Too long to post here in its entorety, but here's the takeaway (I do encourage you to read the whole thing):
Quote
1. Kherson: “The entire Russian line has crumbled.”
2. “Kherson is the only major city Russia has captured in seven months.”
3. “This is the greatest concentration of Russian forces, and it is the best troops Russia has.”
4. They also have the best equipment. If the Ukrainians capture it, it would be even better than Kharkiv.
5. “I still believe this is Russia’s war to lose. The first year of all Russia’s wars look a lot like this. Bad training, bad coordination, poorly maintained equipment.” Modern warfare seldom gives you an entire year to sort your problems out.
6. “Watch Kherson closely. This could be where the war is decided.”
Russia seems to be retreating everywhere save the central front in Donetsk, where they seem to be eking out tiny, meaningless gains of a square kilometer or two a day. That’s not a recipe for success.
In spite of initial assumptions…. The longer this goes on the weaker the invading army gets, and stronger the defending army gets. The Russian forces are loosing their best “professional” (by their standards) units only to replace them by totally untrained conscripts. On the other side, the green Ukrainian (largely volunteer) soldiers are getting real combat experience and becoming battle hardened. They are being reinforced by units fresh from training in NATO countries where they learned how to effectively use the new high tech precision hardware they are being given by supporting nations. The Russian soldiers will to carry on this fight dwindles as they realize the false reasons for the war and face the demoralizing psychological effects of the crimes they have seen been parts of. The Ukrainian forces are becoming more resolute in their determination to NEVER give up till their land and it’s people are free.
With both forces having their momentum going in opposing directions (experienced soldiers, equipment/supplies, morale, public support)… it is NO wonder. The longer the Russians avoid the inevitable, the harsher their reality will become, both in the field and on the home front.
Slava Ukraine!
"Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at it�s worst, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine (from "Common Sense" 1776)
Re: Developing Eastern European Crises
[Re: Navarro]
#178984 10/08/202211:25 AM10/08/202211:25 AM
Who blew up that bridge in Crimea? First of all, they're saying it was a truck bomb, which seems unlikely since all vehicles crossing the bridge are searched for explosives. And, like with the Nordstream pipelines, we're not real sure who did it.
Quote
An explosion Saturday caused the partial collapse of a bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia, damaging a key supply artery for the Kremlin’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine. Russian authorities said a truck bomb caused the blast and that three people were killed.
The speaker of Crimea’s Kremlin-backed regional parliament immediately accused Ukraine of being behind the explosion, though Moscow didn’t apportion blame. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly threatened to strike the bridge and some lauded the destruction, but Kyiv stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The explosion risked a sharp escalation in Russia’s eight-month war, with some Russian lawmakers calling for Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare a “counterterrorism operation” in retaliation, shedding the term “special military operation” that had downplayed the scope of fighting to ordinary Russians.
The Kremlin could use such a move to further broaden the powers of security agencies, ban rallies, tighten censorship, introduce restrictions on travel and expand a partial military mobilization that Putin ordered last month.
Hours after the explosion, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced that the air force chief, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, would command all Russian troops in Ukraine. Surovikin, who over the summer was placed in charge of Russian troops in southern Ukraine, had led Russian forces in Syria and was accused of overseeing a brutal bombardment that destroyed much of the city of Aleppo.
Moscow, however, continues to suffer battlefield losses.
On Saturday, a Kremlin-backed official in Ukraine’s Kherson region announced a partial evacuation of civilians from the southern province, one of four illegally annexed by Moscow last week, amid an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive. Kirill Stremousov told Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti agency that young children and their parents, as well as the elderly, could be relocated to two southern Russian regions because Kherson was getting “ready for a difficult period.”
The 19-kilometer (12-mile) Kerch Bridge across the Kerch Strait that links the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov is a tangible symbol of Moscow’s claims on Crimea and has provided an essential link to the peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The $3.6 billion bridge, the longest in Europe, opened in 2018 and is key to sustaining Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine.
While Russia seized the areas north of Crimea early during its invasion of Ukraine and built a land corridor to it along the Sea of Azov, Ukraine is pressing a counteroffensive to reclaim those lands.
Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said a truck bomb caused seven railway cars carrying fuel to catch fire, resulting in the “partial collapse of two sections of the bridge.” A man and a woman in a vehicle on the bridge were killed by the explosion, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. It didn’t say what happened to the third victim or the truck driver.
The blast occurred even though all vehicles crossing the bridge undergo state-of-the-art checks for explosives, drawing a stream of critical comments from Russian war bloggers who urged Moscow to retaliate by striking Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
The truck that exploded was owned by a resident of the Krasnodar region in southern Russia. Russia’s Investigative Committee said the man’s home was searched and experts were looking at the truck’s route....
It happened on Vlad’s birthday. The Ukrainian minister of national security (or something like that) posted a video on social media of the damaged bridge on fire with the audio of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday Mr. President” then said that this was just the beginning.
The Ukrainians are masters at trolling the Russians, or as they call them Moscals!
"Government at its best is a necessary evil, and at it�s worst, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine (from "Common Sense" 1776)
As Ukraine continues to liberate settlements in its eastern region from occupying Russian troops, Moscow has reportedly replaced another top commander in its armed forces.
The head of Russia's North Caucasus region of Daghestan, Sergei Melikov, wrote on Telegram on October 7 that North Caucasus native Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov had been appointed to lead the Eastern Military District.
The district is based in Russia's Far East, but much of its personnel is currently taking part in Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Muradov, who among other Russian officials has been slapped with Western sanctions, led troops in Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, parts of which have been under Moscow-backed separatists' control since 2014.
He also commanded Russian peacekeepers in Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
RBK news agency reported on October 7, citing sources close to the Russian military, that Muradov replaced Colonel General Aleksandr Chaiko, without giving any details.
There has been no official confirmation of the report.
On October 3, RBK reported that the commander of the Western Military District, Colonel General Aleksandr Zhuravlyov, had been replaced shortly after dramatic Russian losses in northeastern Ukraine in September and Ukraine's recapture of the strategic city of Lyman in the Donetsk region.
In September, General Dmitry Bulgakov, deputy defense minister in charge of logistics, was replaced by Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev, who is accused by the European Union of orchestrating a siege of the Ukrainian port of Mariupol early in the war that killed thousands of civilians. Major setbacks in his unprovoked Ukraine invasion have ramped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In August, Russian state media said the commander of the Black Sea fleet had been fired after Ukraine carried out several successful attacks, including the sinking of Russia's missile cruiser Moskva and the loss of eight warplanes in an attack on a Russian base in Ukraine's Crimea that was seized by Moscow in 2014.
Its unfortunate that the Ukrainian people have been duped into fighting a war to enrich the globalist oligarchy. Its appalling how easily public opinion was molded to support this conflict while hundreds of billions of dollars of money are funneled away from the American people to prop up a corrupt third world regime and to line the pockets of the Biden family and their ilk. Zelensky is no saint and you can trace the money that put him in power right back to Soros, (look into studio Kvartal 95 if you want to know more about this)
This conflict should come as no surprise. Consider the US backed coup in 2014, the placement of Nato weapons within 500 miles of Moscow, placing shady bio labs in Ukraine, the Hunter Biden stuff, the Ukrainian government killing the ethnic Russians in Donbass, violating the Minsk agreement... the list goes on.
This was not an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine, this is a globalists effort to undermine Russia and institute regime change. The best thing for the Ukrainian people would have been for them to have surrendered to Russia. Ukrainians speak Russian and have only been independent for a short while. Russia is no saint but they would have welcomed them back or accepted a pledge of neutrality. We have no reason to think that Russia would have given them any less freedom than they had as an independent state. (They could not own property as it was....) Now the people are being subjected to horrible brutalities by both sides which is hardly preferable.
The narrative of poor Ukraine being picked on by Russia while its noble people struggle for freedom lead by honorable warrior Zelensky, fighting day and night for his freedom is an insidious fabrication. Its design is to enable the leading few to enrich themselves at the expense of our tax dollars and out lives while eliminating competition.
This conflict has brought our already shaky economy to the brink of ruin (the EU has it even worse than we do), reduced our strategic resources to unacceptably low levels, and is costing the American people 1 billion+ dollars a day.
Please do your research on this conflict, If you are supporting any side of it, you are being duped.
The Russian economy will shrink by both four percent this year and next, the Bank of Finland said in its latest Russia forecast, published on Monday.
In a statement titled "War bleeds the Russian economy," the central bank said (siirryt toiseen palveluun) western sanctions continue to raise both the "direct and incidental costs of war."
"The Russian economy is decoupling from the world economy," Laura Solanko, a bank senior adviser, said in the statement.
EU import bans are reducing Russian budget revenues, while export bans are limiting Russia's ability to arm and supply its invasion force, the bank explained.
BoF economists forecast the Russian economy facing a serious recession.
"The lack of access to high-tech inputs is eroding Russia's opportunities for future growth," the bank said in a statement.
The central bank further predicted that Russia's cooperation with China will only replace a fraction of the western relationships lost.
"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Don't believe the controlled major news media. Helping Russia decouple from the world economy is doing them a favor. The price they can get for their natural gas and the value of their ruble has greatly increased from the sanctions. Their energy resources will always increase in value unless cold fusion really works and can be developed which I highly doubt.
All nations including the US needs to decouple from the world economy. The world economy will lead to the UN One World Beast Government predicted in Revelation.
Screw the Russian Commie Rats and screw the Ukrainian Nazis we need to stay out of it. Let them fight it out. We need to quit arming Ukraine with deficit spending. Instead the US should spend money on a totally secure border, advanced weapon development, manufacturing ability, and arming up with weapons technology the is more advanced than the Russians.
Europe should have never gotten dependent on Russia or any other country for natural gas or any other source of energy. The US needs to leave the rest of the world alone so we will have manufacturing ability and not be dependent on any country. USA First and forget about the rest of the world.
The US saved Europe in WWI and WWII becasue of our manufacturing ability which is now gone because of the traitors who started having goods manufactured by the Chi-Coms and destroyed our manufacturing ability. Damn Richard Nixon and his traitorous trip to the Chi-Coms in 1972 while the Chi-Coms were supporting the Vietnamese Commie Rat Gooks we were fighting in Vietnam.
Biden, the Democrats, and the globalists are trying to start WWIII with the Russians so they will not lose in the November elections.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
I'm skeptical about this, for a couple reasons. It's not wise to take any news from the front lines at face value, and the story itself is from the Daily Beast, a somewhat less than reliable source. But with those caveats, this is a tactic the Russians have used in the past, and it certainly sounds believable now. Developing a "second front line" to snuff out deserters certainly seems possible, and maybe even likely.
(Warning: Juvenile language is in this report.)
Quote
Russian’s Vladimir Putin sparked the wrath of his own people by drafting hundreds of thousands to join the war against Ukraine, and now it seems some of those men were sent not to fight the so-called “enemy” but to “snuff out” any of the Russian troops who dare to retreat.
Ukrainian intelligence on Thursday released an audio recording that appears to capture in disturbing detail the mayhem and internal rifts between Russian troops on the battlefield. In the five-minute clip, described as an intercepted phone conversation between a Russian soldier and his wife, the man says he and the other men in his unit are a comfortable distance from the actual fighting.
“They moved us back to the second line, there’s shooting somewhere ahead of us, but we’re back here for now in the trenches,” he says, before boasting that he’d been lucky and found a “Rosneft jacket covered in blood, but warm.”
“They brought the inmates here... from prison. But they led them somewhere way up front. And we’re sitting here as a retreat-blocking detachment, fuck. If someone runs back, we snuff them out.”
“What a nightmare,” his wife says.
“That’s how we have it set up. We sit on the second line, guarding the first. Behind us, there’s another line. If you go that way, you also won’t make it. So it’s impossible to run away. They shoot their own.”
“If someone goes [that way], you need to wipe him out,” he said.
While both the purported soldier and his wife suggested they’d tried to complain about conditions with appeals to an unspecified “committee,” the man seemed convinced any kind of outcry would be futile, noting that Russian defense officials had cleverly listed him and other men in his unit as being “in training” and not on the battlefield.
It was not clear where exactly the soldier was based. But there have been myriad reports of Russian commanders threatening to execute any of their own men who try to ditch the war. A Moscow resident who was called up under Putin’s draft last month said Colonel General Alexander Lapin had personally pulled out a pistol and held it to the head of a commander overseeing drafted troops who’d retreated in Luhansk, threatening to shoot if the unit did not return to the frontline, Sota reported Wednesday.
And amid a humiliating retreat from northern Kharkiv last month, a volunteer fighting for Ukraine in the region who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity said his fellow volunteers and Ukrainian troops had found several dead Russian commanders with gunshot wounds to the back of their heads after top Russian military brass gave an order to gun down any fleeing troops....
Read the whole thing at the link.
Onward and upward, airforce
Re: Developing Eastern European Crises
[Re: Navarro]
#179088 10/31/202209:38 AM10/31/202209:38 AM
Putin is having trouble on the home front. To say that Russian journalists support the government and Putin would be an understatement. When Russian journalists criticize Putin, it means that something is afoot.
Quote
... The Russian defeat in Kharkiv Oblast and Lyman, combined with the Kremlin’s failure to conduct partial mobilization effectively and fairly are fundamentally changing the Russian information space. Kremlin-sponsored media and Russian milbloggers – a prominent Telegram community composed of Russian war correspondents, former proxy officials, and nationalists – are grieving the loss of Lyman while simultaneously criticizing the bureaucratic failures of the partial mobilization.[1] Kremlin sources and milbloggers are attributing the defeat around Lyman and Kharkiv Oblast to Russian military failures to properly supply and reinforce Russian forces in northern Donbas and complaining about the lack of transparency regarding the progress of the war.[2]
Some guests on heavily-edited Kremlin television programs that aired on October 1 even criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to annex four Ukrainian oblasts before securing their administrative borders or even the frontline, expressing doubts about Russia’s ability ever to occupy the entirety of these territories.[3] Kremlin propagandists no longer conceal their disappointment in the conduct of the partial mobilization, frequently discussing the illegal mobilization of some men and noting issues such as alcoholism among newly mobilized forces.[4] Some speaking on live television have expressed the concern that mobilization will not generate the force necessary to regain the initiative on the battlefield, given the poor quality of Russian reserves.[5]
The Russian information space has significantly deviated from the narratives preferred by the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) that things are generally under control. . . . Putin relies on controlling the information space in Russia to safeguard his regime much more than on the kind of massive oppression apparatus the Soviet Union used, making disorder in the information space potentially even more dangerous to Putin than it was to the Soviets....
If it gets too "dangerous" for Putin then Putin will be more likely to take it nuclear in Ukraine which will start a Nuclear World War III which Biden, the Democrats, and the Globalists want.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
It looks like the Democrats and the Globalists will get their wish and WWIII will start. Get Potassium Iodate or Potassium Iodide pills so your thyroid would not be destroyed by radiation and dig an expedient fallout shelter while you still can. 3 feet of hard packed dirt stops radiation and radio active fallout rapidly decays.
Last edited by Texas Resistance; 11/15/202203:13 PM.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
American military officials are "looking into" reports that two Russian missiles may have hit Poland on Tuesday, killing two people near the country's eastern border with Ukraine.
Poland's status as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) means the reported incident, which seems to have occurred as part of a Russian bombardment that targeted cities and key infrastructure across Ukraine, represents one of the most dangerous moments in the war since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Even if only an accident, it seems inevitable that the missile strikes raise the likelihood of a direct confrontation between the world's two largest nuclear powers.
According to The New York Times, two people were killed by an explosion at a grain processing facility near the Polish village of Przewodow. The Associated Press cited two unnamed American intelligence officials who confirmed that the missiles did stray into Poland.
General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon's spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that military officials were "aware of the press reports alleging that two Russian missiles have struck a location inside Poland" but said the military was still seeking to corroborate those reports.
The potential for an accidental missile strike inside NATO territory that could spark a broader war has been one of the top concerns for many observers since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Just weeks after the war began, Emma Ashford and Joshua Shifrinson warned in a piece at Foreign Affairs about the potential for an "escalating spiral" if Russian warplanes accidentally entered NATO airspace or if other events, perhaps accidental ones, caused the war to spill over Ukraine's borders.
"On a long enough timescale and with enough Russian missiles due for western Ukraine, the odds of this were growing," tweeted Ankit Panda shortly after news of the missile strikes broke on Tuesday. "This *exact* inadvertent escalation scenario (off-course Russian missiles hitting Poland/Romania) has been subject of discussions on pathways to direct NATO-Russia escalation since Feb. 24."
The scary question is what might come next. Article V of the NATO charter obligates the alliance to treat an attack on one member as if it were an attack on all, but Panda warns that the language in the treaty should not be treated as "a tripwire/automatic."
"Contrary to prevalent (though not universal) belief, Article V does NOT obligate NATO members to go to war if a fellow ally is attacked. It gives them leeway to take steps they deem suitable, including 'the use of armed force.'" wrote Rajan Menon, director of the Grand Strategy program at Defense Priorities, a realist foreign policy think tank.
That the Pentagon is taking time to assess what happened in Poland is the first step to preventing a dangerous escalation. Indeed, some reports indicate that the explosion might have been the tragic result of Ukraine shooting down Russian missiles over its airspace. Regardless, the next moves made by both NATO and Russia will be some of the most fraught and potentially catastrophic yet seen.
More than anything else, for now, Tuesday's incident is a reminder of the inherent risks that come with any war or near-war between great powers—and should provide a much stronger incentive for all sides to bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine before it truly spirals out of hand.
They fired it in self defense, trying to shoot down a Russian missile. For NATO - as well as in common law - the aggressor party is responsible for any actions taken in self defense.
As an example in common law, suppose you are being robbed at gunpoint. In self defense, you shoot at and slightly wound the robber - but the bullet travels on, and kills an innocent bystander. In such a case, the robber can be charged with felony murder, even though he's not the one who fired the shot.
I don't expect a lot to come of this. Poland may ask Russia to pay reparations for the act, Russia will refuse, and Ukraine will get more military aid. C'est la guerre.
The armed robber might be charged too but if you shoot an armed robber and your bullet goes through the armed robber and kills an innocent bystander behind him you will be tried for shooting the innocent bystander. You must not take the shot if anyone is behind your target. So it is still Ukraine's fault for not firing their interceptor missile in a safe direction.
Ukraine needs to make peace with Russia and give up the parts of Ukraine that voted to join Russia before Russia defeats all of Ukraine or starts WWWIII.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
Damn the idiots who blew up the pipeline and those who gave the order to blow it. They will burn in Hell for it. The globalists want to kill off as many people as they can.
Millions of Europeans will suffer and many will freeze to death because of it. No one has to obey an unlawful order. The Europeans should have never gotten dependent on Russian natural gas and oil. If they are smart they will go back to mining coal and building nuclear power plants. They are already cutting down most of the forests for wood to burn but it won't be dried in time.
Oath Keepers put law enforcement on notice not to follow unlawful orders but in the event of martial law the government plans to coerce law enforcement in to compliance with threats to their families. Oath Keepers was falsely vilified and their founder Stewart Rhodes is still on trial in a kangaroo court on trumped up charges. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/us/politics/oath-keepers-sedition-trial-rhodes.html
"We support Active Duty US Military, Veterans, and Police who will honor their oaths to uphold and defend the US Constitution against all enemies both foreign and domestic and who promise not to obey any unlawful orders:
We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants or to subject them to military tribunal. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a state of emergency on a state. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to keep the peace or to maintain control. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances."
Last edited by Texas Resistance; 11/19/202212:57 PM.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
Investigators have found traces of explosives at the site of the damaged Nord Stream gas pipelines, confirming sabotage had taken place, a Swedish prosecutor said on Friday.
Swedish and Danish authorities are investigating four holes in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines which link Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea and have become a flashpoint in the Ukraine crisis as gas supplies in Europe run short.
Denmark last month said a preliminary investigation had shown that the leaks were caused by powerful explosions.
"Analysis that has now been carried out shows traces of explosives on several of the objects that were recovered," the Swedish Prosecution Authority said in a statement, adding that the findings establish the incident as "gross sabotage".
It said the continued probe would determine whether it would be possible to identify those responsible.
Cooperation with authorities in Sweden as well as in other countries was going very well, lead prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said.
The prosecutor's office declined to give further comment, including on which explosives were believed to have been used to damage the pipelines.
Russia will wait until a full damage assessment is done before deciding on repairs, if any, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
"The very fact that data has already begun to come in, in favour of confirming a subversive act or a terrorist act… once again confirms the information that the Russian side has," Peskov told his daily call with reporters.
"It is very important not to stop, it is very important to find the one behind this explosion."
Neither Gazprom, nor the Nord Stream 1 and 2 replied to Reuters requests for comment.
Seismologists in Denmark and Sweden previously said they had registered tremors in the immediate vicinity of the leaks and that the signals did not resemble those from earthquakes.
Danish police declined to comment on the Swedish findings.
The Sept. 26 ruptures of the seabed pipelines, spewing gas into the ocean that bubbled to the surface in the week that followed, triggered warnings of public hazard and fears of environmental damage.
A section measuring at least 50 metres (164 feet) is missing from Nord Stream 1, Swedish daily Expressen reported on Oct. 18 after filming what it said were the first publicly released images of the damage.
Russia's defence ministry last month said that British navy personnel blew up the pipelines, a claim that London said was false and designed to distract from Russian military failures in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not hold his annual year-end press conference for the first time in a decade, prompting speculation that the Russian leader is sick or running scared from answering questions about Ukraine as the war enters its 10th month.
“As for the big press conference, yes, it won’t happen before the New Year,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday.
“But we hope that the president will still find an opportunity to talk with [journalists], as he regularly does, including during foreign [visits],” Peskov added.
While Peskov gave no reason behind the move, the war in Ukraine and Russian troops having to make repeated retreats in recent weeks were likely both factors in choosing to break the tradition.
The move also draws attention to suspicions that Putin’s health is on the decline, especially following reports last week that he fell down the stairs and soiled himself.
The marathon end-of-year press conference — broadcast live on TV and often lasting upwards of four hours — allows the Russian leader to polish his public image all while answering questions from 500-plus journalists.
Putin’s spokesperson also indicated that a press conference may take place in the New Year, but did not give a specific date or format for the event.
The president had also postponed his annual live Direct Line question-and-answer session with ordinary Russian citizens over apparent concerns he would face difficult questions about the war and his chaotic call to mobilize 300,000 conscripts in September. ...
Is The War In Ukraine About To Go To An Entirely New Level?
January 17, 2023 by Michael
If Russia intends to make a major move to win the war in Ukraine, it needs to do it very soon. As you will see below, representatives from over 50 different nations will gather this week for a historic meeting in Ramstein, Germany. The goal of that meeting will be to implement a plan to absolutely flood Ukraine with tanks and missile systems in an attempt to turn the tide of the war. At the moment, the Russians have regained the initiative and the Ukrainians are steadily losing territory in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainians are hoping to buy enough time for the next massive influx of military aid to arrive, because it could potentially change everything.
Most of you have probably not heard about the meeting that will be held in Ramstein, Germany on Friday. The following originally comes from the Wall Street Journal…
Representatives of more than 50 countries supporting Ukraine are set to gather in Ramstein, Germany, to discuss provisions for Kyiv and pledge fresh supplies later this month. The U.S.-led assembly, known as the contact group, includes all countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and allies, including Japan, South Korea and Australia, offering lethal and nonlethal aid.
Ukraine is expected to receive Patriot missile systems, which Ukrainian officials say would hobble Russia’s missile attacks that have wreaked havoc on Ukraine’s civilian and critical infrastructure. Some Western officials also said that the first-ever shipment of Western-made main battle tanks could also be announced at the Friday meeting in Ramstein.
The only way that the Russians will be able to stop all of this equipment from getting to Ukraine would be to launch an enormous new invasion from the north that completely cuts off the flow of aid from the western powers.
Russia has been moving troops and equipment into Belarus for months, and many believe that such an offensive will soon happen.
And it is interesting to note that Russia and Belarus just initiated “a series of air-force exercises” on Monday…
Russia and its ally Belarus launched a series of air-force exercises Monday along the border with Ukraine in an effort to boost cooperation ahead of what Ukrainian officials and military analysts believe could be a fresh effort by Moscow in the coming months to retake battlefield momentum.
Throughout history, military exercises have often been used as a cover for major military operations.
But that doesn’t mean that the Russians will pull the trigger in this case.
Perhaps the Russians are just bluffing and are simply trying to hold a large number of Ukrainian forces along the northern border as the main push happens in the east.
At this point we just don’t know.
But many analysts in the western world do believe that the Russians will launch some kind of new offensive in the coming months…
“The Kremlin is likely preparing to conduct a decisive strategic action in the next six months intended to regain the initiative,” said a note from the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank that publishes daily reports on the war in Ukraine.
Actually, I think that if the Russians are going to make a move it will happen soon.
When the mud returns in the spring, it will be much more challenging for Russian tanks to move around efficiently.
So if a major offensive is going to take place, it will almost certainly be conducted within the next several weeks.
Meanwhile, Russian television continues to be filled with talk of nuclear war…
One of Vladimir Putin’s allies has claimed World War Three has already started as he called for Russia to launch a nuclear missile strike on Britain, France and Poland.
TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov told Russians that Moscow should target the West to disrupt NATO countries from sending supplies to Ukraine.
You don’t hear this sort of talk on television here in the United States.
In fact, at this point most Americans still believe that the risk of nuclear war is extremely low.
But they see things very, very differently inside Russia.
These remarks by Solovyov were in response to reports that NATO powers are getting ready to ship large numbers of tanks and armored vehicles to Ukraine…
It comes as Britain is poised to supply Challenger II main battle tanks to Kyiv, in the first such move of the war.
France is shipping French AMX-10 reconnaissance vehicles, Germany is sending 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, and the US is promising 50 M2 Bradley fighting vehicles.
Both sides just continue to escalate matters, and that has brought us dangerously close to nuclear conflict.
Earlier this month, Dmitry Medvedev made headlines all over the globe when he “threatened the United States of America with hypersonic cruise missiles”…
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev threatened the United States of America with hypersonic cruise missiles and compared the American government’s policies to that of Nazis in a Thursday Telegram post in response to a US embassy appeal to Russian citizens for peace.
“The main gift of the New Year was the arsenal of Zircon missiles that went yesterday to the shores of NATO countries,” said Medvedev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who currently serves as Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council.
The nuclear warhead-capable Zircon missiles were reported by Reuters Wednesday to have been placed on the frigate Admiral Gorshkov to be deployed to the Indian and Atlantic oceans.
By the way, we have absolutely no way to defend against those hypersonic cruise missiles.
If the Russians launch them, they will hit their targets.
If our leaders were sane, they would be trying to find a peaceful way out of this mess while there is still an opportunity to do so.
Sadly, that window is rapidly closing.
If the Russians launch another massive invasion of Ukraine from the north, there will be no going back.
Both sides will just keep escalating the conflict until someone crosses a line that will never be able to be uncrossed.
On Russian television, they are already talking about the inevitability of a nuclear conflict.
Unfortunately, most Americans don’t even realize that our leaders have us on the brink of the unthinkable.
Hopefully people will start to wake up before it is too late, because the clock is ticking.
"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Damn the Globalists, the damn Democrats, and the lying damn controlled major news media. Here comes World War 3 and it will be nuclear.
Russian Patriarch Kirill Warns 'Any Desire to Destroy Russia Will Mean The End of the World' Chris Menahan, Information Liberation Jan. 19, 2023 https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63553
Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill on Thursday warned the "madmen" running the West that Russia has "powerful weapons" and "any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world."
Any attempts to destroy Russia could spell disaster for the entire world, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, warned on Thursday.
Speaking after a religious service marking the Orthodox Christian holiday of Epiphany, the primate claimed that both the international community and Russia are facing "very huge threats."
According to Patriarch Kirill, the root of the problem is that some "madmen" believe that Russia, which "has powerful weapons and is populated by extremely strong people… who had never given in to an enemy and had always emerged victorious, could be defeated under the current circumstances."
Neither would it be possible to "impose on them certain values that cannot even be called values, so that they would be like everyone else and obey those who have the power to control most of the world," he noted.
"We pray to the Lord so that he enlightens those madmen and helps them understand that any desire to destroy Russia will mean the end of the world," he added.
The Patriarch's remarks echo a statement by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday, who warned those countries wishing to see Moscow defeated in Ukraine that nuclear powers such as Russia had "never lost a major conflict on which their fate depended." Should such a nation lose a conventional war, it could trigger a nuclear conflict, he added.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that the US is "warming" to the idea of working with Ukraine to attack Crimea because Russia has yet to use nuclear weapons.
From The New York Times, "U.S. Warms to Helping Ukraine Target Crimea":
For years, the United States has insisted that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. Yet the Biden administration has held to a hard line since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, refusing to provide Kyiv with the weapons it needs to target the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has been using as a base for launching devastating strikes.
Now that line is starting to soften.
After months of discussions with Ukrainian officials, the Biden administration is finally starting to concede that Kyiv may need the power to strike the Russian sanctuary, even if such a move increases the risk of escalation, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive debate. Crimea, between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, is home to tens of thousands of dug-in Russian troops and numerous Russian military bases.
The moderation in position has come about as the Biden administration has come to believe that if the Ukrainian military can show Russia that its control of Crimea can be threatened, that would strengthen Kyiv’s position in any future negotiations. In addition, fears that the Kremlin would retaliate using a tactical nuclear weapon have dimmed, U.S. officials and experts said — though they cautioned that the risk remained.
Biden's neocon handlers are essentially taunting Russia to use nukes against Ukraine.
"Fighting to the last Ukrainian" is their official policy.
With the reclaiming last year of Kherson in the south, Ukrainian forward lines can now use [American-provided HIMARS, long-range rocket systems] to hit the main supply routes coming out of Crimea, one American military official said in an interview.
This week, top U.S. and Ukrainian commanders will hold a high-level planning meeting in Germany to game out the offensive planning, another senior U.S. official said. The drill, the official said, is meant to align Ukraine’s battle plans with the kinds of weapons and supplies NATO allies are contributing.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the World Economic Forum on Wednesday that providing Ukraine weapons is "the way to peace."
"If we want a negotiated, peaceful solution to the war in Ukraine, we need to provide military support to Ukraine. That’s the only way," Stoltenberg said. "Weapons are the way to peace." --------------------------------------------------------------------
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenber is a lying damn son of a bitch.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
Ukraine's position is not as secure as most people think. The campaign in the Donbas region is usually portrayed as static, with Ukraine forces taking a terrible toll on Russian convict soldiers. In fact, the opposite is true: Russia enjoys a nine to one advantage in artillery tubes, and they're quite content to simply hang back and pound Ukraine defenses. The campaign in the Donbas region is starting to look more like Verdun than anything else.
Far too long to post here, so This is just a short summary. Read the whole thing, and draw your own conclusions:
Quote
...Ukraine’s military is extremely degraded, having taking exorbitant losses in both men and heavy weaponry. I believe Ukrainian KIA are approaching 150,000 at this point, and it is clear that their inventories of both artillery tubes, shells, and armored vehicles are largely exhausted.
I expect the Bakhmut-Siversk defensive line to be cleared before April, after which Russia will push towards the final (and weakest) defensive belt around Slavyansk. Meanwhile, Russia has significant combat power in reserve, which can be used to reopen the northern front on the west bank of the Oskil and restart offensive operations in Zaporozhia, placing Ukrainian logistics in critical danger.
This war will be fought to its conclusion on the battlefield and end in a favorable decision for Russia....
It has been clear from the start that the Ukraine Nazis cannot defeat the Russian Commie Rats. The major news media is controlled by the Globalists and only fools believe the major news media.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
News reports from the Ukraine war have to be taken with a gigantic grain of salt. Would the Russians really be satisfied with a static artillery duel - even if they are winning? Under Stalin, no. And I'm not sure Putin has that much patience, either.
The Russian tyrant is reportedly in the midst of negotiations with the terror group to recognise the Taliban government.
In return, Putin wants US equipment snatched from Afghanistan by the Taliban to be handed over, according to Telegram channel General SVR, which claims to be fed information by a Kremlin insider.
US troops scrambled to withdraw from Afghanistan in August 2021 as the Taliban surged across the war-torn nation in a matter of weeks.
At the same time as seizing regions, militants plundered stocks of Western artillery.
It is thought Taliban fighters may have stolen as many as half a million US weapons and up to 50,000 vehicles.
The US spent an estimated £62billion on weapons and equipment to arm the Afghan army as they propped up the government after toppling the Taliban in 2001.
US documents reveal staggering numbers of guns, vehicles and military gear were handed over to Kabul - only for the Afghan forces to be washed away against the tide of Taliban advance.
Estimates state 22,174 Humvees, 634 M1117s armoured cars, 115 Maxx Pros trucks, and 549,118 machine guns, assault rifles and pistols were given over by the US.
Some 33 Black Hawk helicopters, 23 Super Tucano fighter planes and 4 C-130 transport planes were also given to the Afghan Air Force.
Other support gear was also given over, with some 16,035 pairs of night vision googles, 162,043 radios and some 8,000 trucks.
Much of this equipment may have been removed by the US, may have been out of service, and may have been destroyed.
But the numbers offers an insight into the staggering scale of Afghanistan's arsenal - the remnants of which were picked clean by the militants.
Now so-called Kremlin insiders claim Putin has his eye on the Western weapons, wanting them to arm his troops in Ukraine.
The General SVR channel alleges: "Putin is overseeing negotiations with the Taliban to recognise the Taliban government.
"In return, the Russian leadership is offering a major arms and military equipment swap.
"Putin reported that the Taliban possess weapons and equipment including those seized after coming to power in Afghanistan, that are scarce for the Russian Army at the front.
"People initiated into the details of the negotiations say that the Taliban are extremely surprised by such proposals, but they are discussing them in earnest."
It comes as a Russian warship armed with “unstoppable” hypersonic missiles is claimed to be sailing towards the US coast in a show of strength.
The guided missile frigate Admiral Gorshkov has been closely monitored by Nato navies on its maiden voyage armed with 6,670mph Zircon weapons.
An unconfirmed Russian Telegram channel report says it was “spotted on radar in neutral waters of the Atlantic Ocean - at an effective salvo launch distance from the US coast”.
The nuclear-capable Mach 9 missiles have a reported range of 625 miles.
All equipment left behind should have been destroyed with thermite, fragmentation grenades, sledge hammers, cutting torches etc. All those responsible for leaving any usable equipment for the enemy should be tried for treason or court-martialed. What a bunch of idiots! Obama is a damn Mooslem Traitor and Biden is his puppet.
Biden committed election fraud, is a traitor, is a crook, belongs in a nursing home, and should never have be a president.
Get ready for incoming Russian hypersonic nukes.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
All equipment left behind should have been destroyed with thermite, fragmentation grenades, sledge hammers, cutting torches etc. All those responsible for leaving any usable equipment for the enemy should be tried for treason or court-martialed....
Agreed. But we have a long history of leaving weapons for our enemies. Who do you think armed ISIS?
Iran said three drones caused an explosion at an ammunition factory in the city of Isfahan late Saturday, amid fresh tensions with the West and Israel over Tehran’s military involvement in Ukraine and stalled negotiations to revive an international accord that limits Iran’s nuclear activities.
Phone footage captured by several passersby in Isfahan and posted on social media showed what appeared to be a large explosion on the side of a building on a major street.
“At around 23:30, an unsuccessful attack using micro-aerial vehicles was carried out on one of the Defense Ministry’s workshops,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that one drone had been shot down by air defenses while two others had exploded. The ministry said the roof of one building had been slightly damaged, and that the explosion had caused no casualties.
A local crisis-management chief, Mansour Shisheforoush, told state media that residents had reported “abnormal sounds” in three or four parts of Imam Khomeini Street, a main thoroughfare leading to the city center.
Iranian authorities didn’t immediately assign blame for the blast.
Iranian media also reported a large fire had broken out at an oil refinery in an industrial area outside the western city of Tabriz. It wasn’t clear whether the two incidents were related.
The Isfahan blast comes amid growing tensions between Iran and the West following Tehran’s recent involvement in the war in Ukraine, where it has supplied Russia with armed drones.
Russia purchased last summer hundreds of Iranian Shahed and Mohajer series drones, which Moscow has used to attack Ukraine’s front-line positions and civilian infrastructure, as the two countries move toward what the U.S. has called a full defense partnership.
The purported attack in Isfahan also comes after months of domestic unrest. Nationwide protests erupted in September following the death in police custody of a young woman arrested for allegedly violating the country’s Islamic dress code. Street protests have abated in recent weeks, but discontent continues to simmer with sporadic rallies erupting.
Tensions also have grown over Iran’s nuclear activities. Talks to revive a 2015 nuclear accord that imposed limits on the country’s nuclear program in return for relief from U.S. sanctions stalled over the summer. They have been further complicated by Iran’s support for Russia in the Ukraine war.
Israel was against the accord, which the U.S. exited under Trump administration in 2018, and it has indicated it would take action against Tehran’s nuclear program if the West doesn’t do enough to curb it.
Key Iranian facilities have been hit by sabotage multiple times in the past, including the Natanz nuclear facility in 2021. Iran has accused Israel of being behind the sabotage.
Israel has also previously targeted convoys suspected of smuggling Iranian weapons into Syria from Iraq.
Earlier this week, William Burns, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, arrived in Israel ahead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken‘s scheduled visit on Monday, according to a U.S. official. Mr. Blinken will visit Israel and the West Bank as part of a regional tour to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders amid a recent flare-up in violence there, and to reiterate U.S. support for a two-state solution.
The 2021 sabotage at Natanz, which led to a steep drop in Iran’s nuclear fuel production, happened as U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was visiting Israel and preparing to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
I’ve previously covered suicide drones and drones dropping RPGs. Now Ukraine is evidently cutting out the middleman and passing the savings on to Ivan by just strapping RPGs to light drones and guiding them in....
The is a great application of one of Murphy’s Military Laws: “If it’s stupid but it works, it ain’t stupid.” For the Russians, it must be quit embarrassing to get yeeted into the afterlife by Doogie Howser’s science fair project.
I’m somewhat surprised that drones that small can carry the RPG rounds effectively, but presumably they’re replacing camera gear or something close to the same weight.
An RPG-7 costs about $2,500 each, while a BMP-3 costs about $800,000 each. Even if you double the price for the quadcopter ($2,500 is a bit pricey, but not out-of-line for some pro rigs), you still get a hugely useful loitering munition for less than 1/100th the cost of the target you’re taking out…
Will this be the war that makes armored tanks and manned military aircraft obsolete? Hmmmm...
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
he White House and the CIA have responded to a report that CIA Director, William Burns, offered Russian President Vladimir Putin a fifth of Ukraine's territory to end the ongoing war as part of a peace plan drawn up on behalf of President Joe Biden.
A CIA official told Newsweek that claims in the report from Swiss-German newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) that Burns took a secret trip to Moscow in January and that there was a peace proposal put forward by the director on behalf of the White House were "completely false."
Last month, Burns traveled in secret to meet and brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, The Washington Post reported.
Burns is said to have submitted the plan in mid-January to put an end to the war, which began on February 24, 2022. The story was reported by NZZ on Thursday, citing high-ranking German foreign politicians.
Both Kyiv and Moscow reportedly rejected the proposal.
Newsweek reached out to the foreign ministries of Ukraine and Russia for comment.
According to the newspaper, the proposal offered "around 20 percent of Ukraine's territory"—approximately the size of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.
Kyiv reportedly shut down the proposal "because they are not willing to have their territory divided" while Russian officials said they "will win the war in the long run anyway," reported NZZ, which has been described as the Swiss newspaper of record. ...
If Biden and NATO would quit supplying the Ukrainians they would make peace.
Clearly Biden is fighting war by proxy against Russia and Biden wants to start a nuclear World War III.
“The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand, don’t kid yourself, no matter what y’all say, that’s called World War III,” Biden said on March 11, 2022, while speaking at a gathering of House Democrats in Philadelphia. Source: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politi...raine-would-start-world-war-iii-n1665207
Russia will nuke Ukraine if they have to and it will start a nuclear World War III.
www.TexasMilitia.Info Seek out and join a lawful Militia or form one in your area. If you wish to remain Free you will have to fight for it...because the traitors will give us no choice in the matter--William Cooper
Thanks for catching that bad link, Texas Resistance. Proofreading my own posts is just not something I really enjoy.
Russia, despite their rhetoric, doesn't want WW III any more than we do. But their leaders certainly know how to bluster and intimidate, they've been doing it since Stalin's day, and now even Biden doesn't take them very seriously.
IT IS ONE of the wonders of the world—or, more accurately, off the world. The Starlink constellation currently consists of 3,335 active satellites; roughly half of all working satellites are Starlinks. In the past six months new satellites have been added at a rate of more than 20 a week, on average. SpaceX, the company which created Starlink, is offering it as a way of providing off-grid high-bandwidth internet access to consumers in 45 countries. A million or so have become subscribers.
And a huge part of the traffic flowing through the system currently comes from Ukraine. Starlink has become an integral part of the country’s military and civil response to Russia’s invasion. Envisaged as a celestial side-hustle that might help pay for the Mars missions dear to the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, it is not just allowing Ukraine to fight back; it is shaping how it does so, revealing the military potential of near-ubiquitous communications. “It’s a really new and interesting change,” says John Plumb, America’s assistant secretary of defence for space policy.
Appropriately enough, the story started with a tweet, one sent by Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, two days after the invasion:
Quote
@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars —Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space—Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand.
Mr Musk replied to him within hours, saying that the Starlink service had been turned on over Ukraine and that the hardware would follow. Within days lorries full of the pizza-sized flat dishes used to access the satellites began to arrive in Ukraine.
By May around 150,000 people were using the system every day. The government quickly grew to rely on it for various communication needs, including, on occasion, the transmission of the nightly broadcast by Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president. Because the dishes (some of which are round and some rectangular) and their associated terminals are easily portable and can be rigged to run off a car battery, they are ideal for use in a country where the electricity and communication networks are regularly pounded by Russian missiles. When Kherson was liberated in November Starlink allowed phone and internet services to resume within days.
Crucially, Starlink has become the linchpin of what military types call C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance). Armies have long relied on satellite links for such things. An hour before Russia launched its attack, its hackers sought to disable thousands of modems associated with the terminals which provide access to the main satellite used by Ukraine’s army and government, among many other clients. But the capabilities Russia sought to degrade in that pre-emptive strike were far less advanced than the capabilities Ukraine enjoys today....
The U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center can be found in a location as obscure as its name—down what was once a country lane in rural Panama City, a now-booming resort city in the southwestern panhandle of Florida, 70 miles south of the Alabama border. The center’s complex is as nondescript as its location—a drab concrete post-World War II structure that has the look of a vocational high school on the west side of Chicago. A coin-operated laundromat and a dance school are across what is now a four-lane road.
The center has been training highly skilled deep-water divers for decades who, once assigned to American military units worldwide, are capable of technical diving to do the good—using C4 explosives to clear harbors and beaches of debris and unexploded ordinance—as well as the bad, like blowing up foreign oil rigs, fouling intake valves for undersea power plants, destroying locks on crucial shipping canals. The Panama City center, which boasts the second largest indoor pool in America, was the perfect place to recruit the best, and most taciturn, graduates of the diving school who successfully did last summer what they had been authorized to do 260 feet under the surface of the Baltic Sea.
Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning....
The leak of dozens of U.S. intelligence documents mostly pertaining to Russia's war against Ukraine has raised grave questions for both American policymakers and American allies and partners: Why were they leaked? How secure is U.S. information collection? How much does our government spy on its friends? Why do these materials seem to overestimate Ukrainian casualties, and how close to breakdown is Ukraine's air defense system?
But for the American public and the lawmakers theoretically representing us, one revelation should raise a larger concern: If there are U.S. boots on the ground in Ukraine, as these leaked documents indicate, are we closer to war with Russia than we thought?
To be clear, the boots are very few. "One slide suggested that a small contingent of less than 100 special operations personnel from NATO members France, America, Britain, and Latvia were active in Ukraine," The Guardian reported. A Daily Mail story includes an image of that paper, which shows the largest contingent of these forces are British (the U.K. has semi-denied the report), and only 14 are American.
That's not much. It's tiny compared to the thousands of civilian deaths and hundreds of thousands of combatant casualties reported in Ukraine already. It's also far smaller than U.S. deployments elsewhere, like, say, the roughly 900 U.S. troops lingering in Syria or the 2,500 in Iraq. Even an American embassy in a peaceful, friendly country could have a U.S. military presence of 14.
But that's the thing: Ukraine isn't a peaceful country right now, and Syria is a reasonable comparison. In both countries, the United States has a military presence but is technically not at war. Congress never authorized military intervention in Syria, and President Joe Biden has been adamant that "we will not be directly engaged in this conflict, either by sending American troops to fight in Ukraine or by attacking Russian forces" so "long as the United States or our allies are not attacked." And in both countries, our intervention puts us on opposing sides—and in close quarters in a warzone—with Russia.
That proximity doesn't guarantee we'll stumble into an unwanted U.S.-Russia war. Washington and Moscow alike have many good reasons to avoid that outcome, the specter of nuclear annihilation among them. Moreover, even if those 14 Americans come to real harm in Ukraine, the United States isn't forced to respond with escalation to the point of open conflict.
Syria is again a good comparison: When Iran-linked fighters killed a U.S. contractor and wounded five U.S. service members there last month, the U.S. retaliated with airstrikes, but we didn't launch a full-blown war on Iran. Likewise, though Moscow insists the United States is using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia, it hasn't answered American involvement with military reprisal against us.
Recall, this leak isn't the first hint that Biden's promise not to "[send] American troops to fight in Ukraine or [attack] Russian forces" is only kept on a technicality. It's been nearly a year since The New York Times reported the U.S. was providing intelligence assistance for Ukraine to kill Russian generals and sink their prize warship. And by early October, The Intercept was already reporting that there's "a much larger presence of both CIA and U.S. special operations personnel and resources in Ukraine than there were at the time of the Russian invasion," citing unnamed "current and former intelligence officials."
In that context—not to mention the tens of billions in aid the U.S. has sent to Ukraine since February of last year—it's unlikely a contingent of 14 would make any significant difference to Russian President Vladimir Putin's calculations around chancing war with the world's most powerful military and 30 other NATO allies. Again, 14 is not much.
Still, "unlikely" is not "impossible" and "not much" is not "nothing."
U.S. deterrence is strong and reliable, but we're naïve to imagine that Washington can do whatever it pleases around the world without fear of retaliation. That's especially true in Ukraine, where Putin has indicated he sees a core national interest at stake. (Russia's operations in Syria, though also strategically motivated, aren't on the same scale.) While escalation is not inevitable, it's still a risk.
To Biden's credit, the leak also revealed his administration has been in at least one way more cautious than some of Ukraine's other supporters. "One of the documents says that Britain and France have sent crewed electronic warfare planes over the Black Sea while the United States has sent only drones," David Ignatius observes at The Washington Post. "Why? The answer is that we don't want a direct confrontation with Russia, like the one the documents say took place in September, when the Russians nearly shot down a British RC-135."
That's wise. Yet putting Americans in Ukraine, though only a few, could be a path to direct confrontation with Russia, too. What happens if they're killed by a Russian bomb? It's difficult to imagine a solely verbal response from Washington, particularly if the deaths become public. Even a small risk of a world-historic catastrophe is a serious risk.
Russia has begun sending the new T-14 armored tank to Ukraine. No one is impressed. The auto loader is somehow slower than the tank it is supposed to replace, the armor will almost protect it from 90's missiles, and the Abrams can fire twice in the time it takes the T-14 to fire once. Here's an overview:
Quote
...“The T14 combines all the ultimate Russian technology previously introduced onto NATO tanks 25 years ago in a way that only a country trying to inflate the share prices of Raytheon would understand.” (Raytheon makes Javelin.)
“It does away with all the unnecessary ERA systems of the T90, which cannot protect the tank against missiles that were invented in the 80s, and instead replaces them with an active protection system that can almost defend the tank against missiles that were invented in the 90s.”
“An auto loader famous for jamming that now cannot be accessed and cleared when it does jam, is somehow heavier and slower than the tank it has replaced, and comes combined together in a package so expensive the company that made it immediately went bankrupt. The country that bought it cannot afford it and it has about as much export potential as English whiskey.”
“For a while, every idiot with even the vaguest sense of military interest was banging on about this tank as if Stalin had come back to life and had personally forged the hull from his own ball sack. And that all tanks across every nation in the world had just been rendered obsolete.”
Sections on repeated post-Soviet tank design failures, like the T-95 and Black Knight, and coverage of Russian brain drain, omitted.
The weird, Tiger-2 derived engine is unreliable.
The driver’s vision sucks.
No crew access to the turret internally.
The autoloader is slower than the manual fire rates on T-80s, T-72s and Abrams.
“The qualifying time for [an Abrams] loader to pass training is seven seconds, and the best crews claim they can reload in about four to five seconds. Meaning a good Abrams can fire twice before the T-14 has reloaded.”
“Ukrainian hackers found that most of the electronic systems on board, including the digital sights, the night vision, the infrared, were all in fact western imports. Most notably, these were last generation French optics from Leclerc MBTs left over from when they were all upgraded to ICONE in 2009.”
Current Russian tank optics are actually available to the general public. “They’re not even the best that are currently available. If you’ve got a spare five grand, you can go into any high-end spy gadget store and buy a drone that will give you better night vision and IR tracking capabilities than the latest generation of modern Russian tanks.”
China reportedly found out that none of the tank’s systems actually worked. “The soft kill defense systems were simply smoke screens, and the hard kill systems designed specifically to stop the Javelin and the TOW missile could not detect if either of these systems had been fired at the tank, and relied entirely on the crew being able to notice a missile traveling at the speed of sound flying towards them.”
“To top it off, there was no evidence of the supposed electronic warfare systems that could render guided missiles and mines inert.”
“Nothing in the Armata is new.”
The idea that western tanks need to catch up to the Armata is laughable. “By the time the Armata enters service, it will already be outdated.”
“Everything the Armata is has been done before, and in many cases has been done better.”
“Russia is not an equal to the United States and NATO, it’s an equal to North Korea, both technologically backwards nations.” ...
![[Linked Image]](https://i.imgur.com/gK1t2e0.jpg)
