Russia

[Moiraine]

1 hour ago, Scarlet said:

 

 

 

 

I saw stats showing Russia missile failure rate has increased to over 80% recently, up from around 50% in October when they started taking out the energy grid, and Ukraine has become a lot faster at restoring it.

One thing I'm still wondering is if Russia's top military is willing to tell Putin the truth. There was an article back in March I found stating we had intel that they are lying, but I wonder if that's changed. Things are even worse now. The mobilization and what they've shared on state media suggests he must know some of it. But if their missiles can't even hit their targets, before Ukraine gets even better defense, there is no point for Russia in continuing this war. I feel they are going to get even more embarassed in the next few months unless they send in 700,000 more troops which would be basically their entire military.

There is talk that Russia will start mobilizing some women also although publicly they are saying they won't do anymore. But there was a recent report that police were rounding up men off the streets and kidnapping them to be sent to war. The mobilization may be a great idea since it's the people under 30 who dislike Putin the most and this is a great way to get rid of them - the only problem is they have parents and grandparents.

[ZRod]

2 hours ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

 

I saw stats showing Russia missile failure rate has increased to over 80% recently, up from around 50% in October when they started taking out the energy grid, and Ukraine has become a lot faster at restoring it.

One thing I'm still wondering is if Russia's top military is willing to tell Putin the truth. There was an article back in March I found stating we had intel that they are lying, but I wonder if that's changed. Things are even worse now. The mobilization and what they've shared on state media suggests he must know some of it. But if their missiles can't even hit their targets, before Ukraine gets even better defense, there is no point for Russia in continuing this war. I feel they are going to get even more embarassed in the next few months unless they send in 700,000 more troops which would be basically their entire military.

There is talk that Russia will start mobilizing some women also although publicly they are saying they won't do anymore. But there was a recent report that police were rounding up men off the streets and kidnapping them to be sent to war. The mobilization may be a great idea since it's the people under 30 who dislike Putin the most and this is a great way to get rid of them - the only problem is they have parents and grandparents.

I mean, it's basically a Russian tradition to throw bodies at the front lines until the opposition is no more. 20% is more than 0% comrade!

[TGHusker]

2 hours ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

 

I saw stats showing Russia missile failure rate has increased to over 80% recently, up from around 50% in October when they started taking out the energy grid, and Ukraine has become a lot faster at restoring it.

One thing I'm still wondering is if Russia's top military is willing to tell Putin the truth. There was an article back in March I found stating we had intel that they are lying, but I wonder if that's changed. Things are even worse now. The mobilization and what they've shared on state media suggests he must know some of it. But if their missiles can't even hit their targets, before Ukraine gets even better defense, there is no point for Russia in continuing this war. I feel they are going to get even more embarassed in the next few months unless they send in 700,000 more troops which would be basically their entire military.

There is talk that Russia will start mobilizing some women also although publicly they are saying they won't do anymore. But there was a recent report that police were rounding up men off the streets and kidnapping them to be sent to war. The mobilization may be a great idea since it's the people under 30 who dislike Putin the most and this is a great way to get rid of them - the only problem is they have parents and grandparents.

Related:

 

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-firing-unarmed-missiles-deplete-ukraine-air-defense-says-us-military-2022-11-29/

 

 

Quote

 

Russia is firing unarmed cruise missiles that were designed to carry nuclear warheads at targets in Ukraine to try to deplete Kyiv's stocks of air defenses, a senior U.S. military official said on Tuesday.

The official, who declined to be named, was asked about a Nov. 26 assessment by Britain's military intelligence which said that Russia was "likely" removing nuclear warheads from cruise missiles and firing the unarmed munitions into Ukraine.

That intelligence update cited open source imagery showing wreckage of an air-launched cruise missile fired at Ukraine that seemed to have been designed in the 1980s as a nuclear delivery system.

 

The British defense ministry said a ballast was probably being substituted for the warheads, a system that will still produce damage through the missile's kinetic energy and unspent fuel.

Asked about the assertion, the U.S. military official told Pentagon reporters: "It's certainly something that they're trying to do to mitigate the effects of the air defense systems that the Ukrainians are employing."

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

 

 

[ZRod]

9 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

 

Why do the ammo depots keep having these explosive accidents comrades?

[Moiraine]

Really thorough article by NYT on Russia’s seemingly limitless failures.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/16/world/europe/russia-putin-war-failures-ukraine.html

 

[TGHusker]

 

The Russian answer to poor morale - send over the entertainers.    Where is Bob Hope when you need him?   

 

Kind of reminds me of Bob Hope and his USO shows in Vietnam.  For those of us old enough to remember,  each year around Christmas time, Bob Hope would do 

a number of shows in Vietnam which would air one of the 3 TV networks- NBC, ABC, or CBS.  

https://www.uso.org/bob-hope#:~:text=Bob Hope was many things%2C but to the,entertaining American troops%2C both at home and abroad.

 

 

https://dnyuz.com/2022/12/19/russia-to-deploy-team-of-creatives-to-ukraine-frontlines/

 

Quote

 

Russia is reportedly going to send opera singers, actors, and circus performers to frontlines of its war in Ukraine. 

Russian military leadership has announced the formation of a new troupe of creative entertainers – the “front line creatives brigade” – in an attempt to boost soldiers’ notoriously low morale, according to the UK Ministry of Defence and Russian media reports.

The MoD statement said: “Military music and organised entertainment for deployed troops have a long history in many militaries but in Russia they are strongly intertwined with the Soviet-era concept of ideological political education.”  

However, it added that the move is “unlikely to substantively alleviate” concerns around poor morale.

RBC News, a Russian outlet, said the brigade will include “professional artists who voluntarily entered military service” as well as troops recently mobilised under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recruitment drive.  

The mood among Russian soldiers is believed to generally be very low. Many troops are sent to battle poorly trained and equipped, with the war grinding on into 2023 despite Putin’s belief that the invasion of Ukraine would happen quickly.

This, along with troop desertion, terrible battlefield conditions and large casualty numbers, have contributed to a bad atmosphere for Russian troops, many of whom are unclear about their objectives. A report for the Institute for the Study of War found that morale was especially bad in the fiercely contested east of Ukraine, in a region known as the Donbas. 

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

 

[Scarlet]

 

[BigRedBuster]

2 hours ago, Scarlet said:

 

At this point, Putin has proven his threats are about as valid as My Pillow guy claiming he has evidence. 

[TGHusker]

I wonder what side some of these alt-right guys would be on when FDR started to give aid to Winston Churchill before America got involved in WW 2?  

I probably don't need to wonder - Hitler's side. 

 

https://www.rawstory.com/how-unhinged-maga-republicans-went-full-putin-during-zelenskys-white-house-visit-libertarian/

Quote

 

But some far-right MAGA Republicans were not happy to see Zelenskyy getting a warm reception from Biden, Harris, Pelosi and other Democrats. And libertarian/conservative journalist Cathy Young calls out those MAGA Republicans in a biting article published by The Bulwark on December 22 and headlined, “Putin’s Useful Idiots: Right Wingers Lose It Over Zelenskyy Visit.”

Young observes, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s surprise arrival in Washington on Wednesday for a meeting with President Joe Biden and a speech before Congress has unhinged the always-seething anti-Ukraine Trumpian right, triggering a deluge of snark and grievance…. ‘National conservative’ pundit and Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer, who played the ‘obviously, Putin is a thug and Ukraine is the victim here, but….’ game in the early days of the war, went full Putin this time around.”

Hammer, on December 21, tweeted, “Raise your hand if you are personally DONE with the Ukraine gravy train.” And Republican activist Donald Trump Jr., on Twitter, posted, “Zelenskyy is basically an ungrateful international welfare queen.”

“To top it off, Hammer, who shares Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage, also accused the Ukrainian president of being a bad Jew — unseemly under any circumstances, but all the more so considering that only a few days earlier, Hammer had been spotted at a New York Young Republicans’ Club Gala in the company of various alt-right types with, shall we say, a complicated relationship to antisemitism,” Young writes. “Among them: Rep. Marjorie ‘Jewish Space Lasers’ Taylor Greene, the founders of the white nationalist website VDARE, and erstwhile Jew-baiting troll, Jack Posobiec.”

Young notes that the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said of Zelenskyy, “Get this grifting leech out of our country please,” while Fox News’ Tucker Carlson mocked Zelenskyy as a “Ukrainian strip club manager” and said of his visit to the U.S., “It may be impossible to imagine a more humiliating scenario for the greatest country on Earth.”

 

 

 

 

 

Quote

 

“The question of why the Trumpian populist right is so consumed with hatred for Ukraine — a hatred that clearly goes beyond concerns about U.S. spending, a very small portion of our military budget, or about the nonexistent involvement of American troops — doesn’t have a simple answer, Young explains. “Partly, it’s simply partisanship: If the libs are for it, we’re against it, and the more offensively the better. And if the pre-Trump Republican establishment is also for it, then we’re even more against it. Partly, it’s the belief that Ukrainian democracy is a Biden/Obama/Hillary Clinton/‘Deep State’ project, all the more suspect because it’s related to Trump’s first impeachment.”

Young continues, “Partly, it’s the ‘national conservative’ distaste for liberalism — not only in its American progressive iteration, but in the more fundamental sense that includes conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: the outlook based on individual freedom and personal autonomy, equality before the law, limited government, and an international order rooted in those values. Many NatCons are far more sympathetic to Russia’s crusade against secular liberalism than to Ukraine’s desire for integration into liberal, secular Europe. Whatever the reason, the anti-Ukraine animus on the right is quite real and widespread.”

 

 

[BigRedBuster]

10 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

I wonder what side some of these alt-right guys would be on when FDR started to give aid to Winston Churchill before America got involved in WW 2?  

I probably don't need to wonder - Hitler's side. 

 

https://www.rawstory.com/how-unhinged-maga-republicans-went-full-putin-during-zelenskys-white-house-visit-libertarian/

 

 

 

 

 

Right now, the republicans party is on the wrong side of history. 

[TGHusker]

17 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Right now, the republicans party is on the wrong side of history. 

For sure

[knapplc]

On 12/17/2022 at 2:20 PM, Moiraine said:

Really thorough article by NYT on Russia’s seemingly limitless failures.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/16/world/europe/russia-putin-war-failures-ukraine.html

 

 

That was a very long, very grim read.