It may be a bit off topic, but I read tonight that the Girkin/Strelkovite scum bag shyster who calls himself Rolo/Rurik Slavskiy, a fake non-Russian patriot, is de facto shutting down his blog. It has clearly been a tremendous failure - I predicted this would happen months ago when he banned me from commenting on there.
Well, it is a very sad sad day I must say. What a shame. Z-ANON wins after all.
Sad. I honestly used to read and enjoy his blog at the beginning but I think the conflict mentally broke him. Not everyone is built to withstand the crazy ups and downs and psychological pressures of this game. And even I admit it can get intense at times like during the Prigozhin uprising when I was very on edge.
It's a common tale that I've seen before. Many people end up going "all in" on a certain gimmick, and when it doesn't pan out they're forced to cut their losses and abandon ship in order to save face. It's very common unfortunately. That's why here I try to be as un-ideological as possible so I don't get caught up in such traps and sunk cost fallacy dead ends. This conflict is a real thing with millions of lives at stake and I intend to take it seriously not turn it into some kind of cheap comic book story hour gimmick.
I find your ad hominem deplorable and tends me to think the apellations you so freely and unnecessarily bestow may have some pertinence to yourself.
Rolo's blog exposed me to the whole concept of Russia not being totally a paragon of virtue.
Yes. Naive, childish, stupid of me to even think it was. Well, the point is I didn't think. It was automatic. My revulsion at my own society expressed itself that way: I instinctively thought that which my society hates must be everything my society isn't.
I was wrong.
And now I know it. And Rolo's blog is what I have to thank for that and I do thank him for it. Whereas I fail to see how I profit at all - me or anyone else - from your 'off topic' post which for some reason Simplicius gave a 'like'.
If it is true he's gone then I'm sorry and reading Simplicius's reply here I tend to agree with the psychological aspect he's pointed at there. I suspect it was all just too much mind bending strain for him.
Early on I suspected he was stressed greatly simply for money. Those with no such concerns very soon lose any appreciation of what an enormous strain that can be, if they ever did know.
And the core of him I always took to be a vast desire for Russia to be safe and be good.
And I'll echo that.
If it is true then I'm sorry but I do expect in the future he will return when he's given himself some headroom, found a way, regained his poise. And I'll be happy to hear from him.
Last time I checked Simplicius was insulted on every post out of that blog, his body of work nastily and constantly ridiculed and despised without a shred of evidence. He is more than allowed to very politely get a few shots back, don't you think?
Time is a gentleman, and the truth of a Russian supremacy on the battlefield is progressively becoming incontestable, exactly as the various "5D shills" had been predicting since the start of the war.
But no, you prefer to follow the wheeler-dealer guru who wouldn't be able to tell the barrel of a gun from its handle, but has no moral qualms in taking the contrarian side so to milk money out of fools who pay him just to feel like they are an elite sect in possess of the truth hidden from the unwashed masses.
Then just try to disagree and you get banned at once! and also insulted with the ridiculous arrogance of someone who went to the ivy league but has the galls to ask for money on the internet in exchange for his "analysis". This treatment of his seems to leave people enraged for months afterwards, as you can see with Srbalj here.
Thanks, I have been waiting , on edge , for my next hit of Simplicius. Now I can sit back and enjoy. Only thing better would be word that one of those British Challenger tanks ( or 10 ) got taken out over night.
"Simplicius, could you please address how much support you think there is for Russia in the non-occupied oblasts, particularly the ones most people think could be likeliest to absorbed into Russia at some point in the future, and how important this could be or how linked it is to Russia's decisions to (or not to) launch a major offensive?"
Most people want to be on the side of the perceived winner. In the case of Ukraine, there are particularly bad consequences for anyone discovered or suspected to not be on the side of the Kiev regime.
In Kharkov it is very high. Way over 50% in the urban areas. Previously it was 50-50 in the rural areas because they don't care. But now a lot of them are very angry, and they say we will never live under the Ukrainians again.
It's long been said that majorities in Odessa support Russia. It's also been said that there's a majority of supporters in Nikolaev.
I don't think it would be a good idea to incorporate much if any of the rest of Ukraine into Russia.
I know at the beginning of the war, people estimated that 5% of people in the Kiev region supported Russia. The number has gone up since then due to the horrifying behavior of the Ukrainian army in looting peoples' homes and murdering people, but I still don't think it's very high.
There is some support for Russia in Sumy but not a lot. Maybe 1/3 of the population.
I know support for Russia in Chernihiv is very low. No more than 5%.
There's a fair amount of support for Russia in Dnipro, but I don't think Russia wants to annex it.
Obviously anything west of the Dniper is disastrous except for some areas in the Carpathians where there are a lot of ethnic Hungarians who are starting to really hate Ukrainians. I'm not sure how the Rusyn areas feel. The area inhabited by Poles in Ukraine is pretty small.
They can only bring new regions in if they have a solid majority in favor of joining Russia. If most want to stay in Ukraine, so be it.
Sure, but they really hate Russians there! Also I believe Ukrainian has become a lot more prominent since 2014. Not just there either - even in Kharkov!
When I lived in Kiev, it was far from a Russian hating city.
What happened was that it became clear to Ukrainians that hating Russia, hating their brothers and parents was the price of admission to The West, The Golden Billion, The Land Where Institutions Basically Work.
Of course, it's harder to change one's native language than one's political attitude.
I am from Odessa - support for Russia is very hard to gauge - the penteration of Galich ideology is strong (namely due to immigration of Рогуль from West Ukraine/Lvov). Theres been a concentrated effort to "Ukranianize" Odessa in particular and much of fhe youth is pro-Ukrainian. Odessa would be a tough nut to crack, and those of us who support Russia have been waiting for a long time and our ranks are thinning. Good thing that Russia declared Odessa as an objective - now lets hope there are some concrete actions and not just words.
I suspect that much of the youth is pro-Ukraine because that is seen as the price of admission to The Blessed West, The Good Life, lace panties and whatnot.
Russia and "Russkiy Mir" that is shit on by Ukrainian propaganda is shown as "backwards" and that Ukraine is "European" and that to be "civilized" and "live well" it is necessary to reject everything Russian. After all, "if it wasn't for the Russians we'd be living like Poland"
The irony being that Poles would be living a lot worse, if Poland were not able to export its unemployment to other EU members and Poland were also not the largest net recipient of EU structural adjustment monies.
But none of that matters. The perception is the thing, and that is how the West is perceived in Ukraine, and, for that matter in Russia, too. Try to tell a Russian that a Lada could ever be as good as a Mercedes-Benz.
When I lived in Ukraine, I used to tell Ukrainians that the United States is easily as corrupt as Ukraine, and I have bribed everyone in Ukraine from the postman all the way up to members of the Council Of Ministers, and I have never so much as offered an American cop a free donut. Just that in America, corruption is legalized and channeled to the kinds of people who can afford pricey lawyers.
Poles were always some of the biggest Communism-haters and even socialism-haters (though much less of the latter). The anti-Communism is often combined with pro-Catholicism and antisemitism. At the beginning in Eastern Europe, many working class Poles said their lives were better. But that didn't last long. Stalin famously said that trying to impose Communism on the Poles was like trying to put a saddle on a cow.
Communism was also unpopular in the Baltics, though they had the highest standard of living in the USSR (I'm sure the government really discriminated against them!) They're Nazis too just like the Ukrainians.
It was unpopular in Czechia, though more popular in Slovakia which was more rural. It's odd because I saw a Youtube video of Prague in 1968, and I swear to God, looking at all the open shops, the boats on the river and the healthy, well-dressed people, you would think it was shot in Paris!
There's still a lot of nostalgia for Yugoslavian Communism, but they were doing something a lot different there with Titoism, and they always had a quite high standard of living, including lots of consumer goods. But there were serious problems with worker self-management too, mostly because you can't leave the decision making up to the workers! They're too dumb and selfish to run the firms properly.
That goes for race too. Ukrainian nationalism sees Russians as "bloodthirsty, inferior, murderous Asiatic Huns" from the East and it often pictures them with the Asian eye-fold.
Especially in Western Ukraine, they think they are pure Whites with little to no Asiatic admixture. They also think they are Germanic Aryans, and this thinking goes all the way back to the late 1800's. Weren't they part of Austria-Hungary for a time? Anyway, any Russian admixture was seen as contamination, and they denied their Slavic ancestry and sucked up to the Nazis bigtime. Of course to the Nazis they were just Slav scum like all the rest.
This Ukrainian attitude also helps drive the White nationalism which is very common there (aside from Ukrainian nationalism). Sadly it's also fairly common in Russia, but it's a lot less popular now after Putin cracked down.
Ethnic Russian nationalism goes against the ideology of the Russian Empire. If Russians have any nationalist ideology at all, it is pro-*Russian Empire*, which was multinational, multiethnic, and multireligious. Even the Black Hundreds, while antisemites, had this open-minded philosophy.
About as far as they go in that direction was a group of armed Russian nationalists who fought in the Donbass earlier. They were asked if you had to be ethnic Russian to join, and they said, "No! We are not Nazis!" See, Russian ethnic nationalism is seen as *Nazism* because it's race-based thinking!
They said as long as you were Eastern Orthodox and spoke Russian as a native language, you could join them. You could be any ethnicity and speak any other language you wanted. Folks like that are about as far as "Russian nationalism" goes in Russia, and even there, it's more linguistic and religious (cultural) than ethnic or race-based. Furthermore, it allows anyone to assimilate.
I keep having to explain this to Russia-haters who insist that the principle of the USSR was one of Great Russian ethnic nationalism. Never mind Stalin was a Georgian and his wife was Jewish! They insist that ethnic Russians were always seen as superior in the USSR and Russia. It's BS.
Russians are mixed as Hell. Lavrov is half-Armenian. Putin appears to have a small amount of Jewish ancestry. Prigozhin was half-Jewish. Dugin is half-Ukrainian. Shoigu is half-Tuvan. Russian ethnic nationalism ain't gonna fly in a place like that.
Ukraine was free to go as free market as the Poles or any other East European country after 1991. The Russians were not stopping anyone in that sense as they don't care about your economic system.
I believe that in Kharkov also they said a lot of the younger people were pro-Ukraine. However, a lot of the middle aged folks aged 40-60 went over to pro-Russia after the fake Bucha massacre. The people said that most in Kharkov thought that Bucha was a Ukrainian false flag. That's all it took for them to go over.
Even Kharkov had gotten a lot more pro-Ukrainian though. In 2014, 100% of the city was pro-Russian. Ukraine came in and tortured 300 people to death for being pro-Russian at a notorious torture center in the city. Anyway over the next eight years the city got quite a bit more pro-Ukrainian and also a lot more people started speaking Ukrainian! I also heard though that the Kharkov rural areas were 50-50 split on who to support. This is because they have typically been apolitical farmers who simply never cared who was ruling them. So that would bring down the pro-Russian support in Kharkov Oblast by some.
However, after the mass murders of 2,000 people, including 93 schoolteachers, in Izyum, the Ukrainians threatening to murder everyone in the city, and after shooting a woman in the head for trying to pay for food with rubles, along with the televised murders of schoolteachers in Kupyansk and a couple of massacres of some town dwellers fleeing towns when the Russians moved out, the rural areas are a lot more pro-Russian now.
I saw a video of a Ukrainian unit in Kharkov Oblast near the border and the soldiers were saying a lot of the locals were pro-Russian and were suspected of giving away Ukrainian positions to the Russians. I read interviews with people who took off from rural Kharkov saying, "We will never live under these Ukrainians ever again." And quite a few of the rural Kharkov men said they were joining volunteer units to fight alongside the Russians.
Incredible analysis. I totally agree with your timeline by the way. This will be over no time soon. For your stated reasons, and one more. Biden and the EU scum created this fiasco. Russia is going to let them stew in it for a while. Even if Russia could do an expensive and bloody major offensive and win it in one stroke? Why? They thought they would bleed Russia. Well, what if Russia bleeds them? And keeps this running herpes sore of a fiasco in the news thru the 2024 election cycle? And ala Spanish Civil War, Russia is learning every new Western WunderWaffen that the loons send in at rather minimal expense. And every day gets eventual elections by the European sheep closer.
I disagree on one point. Biden will not step down before the end of his term. And there is a damn good chance that they run/win/prop that zombie up for another 4 years. Do NOT underestimate the ignorance of the American electorate.
I don't think many Americans are deliberately ignorant, but with 100% Corporate Control of Media and the Internet, there are few sources of information to wet your curiosity.
However, poll after poll says Americans believe their Media as much as they believe their lying Politicians.
Hey, McCarthy just did the same bait-and-switch Zelensky did to get into the Big Highchair.
You stated "100% Corporate Control of Media and the Internet".
If that was true there would be no independent sites such as this substack. Corporations control main stream media websites but in no way control the internet.
If the alt media comprises 2-5% of the total viewership how does that make a difference in the general programming of the populations minds? It just provides a scape goat for the corp/govt/media complex to accuse of a "conspiracy". They want to keep a small fringe alt media alive to provide their social proof for the midwits.
No, they merely control the part of net media that gets shoved in everyone's faces the hardest and most frequently, while burying dissenting opinions 10 pages deep on Google searches...
Biden only needs to win the primary. After the Democratic convention, if he steps down, say for health reasons, then the DNC can choose whoever they want.
Having him in the primary prevents debates and the possibility or antiestablishment ideas gaining traction. If he drops out before the primary than an RFK Jr. or a Bernie Sanders type might actually damage some narratives.
I think effective conscript soldiers have to be rather young as they are more likely not to question commands. Older conscripts, who have developed critical thinking skills are less likely to follow a command that is an obvious suicide and might either surrender. or frag a ruthless superior. I think we are seeing some of that now on the Ukraine side.
There was also the allegations that the success of the Soviet troops was in part because the NKVD close behind, would shoot them, if they faltered, or that even being captured, would mean your death upon return to the Soviet union.
The old Soviet union treated the Ukrainians terribly, hence their willing embrace of the Nazi's.
There is a video showing the testimony of a Ukrainian woman, who viewed the advancing German army as their guardian angels, because they were rescued from trains leading to the Soviet Gulags.
This isn't so. 4X as many Ukrainians fought for the USSR as fought for the rebels.
It's dubious how many, if any, Soviet troops who were POW's were executed upon their return. They could have been treated better though. Regrettably, Stalin considered them traitors for surrendering and a lot of them got shipped out to Siberia.
The Red Army did a Hell of a lot of retreating during that war. Obviously the enforcer troops could not have been shooting all of the retreaters. I'm wondering to what extent these blocking battalions even existed.
The Soviets did have very cruel punishment battalions though for soldiers who broke serious rules. They went to the edge of the front and were used in storming attacks, along with a lot of convicts who were released from jails and prisons. The casualty rate in those battalions was very high.
It was just a very cruel front over there on both sides.
An objective assessment would be that Western Ukraine/Galicia had an affinity to Hitler, which didn't elevate them from the UnterMensch German Nazis kept them.
Better than the Gulags? Ukrainians were damned either way.
Same place as the Poles in the 1930's and where they are stuck, in their own minds, today.
I have however, seen filmed and read written testimonies of Ukrainians, Gulag survivors AND soviet soldiers, that show the evil of Bolshevism was spreading.
Stalin was a monster, while the soviet troops are on record as having raped and tortured millions on their march to Berlin.
Also remember that upon the fall of the Soviet union, their own records showed that their body count for the Nazi death camps had been massively overinflated and many of their historical photographs were manipulated.
That is not to say that mass atrocities didn't happen, but that the reports were likely adjusted to suit our version of events.
Ukraine may not have been part of the Soviet union, but the Bolsheviks still starved millions of Ukrainians to death in the Holodomor and just plain murdered others, or shipped them off to Gulags.
Everything should be open to being questioned, but our taught history of WW2 has a great many gaps and omissions of inconvenient facts.
Why do you think that socialism/communism is evil?
Gulags were a network of prison camps not different from similar complexes in other countries. Basically a prison in the open.
The number of prisoners is greatly exaggerated and not confirmed by any reliable source. You can also do the research yourself and see that numbers shown in MSM do not add up.
Ukraine wasn't the part of USSR? What are you talking about? It has been a part of Russian Empire and then Soviet Union for centuries.
The so called Holodomor wasn't an artificial event. The same thing happened in other regions of USSR and also in other countries of the world.
I suggest to educate yourself a bit better to know at least basic facts and history.
The "Ukraine wasn't part of the USSR" was a statement made by the previous commenter who I was replying to.
The Holodomor was a crisis event, turned into an artificially created holocaust, by Bolshevik policies along the lines of "The great leap forward.
Just because the worlds media lied about it "Duranty" and shut down the ones who exposed the truth "Muggeridge - genocidal famine", doesn't make it the truth.
The famine happened quite often in the past. It was very difficult and dangerous geopolitical situation in USSR at this time period. New war was looming on the horizon and country was plundered and in disarray after civil war. In order to industrialize the country in short period of time difficult decisions had to be made (collectivization, purchase of machines and specialists for gold, etc.), but it does not mean that happened famine was artificially engineered. More so it was quickly and effectively dealt with. More so because of the government's long term policy (creation of strong agro-industrial complex) no famine happened ever after, including post WW2.
How do you define a “Ukrainian”? You seem to be using a definition that’s part modern borders definition and part one that Ukrainian nationalists use. There are historical records for the famine, most of the deaths within modern ukraine’s borders occurred in the east (that is “Russian” Ukraine). The USSR’s policies had no effect on the Galatians who were ruled by Poland.
My grandfather nearly lost both feet to frostbite marching alongside Patton’s tanks. His hatred for Patton and the US army was deep and bitter. Does that make the US army in WWII a force of evil?
History is written by the victor, but it's not usually the truth and not one country comes out looking good.
Patton held the Germans in high esteem compared to the Soviets and claimed that "we defeated the wrong enemy".
Eisenhower starved over 1 million Germans to death after the war, so in that regard, the US also qualified for a place at the Nuremburg trial.
Britain and America were equally guilty of terrible war crimes with their terror bombings, while France let their African troops rape German women with impunity.
Churchill was complicit in the starvation of 4 million Bengalis and is recorded as being happy to use chemical weapons.
Poland murdered 50,000 plus Germans at Danzig, while the Soviet NKVD, murdered 22,000 Polish officers at Katyn.
Whilst there were many citizens of the USSR who collaborated with the Germans - maybe some 2 million willingly or otherwise - some 34 million served in the armed forces very many millions of whom were Ukrainian - whether you look at the 39 or 41 borders. The majority were conscripted but fought out of a genuine sense of patriotic anger at what the Germans were doing to the Rodina and its people. There was of course a communist influence but really the Red Army and its civilian rear achived victory because the alternative was extinction. The hatred of the Nazis and desire for revenge was visceral and very real.
Perhaps we need to examine the concept of trust rather than people or entities involved. It is a question of the intention(s) involved. So called 'trust' in the legacy media is at an all-time low, and that is a good thing. We have come to know that, with a few exceptions, at least here in the West, any valid discussion or interchange has moved away from the MSM, who have shown themselves to be 'trusted' to reproduce lies basically, and has moved to other platforms, such as podcasts, Substack and others.
Trust in elections has been shown to have been, at the very least, misplaced, for example for the White House, where widespread manipulation and fudging was employed.
Trust in the administration of justice, where a candidate, however disreputable, is openly hounded, shows that such trust would be misplaced.
But we are better off this way, not placing trust in such 'institutions', and looking for answers elsewhere.
As a veteran I deeply disagree with #1. Experience, leadership, discipline, bearing and esprit de corps are immeasurably important and take time, drill, intention and motivation to develop
If I can offer some numbers related to the question no. 1 ... .
When forming new units, a mixture of experienced/inexperienced is always desired. Manuals say that the ideal ratio should be 50/50 and if this is not possible, 30-40/50 is considered acceptable.
The now famous article, from the Kiev Independent, describing the situation of the 32nd Bde. , talks about 5 weeks of training for the soldiers. Many people would consider this to be not enough, but during war time, a period of training of 4-6 weeks is acceptable. Nobody expects you to become the next Rambo in this period or the next Napoleon, but this time is enough for you to learn the basics. Plus, at the lower level, you need to execute, not think. By lower level I mean everything lower than Brigade/Regiment. Thinking too much will often get you into trouble. The system is designed in such a way that everyone knows only his part and that is enough. Example: Company commander does not need to know where, how and when the Brigade plans to introduce it's Anti-Tank reserves. If it affects him, he will be told, if not, no.
This is one aspect when forming new units, the other, which I consider more important, is the training as a unit and the training of the Staff of that large unit. Again, manuals say, that a Brigade Staff needs a t least, 2-3 months of training and exercises, both on the map only and in the field (at least 1 or 2 every week), before you can start functioning as a unit. The higher you go, the longer it takes. Army Corps, 5-6 months recommended, minimum 4 months. And I think this is where Ukraine has problems. Brigade sized field exercises can't be done in the country, only on the map and I never heard of these types of exercises being done in Europe also.
This is right. You can plug in say replacement infantry privates with relatively short training (12 weeks) but you have to put them in a functioning and expert structure. If everyone is green then you see the sort of disasters sufferred by some UAF units.
The Kremlin is still looking for a deal with the West, and declaring total war will foreclose on that possibility.
Which will make a lot of Putin's oligarch cronies very unhappy. It would mean no more hobnobbing with the western elites in Courchevel, and who could possibly bare such suffering?
Hi Simplicious, just on Q10, this might interest you.
I've noticed on previous occasions you have downplayed the "Bioweapon Labs" angle, not quite to "Russian disinfo" levels, but certainly not to see it as an important aspet of the SMO.
The evidence we have clearly points to the "rebels" posing bodies of people killed using nerve agents, and presenting the story, with help from western propaganda outlets, as a chlorine gas attack. Check out this video where he goes through the evidence with a true expert, and also adds in the theory that the bodies were from minorities that were ethnically cleansed by the "rebels" by means of gas chambers, which we also know for sure now that such things did occur in rebel terrorist controlled areas. https://youtu.be/twXlc4mUtuY?si=aKe_t4-OBT8hqGgP
Some of those people were gassed to death in a room, probably with carbon monoxide. There are photos of the room they used for that. Yes the people they killed were Christians and Alawi who had been kidnapped from some villages up in the north around Aleppo a year before. This was the first attack in Damascus I refer to. All of those bodies wrapped in white were mostly those hostages and they were for the most part killed with carbon monoxide. However, a number of them also had their throats slit. To make things even more confusing, the rebels even released a bit of sarin gas in the area, but they only people they hit with it were their own rebels. However, when these rebels were examined, the sarin levels were at such a low level that it wouldn't do anything. Also the sarin was not Assad's sarin - his had a particular signature to it. Instead it was "bathtub sarin" cooked up by Al Qaeda, probably in Turkey.
Same thing with the one up north. The rebels were holding more of these hostages in a rocky area with caves carved out of it. It also served as a rebel field hospital. Those people also appeared to have been killed by carbon monoxide. Neither group of victims showed any symptoms of sarin or nerve agent poisoning. In that case too, they released a bit more of their bathtub sarin at the site of the fake "chemical weapons attack."
They did this crap over and over, lots of times. Later they claimed chlorine attacks and they often showed babies as victims but those babies didn't have chlorine poisoning symptoms. Instead they had symptoms of being shot up with an opiate like morphine.
I c/ped it to see what it would copy, and it made a fine hieroglyph, but the search turned up nothing. :/ I too could see there were apparently letters, but couldn't make sense of any of it.
We're all gonna be shocked when he turns out to be Hunter Biden "fighting The System from the inside"! ;) :'D
Russia doesn't use conscripts though. By law, conscripts are not allowed to serve outside of the country. All of the "conscripts" were actually Army reserves who had already done two years of training. Furthermore, the mobilization favored those with more experience and those who had actual combat experience. I'm told that the actual Russian "conscripts" had an average of 4-6 years experience.
You can find out about payments to demobilized disabled people here http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/bank/34221 . Upon dismissal due to injury, a military man receives a one-time cash payment that starts at 1,000,000 rubles, and then receives a lifetime pension.
Perversely, one of the Biggest Assets on Russia's side is the West's Banking System/Financialization Illusion game.
Let's say you bought a $1 million U.S. Government or Corporate Bond 2 or 3 years ago, paying, say 2-3%. This yields $20,000 to 30,000 in interest. BUT you can get 5-6% interest on the same (type) of debt instrument today, meaning $500,000 will earn you the same $20-30,000. So, at the money trading/bond table, you have taken losses of 30-50% on the value of what you paid for the bond only a few years ago. Thes facts are hidden; disclosed solely in the fine print on page 666 of Western Financial institutions. Trillions of unrecognized, undisclosed losses.
Media is TOTALLY SILENT on the fact that Bond losses, Public and Private, are now approaching the $5 Trillion plus range in Western Countries and rising. Central Banks haven't seriously started retracting the Trillions of counterfeited money during Covid, while the U.S. is so hooked on the Meth of Debt, that Interest, alone, now exceeds the U.S. Defense Budget.
U.S. public Debt, new and revolving, along with Private Sector Bonds, requires selling $5 to $10 Trillion of Promises to Pay, for instant cash, to someone over the next 2 years.
Ukraine is going to be told to get a Luger and 1 bullet and hand it to Zelenski.
Exactly, and in mid Feb this year John Titus went through FRED data, and F.D.I.C. Quarterly Banking Profile (3Q2022) which showed the parlous state of US banking in later 2022, and not within a few weeks a banking crisis. It's amazing how smoke and mirrors keep the western financial s***show going. And in spite of Yellen China doesn't want anymore US debt. It sure is hard to place a bet as to which nag will drop first - the USD or Ukraine.
The economic and monetary history of the British Empire during WWI is most instructive in showing just how far TPTB will go in order to keep their imperial projects from collapsing.
It all happens at the Margins, until there is no Margin left.
Printing/Counterfeiting Money causes Inflation, now on the increase again, so the Fed is boxed in. Either print cash to buy Biden's Bogus Bonds, or let the Market decide, which means low Bond prices/higher interest rates.
"Debt doesn't matter." and "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." Same author.
Find all Western Government and Corporate Bonds issued at coupon rates below today's interest rates and they all have losses based on initial price paid.
The greater the interest difference and the longer the term, the bigger the loss.
After the crash of 2009, the U.S. Government allowed bond holders to hold the bonds to maturity, and to disclose in the "notes" the difference between current market value and original purchase price.
These bonds are impaired collateral and are not liquid without taking the actual loss when/if you are forced to sell. Therein is the Achilles Heel Western Governments are trying to hide.
You're answer to #10 brings up an interesting blindspot.
The US is trying to coerce the Russian people to turn on the motherland and sell out to foreign interests by making them suffer through sanctions, SWIFT, international cancelling and shaming, etc. It's like the state department has never even heard of Russian history, much less studied it. Bizarre.
You probably already know this, but your readers might not. The most hated Soviet isn't Stalin, it's Gorbachev. The Russian people dislike Gorbachev more than Stalin because he imploded the country and put Yeltsin in a position to sell it off to the west. (Yeltsin isn't on the list because he wasn't important until after the Soviet Union collapsed) And even though Stalin is the 2nd most hated Soviet, he is also the 2nd most loved because he repelled the nazis. Yuri Gagarin is most loved, of course.
Stalin is "second most hated"? What? As someone from Eastern Europe, Stalin is one of Russian people's favorite leaders - as he is credited with having broken the back of the Nazis as well as made the USSR into a global industrial and military and scientific power. Much of current Russian developments are credited by Russian people directly to Stalin's legacy.
Read the article. According to the survey Stalin is both the 2nd most loved and 2nd most hate person from the soviet era. Loved for defeating the Germans and protecting the motherland and hated for the purges and gulags.
It may be a bit off topic, but I read tonight that the Girkin/Strelkovite scum bag shyster who calls himself Rolo/Rurik Slavskiy, a fake non-Russian patriot, is de facto shutting down his blog. It has clearly been a tremendous failure - I predicted this would happen months ago when he banned me from commenting on there.
Well, it is a very sad sad day I must say. What a shame. Z-ANON wins after all.
Sad. I honestly used to read and enjoy his blog at the beginning but I think the conflict mentally broke him. Not everyone is built to withstand the crazy ups and downs and psychological pressures of this game. And even I admit it can get intense at times like during the Prigozhin uprising when I was very on edge.
It's a common tale that I've seen before. Many people end up going "all in" on a certain gimmick, and when it doesn't pan out they're forced to cut their losses and abandon ship in order to save face. It's very common unfortunately. That's why here I try to be as un-ideological as possible so I don't get caught up in such traps and sunk cost fallacy dead ends. This conflict is a real thing with millions of lives at stake and I intend to take it seriously not turn it into some kind of cheap comic book story hour gimmick.
I find your ad hominem deplorable and tends me to think the apellations you so freely and unnecessarily bestow may have some pertinence to yourself.
Rolo's blog exposed me to the whole concept of Russia not being totally a paragon of virtue.
Yes. Naive, childish, stupid of me to even think it was. Well, the point is I didn't think. It was automatic. My revulsion at my own society expressed itself that way: I instinctively thought that which my society hates must be everything my society isn't.
I was wrong.
And now I know it. And Rolo's blog is what I have to thank for that and I do thank him for it. Whereas I fail to see how I profit at all - me or anyone else - from your 'off topic' post which for some reason Simplicius gave a 'like'.
If it is true he's gone then I'm sorry and reading Simplicius's reply here I tend to agree with the psychological aspect he's pointed at there. I suspect it was all just too much mind bending strain for him.
Early on I suspected he was stressed greatly simply for money. Those with no such concerns very soon lose any appreciation of what an enormous strain that can be, if they ever did know.
And the core of him I always took to be a vast desire for Russia to be safe and be good.
And I'll echo that.
If it is true then I'm sorry but I do expect in the future he will return when he's given himself some headroom, found a way, regained his poise. And I'll be happy to hear from him.
Woh Woah! hold on friend!
Last time I checked Simplicius was insulted on every post out of that blog, his body of work nastily and constantly ridiculed and despised without a shred of evidence. He is more than allowed to very politely get a few shots back, don't you think?
Time is a gentleman, and the truth of a Russian supremacy on the battlefield is progressively becoming incontestable, exactly as the various "5D shills" had been predicting since the start of the war.
But no, you prefer to follow the wheeler-dealer guru who wouldn't be able to tell the barrel of a gun from its handle, but has no moral qualms in taking the contrarian side so to milk money out of fools who pay him just to feel like they are an elite sect in possess of the truth hidden from the unwashed masses.
Then just try to disagree and you get banned at once! and also insulted with the ridiculous arrogance of someone who went to the ivy league but has the galls to ask for money on the internet in exchange for his "analysis". This treatment of his seems to leave people enraged for months afterwards, as you can see with Srbalj here.
Thanks, I have been waiting , on edge , for my next hit of Simplicius. Now I can sit back and enjoy. Only thing better would be word that one of those British Challenger tanks ( or 10 ) got taken out over night.
Let's be honest. Britain never, ever built a survivable tank.
still wanna see em burn baby!!! You bring the vids, I'll bring the tissue box !!!!!
"Simplicius, could you please address how much support you think there is for Russia in the non-occupied oblasts, particularly the ones most people think could be likeliest to absorbed into Russia at some point in the future, and how important this could be or how linked it is to Russia's decisions to (or not to) launch a major offensive?"
Most people want to be on the side of the perceived winner. In the case of Ukraine, there are particularly bad consequences for anyone discovered or suspected to not be on the side of the Kiev regime.
In Kharkov it is very high. Way over 50% in the urban areas. Previously it was 50-50 in the rural areas because they don't care. But now a lot of them are very angry, and they say we will never live under the Ukrainians again.
It's long been said that majorities in Odessa support Russia. It's also been said that there's a majority of supporters in Nikolaev.
I don't think it would be a good idea to incorporate much if any of the rest of Ukraine into Russia.
I know at the beginning of the war, people estimated that 5% of people in the Kiev region supported Russia. The number has gone up since then due to the horrifying behavior of the Ukrainian army in looting peoples' homes and murdering people, but I still don't think it's very high.
There is some support for Russia in Sumy but not a lot. Maybe 1/3 of the population.
I know support for Russia in Chernihiv is very low. No more than 5%.
There's a fair amount of support for Russia in Dnipro, but I don't think Russia wants to annex it.
Obviously anything west of the Dniper is disastrous except for some areas in the Carpathians where there are a lot of ethnic Hungarians who are starting to really hate Ukrainians. I'm not sure how the Rusyn areas feel. The area inhabited by Poles in Ukraine is pretty small.
They can only bring new regions in if they have a solid majority in favor of joining Russia. If most want to stay in Ukraine, so be it.
Kiev is a Russian speaking city, to this day.
Sure, but they really hate Russians there! Also I believe Ukrainian has become a lot more prominent since 2014. Not just there either - even in Kharkov!
When I lived in Kiev, it was far from a Russian hating city.
What happened was that it became clear to Ukrainians that hating Russia, hating their brothers and parents was the price of admission to The West, The Golden Billion, The Land Where Institutions Basically Work.
Of course, it's harder to change one's native language than one's political attitude.
When did you live there?
2004-2012, but first traveled there in 1994.
Is it Lavrov who talks about the Golden Billion?
They say Ukraine's gotten a lot more Ukrainian-speaking in the last nine years.
I suppose this means though that the Russian speakers don't think aligning with the West is all that.
I am from Odessa - support for Russia is very hard to gauge - the penteration of Galich ideology is strong (namely due to immigration of Рогуль from West Ukraine/Lvov). Theres been a concentrated effort to "Ukranianize" Odessa in particular and much of fhe youth is pro-Ukrainian. Odessa would be a tough nut to crack, and those of us who support Russia have been waiting for a long time and our ranks are thinning. Good thing that Russia declared Odessa as an objective - now lets hope there are some concrete actions and not just words.
I suspect that much of the youth is pro-Ukraine because that is seen as the price of admission to The Blessed West, The Good Life, lace panties and whatnot.
Russia and "Russkiy Mir" that is shit on by Ukrainian propaganda is shown as "backwards" and that Ukraine is "European" and that to be "civilized" and "live well" it is necessary to reject everything Russian. After all, "if it wasn't for the Russians we'd be living like Poland"
The irony being that Poles would be living a lot worse, if Poland were not able to export its unemployment to other EU members and Poland were also not the largest net recipient of EU structural adjustment monies.
But none of that matters. The perception is the thing, and that is how the West is perceived in Ukraine, and, for that matter in Russia, too. Try to tell a Russian that a Lada could ever be as good as a Mercedes-Benz.
When I lived in Ukraine, I used to tell Ukrainians that the United States is easily as corrupt as Ukraine, and I have bribed everyone in Ukraine from the postman all the way up to members of the Council Of Ministers, and I have never so much as offered an American cop a free donut. Just that in America, corruption is legalized and channeled to the kinds of people who can afford pricey lawyers.
https://indica.medium.com/how-the-us-legalized-corruption-c478b5ad0655
Needless to say, they didn't listen.
Poles were always some of the biggest Communism-haters and even socialism-haters (though much less of the latter). The anti-Communism is often combined with pro-Catholicism and antisemitism. At the beginning in Eastern Europe, many working class Poles said their lives were better. But that didn't last long. Stalin famously said that trying to impose Communism on the Poles was like trying to put a saddle on a cow.
Communism was also unpopular in the Baltics, though they had the highest standard of living in the USSR (I'm sure the government really discriminated against them!) They're Nazis too just like the Ukrainians.
It was unpopular in Czechia, though more popular in Slovakia which was more rural. It's odd because I saw a Youtube video of Prague in 1968, and I swear to God, looking at all the open shops, the boats on the river and the healthy, well-dressed people, you would think it was shot in Paris!
There's still a lot of nostalgia for Yugoslavian Communism, but they were doing something a lot different there with Titoism, and they always had a quite high standard of living, including lots of consumer goods. But there were serious problems with worker self-management too, mostly because you can't leave the decision making up to the workers! They're too dumb and selfish to run the firms properly.
That goes for race too. Ukrainian nationalism sees Russians as "bloodthirsty, inferior, murderous Asiatic Huns" from the East and it often pictures them with the Asian eye-fold.
Especially in Western Ukraine, they think they are pure Whites with little to no Asiatic admixture. They also think they are Germanic Aryans, and this thinking goes all the way back to the late 1800's. Weren't they part of Austria-Hungary for a time? Anyway, any Russian admixture was seen as contamination, and they denied their Slavic ancestry and sucked up to the Nazis bigtime. Of course to the Nazis they were just Slav scum like all the rest.
This Ukrainian attitude also helps drive the White nationalism which is very common there (aside from Ukrainian nationalism). Sadly it's also fairly common in Russia, but it's a lot less popular now after Putin cracked down.
Ethnic Russian nationalism goes against the ideology of the Russian Empire. If Russians have any nationalist ideology at all, it is pro-*Russian Empire*, which was multinational, multiethnic, and multireligious. Even the Black Hundreds, while antisemites, had this open-minded philosophy.
About as far as they go in that direction was a group of armed Russian nationalists who fought in the Donbass earlier. They were asked if you had to be ethnic Russian to join, and they said, "No! We are not Nazis!" See, Russian ethnic nationalism is seen as *Nazism* because it's race-based thinking!
They said as long as you were Eastern Orthodox and spoke Russian as a native language, you could join them. You could be any ethnicity and speak any other language you wanted. Folks like that are about as far as "Russian nationalism" goes in Russia, and even there, it's more linguistic and religious (cultural) than ethnic or race-based. Furthermore, it allows anyone to assimilate.
I keep having to explain this to Russia-haters who insist that the principle of the USSR was one of Great Russian ethnic nationalism. Never mind Stalin was a Georgian and his wife was Jewish! They insist that ethnic Russians were always seen as superior in the USSR and Russia. It's BS.
Russians are mixed as Hell. Lavrov is half-Armenian. Putin appears to have a small amount of Jewish ancestry. Prigozhin was half-Jewish. Dugin is half-Ukrainian. Shoigu is half-Tuvan. Russian ethnic nationalism ain't gonna fly in a place like that.
Ukraine was free to go as free market as the Poles or any other East European country after 1991. The Russians were not stopping anyone in that sense as they don't care about your economic system.
I believe that in Kharkov also they said a lot of the younger people were pro-Ukraine. However, a lot of the middle aged folks aged 40-60 went over to pro-Russia after the fake Bucha massacre. The people said that most in Kharkov thought that Bucha was a Ukrainian false flag. That's all it took for them to go over.
Even Kharkov had gotten a lot more pro-Ukrainian though. In 2014, 100% of the city was pro-Russian. Ukraine came in and tortured 300 people to death for being pro-Russian at a notorious torture center in the city. Anyway over the next eight years the city got quite a bit more pro-Ukrainian and also a lot more people started speaking Ukrainian! I also heard though that the Kharkov rural areas were 50-50 split on who to support. This is because they have typically been apolitical farmers who simply never cared who was ruling them. So that would bring down the pro-Russian support in Kharkov Oblast by some.
However, after the mass murders of 2,000 people, including 93 schoolteachers, in Izyum, the Ukrainians threatening to murder everyone in the city, and after shooting a woman in the head for trying to pay for food with rubles, along with the televised murders of schoolteachers in Kupyansk and a couple of massacres of some town dwellers fleeing towns when the Russians moved out, the rural areas are a lot more pro-Russian now.
I saw a video of a Ukrainian unit in Kharkov Oblast near the border and the soldiers were saying a lot of the locals were pro-Russian and were suspected of giving away Ukrainian positions to the Russians. I read interviews with people who took off from rural Kharkov saying, "We will never live under these Ukrainians ever again." And quite a few of the rural Kharkov men said they were joining volunteer units to fight alongside the Russians.
https://t.me/s/kharkov_narodnuy
I got a lot of that from this Telegram site: Kharkov People. You can run it through the translator.
Incredible analysis. I totally agree with your timeline by the way. This will be over no time soon. For your stated reasons, and one more. Biden and the EU scum created this fiasco. Russia is going to let them stew in it for a while. Even if Russia could do an expensive and bloody major offensive and win it in one stroke? Why? They thought they would bleed Russia. Well, what if Russia bleeds them? And keeps this running herpes sore of a fiasco in the news thru the 2024 election cycle? And ala Spanish Civil War, Russia is learning every new Western WunderWaffen that the loons send in at rather minimal expense. And every day gets eventual elections by the European sheep closer.
I disagree on one point. Biden will not step down before the end of his term. And there is a damn good chance that they run/win/prop that zombie up for another 4 years. Do NOT underestimate the ignorance of the American electorate.
Or the complicity of democrats in treasonous election theft.
There's not a chance in hell that the paedophile in chief actually got 81 million votes.
I don't think many Americans are deliberately ignorant, but with 100% Corporate Control of Media and the Internet, there are few sources of information to wet your curiosity.
However, poll after poll says Americans believe their Media as much as they believe their lying Politicians.
Hey, McCarthy just did the same bait-and-switch Zelensky did to get into the Big Highchair.
The Corp media does not control the internet.
Hmm....Google, Facebook and a handful of others control the net. Government are their partners.
You stated "100% Corporate Control of Media and the Internet".
If that was true there would be no independent sites such as this substack. Corporations control main stream media websites but in no way control the internet.
Prove me wrong.
Independent sites are tricky to keep on side of Google/Facefart/Government Sensors.
Ask Parler how fast an independent voice can be crushed.
Why be pedantic?
If the alt media comprises 2-5% of the total viewership how does that make a difference in the general programming of the populations minds? It just provides a scape goat for the corp/govt/media complex to accuse of a "conspiracy". They want to keep a small fringe alt media alive to provide their social proof for the midwits.
Who says it's only 2-5%?
And pedantic? It was incorrectly stated MSM controls ALL of the internet. All means 100%.
Definitions matter, or do we all just redefine words?
@grr
No, they merely control the part of net media that gets shoved in everyone's faces the hardest and most frequently, while burying dissenting opinions 10 pages deep on Google searches...
Biden only needs to win the primary. After the Democratic convention, if he steps down, say for health reasons, then the DNC can choose whoever they want.
Having him in the primary prevents debates and the possibility or antiestablishment ideas gaining traction. If he drops out before the primary than an RFK Jr. or a Bernie Sanders type might actually damage some narratives.
I think effective conscript soldiers have to be rather young as they are more likely not to question commands. Older conscripts, who have developed critical thinking skills are less likely to follow a command that is an obvious suicide and might either surrender. or frag a ruthless superior. I think we are seeing some of that now on the Ukraine side.
There was also the allegations that the success of the Soviet troops was in part because the NKVD close behind, would shoot them, if they faltered, or that even being captured, would mean your death upon return to the Soviet union.
The old Soviet union treated the Ukrainians terribly, hence their willing embrace of the Nazi's.
There is a video showing the testimony of a Ukrainian woman, who viewed the advancing German army as their guardian angels, because they were rescued from trains leading to the Soviet Gulags.
This isn't so. 4X as many Ukrainians fought for the USSR as fought for the rebels.
It's dubious how many, if any, Soviet troops who were POW's were executed upon their return. They could have been treated better though. Regrettably, Stalin considered them traitors for surrendering and a lot of them got shipped out to Siberia.
The Red Army did a Hell of a lot of retreating during that war. Obviously the enforcer troops could not have been shooting all of the retreaters. I'm wondering to what extent these blocking battalions even existed.
The Soviets did have very cruel punishment battalions though for soldiers who broke serious rules. They went to the edge of the front and were used in storming attacks, along with a lot of convicts who were released from jails and prisons. The casualty rate in those battalions was very high.
It was just a very cruel front over there on both sides.
An objective assessment would be that Western Ukraine/Galicia had an affinity to Hitler, which didn't elevate them from the UnterMensch German Nazis kept them.
Better than the Gulags? Ukrainians were damned either way.
Same place as the Poles in the 1930's and where they are stuck, in their own minds, today.
>The old Soviet union treated the Ukrainians terribly, hence their willing embrace of the Nazi's.
All the national heroes of modern Ukraine that collaborated with the Nazis were from Galicia.
And Galicia was not part of the USSR until after WWII.
So how exactly did the "terrible" Soviet treatment of Ukrainians cause Galicians to commit mass murder against Poles and Jews? Please enlighten us.
Lots of panties in a twist here.
I don't know.
I wasn't there.
Neither were you.
I have however, seen filmed and read written testimonies of Ukrainians, Gulag survivors AND soviet soldiers, that show the evil of Bolshevism was spreading.
Stalin was a monster, while the soviet troops are on record as having raped and tortured millions on their march to Berlin.
Also remember that upon the fall of the Soviet union, their own records showed that their body count for the Nazi death camps had been massively overinflated and many of their historical photographs were manipulated.
That is not to say that mass atrocities didn't happen, but that the reports were likely adjusted to suit our version of events.
Ukraine may not have been part of the Soviet union, but the Bolsheviks still starved millions of Ukrainians to death in the Holodomor and just plain murdered others, or shipped them off to Gulags.
Everything should be open to being questioned, but our taught history of WW2 has a great many gaps and omissions of inconvenient facts.
Katyn for one.
Danzig / Bromburg for another
Why do you think that socialism/communism is evil?
Gulags were a network of prison camps not different from similar complexes in other countries. Basically a prison in the open.
The number of prisoners is greatly exaggerated and not confirmed by any reliable source. You can also do the research yourself and see that numbers shown in MSM do not add up.
Ukraine wasn't the part of USSR? What are you talking about? It has been a part of Russian Empire and then Soviet Union for centuries.
The so called Holodomor wasn't an artificial event. The same thing happened in other regions of USSR and also in other countries of the world.
I suggest to educate yourself a bit better to know at least basic facts and history.
The "Ukraine wasn't part of the USSR" was a statement made by the previous commenter who I was replying to.
The Holodomor was a crisis event, turned into an artificially created holocaust, by Bolshevik policies along the lines of "The great leap forward.
Just because the worlds media lied about it "Duranty" and shut down the ones who exposed the truth "Muggeridge - genocidal famine", doesn't make it the truth.
The famine happened quite often in the past. It was very difficult and dangerous geopolitical situation in USSR at this time period. New war was looming on the horizon and country was plundered and in disarray after civil war. In order to industrialize the country in short period of time difficult decisions had to be made (collectivization, purchase of machines and specialists for gold, etc.), but it does not mean that happened famine was artificially engineered. More so it was quickly and effectively dealt with. More so because of the government's long term policy (creation of strong agro-industrial complex) no famine happened ever after, including post WW2.
How do you define a “Ukrainian”? You seem to be using a definition that’s part modern borders definition and part one that Ukrainian nationalists use. There are historical records for the famine, most of the deaths within modern ukraine’s borders occurred in the east (that is “Russian” Ukraine). The USSR’s policies had no effect on the Galatians who were ruled by Poland.
My grandfather nearly lost both feet to frostbite marching alongside Patton’s tanks. His hatred for Patton and the US army was deep and bitter. Does that make the US army in WWII a force of evil?
East or West. Still called Ukraine back then.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/02/exposing-stalin-famine-in-ukraine-muggeridge-1933
https://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/morning_post_1.htm
History is written by the victor, but it's not usually the truth and not one country comes out looking good.
Patton held the Germans in high esteem compared to the Soviets and claimed that "we defeated the wrong enemy".
Eisenhower starved over 1 million Germans to death after the war, so in that regard, the US also qualified for a place at the Nuremburg trial.
Britain and America were equally guilty of terrible war crimes with their terror bombings, while France let their African troops rape German women with impunity.
Churchill was complicit in the starvation of 4 million Bengalis and is recorded as being happy to use chemical weapons.
Poland murdered 50,000 plus Germans at Danzig, while the Soviet NKVD, murdered 22,000 Polish officers at Katyn.
History is brutal and no one comes out clean.
You are a retard who "learned" "history" from Enemy at the Gates, and websites with .ua at the end, clearly.
Whilst there were many citizens of the USSR who collaborated with the Germans - maybe some 2 million willingly or otherwise - some 34 million served in the armed forces very many millions of whom were Ukrainian - whether you look at the 39 or 41 borders. The majority were conscripted but fought out of a genuine sense of patriotic anger at what the Germans were doing to the Rodina and its people. There was of course a communist influence but really the Red Army and its civilian rear achived victory because the alternative was extinction. The hatred of the Nazis and desire for revenge was visceral and very real.
Thanks for answering my question (# 14)!
I will watch the videos you linked and read the rest of the article tomorrow.
Me too....will finish tomorrow but thank you Simplicius.
I am glad the 'Red Line' business came up. How can anyone trust the US?
Ask an Afghani Woman how much you can trust the U.S.
Perhaps we need to examine the concept of trust rather than people or entities involved. It is a question of the intention(s) involved. So called 'trust' in the legacy media is at an all-time low, and that is a good thing. We have come to know that, with a few exceptions, at least here in the West, any valid discussion or interchange has moved away from the MSM, who have shown themselves to be 'trusted' to reproduce lies basically, and has moved to other platforms, such as podcasts, Substack and others.
Trust in elections has been shown to have been, at the very least, misplaced, for example for the White House, where widespread manipulation and fudging was employed.
Trust in the administration of justice, where a candidate, however disreputable, is openly hounded, shows that such trust would be misplaced.
But we are better off this way, not placing trust in such 'institutions', and looking for answers elsewhere.
As a veteran I deeply disagree with #1. Experience, leadership, discipline, bearing and esprit de corps are immeasurably important and take time, drill, intention and motivation to develop
I think you are talking about American military here........not every country does war the same way.
Zelensky can't become unhinged if he is dead. So what's the delay?
The irony of ironies? Zelenski has U.S. body guards.
If I can offer some numbers related to the question no. 1 ... .
When forming new units, a mixture of experienced/inexperienced is always desired. Manuals say that the ideal ratio should be 50/50 and if this is not possible, 30-40/50 is considered acceptable.
The now famous article, from the Kiev Independent, describing the situation of the 32nd Bde. , talks about 5 weeks of training for the soldiers. Many people would consider this to be not enough, but during war time, a period of training of 4-6 weeks is acceptable. Nobody expects you to become the next Rambo in this period or the next Napoleon, but this time is enough for you to learn the basics. Plus, at the lower level, you need to execute, not think. By lower level I mean everything lower than Brigade/Regiment. Thinking too much will often get you into trouble. The system is designed in such a way that everyone knows only his part and that is enough. Example: Company commander does not need to know where, how and when the Brigade plans to introduce it's Anti-Tank reserves. If it affects him, he will be told, if not, no.
This is one aspect when forming new units, the other, which I consider more important, is the training as a unit and the training of the Staff of that large unit. Again, manuals say, that a Brigade Staff needs a t least, 2-3 months of training and exercises, both on the map only and in the field (at least 1 or 2 every week), before you can start functioning as a unit. The higher you go, the longer it takes. Army Corps, 5-6 months recommended, minimum 4 months. And I think this is where Ukraine has problems. Brigade sized field exercises can't be done in the country, only on the map and I never heard of these types of exercises being done in Europe also.
This is right. You can plug in say replacement infantry privates with relatively short training (12 weeks) but you have to put them in a functioning and expert structure. If everyone is green then you see the sort of disasters sufferred by some UAF units.
One possible question that has not been addressed:
When will Russia declare end of SMO and announce the next phase -- a total war against Nazi and US- controlled Ukraine?
Bombing and closing all airports, destruction of all key transportation and energy infrastructure, etc.
General Winter is approaching -- a perfect timing would be early October -- to finally put an end to this agony.....
Many thanks in advance.
Likely they won't as long as Putin is in power.
The Kremlin is still looking for a deal with the West, and declaring total war will foreclose on that possibility.
Which will make a lot of Putin's oligarch cronies very unhappy. It would mean no more hobnobbing with the western elites in Courchevel, and who could possibly bare such suffering?
Keep on doing what you do best, doomin' & gloomin'
GM, I disagree on your view of Putin -- Putin is the best president Russia ever had.
Stalin is the best leader Russia ever had and he was not even Russian - yet one of the greatest patriots of Russia to ever live.
Our poor Scipio, despite ambitious “pseudonym” you exhibit very poor thinking
Russia would need to bring a lot more reserves of men and equipment, movements that would be hard to hide.
Why it needs to be hidden?
Well, nobody is seeing such a mass of men and equipment, either.
Hi Simplicious, just on Q10, this might interest you.
I've noticed on previous occasions you have downplayed the "Bioweapon Labs" angle, not quite to "Russian disinfo" levels, but certainly not to see it as an important aspet of the SMO.
But it's worth bearing in mind that Russian decision-makers would certainly have been made aware of this from the DPRK: https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/07/23/the-schnacke-affidavit-u-s-admission-of-offensive-germ-warfare-capability-during-the-korean-war/
They would also be very well aware of the Chemical WMD uses in Syria by western-allied terrorist groups.
How in all hades did you manage to create that script to cover "Who are you?" lollol. Never seen anything like it!!
Those rebels never used any chemical weapons during that war. Maybe chlorine, but that doesn't do much.
The evidence we have clearly points to the "rebels" posing bodies of people killed using nerve agents, and presenting the story, with help from western propaganda outlets, as a chlorine gas attack. Check out this video where he goes through the evidence with a true expert, and also adds in the theory that the bodies were from minorities that were ethnically cleansed by the "rebels" by means of gas chambers, which we also know for sure now that such things did occur in rebel terrorist controlled areas. https://youtu.be/twXlc4mUtuY?si=aKe_t4-OBT8hqGgP
Some of those people were gassed to death in a room, probably with carbon monoxide. There are photos of the room they used for that. Yes the people they killed were Christians and Alawi who had been kidnapped from some villages up in the north around Aleppo a year before. This was the first attack in Damascus I refer to. All of those bodies wrapped in white were mostly those hostages and they were for the most part killed with carbon monoxide. However, a number of them also had their throats slit. To make things even more confusing, the rebels even released a bit of sarin gas in the area, but they only people they hit with it were their own rebels. However, when these rebels were examined, the sarin levels were at such a low level that it wouldn't do anything. Also the sarin was not Assad's sarin - his had a particular signature to it. Instead it was "bathtub sarin" cooked up by Al Qaeda, probably in Turkey.
Same thing with the one up north. The rebels were holding more of these hostages in a rocky area with caves carved out of it. It also served as a rebel field hospital. Those people also appeared to have been killed by carbon monoxide. Neither group of victims showed any symptoms of sarin or nerve agent poisoning. In that case too, they released a bit more of their bathtub sarin at the site of the fake "chemical weapons attack."
They did this crap over and over, lots of times. Later they claimed chlorine attacks and they often showed babies as victims but those babies didn't have chlorine poisoning symptoms. Instead they had symptoms of being shot up with an opiate like morphine.
"How in all hades did you manage to create that script to cover "Who are you?" lollol. Never seen anything like it!!"
I managed to make out one word 'officer' spelled using both Latin and Cyrillic characters.
Oooh! :o
I c/ped it to see what it would copy, and it made a fine hieroglyph, but the search turned up nothing. :/ I too could see there were apparently letters, but couldn't make sense of any of it.
We're all gonna be shocked when he turns out to be Hunter Biden "fighting The System from the inside"! ;) :'D
Russia doesn't use conscripts though. By law, conscripts are not allowed to serve outside of the country. All of the "conscripts" were actually Army reserves who had already done two years of training. Furthermore, the mobilization favored those with more experience and those who had actual combat experience. I'm told that the actual Russian "conscripts" had an average of 4-6 years experience.
You can find out about payments to demobilized disabled people here http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/bank/34221 . Upon dismissal due to injury, a military man receives a one-time cash payment that starts at 1,000,000 rubles, and then receives a lifetime pension.
Thanks very much.
Perversely, one of the Biggest Assets on Russia's side is the West's Banking System/Financialization Illusion game.
Let's say you bought a $1 million U.S. Government or Corporate Bond 2 or 3 years ago, paying, say 2-3%. This yields $20,000 to 30,000 in interest. BUT you can get 5-6% interest on the same (type) of debt instrument today, meaning $500,000 will earn you the same $20-30,000. So, at the money trading/bond table, you have taken losses of 30-50% on the value of what you paid for the bond only a few years ago. Thes facts are hidden; disclosed solely in the fine print on page 666 of Western Financial institutions. Trillions of unrecognized, undisclosed losses.
Media is TOTALLY SILENT on the fact that Bond losses, Public and Private, are now approaching the $5 Trillion plus range in Western Countries and rising. Central Banks haven't seriously started retracting the Trillions of counterfeited money during Covid, while the U.S. is so hooked on the Meth of Debt, that Interest, alone, now exceeds the U.S. Defense Budget.
U.S. public Debt, new and revolving, along with Private Sector Bonds, requires selling $5 to $10 Trillion of Promises to Pay, for instant cash, to someone over the next 2 years.
Ukraine is going to be told to get a Luger and 1 bullet and hand it to Zelenski.
Exactly, and in mid Feb this year John Titus went through FRED data, and F.D.I.C. Quarterly Banking Profile (3Q2022) which showed the parlous state of US banking in later 2022, and not within a few weeks a banking crisis. It's amazing how smoke and mirrors keep the western financial s***show going. And in spite of Yellen China doesn't want anymore US debt. It sure is hard to place a bet as to which nag will drop first - the USD or Ukraine.
The economic and monetary history of the British Empire during WWI is most instructive in showing just how far TPTB will go in order to keep their imperial projects from collapsing.
It all happens at the Margins, until there is no Margin left.
Printing/Counterfeiting Money causes Inflation, now on the increase again, so the Fed is boxed in. Either print cash to buy Biden's Bogus Bonds, or let the Market decide, which means low Bond prices/higher interest rates.
"Debt doesn't matter." and "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." Same author.
I note that Ghani is still alive and well.
Don’t understand your “losses” calculation....
Find all Western Government and Corporate Bonds issued at coupon rates below today's interest rates and they all have losses based on initial price paid.
The greater the interest difference and the longer the term, the bigger the loss.
After the crash of 2009, the U.S. Government allowed bond holders to hold the bonds to maturity, and to disclose in the "notes" the difference between current market value and original purchase price.
These bonds are impaired collateral and are not liquid without taking the actual loss when/if you are forced to sell. Therein is the Achilles Heel Western Governments are trying to hide.
Tax Receipts down, spending way up. A Runaway Train.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/endgame-us-debt-interest-payments-about-hit-1-trillion
You're answer to #10 brings up an interesting blindspot.
The US is trying to coerce the Russian people to turn on the motherland and sell out to foreign interests by making them suffer through sanctions, SWIFT, international cancelling and shaming, etc. It's like the state department has never even heard of Russian history, much less studied it. Bizarre.
You probably already know this, but your readers might not. The most hated Soviet isn't Stalin, it's Gorbachev. The Russian people dislike Gorbachev more than Stalin because he imploded the country and put Yeltsin in a position to sell it off to the west. (Yeltsin isn't on the list because he wasn't important until after the Soviet Union collapsed) And even though Stalin is the 2nd most hated Soviet, he is also the 2nd most loved because he repelled the nazis. Yuri Gagarin is most loved, of course.
https://www.rt.com/russia/542570-gorbachov-low-ratings-poll/
There is a better, more detailed, article on this, but I can't find it at the moment.
Stalin is "second most hated"? What? As someone from Eastern Europe, Stalin is one of Russian people's favorite leaders - as he is credited with having broken the back of the Nazis as well as made the USSR into a global industrial and military and scientific power. Much of current Russian developments are credited by Russian people directly to Stalin's legacy.
Read the article. According to the survey Stalin is both the 2nd most loved and 2nd most hate person from the soviet era. Loved for defeating the Germans and protecting the motherland and hated for the purges and gulags.