Good thing the Night King was slow as **** and an easy kill
And to add salt to the wound, the Belarussians would welcome them with flower's and kisses'.
...
Same old story from 3 months ago so nothing has changed,bar the mass influx of generators and floating power stations
Biden receiving Zelensky: Putin has escalated his attacks against civilians and is trying to use winter as a weapon
Putin is the ultimate white walker, the night king
I love how they flew him to American via a US airforce aircraft from Poland,
No chance anyone would have interfered with that flight and it's likely escort of US F22 fighters
Right...... so they can't take a few dusty towns a few km from their own borders and they're going to take Paris. I imagine the French are trembling alright.
Probably the first time in 300 + days he's felt safe from attacks and assassinations
Joe Biden failing to know that Time Magazine is a global publication is peak Grandad Joe.
But you're right about Zelensky.
It occurs to me, that all these windbags around the World spend their lives ass-kissing and shilling and working grimey junior jobs, with the aim of leading their Countries. When in fact, all it takes, is for a person to be utterly selfless, to put the people first, to put the Constitution and the integrity of the Country first and to never say die.
Slava.
I feel a tear or two listening to Zelensky at the moment
I presume Solovyov has an escape plan too, for when inevitably he needs it.
There'll be someone on shortly whinging about him not wearing a suit
One president Meets an Amazing president
President Zelensky arrived in U.S.
Stephen Fry and John Boyne 🤣
Nice one Vlad, you'll do wonders for their Kindle sales.
And yet '1984' is still the most read title in Russia at the moment. If Putin isn't worried, well, he ought to be.
He's probably banned Margaret Attwood as well, but I can see a scenario develop which ends with Putin hanging by his neck from the wall of the Kremlin by this time next year, just like in 'The Handmaid's Tale'.
I think it's a matter of priorities and solving one problem at a time. It can only be addressed once the active fighting has ended and the return of the children can be made part of some agreement such as the kidnapped being used as currency to pay for the lifting of sanctions. Unfortunately I think it highly likely those children will mostly be abused in the meantime, such is the base nature of Orcs. I don't really want to to think about it as it's an utterly terrible situation where nothing can be done about the suffering at the moment.
Imagine the look on Putins face if the Ukrainans went into Belarus and announced they were annexating half of Belarus to protect ukraine
Russia's Oil Exports Collapsed Since G-7 Sanctions Began
Country’s volumes plunged by more than half in week to Dec. 16
(I'd post a link, but Bloomberg...)
Meanwhile, it looks like no one is brave enough to tell Putrid.
Putin Pledges Unlimited Spending to Ensure Victory in Ukraine
Russian president tells military to achieve results in Ukraine
Defense minister calls for expanding army to 1.5 million
Unlimited spending based on unlimited income, not to mention unlimited amounts of cannon fodder.
The cold war concluded with a ratcheted up arms race which the US could afford, but which broke the USSR financially. How's it go?: 'Those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.'
That applies equally to the west, this time we need to put the boot in and finish them off. They clearly aren't fit to run their country so it needs to be run for them, like Japan post WW2.
So we all know about the forced deportations of Ukrainans especially Ukrainian children to Russia to be forcibly adopted,
Here's a report showing Russian soldiers searching orphanages to steal children from so they can be taken back to Russia to be indoctrinated to fight for Russia...
How the hell is the International community and the UN staying silent .
⚡️The United States allocates $1.85 billion in additional military assistance to Ukraine, it includes Patriot air defense systems, - Blinken
Finally, great news.
Shout out to Israel for its consistency; 17 generators. The UK is only providing 900.
Fu*k.
But the US also had far more to lose. So it doesn't make sense.
But now, after months of investigation, numerous officials privately say that Russia may not be to blame after all for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.
“There is no evidence at this point that Russia was behind the sabotage,” said one European official, echoing the assessment of 23 diplomatic and intelligence officials in nine countries interviewed in recent weeks.
Some went so far as to say they didn’t think Russia was responsible. Others who still consider Russia a prime suspect said positively attributing the attack — to any country — may be impossible.
So no evidence the Russians blew up Nord Stream. It made no sense for them to do so. It makes far more sense that the US did it, they had far more to gain than Russia.
To some extent the provocation stuff Is kind of bullshit ,
Ukraine and Russia are at war , Belarus has been assisting and allowing Russian attacks on Ukraine , Ukraine will have no problem going for a first strike if it suits them , it's not like in February when Ukraine was doing everything ( prob too much ) to not escalate and inflame the situation ,Ukraine wasn't mobilizing ,wasn't mining the borders ,wasn't deploying troops to the border..
At this stage what are the Russians going to do that they're not already doing ,
At the most they allow the Belarussians to spread the we were attacked narative - theyll spread that anyway if it suits ,
If there are Russian troop and armour build ups near the Ukrainian border there'll be hi-mars strikes in response..
Reports of Liga(Wagner) mercenaries being deployed near Krupeyki village in Belarus to stage a provocation on the border
we may be looking at some sinister actions to....
Well they attacked from Belarus in Feb, so can potentially do so again now, without it dragging Belarus into the war.
Belarus attacking also brings Belarus itself into play, Ukraine will be able to retaliate directly against a non-nuclear armed country. Poland could have the tanks outside Lukashenko's office by the next morning.
It's why Belarus attacking won't happen and isn't being taken seriously bar a few wish-casters.
That's a large part of the reason Russia is there, but really it is about not losing Ukraine from its orbit, even if it didn't have those resources. Something which it has no right to demand, especially in light of treaties it has signed with Ukraine.
It doesn't necessarily follow that's why the US and EU is giving so much support, for the reasons here.
Well they study it and try to replicate it, but in a very lazy and non-committal way. Russian military structures are more or less those of the Red Army in WWII. Their tactics are to amass huge numbers of men and artillery, blast forward in two unrelenting pincers to try to encircle them and then keep blasting until they surrender. Brutal, but it was effective at a time when they had millions of men but no advanced equipment. Such a structure does not have room for individual sub commanders making in field decisions, selecting targets or adapting to changed circumstances, and so the centralised commander issues orders and they have to be obeyed, or you get shot. This is the tactics of choice if you have to suddenly conscript a load of soldiers without proper training and favour large stockpiles of equipment over smaller amounts of the latest and best.
NATO by contrast rely on smaller, smarter units working towards an understood goal using their own judgment, maneuver tactics, speed and precision to achieve them. To do this, you need to have professional, long term, dedicated and smart soliders with modern equipment. You also need to have a much larger number of NCOs and officers who take responsibility rather than blindly following orders. Finally, you need to have a large number of support and logistics personnel and accurate intelligence.
Russia tried to adopt NATO tactics at the start of the invasion, but without providing the structural reforms and equipment necessary. They had a complete logistical and support failure, and their intelligence, while good by WW2 standards, was not sufficient for modern warfare. The result was that their attempt to mirror NATO tactics simply didn't work and they resorted to the old reliable - blast away until the enemy is all dead. It's brutal, and can be effective if you have several million equipped men, but doesn't work for the size of forces they have in Ukraine.
Incidentally, a significant ex post facto explanation from Russian supporters for their failures to date is that they never actually intended this to be a full scale invasion, and so they didn't fail to take Kyiv etc. The "evidence" for same is that if they did wish to carry out such an operation, they would have needed millions of men and they compare it to Barbarossa (3-5 million men) or the Battle of Berlin (1 million with more to follow). John Mearshimer repeats this line a lot. But what it misses is that this implicitly acknowledges that the Russian armed forces are still stuck in the WW2 era. What they don't mention is that Russia tried to recreate the 2003 invasion of Iraq where the US used a very fast combined arms invasion and had effectively destroyed the clunky old Iraqui army within a month, using similar numbers of ground troops.
Well the strategy is to liberate Zaphorizhzhia by avoiding the fortified areas and use maneuver troops to encircle and cut off the fortified areas and towns such as Melitopol to force the Russians surrender. Russia does not have enough troops to have a properly fortified line from the Dnieper river to Donbas. I agree that there is nothing easy about the upcoming offensive, but what Ukraine want to achieve is eminently achievable and in many ways is seems more realistic than the Kherson offensive did at the start of same.
Russia are the ones who are trying to prosecute WW1 style trench warfare which, to be fair to them, was working well around April-May last year. But then HIMARS was introduced to disrupt their supply lines, and they have been bogged down ever since. Ukraine are not planning any major offensives in the Donbas, because it would, as you say, be sending them into the heavily fortified areas. But without giving the game away, they are not planning to attack there.
The Russians seem to be using their training exercises in Belarus as a blocking maneuver i.e. it forces Ukraine to keep troops in or around Kyiv for its defence so they cant commit them to the South. But if they were to attack into Northern Ukraine, it would be a terrific Christmas present for Kyiv. In February, they invaded with a more professional and better equipped force, with the element of surprise and with a troop ratio advantage of up to 12:1. Now, they would be attacking where they are expected, with poorly trained and equipped conscripts and without the numerical advantage that they had in February.
Combined with stalemate in Donbas and the Ukrainians being able to withdraw and rest some of their major assault battalions from Kherson and Kharkiv, and agreeing with you that it won't be "easy", Ukraine are in a very good position to impose massive defeats on the Russians over the next few months.
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