War in Ukraine

#66,826
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FzNhHNeX0AA4SoT
 
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#66,829
#66,829
WBO said:
Lamar Alexander wasn't rich when he entered politics but he sure retired wealthy. Never held a public sector job unless you count the 4 years Howard Baker's law firm supposedly paid him $250k a year to basically live and run for President in Iowa.

I believe he came in 4th after all of that. Guess people in Iowa are more discerning than in Tennessee.
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Yeah no, Lamar Alexander was far from poor when he entered Congress.

POLITICS: PERSONAL FINANCES;Alexander Still Draws Scrutiny for Making Small Investments Pay Well (Published 1996)
 
#66,830
#66,830
Rasputin_Vol said:
I'm not sure what you mean right here. What are saying about the comparisons between this and the Iran/Iraq war?


Because they were on the verge of peace last year before Boris Johnson stepped in to squash the deal. So that right there kills the narrative of Zelensky being the one to decide when the conflict ends. Also, again, the reason why the Russians pulled out of Kyiv and the north had nothing to do with this great Ukrainian resistance. As we learned this weekend, the Russians pulled out of those regions in a show of good faith when they had a signed deal in place in Turkiye.

But since last year after Johnson broke the peace deal, he made promises (I'm sort of speculating here) that NATO was going to stand behind him, they were going to arm them to the teeth and that they are going to win the conflict. Well, as it turns out, Ukraine became a dumping ground for old NATO weapons stockpiles and outdated equipment. They (NATO) assumed that Russia didn't have the stamina to sustain a conflict long enough to exhaust the weapons they were sending. They also assumed that the sanctions that had just been put in place was going to collapse the Russian economy, people would take to the streets in Moscow and by the summer of 2022, Zelensky and the Ukrainians would be march on Red Square. Keep in mind that this is in early April and the ruble had crashed to around 150:1 to the dollar, so confidence in their plan was extremely high.



Their original plan on 02/24/2022
1. Enter Donbas to stop the Kyiv regime from attacking the civilians there
2. Establish land corridor to Crimea and restore the water canal/aqueduct that supplies them their water in Zaphorrozhia and Kherson area
3. Send roughly 40k troops to Kyiv and the north to force the Kyiv regime to have to commit resources around the capital and prevent them from running those same resources directly to Donbas
4. Send those 40k troops to Kyiv to also pressure Zelensky into going to the negotiating table. As we know from this weekend, that worked and they got cut a deal.

This is why it was called a "special military operation". It wasn't something where they were planning on having a long drawn out conflict that would have needed to put Russia on a war footing. And Russia didn't go in with a "shock and awe"/bull in a china shop wrecking ball. They went in and didn't destroy many, if any civilian utilities or anything of that nature to inconvenience the average Ukrainian citizen. Hell, that pretty much kept that same strategy until October 2022. But then BoJo came and then the Russia strategy and objectives changed.
1. Secure the Donbas and the other two regions
2. Destroy the NATO army in Ukraine

By September, the Ukrainians had pretty much lost all of the military men and equipment that NATO had given them since 2014. That army was essentially gone. When they started their fall counter offensive, this was the second Ukrainian army. With the escalation of the offensives in Kharkiv and Kherson regions, the bombing of the Kerch bridge and bombing of Nordstream, the Russians changed objectives and strategy again. And with Surovikin taking over in late September/early October, the tempo and ferociousness increased.
1. Hit electrical and communication infrastructure
2. Sustained missile campaign
3. More sustained targeting of Ukrainian air defense systems (keep in mind that even at this point, Ukraine still had a formidable air defense system with their Soviet era S-300s)
4. Continued destruction of the second Ukraine/NATO army

By December/January, the second Ukrainian army had been defeated and so now this is when NATO starts talking about Leopards, Bradleys and the build up for a "spring counteroffensive" with the third iteration of the Ukrainian army. So between the winter and the first of June, NATO struggled to build this army. Germany crossed every redline Olaf Scholz said he wouldn't cross and the rest of NATO members pressured him to send the Leopards. Meanwhile, the nonsense about "Russia is running out of weapons" turned into concerns about NATO running out of weapons. Poland talked about building a 300k army around this time. But as we found out a few days ago, they don't have anywhere close to that right now.

So finally this big counteroffensive gets started in the early part of this month, and 3 weeks later, Ukraine has not even been able to do anything but swap back and forth a few villages and open fields in the gray zone. They haven't gotten to with 10km of the first line of Russian fortifications (supposedly, the Russians had built up 3 lines of fortifications 10km apart from each other or something along those lines between Melitopol and the Sea of Azov).


1. The BBC back in late winter estimated that the Russians had between 12k-24k KIA. I would say that today that number might (might) be closer to 30k right now.
2. On the other hand, Ursula van der Leyen admitted in November 2022 that the Ukrainians had 100k KIA... but then had to walk it back.
3. Around February 2023, I couldn't remember if it was Valerii Zaluzhnyi or maybe Reznikov, nut there was a (unconfirmed) report that said one of them had told Milley or Austin that Ukraine had 230-250k KIA


1. Last March/April, the ruble fell to 150:1 to the USD. By the summer, it had recovered to just hitting around 50:1 for a few days
2. In April 2022, The West had assumed/estimated that the Russian economy would collapse by about 30% in 2022. In reality, it only drew back right around 2%.
3. Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Russian central bank, had estimated at the beginning of the year that they were going to expect growth to be in a band between .5% and 2%. Well, about a week ago, they projected that growth would be closer to the high end of 2%
4. Also, Nabiullina initially raised interest rates briefly at the start of the sanctions to close to 18-20%. By the time September rolled around, she had cut them to around 8%. So in other words, interest rates and inflation are lowering, while in the NATO countries, the situation is the exact opposite.
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as usual so much bs.
1. They haven't stopped the civilian casualties in Donbas, if anything Russia has ramped that up turning it into a hot continuous fight.
2. Seems like they lost their water connection with the dam being blown, and the certainly don't hold Kherson.
3 & 4, are the same bit of revisionist history. If any easy push to Kiev was enough for a peace treaty, that Kiev crawfished on, why didn't they go right back and do it again? As you allude, it was easy, it achieved its goal, and it made their job easier in Donbas. Seems like going right back to it would be a winning strategy. Also why would Russia sit on this peace treaty for a year only to pull it out after a second offensive by Ukraine? its an obvious smoke screen to try and explain away their losses.
5. Russia absolutely was a bull in a China shop, you just denied denied denied, until LSUSIU came in all bloodthirsty and posted about the destruction as winning for Russia, which you NEVER refuted.
6. If the First, or even second, Ukrainian army was defeated, why didn't Russia use the opportunity to gain land, especially in the "all so important" Bahkhmut area? or at least pick better defensive lines where the "second" ukrainian army couldn't have retaken some major ground. Seems like it would have been pretty easy to hold what they had and defeat the Ukrainian offensive. And this would have helped them with #2, so don't pretend like the offensive did nothing for Ukraine.
6a. You also failed to mention Russia having to conscript 500k new men for a new Russian army, so it seems like that means the First Russian army was defeated.
7. Russia's winter offensive took 2 miles of a town they had been fighting in for 9 months. Taking a couple villages in 3 weeks seems vastly more successful.
8. The losses you posted are slanted as always. the BBC noted 25k Russian DEAD, which seems reasonable at the time. the quoted 100k was 100k DEAD OFFICERS. Ukraine wouldn't even have 100k OFFICERS to lose, unless there army was over 10 million men. clearly she misspoke, and even clarified it to be 100k CASAULTIES (not just officers either) which includes wounded & killed. The American leaks backed that number up. and depending on what piece you are talking about with the 250k the only places I have seen that referenced were projections for total CASAULTIES if the war doubled in length, or total Ukrainian losses including civilians. But as typical as it is for you you flip the terms as it best fits your biased world view.
9. Russia is running out of equipment, we have quotes from Putin himself noting that they didn't have enough, they had equipment, but not the qualitative numbers they needed. you also had the very public statements from Wagner talking about their supply issues. And you have russia digging out 70 year old tanks to use as artillery and now remote suicidal drones. and then we just had a piece about Russia having to buy ammo from the US for their standard issue sniper rifles.
10. despite blowing up like 15 of the 3 patriot systems sent to Ukraine, somehow Ukraine is still shooting down stuff from Russia. Russia STILL doesn't have control of the air, which would be huge even if Russia was just wanting to bleed Ukraine, airpower would allow them to do that even more efficiently than the fanciful situation you have dreamed up.
11. You failed to mention the ongoing sabotage or whatever that is happening all over Russia, including Moscow. You would think if Ukraine was losing so hard, and the Russian's were so supportive of Putin there wouldn't be any way for them to project forces, even small ones, deep into Russia this late in the war.
12. Along the same lines you failed to even mention Belogrod and the overt, instead of the covert in #11, anti-Putin movements inside of Russia. including some clear power struggles between their MoD and Wagner.

and since you brought it up the dollar is trading 83 rubles, not as nice as the 50 you left as a slanted way to hide the truth.
You didn't bring up Russia losing somewhere between 250k-500k male civilians fleeing the conscription movement
You didn't bring up NATO expanding towards Russia even though you have always stated that is the one goal that Russia was trying to avoid.

bias bias bias, and hardly a lick of truth to be found.
 
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#66,834
#66,834
Pennheel said:
@Rasputin_Vol I have a question for curiosities sake and nothing more.... Why do you have such a strong pro Russian stance on their invasion?
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2 reasons mainly:
1. The Obama State Department overthrew the democratically elected Yanukovich in 2014 and then inserted a regime that tormented the people in Eastern Ukraine for 8 years with military attacks and discriminatory laws. That was a coup that was intended to be a pressure point and a staging ground for future aggression against Russia. No different than what Taiwan is to China, and what will likely soon be Kashmir to India if they don't turn away from Russia.
2. The people that are running Ukraine right now are supported by the same people here in America that are in power. The same corrupt entities that are running lawlessly here have overt interests in Ukraine. Not because they GAF about the people of Ukraine. It serves their geopolitical interests and Ukraine is a moneymaking scheme in every conceivable facet from skimming on pipelines going to Europe, to bioweapons labs, to weapons trafficking, to human trafficking, to narcotics, to MIC scamming, to just about any other hustle you can think of. These people need to be defeated.
 
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#66,837
#66,837
Rasputin_Vol said:
2 reasons mainly:
1. The Obama State Department overthrew the democratically elected Yanukovich in 2014 and then inserted a regime that tormented the people in Eastern Ukraine for 8 years with military attacks and discriminatory laws. That was a coup that was intended to be a pressure point and a staging ground for future aggression against Russia. No different than what Taiwan is to China, and what will likely soon be Kashmir to India if they don't turn away from Russia.
2. The people that are running Ukraine right now are supported by the same people here in America that are in power. The same corrupt entities that are running lawlessly here have overt interests in Ukraine. Not because they GAF about the people of Ukraine. It serves their geopolitical interests and Ukraine is a moneymaking scheme in every conceivable facet from skimming on pipelines going to Europe, to bioweapons labs, to weapons trafficking, to human trafficking, to narcotics, to MIC scamming, to just about any other hustle you can think of. These people need to be defeated.
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LMAO you’ve had a death grip on the bald dwarf’s nutsack for as long as you’ve posted here. Own it.
 
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#66,838
#66,838
Septic said:
"rasputin"

he's a ruskie, nothing more - nothing less.

Don't let him convince you he has some moral or ethical high ground.
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He also fails to report that all that crap he listed the Ukrainians learned from decades of Russian example.
 
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#66,843
#66,843
Septic said:
"rasputin"

he's a ruskie, nothing more - nothing less.

Don't let him convince you he has some moral or ethical high ground.
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Yeah, between his screen name and title under his name, I thought this might be something personal to him with the lengths he's going to justify it.
 
#66,844
#66,844
Pennheel said:
Yeah, between his screen name and title under his name, I thought this might be something personal to him with the lengths he's going to justify it.
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Ask him about his love of Russian eggs. He used to love posting videos by this Russian twerp who'd go to supermarkets in St. Petersburg to talk about how Russia wasn't being affected by sanctions. The videos tended to feature the egg shelves. We ragged on Ras for a few months about how bountiful and delicious Russian eggs were.
 
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#66,845
#66,845
evillawyer said:
Ask him about his love of Russian eggs. He used to love posting videos by this Russian twerp who'd go to supermarkets in St. Petersburg to talk about how Russia wasn't being affected by sanctions. The videos tended to feature the egg shelves. We ragged on Ras for a few months about how bountiful and delicious Russian eggs were.
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It was one of the strangest flexes I have ever seen
 
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#66,846
#66,846
Rasputin_Vol said:
2 reasons mainly:
1. The Obama State Department overthrew the democratically elected Yanukovich in 2014 and then inserted a regime that tormented the people in Eastern Ukraine for 8 years with military attacks and discriminatory laws. That was a coup that was intended to be a pressure point and a staging ground for future aggression against Russia. No different than what Taiwan is to China, and what will likely soon be Kashmir to India if they don't turn away from Russia.
2. The people that are running Ukraine right now are supported by the same people here in America that are in power. The same corrupt entities that are running lawlessly here have overt interests in Ukraine. Not because they GAF about the people of Ukraine. It serves their geopolitical interests and Ukraine is a moneymaking scheme in every conceivable facet from skimming on pipelines going to Europe, to bioweapons labs, to weapons trafficking, to human trafficking, to narcotics, to MIC scamming, to just about any other hustle you can think of. These people need to be defeated.
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I have yet to see a claim from a credible source of the bioweapons claim. Can you please provide, credible and not some rando off of Twitter, proof?

As far as the others of human trafficking, narcotics, and scamming all happen in every country even in Russia. These things are all very horrific. But it happens in every country as sad as that is to say.
 
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#66,850
#66,850
Russians crack me up sometimes. The public face they put forward is a complete laughingstock by ANY measure. Honestly, it's pure arrogance.

And we wonder why the worldview of our resident Stooges is so warped. It will be interesting to see their coping mechanisms as they finally come to realize that their vaunted "2nd Army" is going STRAIGHT. DOWN. THE TOILET.

Time to start placing our bets on the nature of Putin's dirt nap.

Russia demands U.S. pay reparations for helping Ukraine in war

"Moscow's envoy in Washington, D.C. has demanded that the U.S. pays reparations for helping Ukraine in the war.

The Biden administration "is fully responsible for what is happening in Ukraine," Russian ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov told reporters on Wednesday.

The Kremlin has repeatedly accused NATO allies of becoming involved in the conflict by sending Ukraine weapons, providing its troops with training, and assisting with military intelligence. Moscow has accused members of the military alliance of crossing red lines by assisting Ukraine in the ongoing war, which was launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2022."
 
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