though wrapped in diplomatic packaging, ultimately demands Russia surrender what it has bled to secure without any binding guarantees in return. History shows that true peace only follows decisive outcomes, not half-measures that reward weakness. In this kind of high-stakes game, hesitation is fatal—and Moscow knows it.
>The reality is simple: no serious nation sacrifices hard-won strategic advantages for vague promises of future cooperation
What does that make Russia then given that Russian elites voluntarily dissolved the country in the late 1980s in exchange for vague promises and subsequently continued more or less the same policy, with only slight deviations, up until 2022, and arguably even to this day?
(You can hold off awarding me my prize for answering correctly until one of those "everything is going according to the Russian plans " posters around here posts a picture of themselves unfurling the Russian flag in Lvov city center. )
Russians were then less aware of the depravity and bloodthirstiness of global jewry. Since then, not only Russians but the whole world has been learning about the maliciousness of the supremacist tribe. See Gaza, for instance
And don’t forget that the UK is still under a boot of the Friends of Israel of all stripes, and the US congress is aipac-occupied territory.
American patriot Henry Ford warned US government about the true nature of global jewry. It was too late. Look at the mortally wounded western civilization. “The International Jew” should have been an obligatory reading in all hosts countries for the supremacist whining and shameless tribe.
That's the bottom line. And even if Trump offers a peace deal that gives Russia everything it wants, there is a) no guarantee he or the DS will stick to it, or b) it will survive whoever takes over power in 2028. I hope the Russians finally go for one of those Big Arrow offensives the pundits have always promised us.
Due to modern battlefield conditions I don't think we will get to watch what we want to watch.
Maybe a couple hundred small(ish) attacks conducted simultaneously and not relenting until a couple of gaps are opened so a few brigades can pour through each to widen the gaps then a halt, straighten the lines, refit. Rinse and repeat.
As much as I want to watch a tank corps race ahead to relieve the three airborne divisions that captured a bridge over the Dnieper.
Helmer seems to think Putin will take a deal, to prepare for a bigger war down the road. Doesn't sound like a good idea to me but maybe Russia is weaker than we thought.
As for the Vampire Squid of the City of London (Looters), they will not stop warmongering until destroyed. The supremacist lunacy of banderites led to the destruction of Ukraine. The supremacist lunacy of jews led to the destruction of western civilization.
No, Helmer is likely right. All the signs are that Putin is begging for a deal.
The problem is that this was precisely the logic of 2014. Don't solve the problem now because we are not ready, wait to prepare.
Well, who used that time better?
Worse, the 2022 fiasco and the diaster ever since was not even one of lack of capability, the key problem has been Putin keeping the military under shackles in terms of the rules of engagement.
Proper "preparation for the big war" means preemptive nuclear strikes on NATO that will clear and secure a swath of 2-3,000 kilometers around Russia so that NATO cannot do its own pre-emptive strike from point blank range. Putin, of course, won't do that, which in turn means NATO will strike first.
When you are reorienting (pun intended) to the east, secure your western rear from the hostile Queer Starmer.
I believe Trump's MAGA peace and security plan is designed to bail us out of a shit position. The longer Trump keeps us active in an area we have zero national interest in, the closer he gets to owning Genocide Joe's failure.
Why did the Russians hide the North Koreans for so long ? I wonder who else they are hiding ? Both sides are playing hide and seek and the winners get to live . We are getting curated images and video from both sides . Even Simplicius was doubtful of NK involvement so Russian OPSEC is pretty good. Getting correct information on this conflict is like trying to find the way out in a hall of mirrors. Negotiations must be challenging. Watched Lazarovs interview and that man is a legend.
I was one of the first commentators on the net to predict precisely that North Koreans were sent exactly at Kim's initiative. I was only doubtful of Kiev's propaganda clips, which likely did use Buryats or other captured ethnicities.
"Secondly, the North Korean troops could have very well been sent at Kim’s request, not Russia’s. That’s because Kim—seeing the buildup of provocations and aggression against North Korea—was likely interested in getting real life combat experience for his own troops, so that they can return and seed it all back into the DPRK’s larger military structure. Given that a broader strategic deal was already in play between the two countries, Putin likely acquiesced, since it is something that had benefits for both sides. After all, if Russia was truly desperate for troops it could have called on its Union State partner Belarus."
I stand corrected on your stated use of NK troops . To me the co-incidence of South Korea trying to declare martial law would fit with the possibility of the capture of SK sheepdipped soldiers in Kursk as it was widely known that there were lots of "mercenaries" there . As SK has already supported Ukraine with weapons and ammo its not unlikely and would have the bonus of real world training for them too . The big question for me is why , when it was legal to use them that Russia didn't openly admit North Korean participation as they do now. We know that Russia is using "volunteers" (arguably mercenaries) and this obscures who is actively assisting them as NATO does for Ukraine . As you pointed out the logistics of having multiple languages being used on the battlefield can complicate tactics and strategy.
Russia didn't hide or deny the NK pressence. Russia didnt parade them. And Simplicius didn't deny them either. He primarily dismissed the Western characterization of the NKs, which publicly showed few actual NKs but often substituted Mongolians, Laotians, Philippinos, etc., or denied that Russians include people like residents of Yakutia.
The West acted like NKs was some legal and moral violation while sending combatants from a dozen countries. The pressence of NKs largely is a big "so what" unless one is attempting to assess NKs combat ability. In Ukraine their pressence doesn't matter as it was framed by the West, which was as an underhanded act and a sign of weakness. It was neirher.
It is rich for the collective west to bark about morals. The Odessa massacre in 2014 and the western support for Banderites (self-proclaimed Nazis) and Zionists (“jewish fascists” according to Mussolini) have left the western prudes of “morality” naked.
There was absolutely zero concrete evidence they were there.
A couple Russian Telegram channels praised them on one occasion for successfully taking some positions early on, but after that they kept silent too, so the assumption was that perhaps they wrote those reports ironically.
This actually gives hope -- if op-sec was successfully maintained for so long on this issue, maybe there are more serious positive surprises in store in the future.
The OpSec appears good. I cannot say there were no depictions of NK troops though. I did not review all reports nor did I investigate all the reports I did read thoroughly. Of the 20 some reports/articles I read several were regurgitated. Many were ludicrous fabrications picturing any Asian in place of NKs over span of decades - not even remotely connected to Russia, NK or events in Ukraine.
There were two reports though that could have shown actual NKs but it was difficult to verify - impossible for me given limits of time and online access. That makes saying there was no accurate reporting impossible since there are clear limits on what I could do.
It's not ethnic Koreans that were the issue, but NK combatants in Kursk. And despite their pressence many media/online content creators used a number of ethnic Asian groups that were not Korean at all and published their photos asserting that they were NKs.
Jack, you missed the point. My point was it's not hard to find real ethnic Koreans in Ukraine to make the fake "NK" photos, there was no need to borrow from a "number ethnic Asian Groups." I mean - if fake it, fake it well :-)
Western nations need to be more cautious in the hypocritical precedent they set. As it is difficult to cry terrorism on one hand and then call it resistance when the same act suits the prevailing narrative. As the saying goes "if you live in glass houses you shouldn't throw stones." As in the end you cannot cry when car bombs, official start being assassinated and other creative terror measures become common practice, it will be only war and a brown person defending his country. Justify the actions of your friends enough, then you may lose the ability to condemn the actions of your enemy.
The West is desperate. Run out of time, luck, resources and money. Or rather the banks have. Nat Rothschild the old Etonian invested $2 trillion in Kharkov and it was underwritten by the BoE. Without that collateral (the mines and minerals) it's over.
The banks are desperate you are saying? That would explain to a great extent the reason why Europe is behaving in the way it is. Not for a just and lasting peace for Ukraine, but for the interest of their banks. The entity that financed almost all of the wars that killed hundreds of millions.
It depends on what you consider powerful and where the power is derived from. The West has a financial system akin to an inverted pyramid with a small resource, manufacturing and commodity base supporting a huge paper, debt dirivitives market. Radical extremist groups are highly motivated most just need material support. Now if a big player starts playing the western game giving material support their is so much hate globally. What would be the outcome? How exactly would western societies deal with the reality of the fears merely created by Hollywood? It is surprising how Russia is being condemned for not being as barbaric as the west just as Iran is being criticised and considered weak for not targeting civilians. The west has forgotten the suffering of their warmongering past and the US citizenry mostly have no clue about wars and destruction as everything is always perceived as being far away. The sad thing is be careful of the things you yearn and desire as you may not enjoy them as much as you may think.
What other power are you mentioning information control, perception management and narrative creation? Do you believe there will be the possibility of an Afghan or Iraqi invasion again? Well Yemen is the poorest country in the Muslim world so we may see a western ground invasion of Yemen or maybe Papua new Guinea or Paula or maybe an invasion of the St Kits and Nevis or St Lucia?
The Western world is insulated, with huge immigrant populations from all the nations they colonised or invaded. Probably you believe all these people have very short memories and all have good intentions? . How exactly does that insulation work?
The West enjoys immense soft power as well as hard power and financial power.
I don't have to like it, but pretending otherwise will not make it go away and there is a reason that the rest of the world craves American carrot and greatly fears American stick.
Well as you stated "soft power" extremely good marketing and PR? As I state perception, information management and narrative control. The ability to bungle into countries, making a mess then leave without achieving goals or objectives if they actually understood why or what they were doing in the first place. I am just relating history and a presedent set. Well their was a time, yes, but one can live on past legacy for so long.
That commentator said it best. Every minute putin spends with witkoff or wasting his time on a deal that will never happen is time that could have been spent winning the war.
The Ukrainians maintain their maximalist stance because they are not defeated. If kiev was likely to fall in the next 6 months they would be more amenable but they aren't even giving ground on crimea
Yes. And so called pro-russians cant understand that calling this War a SMO is also creating ”small” thoughts that inevitably leads to small achievements.
But there are reasons for it -- the Kremlin is mortally afraid of a repeat of the GPW. Not in terms of the casualties -- if that was an issue, we would not be where we are now -- but in terms of the momentum that would build within Russian society.
Always remember that the people in power in Russia right now are still leading the counter-revolution to 1917. Putin was installed in power with one primary mission -- make sure the communists never come back to power and the newly (re-)established order remains intact. And this is the only thing he has truly successfully fulfilled as a mission in a quarter of a century. Because the communists would have been back in power already in 1996 if the election had not been faked, and the new Russian elite had that possibility as a mortal fear after that near-death experience.
To this end the country had to be stabilized, which was also done. But not so much as an objective of its own, it was simply necessary in order for the robber baron gang that had taken power to keep that power.
Now imagine what happens if Putin comes out and says "The West is planning Operation Barbaross V.2, together with a Generalplan Ost 2.0, we need to mobilize fully in order to defend the motherland, the Nazis will be defeated, and this time properly exterminated"? The Russian people will rally behind him, but there lies the problem. You can't dissociate a GPW V.2 from the original one, and the original one cannot be dissociated from communism. It is already a substantial inconvenience for the Kremlin every year around May 9. And in order to prosecute that GPW V.2, you would need to bring a lot of elements of Stalinism back in terms of administrative and economic organization, because that is the only proven way to win such a war. Also, if we are pursuing total victory in total war, serious questions about the activities and loyalties of the elites in the previous decades will immediately come up too.
Very, very dangerous.
In fact, you saw a demo version of it in the first weeks of the SMO. You had people lined up along the streets to wish good luck to the armed convoys going towards Ukraine waving Soviet flags. Not just the victory banners, which are often confused with them, but proper Soviet flags, and they were not exactly rare compared to the current Russian flag. Not in Moscow, of course, but in the more working class cities further south, like Oryol, Lipetsk, etc. The army itself burst into Ukraine flying a lot of Soviet flags.
You don't see that any more at all. First, because the Kremlin did its best to evaporate that initial enthusiasm within the population, and second, because orders were issued to the army to stop it, or else. And it was only defiant individuals with an ideological axe to grind like general Lapin who violated it later on.
Agree with your analysis. Nothing to add other that my conclusion is that Russia better accept the US solution because they cant do this better without risking the whole society (they built on the Siloviki or better called Russian Deep State).
Russia can be sure the Ukrainians will not play along. In the end we can expect for a deal there US and Russian oligarky divide the revenues from a completely occupied Ukraine? My biggest concern is what to do with the ultra-nationalists threatening to spread terror in Russia and Europe once they feel ”betrayed”.
Ironically, it is precisely the ultra-nationalists that are so far saving Russia from the Kremlin.
It is in the Ukro-NATO-Nazi's best interest to agree to a freeze on the conflict and rearm in peace. It would be an Idlib on steroids, and we saw how that ended up.
And the Kremlin has a long history of agreeing on such shitty deals. That then blow up in their faces. Terminally, in the case of Idlib, and Ukraine itself is one of the best examples -- we are in this mess because of Minsk I/II, and then the attempt at Minsk-III in Istanbul not being followed, to this day, by the beginning of real war.
It is why Trump is pushing for a deal -- they know the Kremlin fell for that trick repeatedly in the past, and will do so again and again.
But the Ukronazi fanatics will have none of it, which is good for Russia.
P.S. How the Kremlin keeps falling for that trick is quite remarkable. Even more remarkable is how in the "alternative media" they keep slobbering over someone like Lavrov as the guru of foreign policy, when every single shitty deal he has made in the last 20 years has spectacularly failed, to the great detriment of Russia. What kind of a grandmaster are you with that track record of catastrophic failure after catastrophic failure after catastrophic failure?
And it's not as if the tactics those idiots keep falling for are anything new or sophisticated. It is how the US came into being in the first place -- fight the natives, get the situation to the limit of exhaustion for yourself, sign a treaty with the natives that claims "eternal peace" just when they are on the verge of gaining the upper hand, regather your strength, violate the treaty in an opportune for you moment, rinse and repeat all the way from Boston and Virginia to the Pacific.
Yet the judo 5D-chess grandmasters in the Kremlin can't see that it's the exact same game being played on them.
For the record, what would have been the winning strategy for the natives in America? Strict policy of total extermination of any foreign vessels landing on their shores, not allowing any footholds to be established, while investing heavily in rearmament locally to make sure they would be able to keep doing that. They had the numbers do pull it off successfully in the 17th century. But they lacked the foresight to see where it was all going and were too divided to organize themselves and act accordingly. We know the end result.
Russia's policy should be the same with respect to what is rightfully Russian. Total and immediate extermination of any Western encroachment attempts. There is no other way with these people, centuries of history have shown it beyond any doubt. But Russia too has inadequate leadership, and we see the results...
Your perspectives are worth reading! Food for thoughts. I think Lavrov is the best diplomat Russia had in modern times. Hard-ass Molotov and No-sayer Gromyko plays in the second league. But diplomats are diplomats. Not rulers. Putin has leaned on Lavrov because he likens the amenable way of him. They are the same type of persons. I dont think Putin is without hard glooves or ruthlessness when ”pressed”. He did the Crimea take-over gallantly.
But, as you say, being pushed out of Syria and screwed three times in a row about Ukraine. What does it tell about Russian 5D-chess?
Russia has no land link to Syria, only two precariously vulnerable military bases hanging onto the shore of the hostile Mediterranean. Once Assad dropped the ball, Russia was in no position to save him, even at exorbitant costs, so they did the right thing pulling out.
But it was Assad's negligence that lost him the country his father built. Had Assad not starved and ruined his own armed forces in the midst of a continuing war, Russia and Iran would have helped him.
And, AFAIK, Russia and maybe China even offered to help in refinancing and retraining that army, but he refused, thinking that it would be cheaper and cleverer if they actually defended him with their own. Or perhaps he was afraid of the obligations that would entail.
Lavrov has a different, long-term objective. He is unconcerned with the agreement-incapable West, but is trying to establish Russia as a world player in the RoW. Considering that he doesn't have the economic clout of China at his disposal, he is being amazingly effective. And successful.
So Putin, whose family lived through Leningrad siege, is inconvenienced by V-Day parade?
Dude elevated "Immortal Regiment" to the state level, now happening all over the world, in times when, at least back home, revisionist quisling posterity started to openly gloat how all of the WWII veterans will be gone soon. And now they have global "Immortal Regiment".
>Putin, whose family lived through Leningrad siege
If Putin genuinely cared about the Leningrad siege, Finland would have been erased from the map and converted back to a Russian province the moment they announced their intention to join NATO.
That was strike #3 (strike #1 were the multiple Finnish invasions of Russia in 1919-1922, strike #2 was the Continuation War and the siege of Leningrad). This after the sole reason Finland exists today being Russia saving it from Swedish assimilation, then giving it very broad autonomy, then Lenin giving them independence in 1918. Enough, these people have forfeited the right to exist.
Instead Putin has been sitting on his hands for three years as NATO is situating strike assets in Finland in order to take out Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Leningrad, and more.
I disagree. The Russians rallied for the GPW not for the sake of communism, which they hated, but for the cause of the Motherland and, somewhat counterintuitively but ultimately correctly, for Stalin. Stalin too was afraid of the masses at first; but he was man enough to clench his teeth and run with it, also for the Motherland's sake. Does Putin have Stalin's balls? The people would welcome him into that role, but apparently not.
Russia knows the difference between a full-scale war - like on 22Jun1941, 3 million German troops invaded the USSR, vs. SMO -Russia's 100 thousand troops invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022. Most in the West do not.
Their mind can only imagine victory until the moment they leave the world of the living. Nothing to do with being defeated on short notice. It’s a mental mindset or disorder and cannot be cured.
The "Ukrainians" maintain their maximalist stance because they are not Ukrainians, but either outright Jews or renegades serving the City of London. They don't really give a rat's fart about Ukrainian lives, territory or infrastructure lost, they only care about hurting and weakening Russia, at whatever cost to the Slavic goyim.
Unfortunately, many of them are die in the woods, bite the bridle, “death to cursed Moskals,” Ukrainians. There’s always an undercurrent of hate/whatever, even in Soviet times, only occasionally rising its head. And yes, they’d burn Ukraine to ashes and walk on corpses, to be “right.”
Right at the outset western intelligence set about planting voices within Russia aimed at criticising Putin, to stir up unrest and hopefully lead to his overthrow, not by taking some pro western stance, hell no. That would have got them lynched, but by claiming that Russia was not being hard-nosed enough, that Putin was a traitor blah blah. The intention was not really to replace Putin with hardliners and nuke Berlin but to created chaos at home which the west could then exploit to bring this war it had fomented to its pro western conclusion.
You find echoes of these voices in these columns. Like the nutters in the UK led by Boris Johnson, you would think it was still 1939.
On the subject of BJ, by the way, this was the bloke who at the outset, when he was pushing for a full scale NATO war with Russia and Russia's military defeat, quoted Herodotus (sorry, Heraclitus)- 'war is the father of all things'.
But this was when he thought the west could just roll Russia over- no real people hurt, more a cartoon. War according to Herodotus (sorry, Heraclitus- thanks, Jack) is the only way to build a new world. It is ultimately how radical change is effected when it cannot be achieved peacefully, meaning today, through the democratic voice which instead is just persistently ignored if not stamped on by existing power structures. That is what happened in eastern Ukraine and which was the cause of the Russian invasion. It is happening now throughout western europe.
Russia will indeed ensure that this current war effects radical change and justifies the radical costs.
I don't want to nitpick (actually maybe I do) but that is Heraclitus not Herodotus.
Boris Johnson only gave a small piece on 9 April 2022, when he met Zelenskyy, arguably misquoting and misunderstanding the larger point.
The full bit runs something like;
"War is the Father of All, and the King of All. And some he makes Gods and some he makes men, and some men he makes free, and some men he makes slaves"
The operative term "polemos" is war/conflict, but the conflict is cosmic and human war is just a much smaller part of that.
Talk about a Sham, the West is continually called for a "Ceasefire" but now that Putin has declared a unilateral ceasefire for the 8th, 9th and 10th May, now the West is suddenly calling it a Sham.
So again, when the West calls for a ceasefire, according to them it's legitimate, but when Putin calls for one, its suddenly, supposedly a Sham, how ironic.
If the Ukrainians can't uphold a limited period ceasefire over the 8th, 9th and 10th, they cannot uphold a longer term ceasefire, and Putin is putting them and the West to the test.
27 Million dead isn't a sham. I doubt whether they'll bother with Remembrance Sunday in a few years. The West doesn't care. Even the EU called WWII "the European Civil War".
It's time for Russia to start retaliating for Ukrainian assassinations, and making it clear that there are consequences for terrorism...and hopefully, Putin already realizes that negotiations with the US are futile in terms of ending the war, although they may be quite useful for other reasons....
The Russians are trying to minimize the escalation. They know that the other side consist of mentally retarded leaders and their behavior is totally unpredictable.
Poland "preparing for closing the Baltic Sea to Russia" - Poland always bites more than it can chew, sticks its nose where it doesn't belong, steals whatever was left unattended, and plays a victim when it gets caught, and punched in the mouth.
Lavrov: "Kaja Kallas and what's his name - Matt Rutte" - priceless :-)
Trump is right re.: Russia's concession to Ukraine & USA is not taking over entire Ukraine.
I'm sure that even with a Russian boot on their neck, Ukrainians won't admit defeat.
After WW2, the terror acts in the Western Ukraine continued all the way into mid-1950s.
Nobody/nothing can be fully terror-proof, it's impossible.
Instead of Żubrówka and vodka, Pols started to drink whiskey and gin. Not good for a Slavic head. Results are visible in their self destructive behavior.
Article 5 doesn't mean what most people think it means.
Portugal and Spain will send "best wishes", Italy and Greece will send investigation teams to try to figure out who ordered something so stupid, Turkey will continue consolidating it's position in Syria.
I must agree with Kuleba, they aren't even close to successful peace and settlement negotiatoons, given that the US, a co-beligerant and Ukraine are not even close to accepting Zaporozhye, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk as Russian territory, or to adddressing the Root Causes of the conflict.
Until that realisation comes to the fore in the US/ West and Ukraine a peaceful settlement cannot effectively be discussed, as they are talking about night while the Russians are talking about day.
On Joe Rogan Mel Gibson described a situation where he found himself on the wrong side of LA with a flat time and potential aggressors watching. So what did he do? He acted crazy. "People are afraid of crazy people because they don't know what they are going to do." So we apply that to bull in the chine shop Trump and Putin, and Putin is sane and not scaring anybody. The Brits, the French, the Romanians and Balkans are not going to stop until they are afraid, scared that they, not the people, will be targeted. Target their money (EMP) and they are done.
I've heard of this "Acting Crazy" strategy before, probably in the context of Nixon and the Cold War Game Theory and it just doesn't work. The down side of acting crazy to get people to back off you is that you can't get any serious work done. No one is dangerously crazy on Mondays through Thursday and perfectly sane for the rest of the week and no one will make long term deals and projects with unreliable and unstable people.
At what point does Trump lay on his back and have a temper tantrum like a two year old? Claims it's the Zebra and Shit His Pants Joe's war and yet brags about giving Ukraine Javelins and Stingers during his first term. Wank stain.
I have completely changed 180º wrt Trump. There's something very unhealthy about someone who wants to build a beach resort on the graves of thousands of children. Sick in the head.
I can't even scratch my head over it anymore. He pisses and moans about all these people being killed in the Ukraine conflict and is oblivious to the genocide in the Middle East. Russia bombs military installations where there is 12 civilians killed in collateral damage. Trump bombs civilian infrastructure in Yemen killing hundreds. Wish I had that kind of moral on/off switch.
Exactly. Look at the staged spectacle at the Pope’s funeral, Zelensky, still clad in his black fatigues, couldn’t even bother to wear a suit out of respect. There they sat, the two of them, center stage in that massive hall, while Macron—that wannabe Napoleon—lurked on the sidelines, watching.
The whole father-and-son routine was nauseating. Zelensky, lying through his teeth after the recent missile attack on Kiev, peddling the same old narrative about Russian missiles targeting civilians, when we all know the Russian military strictly hits military infrastructure. And what does Trump do? He swallows it whole, demanding Putin “STOP.” Just as S pointed out, Trump merely parrots the last person he spoke to.
Meanwhile, how many times has the AFU deliberately bombed civilians? Belgorod, Donetsk, even Moscow—regular, unprovoked attacks on innocent people. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated. There is no eleven dimensional chess or whatever. He simply agrees with whatever the last person who talked to him said. His own advisors plan meetings and shut out rivals accordingly.
Yes, you can click the navy link for the official report. Apparently it was in the middle of being moved by the tractor in the underbay compartment 'hangar' and flew out the bay doors.
"The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard."
Easy come, easy go
The towing tractor was for the jet, not the ship.
>Russia needs to start thinking of ways to respond
Yeah, we will be waiting for them to start thinking, forget about finishing thinking and starting real action, for a very long time to come.
Today Zelensky publicly bragged about assassinating Russian military leadership and promised much more to come.
Which, as if everything that has happened so far was not already more than sufficient as a justification for doing it, should have resulted in the appropriate munitions targeting the relevant locations and exterminating all of the Ukrainian leadership in the next few hours. But it did not happen and will not happen.
Because the people making the decisions in Moscow are not making those decisions in the interests of the Russian state.
The question is how long the military is going to put up with being sitting ducks for NATO and the Ukronazis to do target practice on while the political leadership has placed a veto on defending against it. There has to be a point where the "enough of this shit" decision is made in the General Staff, or perhaps at the lower levels, and they take the matter in their own hands.
What would you have Putin do, GM?
I literally said it in the comment you are replying to.
No. You just stated the western objective of overthrowing Putin. You have not said what action beyond destroying the current political structure in Russia bringing about an internal civil war (to benefit who, exactly?) you would promote.
I said:
>the appropriate munitions targeting the relevant locations and exterminating all of the Ukrainian leadership in the next few hours
Given that Putin refuses to issue that order, yes, Putin has to go.
And yes, I am well aware of how destabilizing that would be. It is why it hasn't been done so far. But there are limits beyond which not doing it will be even more destabilizing. The question is where we are with respect to those limits.
? That is just a version of a Russian death wish, of which Putin is not guilty. Thank God. If Russia wiped out the Ukkie leadership we would indeed get a ridiculous destabilisation launched within Russia by western operatives, Russia's allies throwing up hands etc etc, that would NOT ADVANCE THE OBJECTIVES OF THE SMO but distract massively from it.
... which is precisely what the west wants to happen now, to bail it out of a war it is losing- some massive lurid Russian over-action that will also weaken Russia's own allied support. The west has been angling for this since the Ukkie counter offensive failed. It is their plan B. Why are you so intent on furthering western objectives?
So it's open season on Russian leadership, but Russia is forbidden from striking at the Ukronazis, let a lone the West?
What does that make Russia then?
A very big Panama with snow?
How do you know ”we would indeed get a ridiculous destabilisation launched within Russia by western operatives”?
Do you know from where the ultra-nationalist odour originated? How do you de-nazify without de-nazifying?
"Putin has to go" is exactly what the US and the collective West have been trying to achieve - unsuccessfully - for the last 25 years or so.
And what has Putin achieved?
His country is surrounded by enemies from nearly all sides, and is now bombed daily thousands of kilometers inland, while Putin sits on his hands and does not fire a single shot back.
Is that a success?
"And yes, I am well aware of how destabilizing that would be. It is why it hasn't been done so far. But there are limits beyond which not doing it will be even more destabilizing. The question is where we are with respect to those limits."
You're right, of course, with that. The question indeed is where Russia is with respect to those limits. I happen to agree with you that exterminating the Nazi leadership (including their foul, fake "Rada") would be productive.
But you're also wrong when you use "destabilizing" to casually write copium (on your side) like "Putin has to go" as if there's the slightest possibility of that happening.
As readers of that excellent physics text, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" well know, there is indeed a slight chance as a result of quantum theory that a cat sitting on one side of a room will instantly teleport to the other side of the room. It's a very slight chance, like a fraction of a percent with the number of zeros beyond the decimal point like the number of grains of sand in the universe. The chance of Putin being removed (the implication of your "has") by the Russian population, by any coup, or by any outside agency is less than that.
He could be killed, of course, but not by Russians, and he might die of natural causes, like a stroke. But that's the risk all of us mortals take.
The real destabilization would come in escalating to hotter war with the US and the US's stooges. That's something that Putin judges should be avoided. How the war is going right now is exactly what Russia wants, steering a path that enables Russia to defeat the US and NATO while strongly growing the Russian economy and deepening and broadening Russia's ties with the new majority of the world's countries which are replacing the US and colonial powers.
Putin grew up in an impoverished St. Pete that was still far behind economically as a result of WW2. He knows, to the marrow of his bones, that if he follows a path that leads to nuclear conflict that poverty will be the experience throughout Russia for the next 200 years. Russia will become a shattered, third world ruin and it will stay that way for literally hundreds of years. That's what a full nuclear exchange means.
The US would too, but nobody gives a flying hoot about the US. Putin is the President of Russia, and that's what he cares about. He'll eat whatever crow he has to follow a middle path that makes Russia stronger and better for centuries while avoiding a nuclear war that would destroy Russia for centuries.
His problem is that there is no one in leadership positions in the US or US stooge nations that understands what it means to have their countries totally destroyed in either a major conventional war or in a nuclear war.
When cretins in Washington pushed to expand NATO eastward, contrary to all the promises made to the USSR and then Russia, there were still genuinely experienced, hard core cold warriors left in the US. Almost every one of them, from George Kennan on down, actively opposed such an act. They knew it was insane to commit what are basically acts of war against Russia. They were ignored. Since then there's a US full of utterly ignorant people who have no idea what it means to have their country destroyed in war and who are led by leaders who think committing acts of war against the world's strongest nuclear power is a perfectly acceptable risk.
>The real destabilization would come in escalating to hotter war with the US and the US's stooges. That's something that Putin judges should be avoided.
He hasn't avoided it though.
NATO has been striking as deep as Kirov, Kazan and Orenburg. Some drones even reached Ufa. At rather sensitive objects too. When that is happening regularly, the time to be concerned about "avoiding a hot war" has passed. The hot war is a reality already.
By not striking back you just ensure you are going to lose.
I haven't brought this up forcefully in a while, so let me remind you:
1) "Drones" are really cruise missiles and at this point drones heavy enough to carry even megaton-sized nukes have flown almost to the Urals. Anything of the sort flying all over the country should be completely, absolutely inadmissible. It should be treated as a potential nuclear attack and responded to as if it is a nuclear attack.
But it is not.
2) Air defense deep inside Russia, unless it was deliberately kept turned off most of the time, has now been thoroughly mapped, and NATO has well worked out routes for mass attacks with low flying cruise missiles, in between the gaps. Again, we know that because heavy drones have successfully reached as far as Ufa and Orenburg.
3) Storm Shadows have confirmed hit targets as deep as Lipetsk and Oryol. Unconfirmed quite a bit deeper with other missiles and at much more sensitive targets.
That means launch-on-warning no longer exists for Russia. Because whatever launch-on-warning systems existed have been turned off given that cruise missiles flew towards Moscow, passed through the whole of Kursk, and hit targets around Oryol and Lipetsk, and there was no second strike launched while they were flying.
4) Russia air defense around Ukraine has been pushed back by HIMARS strikes. You see how F-16s are flying all the way immediately to the border to launch AASM Hammers and nobody is shooting them down. Because the S-400 are 150-200 km deep inside now, which is too far to deal with low flying targets. Similarly, aviation has been pushed back to air fields several hundred kilometers deep by the ATACMS threat, and that means its air defense role has been seriously compromised because most of the time it too is too far too late.
This is catastrophic in terms of guarding against a decapitating strike from that direction. It won't take all that many NATO planes to annihilate Moscow.
All commonly understood prior to the SMO criteria for erasing most of Europe from the map were met a very long time ago, but there has been not a single missile fired to defend against these constant attacks.
Russia has been effectively reduced to a much bigger Syria.
….now you mention War….good.
General Moron still refuses to be educated. Ukie leadership are puppets (sometimes they go rogue and off script), killing them will change nothing as new puppets will be put in place.
Is there are a severe shortage of ammo?
I don't think so given the volume of it that flies every night at random not very significant objects deep in the Ukronazi rear
Then just take them out, for the sake of them having earned it a long tine ago.
My opinion: GM has the strategic high ground. These kinds of in-your-face attacks must be savagely answered. What happens down the road is what happens down the road, which is probably baked in already.
Again, my opinion: the ONLY justification for Putin (and I am a major fan) is that he is playing the very long game—five more years of grinding up the enemy and bankrupting the West. But Russia’s enemies show no sign of slowing down—now developing war plans to churn up the Black Sea!
On one level this is true, and it would or will be intensely gratifying to see some of the wicked get punished in this world for a change.
Unfortunately on another level given the psychopathic bloodlust of globalist puppet leadership in place in the West, it'll take only the smallest provocation for them to go full-on ape-shit. Think, chimps brandishing thigh bone in Space Odyssey. "Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven" type mentality.
Maybe you'll get your wish anyway pretty soon, because there are so many fuses waiting to be lit, or maybe already lit, burning their way to the big pop. As in, the psycho Zios. Sigh...
>Unfortunately on another level given the psychopathic bloodlust of globalist puppet leadership in place in the West, it'll take only the smallest provocation for them to go full-on ape-shit.
It is the exact opposite. The West understands only power. As long as you keep taking hits without fighting back, they will keep escalating and coming back for more. And vice versa -- the moment they are genuinely afraid for their own safety, they will back off.
GM nails it here. Why would anyone in London or Washington or Paris give a shit how many Ukrainians and Russians are dying when they are absolutely perfectly safe.
Your last sentence should be read by more people.
How, exactly, would these Western leaders go ape-shit? Issue a scathing condemnation? NATO is powerless at this point, with few soldiers, no ammunition, no materiel, not even the logistics to transport them if they had any. Poland, the loudest dog of them all, has an antiquated military trained and organized to follow Guderian's and Goering's century-old doctrines, no AD to speak of, no ammo for more than a week of fighting, no drones, and most of their artillery already attrited in Ukraine. The others are much worse.
The only ape-shit thing they can do is make a nuclear first strike, and they are ill-equipped even for that, with no effective missile defense and ICBMS falling apart from old age. They will not dare.
So rather than go ape-shit, the West would just end up shitting itself. But this is now; appease them for a few more years, and they could possibly get their shit together.
>But this is now; appease them for a few more years, and they could possibly get their shit together.
Which is exactly why they are pushing for a ceasefire.
Putin fanboys will reassure you that Russia will be preparing in that time too, but we already saw that movie in 2014 -- in the 8 years between 2014 and 2022 what happened was that the relative gap in capabilities between Ukraine and Russia was closed, at least within the self-defeating constraints on the rules of engagement that the Kremlin imposed on itself. So Russia's strategic position deterriorated rather than improving.
Same thing now.
Russia has the technical and deployment lead on a few things, but give it a few years, and that advantage will be similarly gone.
I was chatting with Pres Putin earlier and he was complaining bitterly about the spineless turncoats that he is surrounded by. I dropped your name and he sounded real keen. Expect a call from him soon.
lol
"... exterminating all of the Ukrainian leadership..."
would not change anything. This is a US vs Russia war using Ukraine as a sacrificial proxy. Kill any Ukrainian political leader and another one pops up immediately. Kill the green gnome and you get an Azov member that is immediately propped up to "military genius" status. Kill a Ukrainian general and a previously unknown Ukrainian Lt. Col. gets an immediate promotion. And it doesn't matter because Kiev does exactly what Washington/Langley orders it to do, and the Ukrainian army receives all its orders from a US Army/CIA command center in Germany.
Ukraine is a puppet and the puppeteer is thousands of kilometers away and acting as though it just wants "to stop the killing".
Russia is not wasting any missiles. And that's good.
You are deeply mistaken, it will change a lot.
Ukrainian leadership is the middlemen between the Ukrainian cannon fodder and Western weapons. Take them out and, most importantly, make it abundantly clear that the same fate awaits anyone in their place, and the scheme will suffer a lot.
Sure, some Azov member will replace Zelensky. That Azov member gets an Iskander up his ass during the ceremony when he is sworn in, together with everyone else present. Do that persistently and there will be no Ukrainian state structures to organize resistance.
And yes, destroy the command center in Germany too. In fact, Germany should have ceased to exist two years ago. It forfeited the right to existence (granted to it by the combined force of unreasonable mercy on Stalin's part and the American army occupying the west of it) the moment it sent the tanks. Review the official conditions on which German unification was allowed.
Also, Ukraine should have been derecognized as an independent country already by the end of 2022 and an official claim made on the whole of it, accompanied by an officially state intent of de-Ukrainization as an added goal of the war. By that time it was clear to everyone with a brain that there will never be peace without that being done.
What part of "proxy war" do you not understand?
The Israelis clearly didn't listen to your advice, because they used just this tactic to turn Hezbollah into a headless chicken, running in circles. Yes, new leaders sprung up to take place of the assassinated ones, and were eliminated in turn, until Hezbollah ended up enable to take any initiative, just reflex defense and retaliation. And that against a military as inept as the IOF.
The basic idea is this: keep eliminating the leadership, and observe the replacements. If you see an incompetent rise as a replacement, leave him alone; concentrate on the capable ones. Soon you will have the enemy's leadership filled with opportunists and warm bodies.
"The enemy's leadership filled with opportunists and warm bodies" is just what there is in Ukraine now, isn't it?
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Syrsky is reasonably competent; his major mistakes are due to trusting and following instructions from his UK masters. He manages to somehow hold the long front line, in spite of the drain that the Kursk boondoggle must have been on his reserves. He is a prime target: if he is lost, his successor may be unable to prevent collapse of the front. Budanov, a total scoundrel, would also be better six feet under.
Interestingly, both Budanov and Syrsky's predecessor have been targeted by Russian missiles, but survived. It seems the Russians have since realized it is better to target the "advisors" that really run the AFU.
Hezbollah's tragic case also illustrates the use-it-or-lose-it principle.
Hezbollah supposedly had a sufficient arsenal to kill the Israeli's air force, shut the country down completely, and do a substantial decapitation of Israeli leadership on its own.
Much of that ended up destroyed by Israeli bunker buster strikes, and what remains in the depths of the Lebanese mountains there is apparently nobody to utilize as intended.
Total defeat.
Hezbullah dithered, when Israel was preoccupied with Gaza.
Israel may be evil, but they did not dither, nor were they indecisive.
"Kill the green gnome and you get an Azov member that is immediately propped up to "military genius" status."
Since nobody has killed or even seriously threatened the green gnome, how can you be so sure?
Didn't Putin give his word of honor to ex-PM Bennett not kill the green gnome?
Even if we take that as given that Putin is that foolish, is that promise not negated by Ukraine's open campaign of terrorism?
Do you offer to drop to their level?
Do you want to win?
This again?
I'd suggest that Russia's main deficiency is lack of Air Power. They don't have the means or doctrine to achieve air superiority over Ukraine. This means the kind of strategic campaign on Ukrainian rear areas, communications and supply links is not possible. Little Geran drones with 100 pound war heads will not do it. Ballistic missiles and cruise missiles numbered in the mere 100's will not do it. The Russian posture is air defense which they are very good at, but defense doesnt win the war. It's in this area that Russian budgets work against it. They do what they can with the limited resources they have to work with but it's a hard reality. Russian military spending is 120 billion/year while the west spends 1.1 trillion. The Russians may spend more efficiently, but a nearly 8x deficit is real nonetheless.
The lack of air dominance is also apparent on the line of contact. If Russia had the means to suppress air defenses on the line of contact and the aircraft and doctrine to practice true close air support, Russian advances would be more than just incremental and Ukraines ability to quickly move fire brigades at will and plug holes would be interdicted.
Is the Russian Air Force adequate in size to go toe to toe with the US? No, the USSR collapse and the oligarchization of post-Soviet Russia meant that the resources went towards buying private jets for Russian billionaires instead of fighter jets to defend the country.
Does Russia have enough ballistic missiles? No, the INF treaty ensured that it doesn't.
Is that the reason for the failure in Ukraine? No, the rules of engagement that the Kremlin continues to observe are the reason.
The US would be doing no better under these rules of engagement -- their planes would still run into the buzz saw of 1980s Soviet S-300 later supplemented with Patriots, and they don't have enough missiles either.
The difference is that the US would hit what has to be hit to win the war from the very start -- it would cut off logistics and carry out decapitation as first and topmost priority.
Putin hasn't done that. It is not for lack of military-technical means
It certainly is open to question if the US Army would be doing any better than the Russians are in the Ukraine. I wouldn't come to any conclusions with any confidence. Im also not saying that the Russians are dummy's for not focusing more on air power. I think their choices make perfect sense given the financial asymmetries.
I do think an American effort would be different. As I said, Russian Air Defense is powerful. The American way would be to first conduct a sustained SEAD campaign. The Russians don't posses that same sort of capacity.
I'm also not saying that the Russians dont have any offensive air capacity. Im only suggesting it's relatively limited and that limits their strategic and tactical options over Ukraine. In one 6 day period the IDF put 6000 500/1000/2000 pound bombs on targets in Gaza - many of them as service calls from front line assault forces calling for close air support in more or less real time.
This has nothing to do with supporting Israel or not, it's just warfare. Gaza is about the battle space size of any one of several combat zones where the Russian army active offensively in Ukraine. Assaults carried out by Russian forces in similar space that could call in real time on 6000 heavy, precision bombs placed on active targets in a 6 day period in a focused area might have different results than current Russian tactics.
Of course this presupposes a successful SEAD campaign in the battle zone which is an untested assumption. But, who was it, Lenin, who said, "sometimes quantity has a quality all of it's own".
None of this is to say disparaging things about the Russian Army. It lives and operates within the resource and financial limits it has. It's going to have to come up with it's own solutions. What they are doing now, works, but not impressively or decisively so. They are going to have to do better to WIN.
I would say that the difference is that when the US goes in like a bull in a china shop it leaves nothing but ruin and failed countries in its wake. Some of these have been reconstituted in another form after the departure of the US, but not along the lines the US went in for in the first place. Russia does not want to leave Ukraine in ruins, both because it is probably going to do the reconstruction after it is all over and because something worse could arise from the ruins -- and on its own doorstep. That is something the US has not had to deal with.
The US destroyed countries because that was the goal of the operations -- to destroy them, not to take them over.
You should have understood that point by now.
But nobody is calling for destroying Ukraine.
What we want are precision strikes on Ukrainian leadership, and nuclear strikes on Europe to stop the flow of weapons
Got this from RussianWithAttitude:
” As locked mutual points out, the activation of the treaty with the DPRK is a genuine escalation on Russia's part, probably the first serious one since the beginning of strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure (which began after the Kerch Bridge attack).
It gets a bit lost because of two factors:
1) Russia generally stepping back from the escalation spiral and letting her enemies escalate without retaliation (how many steps have been announced as 'red lines' by Russia after which Western countries will be seen as active participants in the war, and then Western countries just did it anyway with no consequences?);
2) her enemies making up such insanely exaggerated fantasy stories about everything (100,000 North Koreans overrunning the entire front line but also all of them dying, while eating dogs and getting addicted to porn, etc. You remember the headlines!) that the actual event becomes quite underwhelming by the time it is confirmed.
I also agree that it is good. All diplomatic overtures must be backed by massive kinetic force and threat of escalation. This would not necessarily be the case if Russia had reacted to Western escalations earlier and forced them to turn it down a notch (avoiding the one-sided escalation spiral that makes Russian threats look fake and hurts Russia's negotiating position), but we are where we are now -- no deal is possible at this point without putting real fear into our enemies.”
Read the last sentence again.
Accurate
its the ukrainians job 2 lynch elensky and friends.
Just as they lynched the OUN in the 1940s?
Which is why Stalin waited for them to do it and did not attack?
Maybe now, Russia will start taking this war more seriously. As I've said from the beginning, there is no easy way out, only total victory. NATO and proxy Ukraine do not fear Russia because Russia has shown itself to be too accommodating to make peace. NATO only understands that might is right. NATO is too weak for all out war right now. It would be a good time to ask North Korea for 50,000 or more well-equipped soldiers and mechanized equipment, as well as 30,000 or more Belarusian forces to enter the battle. Russia should say NATO has given it no choice, and now Ukraine will be soundly defeated. The gloves are off, no more Mr. Nice guy.
They have been serious up until now, but with too much balance on adhering to international law, what their BRICS and other allies think, and ignoring provocations meant to cause them to escalate with an exchange of nukes a real threat.
The heat from now will be turned up.
I understand what you say, Grr. Russia is trying to be reasonable with an unreasonable enemy that doesn't adhere to international law. This has emboldened NATO. Even puny Estonia is acting bold. BICS are unreliable, but I'm certain North Korea would send 50,000 well-equipped soldiers and armaments to reinforce Russia. Nuclear exchange is always a threat, but you can't let that dissuade a country fighting for its survival from doing what needs to be done- force Ukraine to surrender. Russia is fighting an enemy that only understands that might is right. There is no alternative for Russia unless it prefers to hold the line and see what happens, which, so far, has not worked.
Russia always has held the line. Restraining oneself from going full retard doesn't mean one isn't holding the line (retreating).
Yes NATO is emboldened, at least in their public statements, but Russia sees them for what they are.
NATO can not launch an effective pre emptive attack so as long as they in their kennel barking there is no immediate danger.
I agree.
Always need to watch for that stray UK cur sneaking up from the weeds.
So since you lack the intellectual capacity to grasp what's actually happening you automatically assume the Russians don't know what they are doing? Yet another armchair general with zero understanding of military strategy.
Hey, Grumps.
Tell me what you think, your highness.
>They have been serious up until now
They have been anything but serious
Troll, be off with you.
They/them entertain.
The fronts are growing more active and not cuz the Banderan army has that 4th NATO army ready to launch another failed offensive.
Russia can afford to turn the heat up several degrees AND still maintain it's international integrity.
The rest of the globe is tired of the WEF and it's armed wing.
All Russia had to do is threaten that illegal Jew state.
Huh? What? Have you ever had an original thought?
Didn't think so.
Yawn. Go defend the chicken swingers elsewhere
He isn't defending the 'chicken swingers'. He is talking about your repetitive comments. I do think we understand your position. You've made it clear often enough. Amazingly enough, other than the irritation factor -- or, the way I look at it now, comic relief -- nobody cares.
Apparently not when Russian general is still getting killed in the heart of Moscow. the FSB and MoD keep thinking they are fighting a gentlemen war while the truth is not. Cant wait to see the Ukro pulled a stunt during the May 9th Parade with one of the nuke carriers and see how Putin or his brass keep muttering about brotherly bullshit with the Ukro. Will be a nice sight to see.
Rus have their own way of doing warfare. Did general want to have protection? Kirillov didn't want protection, its in soldiers' JD that they can get killed.
With all the constant whining within our NATO, they must be doing something right warfare-wise. For 1000+ years I guess.
So just because a general does not want protection is a good enough reason for the FSB to neglect the security of the top brass of the Russian armed forces? No no brother, call it for what it is, the FSB fucked up and they need to pick up their slack or Gerasimov is next on the list.
The FSB has traditionally had a bone to grind with the military. The see them, especially the GRU, as competitors. This is not unlike the attitude of the SS towards the Wehrmacht, and especially towards the Abwehr. It was terribly destructive of the war effort then, and remains so now.
Much like how the IJN and IJA fucked up Imperial Japan war effort during WW2 because of their rivalry. They practically never worked together and never see eye to eye on almost every matter that's vital to the Jap war effort. Not that it's the bad thing, they lost the war in the end.
We've heard that on the other side too -- Curtis LeMay supposedly said that "the Soviets are the adversary, the Navy is the enemy".
But in practice that has not hampered the West much, while Russia right now is unable and/or unwilling to fight, for whatever reason.
The FSB doesn't provide physical security to the generals.
You don't know the difference between a counter-intelligence failure and a body-guard?
Dude it is impossible for a country the size of Rus to control everything at all times. What you talk about is maaaaybe possible in my country of 2 mil people and 20k km2.
This mythical "Russian war of warfare" is just cope.
Would you elaborate more. I keep coming across all sorts of peeps, especially anglosaxons who project their views on how things should be done. Peeps are different, have different worldviews, including different ways of waging war. One diff with our NATO cowards is that they fight their own wars.
Sure. Certain supporters of Russia like to tell themselves that there is a "Russian way of war" that involves extremely slow movement and gradual progress, ignoring, to name a few examples, the Brusilov Offensive, Bagration, August Storm, the Invasion of Czechoslovakia, or the defeat of Georgia in 2008.
They do this to try and excuse Russian dithering and indecision. FWIW, these commentators are themselves not Russians, as far as I can tell, and are mostly anglosaxons.
Weren't the above of different scope? Apples to oranges, anyone?
Brusilov offensive: WWI, "war to end all wars" (500k dead and wounded? Half of a Rus army at the beginning of SMO?)
Bagration: WWII - total mobilization (how many soldiers at USSR's disposal?)
August Storm: WWII, total mobilization
Czechoslovakia: less soldiers needed than for Ukraine (Warsaw Pact Armies not just Rus / Sovier?)
Georgia: Military non-entity, pinprick attack
None of these are comparable to what we have today with SMO, and keep in mind it is an SMO (Jacque Baud nicely explains why it is an SMO and not a war in his "The Russian Art of War"). Ukraine is by far the biggest, best trained NATO proxy there ever was and Rus have trashed how many iterations of their army? 4? 5? Plus how many foreign "mercs", "chefs" and "drivers"?
Quite a few people whining about Rus army getting better, bigger, outproducing combined west etc. Trump would have never tried for peace if there was a chance of a win.
It's Clausewitz/Russo. The Banderan invasion into Kursk appeared as the Russian tactic; 'reyd'. Then they overstayed their advantage and it began to look like Krinky.
Every day they had forces in Kursk was another display of Russian impotence.
Sure skippy. I doubt any of the 74,000 nazis killed in Kursk would agree
Yeah...I don't think Gerasimov was too worried about western optics while the Banderan army occupied an operationally useless position in Kursk. Everyday the Banderans spent in Kursk allowed Russia to speed up liberating the Donbas.
One thing I did correctly (for a change) predict was when the Banderan army retreated from Kursk, the RUF would follow it into Sumy to open another front for the diminished Banderan army to deal with. Of course, that was more of a common sense decision than a brilliant operational plan
Then you will see Putin speed up the end of the Banderan state and will kill tens of thousands of Banderan civilians doing it.
It's been a while since Russia has unleashed a series of hyper-sonic missile attacks. Do you suppose that's because Russia ran out of them for the umpthteen time or they are being stockpiled so morons such as yourself can enjoy watching Banderan cities (Lviv) being destroyed?
Putin doesn't consider your Banderan friends to be anything other than what they are, trash to be carried to the curb.
So, what has Russia been waiting for?
It takes quite some time to properly equip and train a brigade.
Time is on Russia's side. The more NATO materiél and Banderan men are destroyed today means fewer of each to hold the Dnieper lines tomorrow.
If the OSINT is correct, Russia has three CAA in Kherson/Zaporizhe areas and one headed to Sumy and one in Kharkov. The last two are more for threat and future exploitation than action today I believe.
Any break on the Banderan main line will force the whole line to readjust.
Russia is probably ready to start exploiting the advantage this year, unlike prior years.
I hope you prove correct, but we've seen such predictions before.
I am wrong all the time trying to predict Gerasimov. He might decide to start a diversionary offensive in the south so he can make bigger grabs in Sumy and Kharkov or do the opposite.
A Sumy grab has some psychological merit. Moves the RUF closer to Kiev.
Decide to roll up the center through Donetsk to try to split the line so the separated Banderan forces can be defeated individually. Has some operational value, but will create higher casualties.
Good diversionary offensives have to be responded to or they can turn into primary offensives.
Then there Ruskies have been adding rail into the Donbas and Zaporizhe for a couple of years for a reason.
I want to see an airborne/air assault using twelve divisions to land west of the Dnieper. That would be an awesome spectacle.
Since you lack the intellectual capacity to comprehend the answer I won't wast my time trying to explain it to you.
"... and now Ukraine will be soundly defeated."
Ukraine is already destroyed and will cease to exist within the next two generations.
Everybody recognizes that "Project Ukraine" has failed catastrophically. Russia and China are both stronger militarily and economically in 2025 than they were in 2022, whereas the US and the "Collective West" are crumbling and NATO has been exposed as a paper tiger.
“Glory Nuland-Kagan, Bandera, and the City of London.”
The war will go on until the money-bags-deciders are summoned for karma meeting.
The NATO (North Atlantic Terrorist Organization ) acts on orders from the banking cartel and fascist mega corporations. The cannibalistic banking families must be exposed. They have destroyed western civilization and brought death, suffering, and destruction to the tens of millions of human beings.
There are too many dishonorable cheneys and arbuthnots among the “deciders,” with the well organized global jewry leading the charge for the full spectrum financial-military dominance.
Yep, exactly. Let's name the Pindar ("tip of Satan's penis," i.e. top minion, who is the top Rothschild, right? There are satanic forces at work, obviously. Not "edgy" but "inversion of morality" satanic, therefore, hard to even imagine. The bloodline thing, the chosen people thing. We laugh it off while apparently for them it's deadly serious.
That's why we need to fight for principles and morality, regardless of the cost. Them's the rules; it's spiritual battle.
Well stated.
Russia's agreement with Kim is for mutual-defense. The Banderans are pretty much gone from Russian lands.
No need to take an operations page from the US State Department and escalate unnecessarily.
Don't be NATO.
Don't kid yourself. The Russian leadership will do no such thing.
I have no clue what the Russian leadership will do. I trust your opinion because I read that you lived in Ukraine and have a good understanding of the politics in the region. I'm at a distance in occupied Canada, trying to figure things out. There's a lot more history there than here.
Thank you for the kind words. I have explained my basic theory of the Russian and Ukrainian leadership elsewhere, and so far it is the only way I can make sense of what Russia is doing.
Repeat or link, please
The reality is simple: no serious nation sacrifices hard-won strategic advantages for vague promises of future cooperation. Russia has every incentive to press forward now, while the momentum and conditions favor it, rather than freeze the conflict just to allow its adversaries time to rearm, regroup, and come back stronger. Trump’s proposed ceasefire, though wrapped in diplomatic packaging, ultimately demands Russia surrender what it has bled to secure without any binding guarantees in return. History shows that true peace only follows decisive outcomes, not half-measures that reward weakness. In this kind of high-stakes game, hesitation is fatal—and Moscow knows it.
>The reality is simple: no serious nation sacrifices hard-won strategic advantages for vague promises of future cooperation
What does that make Russia then given that Russian elites voluntarily dissolved the country in the late 1980s in exchange for vague promises and subsequently continued more or less the same policy, with only slight deviations, up until 2022, and arguably even to this day?
That was then, this is now. Russia learned its hard won lesson and it's rock solid.
It is now too.
If it wasn't, the war would have been decisively won within a month of February 24 2022.
It makes them naive fools GM.
It was a hard lesson that the West can't be trusted.
The question answers itself: No serious nation.
(You can hold off awarding me my prize for answering correctly until one of those "everything is going according to the Russian plans " posters around here posts a picture of themselves unfurling the Russian flag in Lvov city center. )
Russians were then less aware of the depravity and bloodthirstiness of global jewry. Since then, not only Russians but the whole world has been learning about the maliciousness of the supremacist tribe. See Gaza, for instance
And don’t forget that the UK is still under a boot of the Friends of Israel of all stripes, and the US congress is aipac-occupied territory.
American patriot Henry Ford warned US government about the true nature of global jewry. It was too late. Look at the mortally wounded western civilization. “The International Jew” should have been an obligatory reading in all hosts countries for the supremacist whining and shameless tribe.
Henry was a NAZI symp.
Those were mostly Jew or shabbos goy ‘soviets’.
1990
Russia dodn‘t have elite
"Nothing is ever settled until it's settled right" -Rudyard Kipling
That's the bottom line. And even if Trump offers a peace deal that gives Russia everything it wants, there is a) no guarantee he or the DS will stick to it, or b) it will survive whoever takes over power in 2028. I hope the Russians finally go for one of those Big Arrow offensives the pundits have always promised us.
Due to modern battlefield conditions I don't think we will get to watch what we want to watch.
Maybe a couple hundred small(ish) attacks conducted simultaneously and not relenting until a couple of gaps are opened so a few brigades can pour through each to widen the gaps then a halt, straighten the lines, refit. Rinse and repeat.
As much as I want to watch a tank corps race ahead to relieve the three airborne divisions that captured a bridge over the Dnieper.
Agreed. The days of Blitzkrieg are over - at least until the Ukrainians are so degraded that they can't mount drone and ISR defences.
Russia is full of surprises.
I really want to see a division(s) parachute into the Banderan rear while a few CAAs give us your Blitzkrieg.
Helmer seems to think Putin will take a deal, to prepare for a bigger war down the road. Doesn't sound like a good idea to me but maybe Russia is weaker than we thought.
Or Helmer is talking out of his hat?
Perhaps it is a good idea - on the Russian terms.
As for the Vampire Squid of the City of London (Looters), they will not stop warmongering until destroyed. The supremacist lunacy of banderites led to the destruction of Ukraine. The supremacist lunacy of jews led to the destruction of western civilization.
No, Helmer is likely right. All the signs are that Putin is begging for a deal.
The problem is that this was precisely the logic of 2014. Don't solve the problem now because we are not ready, wait to prepare.
Well, who used that time better?
Worse, the 2022 fiasco and the diaster ever since was not even one of lack of capability, the key problem has been Putin keeping the military under shackles in terms of the rules of engagement.
Proper "preparation for the big war" means preemptive nuclear strikes on NATO that will clear and secure a swath of 2-3,000 kilometers around Russia so that NATO cannot do its own pre-emptive strike from point blank range. Putin, of course, won't do that, which in turn means NATO will strike first.
You got it!
Exactly!
When you are reorienting (pun intended) to the east, secure your western rear from the hostile Queer Starmer.
I believe Trump's MAGA peace and security plan is designed to bail us out of a shit position. The longer Trump keeps us active in an area we have zero national interest in, the closer he gets to owning Genocide Joe's failure.
Don't be Joe!
Why did the Russians hide the North Koreans for so long ? I wonder who else they are hiding ? Both sides are playing hide and seek and the winners get to live . We are getting curated images and video from both sides . Even Simplicius was doubtful of NK involvement so Russian OPSEC is pretty good. Getting correct information on this conflict is like trying to find the way out in a hall of mirrors. Negotiations must be challenging. Watched Lazarovs interview and that man is a legend.
If you keep your expectations reasonable, the information is also reasonable.
If you were the NK command, you'd send your best to this propaganda opportunity, and they did.
Russia has a right to use them in Kursk. Russian territory.
Russia didn’t ask, NK proposed and the idea is to get real battle experience.
I was one of the first commentators on the net to predict precisely that North Koreans were sent exactly at Kim's initiative. I was only doubtful of Kiev's propaganda clips, which likely did use Buryats or other captured ethnicities.
Article from 5 months ago:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-121624-negotiations-talk-curdles
"Secondly, the North Korean troops could have very well been sent at Kim’s request, not Russia’s. That’s because Kim—seeing the buildup of provocations and aggression against North Korea—was likely interested in getting real life combat experience for his own troops, so that they can return and seed it all back into the DPRK’s larger military structure. Given that a broader strategic deal was already in play between the two countries, Putin likely acquiesced, since it is something that had benefits for both sides. After all, if Russia was truly desperate for troops it could have called on its Union State partner Belarus."
I stand corrected on your stated use of NK troops . To me the co-incidence of South Korea trying to declare martial law would fit with the possibility of the capture of SK sheepdipped soldiers in Kursk as it was widely known that there were lots of "mercenaries" there . As SK has already supported Ukraine with weapons and ammo its not unlikely and would have the bonus of real world training for them too . The big question for me is why , when it was legal to use them that Russia didn't openly admit North Korean participation as they do now. We know that Russia is using "volunteers" (arguably mercenaries) and this obscures who is actively assisting them as NATO does for Ukraine . As you pointed out the logistics of having multiple languages being used on the battlefield can complicate tactics and strategy.
Russia didn't hide or deny the NK pressence. Russia didnt parade them. And Simplicius didn't deny them either. He primarily dismissed the Western characterization of the NKs, which publicly showed few actual NKs but often substituted Mongolians, Laotians, Philippinos, etc., or denied that Russians include people like residents of Yakutia.
The West acted like NKs was some legal and moral violation while sending combatants from a dozen countries. The pressence of NKs largely is a big "so what" unless one is attempting to assess NKs combat ability. In Ukraine their pressence doesn't matter as it was framed by the West, which was as an underhanded act and a sign of weakness. It was neirher.
It is rich for the collective west to bark about morals. The Odessa massacre in 2014 and the western support for Banderites (self-proclaimed Nazis) and Zionists (“jewish fascists” according to Mussolini) have left the western prudes of “morality” naked.
Indeed. Sadly, it appears hypocrisy is a Western value.
>publicly showed few actual NKs
They in fact showed none.
There was absolutely zero concrete evidence they were there.
A couple Russian Telegram channels praised them on one occasion for successfully taking some positions early on, but after that they kept silent too, so the assumption was that perhaps they wrote those reports ironically.
This actually gives hope -- if op-sec was successfully maintained for so long on this issue, maybe there are more serious positive surprises in store in the future.
The OpSec appears good. I cannot say there were no depictions of NK troops though. I did not review all reports nor did I investigate all the reports I did read thoroughly. Of the 20 some reports/articles I read several were regurgitated. Many were ludicrous fabrications picturing any Asian in place of NKs over span of decades - not even remotely connected to Russia, NK or events in Ukraine.
There were two reports though that could have shown actual NKs but it was difficult to verify - impossible for me given limits of time and online access. That makes saying there was no accurate reporting impossible since there are clear limits on what I could do.
There are plenty of ethnic Koreans in Ukraine and Russia. Vitaly Kim, Governor on Mykolaev Oblast is an ethnic Korean. Not hard to have photos.
It's not ethnic Koreans that were the issue, but NK combatants in Kursk. And despite their pressence many media/online content creators used a number of ethnic Asian groups that were not Korean at all and published their photos asserting that they were NKs.
Jack, you missed the point. My point was it's not hard to find real ethnic Koreans in Ukraine to make the fake "NK" photos, there was no need to borrow from a "number ethnic Asian Groups." I mean - if fake it, fake it well :-)
Remember the ghost of Pompeo - we lie, we cheat, we steal. If you need to know more or fail to understand the US motives then there's no help for you.
Western nations need to be more cautious in the hypocritical precedent they set. As it is difficult to cry terrorism on one hand and then call it resistance when the same act suits the prevailing narrative. As the saying goes "if you live in glass houses you shouldn't throw stones." As in the end you cannot cry when car bombs, official start being assassinated and other creative terror measures become common practice, it will be only war and a brown person defending his country. Justify the actions of your friends enough, then you may lose the ability to condemn the actions of your enemy.
I think the West is way past cautious, reasonable or scrupulous for a long time now.
The West is desperate. Run out of time, luck, resources and money. Or rather the banks have. Nat Rothschild the old Etonian invested $2 trillion in Kharkov and it was underwritten by the BoE. Without that collateral (the mines and minerals) it's over.
All it can hope for now is some sort of Russian own-goal, which is what GM is angling for.
What is a bigger own goal?
Exterminating your enemies or watching idly as they kill you one by one while you are afraid of "overstepping boundaries"?
You are just circling around your own hole now. Stop digging.
The banks are desperate you are saying? That would explain to a great extent the reason why Europe is behaving in the way it is. Not for a just and lasting peace for Ukraine, but for the interest of their banks. The entity that financed almost all of the wars that killed hundreds of millions.
Of course they're not for peace. They even dropped all pretense by now
The West doesn't need to be cautious, as long as they have power.
It depends on what you consider powerful and where the power is derived from. The West has a financial system akin to an inverted pyramid with a small resource, manufacturing and commodity base supporting a huge paper, debt dirivitives market. Radical extremist groups are highly motivated most just need material support. Now if a big player starts playing the western game giving material support their is so much hate globally. What would be the outcome? How exactly would western societies deal with the reality of the fears merely created by Hollywood? It is surprising how Russia is being condemned for not being as barbaric as the west just as Iran is being criticised and considered weak for not targeting civilians. The west has forgotten the suffering of their warmongering past and the US citizenry mostly have no clue about wars and destruction as everything is always perceived as being far away. The sad thing is be careful of the things you yearn and desire as you may not enjoy them as much as you may think.
The West has far more than simply financial power.
Anyway, the West need care about their past or the consequences of their actions because they are insulated from them.
What other power are you mentioning information control, perception management and narrative creation? Do you believe there will be the possibility of an Afghan or Iraqi invasion again? Well Yemen is the poorest country in the Muslim world so we may see a western ground invasion of Yemen or maybe Papua new Guinea or Paula or maybe an invasion of the St Kits and Nevis or St Lucia?
The Western world is insulated, with huge immigrant populations from all the nations they colonised or invaded. Probably you believe all these people have very short memories and all have good intentions? . How exactly does that insulation work?
The West enjoys immense soft power as well as hard power and financial power.
I don't have to like it, but pretending otherwise will not make it go away and there is a reason that the rest of the world craves American carrot and greatly fears American stick.
Well as you stated "soft power" extremely good marketing and PR? As I state perception, information management and narrative control. The ability to bungle into countries, making a mess then leave without achieving goals or objectives if they actually understood why or what they were doing in the first place. I am just relating history and a presedent set. Well their was a time, yes, but one can live on past legacy for so long.
Do they? Smell of desperation lately.
I see no evidence of such desperation.
That commentator said it best. Every minute putin spends with witkoff or wasting his time on a deal that will never happen is time that could have been spent winning the war.
The Ukrainians maintain their maximalist stance because they are not defeated. If kiev was likely to fall in the next 6 months they would be more amenable but they aren't even giving ground on crimea
And yet this thing is still called an SMO.
Yes. And so called pro-russians cant understand that calling this War a SMO is also creating ”small” thoughts that inevitably leads to small achievements.
Well said.
But there are reasons for it -- the Kremlin is mortally afraid of a repeat of the GPW. Not in terms of the casualties -- if that was an issue, we would not be where we are now -- but in terms of the momentum that would build within Russian society.
Always remember that the people in power in Russia right now are still leading the counter-revolution to 1917. Putin was installed in power with one primary mission -- make sure the communists never come back to power and the newly (re-)established order remains intact. And this is the only thing he has truly successfully fulfilled as a mission in a quarter of a century. Because the communists would have been back in power already in 1996 if the election had not been faked, and the new Russian elite had that possibility as a mortal fear after that near-death experience.
To this end the country had to be stabilized, which was also done. But not so much as an objective of its own, it was simply necessary in order for the robber baron gang that had taken power to keep that power.
Now imagine what happens if Putin comes out and says "The West is planning Operation Barbaross V.2, together with a Generalplan Ost 2.0, we need to mobilize fully in order to defend the motherland, the Nazis will be defeated, and this time properly exterminated"? The Russian people will rally behind him, but there lies the problem. You can't dissociate a GPW V.2 from the original one, and the original one cannot be dissociated from communism. It is already a substantial inconvenience for the Kremlin every year around May 9. And in order to prosecute that GPW V.2, you would need to bring a lot of elements of Stalinism back in terms of administrative and economic organization, because that is the only proven way to win such a war. Also, if we are pursuing total victory in total war, serious questions about the activities and loyalties of the elites in the previous decades will immediately come up too.
Very, very dangerous.
In fact, you saw a demo version of it in the first weeks of the SMO. You had people lined up along the streets to wish good luck to the armed convoys going towards Ukraine waving Soviet flags. Not just the victory banners, which are often confused with them, but proper Soviet flags, and they were not exactly rare compared to the current Russian flag. Not in Moscow, of course, but in the more working class cities further south, like Oryol, Lipetsk, etc. The army itself burst into Ukraine flying a lot of Soviet flags.
You don't see that any more at all. First, because the Kremlin did its best to evaporate that initial enthusiasm within the population, and second, because orders were issued to the army to stop it, or else. And it was only defiant individuals with an ideological axe to grind like general Lapin who violated it later on.
Agree with your analysis. Nothing to add other that my conclusion is that Russia better accept the US solution because they cant do this better without risking the whole society (they built on the Siloviki or better called Russian Deep State).
Russia can be sure the Ukrainians will not play along. In the end we can expect for a deal there US and Russian oligarky divide the revenues from a completely occupied Ukraine? My biggest concern is what to do with the ultra-nationalists threatening to spread terror in Russia and Europe once they feel ”betrayed”.
Ironically, it is precisely the ultra-nationalists that are so far saving Russia from the Kremlin.
It is in the Ukro-NATO-Nazi's best interest to agree to a freeze on the conflict and rearm in peace. It would be an Idlib on steroids, and we saw how that ended up.
And the Kremlin has a long history of agreeing on such shitty deals. That then blow up in their faces. Terminally, in the case of Idlib, and Ukraine itself is one of the best examples -- we are in this mess because of Minsk I/II, and then the attempt at Minsk-III in Istanbul not being followed, to this day, by the beginning of real war.
It is why Trump is pushing for a deal -- they know the Kremlin fell for that trick repeatedly in the past, and will do so again and again.
But the Ukronazi fanatics will have none of it, which is good for Russia.
P.S. How the Kremlin keeps falling for that trick is quite remarkable. Even more remarkable is how in the "alternative media" they keep slobbering over someone like Lavrov as the guru of foreign policy, when every single shitty deal he has made in the last 20 years has spectacularly failed, to the great detriment of Russia. What kind of a grandmaster are you with that track record of catastrophic failure after catastrophic failure after catastrophic failure?
And it's not as if the tactics those idiots keep falling for are anything new or sophisticated. It is how the US came into being in the first place -- fight the natives, get the situation to the limit of exhaustion for yourself, sign a treaty with the natives that claims "eternal peace" just when they are on the verge of gaining the upper hand, regather your strength, violate the treaty in an opportune for you moment, rinse and repeat all the way from Boston and Virginia to the Pacific.
Yet the judo 5D-chess grandmasters in the Kremlin can't see that it's the exact same game being played on them.
For the record, what would have been the winning strategy for the natives in America? Strict policy of total extermination of any foreign vessels landing on their shores, not allowing any footholds to be established, while investing heavily in rearmament locally to make sure they would be able to keep doing that. They had the numbers do pull it off successfully in the 17th century. But they lacked the foresight to see where it was all going and were too divided to organize themselves and act accordingly. We know the end result.
Russia's policy should be the same with respect to what is rightfully Russian. Total and immediate extermination of any Western encroachment attempts. There is no other way with these people, centuries of history have shown it beyond any doubt. But Russia too has inadequate leadership, and we see the results...
Your perspectives are worth reading! Food for thoughts. I think Lavrov is the best diplomat Russia had in modern times. Hard-ass Molotov and No-sayer Gromyko plays in the second league. But diplomats are diplomats. Not rulers. Putin has leaned on Lavrov because he likens the amenable way of him. They are the same type of persons. I dont think Putin is without hard glooves or ruthlessness when ”pressed”. He did the Crimea take-over gallantly.
But, as you say, being pushed out of Syria and screwed three times in a row about Ukraine. What does it tell about Russian 5D-chess?
Russia has no land link to Syria, only two precariously vulnerable military bases hanging onto the shore of the hostile Mediterranean. Once Assad dropped the ball, Russia was in no position to save him, even at exorbitant costs, so they did the right thing pulling out.
But it was Assad's negligence that lost him the country his father built. Had Assad not starved and ruined his own armed forces in the midst of a continuing war, Russia and Iran would have helped him.
And, AFAIK, Russia and maybe China even offered to help in refinancing and retraining that army, but he refused, thinking that it would be cheaper and cleverer if they actually defended him with their own. Or perhaps he was afraid of the obligations that would entail.
Lavrov has a different, long-term objective. He is unconcerned with the agreement-incapable West, but is trying to establish Russia as a world player in the RoW. Considering that he doesn't have the economic clout of China at his disposal, he is being amazingly effective. And successful.
What exactly has he been successful at?
All of his shitty deals have blown up in his face, and it is not as if people were not predicting that would happen at the time he made them.
The US solution happens to be BS, and both, Russia and the US, know it.
So Putin, whose family lived through Leningrad siege, is inconvenienced by V-Day parade?
Dude elevated "Immortal Regiment" to the state level, now happening all over the world, in times when, at least back home, revisionist quisling posterity started to openly gloat how all of the WWII veterans will be gone soon. And now they have global "Immortal Regiment".
>Putin, whose family lived through Leningrad siege
If Putin genuinely cared about the Leningrad siege, Finland would have been erased from the map and converted back to a Russian province the moment they announced their intention to join NATO.
That was strike #3 (strike #1 were the multiple Finnish invasions of Russia in 1919-1922, strike #2 was the Continuation War and the siege of Leningrad). This after the sole reason Finland exists today being Russia saving it from Swedish assimilation, then giving it very broad autonomy, then Lenin giving them independence in 1918. Enough, these people have forfeited the right to exist.
Instead Putin has been sitting on his hands for three years as NATO is situating strike assets in Finland in order to take out Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Leningrad, and more.
I disagree. The Russians rallied for the GPW not for the sake of communism, which they hated, but for the cause of the Motherland and, somewhat counterintuitively but ultimately correctly, for Stalin. Stalin too was afraid of the masses at first; but he was man enough to clench his teeth and run with it, also for the Motherland's sake. Does Putin have Stalin's balls? The people would welcome him into that role, but apparently not.
Russia knows the difference between a full-scale war - like on 22Jun1941, 3 million German troops invaded the USSR, vs. SMO -Russia's 100 thousand troops invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022. Most in the West do not.
Their mind can only imagine victory until the moment they leave the world of the living. Nothing to do with being defeated on short notice. It’s a mental mindset or disorder and cannot be cured.
That disorder has a name: Narcissism. It's a primary criterion for which the YGL have been selected; but even without the YGL, it's a byproduct of the typical political career selection process used by the deep state. Read: https://gaiusbaltar.substack.com/p/what-is-wrong-with-the-western-political
It's not the narcissism but the false exceptionalism the driving force.
I suspect that Putin can multi-task: engage the enemy in endless blather AND win the war on the ground. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Some people can only think one dimensionally. Trying to understand complexity is better left to the Russians.
The "Ukrainians" maintain their maximalist stance because they are not Ukrainians, but either outright Jews or renegades serving the City of London. They don't really give a rat's fart about Ukrainian lives, territory or infrastructure lost, they only care about hurting and weakening Russia, at whatever cost to the Slavic goyim.
Unfortunately, many of them are die in the woods, bite the bridle, “death to cursed Moskals,” Ukrainians. There’s always an undercurrent of hate/whatever, even in Soviet times, only occasionally rising its head. And yes, they’d burn Ukraine to ashes and walk on corpses, to be “right.”
Right at the outset western intelligence set about planting voices within Russia aimed at criticising Putin, to stir up unrest and hopefully lead to his overthrow, not by taking some pro western stance, hell no. That would have got them lynched, but by claiming that Russia was not being hard-nosed enough, that Putin was a traitor blah blah. The intention was not really to replace Putin with hardliners and nuke Berlin but to created chaos at home which the west could then exploit to bring this war it had fomented to its pro western conclusion.
You find echoes of these voices in these columns. Like the nutters in the UK led by Boris Johnson, you would think it was still 1939.
On the subject of BJ, by the way, this was the bloke who at the outset, when he was pushing for a full scale NATO war with Russia and Russia's military defeat, quoted Herodotus (sorry, Heraclitus)- 'war is the father of all things'.
But this was when he thought the west could just roll Russia over- no real people hurt, more a cartoon. War according to Herodotus (sorry, Heraclitus- thanks, Jack) is the only way to build a new world. It is ultimately how radical change is effected when it cannot be achieved peacefully, meaning today, through the democratic voice which instead is just persistently ignored if not stamped on by existing power structures. That is what happened in eastern Ukraine and which was the cause of the Russian invasion. It is happening now throughout western europe.
Russia will indeed ensure that this current war effects radical change and justifies the radical costs.
I don't want to nitpick (actually maybe I do) but that is Heraclitus not Herodotus.
Boris Johnson only gave a small piece on 9 April 2022, when he met Zelenskyy, arguably misquoting and misunderstanding the larger point.
The full bit runs something like;
"War is the Father of All, and the King of All. And some he makes Gods and some he makes men, and some men he makes free, and some men he makes slaves"
The operative term "polemos" is war/conflict, but the conflict is cosmic and human war is just a much smaller part of that.
I stand humbly corrected and I thank you for that explanation that makes my case better than I did, including getting the right ancient chap.
Talk about a Sham, the West is continually called for a "Ceasefire" but now that Putin has declared a unilateral ceasefire for the 8th, 9th and 10th May, now the West is suddenly calling it a Sham.
So again, when the West calls for a ceasefire, according to them it's legitimate, but when Putin calls for one, its suddenly, supposedly a Sham, how ironic.
If the Ukrainians can't uphold a limited period ceasefire over the 8th, 9th and 10th, they cannot uphold a longer term ceasefire, and Putin is putting them and the West to the test.
27 Million dead isn't a sham. I doubt whether they'll bother with Remembrance Sunday in a few years. The West doesn't care. Even the EU called WWII "the European Civil War".
Who said it was a Sham, I certainly didn't say so?
Mr. VVP. is trolling Trump and the West with his version of a ceasefire when it is suitable and advantageous.
He isn't trolling them, he's testing the integrity of their claims in regard to a ceasefire.
That is the point of trolling.
It's time for Russia to start retaliating for Ukrainian assassinations, and making it clear that there are consequences for terrorism...and hopefully, Putin already realizes that negotiations with the US are futile in terms of ending the war, although they may be quite useful for other reasons....
The Russians are trying to minimize the escalation. They know that the other side consist of mentally retarded leaders and their behavior is totally unpredictable.
So what has Russia been waiting for all this time?
Excellent article - thank you, Simplicius.
Poland "preparing for closing the Baltic Sea to Russia" - Poland always bites more than it can chew, sticks its nose where it doesn't belong, steals whatever was left unattended, and plays a victim when it gets caught, and punched in the mouth.
Lavrov: "Kaja Kallas and what's his name - Matt Rutte" - priceless :-)
Trump is right re.: Russia's concession to Ukraine & USA is not taking over entire Ukraine.
I'm sure that even with a Russian boot on their neck, Ukrainians won't admit defeat.
After WW2, the terror acts in the Western Ukraine continued all the way into mid-1950s.
Nobody/nothing can be fully terror-proof, it's impossible.
Poland must be denied access to the Vodka bottles, and sober up.
Poles have their own Zubrowka. I think Poles should drink more, to sober up :-)
Dobzse, Dobzse, In that case, more Zubrowka please. I will try it myself so I can relate.
Never tried but on my "to do" list :-)
Instead of Żubrówka and vodka, Pols started to drink whiskey and gin. Not good for a Slavic head. Results are visible in their self destructive behavior.
Too funny, man.
Yes, I loved "what's his name?"
Isn't he the ex prime minister of that flat country? Now he heads some military bloc somewhere.
Lavrov: "Kaja Kallas and what's his name - Matt Rutte" - priceless :-) Absolutely, it’s so funny.
Poland will run screaming to NATO "Aeticle 5! Article 5!" with NATO unable to stand idly by.
Poland knows full well what it is doing.
Article 5 doesn't mean what most people think it means.
Portugal and Spain will send "best wishes", Italy and Greece will send investigation teams to try to figure out who ordered something so stupid, Turkey will continue consolidating it's position in Syria.
Even if that were the case, the point is to present the US a fait accompli such that the US will have to respond.
I must agree with Kuleba, they aren't even close to successful peace and settlement negotiatoons, given that the US, a co-beligerant and Ukraine are not even close to accepting Zaporozhye, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk as Russian territory, or to adddressing the Root Causes of the conflict.
Until that realisation comes to the fore in the US/ West and Ukraine a peaceful settlement cannot effectively be discussed, as they are talking about night while the Russians are talking about day.
And it’s also UK being co-belligerent. Some argue that the UK pulled in the USA.
On Joe Rogan Mel Gibson described a situation where he found himself on the wrong side of LA with a flat time and potential aggressors watching. So what did he do? He acted crazy. "People are afraid of crazy people because they don't know what they are going to do." So we apply that to bull in the chine shop Trump and Putin, and Putin is sane and not scaring anybody. The Brits, the French, the Romanians and Balkans are not going to stop until they are afraid, scared that they, not the people, will be targeted. Target their money (EMP) and they are done.
I've heard of this "Acting Crazy" strategy before, probably in the context of Nixon and the Cold War Game Theory and it just doesn't work. The down side of acting crazy to get people to back off you is that you can't get any serious work done. No one is dangerously crazy on Mondays through Thursday and perfectly sane for the rest of the week and no one will make long term deals and projects with unreliable and unstable people.
Yeah - it's a simple trick; works in the ghetto if you happen to be passing through and feel nervous...
We focus on wars, genocides, and what is happening the front lines, but they are only symptoms. Let's put things in context:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8pA2TDXtew
Play at 1.5 speed and enjoy.
Thanks for the link. Title is already inviting to watch. Wish I had some more time as their is so much to watch and learn
At what point does Trump lay on his back and have a temper tantrum like a two year old? Claims it's the Zebra and Shit His Pants Joe's war and yet brags about giving Ukraine Javelins and Stingers during his first term. Wank stain.
I have completely changed 180º wrt Trump. There's something very unhealthy about someone who wants to build a beach resort on the graves of thousands of children. Sick in the head.
I can't even scratch my head over it anymore. He pisses and moans about all these people being killed in the Ukraine conflict and is oblivious to the genocide in the Middle East. Russia bombs military installations where there is 12 civilians killed in collateral damage. Trump bombs civilian infrastructure in Yemen killing hundreds. Wish I had that kind of moral on/off switch.
Sociopaths care nothing for morals, except to the extent that they can be weaponized.
Exactly. Look at the staged spectacle at the Pope’s funeral, Zelensky, still clad in his black fatigues, couldn’t even bother to wear a suit out of respect. There they sat, the two of them, center stage in that massive hall, while Macron—that wannabe Napoleon—lurked on the sidelines, watching.
The whole father-and-son routine was nauseating. Zelensky, lying through his teeth after the recent missile attack on Kiev, peddling the same old narrative about Russian missiles targeting civilians, when we all know the Russian military strictly hits military infrastructure. And what does Trump do? He swallows it whole, demanding Putin “STOP.” Just as S pointed out, Trump merely parrots the last person he spoke to.
Meanwhile, how many times has the AFU deliberately bombed civilians? Belgorod, Donetsk, even Moscow—regular, unprovoked attacks on innocent people. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Doesn't matter. It worked.
Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated. There is no eleven dimensional chess or whatever. He simply agrees with whatever the last person who talked to him said. His own advisors plan meetings and shut out rivals accordingly.
Do you have "Trump is weak, stupid and easily manipulated." programmed into a macro key sequence?
No, hut he is all three. Pretending otherwise won't make him anything other than what he is.