Dated 2022. But in a sense, accurate. No gains of note since then.
Ffs look at the date below the video.
Here, i circled it
One report of Ukrainians with F16s in Ukraine.
Hopefully true and are a help.
That prediction was spot on
March 25th 2022 was the height of Russian occupation by area
Since then it was an industrial scale Russian “Special” mince meat sausage making operation for the glorious benefit of dear leader of Russiastan
....
Didn't realize it was so dated, but still accurate. Avdiivka may be the last big one for the Russians.
To put it in a nutshell, Russia is a Mafia state, with Don Putin at its head. He is the ultimate power in Russia, with the power of life or death, literally over everyone, and his tentacles reach worldwide. Skripol poisoning in England, and a bit closer to home, Prigozhin, one of his "Stars", but when push came to shove, he met his "premature" end to on Putins orders.
If you google "Putin Russia and the West", or Channel 4's "Hunting Russia's lost boys Dispatches" This was on last night, and by accident I happened to see it. A very telling slice of present day Russian life.... the complete disdain that the state has for its citizens, the sense of powerless these women felt when they tried to find out what had happened their menfolk. And also the implied threat if you asked to many questions. It also shows the real Russia not the glamour and glitz that is to be found in Moscow or St, Petersburg. If you watch it, take note of the conditions these people live under.
Brilliant if Ukraine has these to use. The question, of course, is how effective can they be if Russia has known for months that Ukraine would be getting them. What kind of sorties can Ukrainian F-16s run if Russia has AA batteries strategically placed behind their front lines? Will Ukraine be provided with the kind of ordinance required to really degrade heavily dug-in Russian positions? Like concrete bunkers and so on?
Adam Curtis is a pure stylist, I actually quite like his films but anyone who thinks they offer some sort of objective truth is deluded. He goes into the archives with his preconceived ideas and stitches together footage that supports these ideas
Don't know if you've watched it but I found TraumaZone was somewhat different to the other (more well known?) polemic type ones. Have seen a few of them over the years but haven't bothered to rewatch any in a long time, and they are a bit hazy in memory now. Your description fits them from what I remember.
I think there was just cards/plain text on screen describing the events in history (the period of the collapse of the Soviet Union) contemporaneous with the pieces of video archive footage. I did not detect too large of a bias in these (maybe an anti-capitalist one which is somewhat understandable in context), and there isn't as far as I remember any voiceover hammering points home and impressing a certain pov or a strong narrative structure on the viewer.
The main interest to it I found was that old, maybe quite rare, BBC footage of different people and aspects of ordinary life all across the USSR/Russia, even if not much is happening on screen at times. Could ignore the history text, and just enjoy these.
There was footage of big events too, but a lot of it is just fairly random (or if there was an agenda or a message behind every piece of footage selected, I wasn't smart/aware/knowledgeable enough to detect it).
I can see three big advantages for the F-16 right out the gate.
Having said that, the F-16 is no miracle weapon, and we should be careful to temper our expectations. There will be no massive fighter sweep that takes out the Russian Air Force once the first Ukrainian F-16 squadron becomes operational. We might see a slight increase in strikes against radar sites or key targets, but nothing world changing. Things in the air might change once more aircraft become available, but this is a long-term project, and in its early phases in particular, will likely be mostly defensive in nature.
Oh, and I think it's also worthwhile to point out that the first F-16s on Ukrainian soil will likely not be combat ready for quite some time even after they arrive. It'll take time for enough aircraft to arrive to form a combat-ready squadron, for the ground crews to work out the best way to service the aircraft at their home bases, for additional pilots to build up hours and so on. So even if the fist F-16s have arrived in Ukraine, which I'm sceptical about, I don't expect any major activity from them before December, possibly not before Christmas.
Why have the Russians been unable to dislodge the Ukrainians form their positions on the left bank of the Dnipro? The Ukrainians don't have any armor across from what I read. At the moment, they have toeholds in Pischanivka and Krynky. These are not disputed boggy islands in the Dnipro. This is terra firma on the left bank.
A few reasons. And from what we've seen Ukraine have actually managed to get some Ukranian modified BTR's across the water.
That's what I think anyway. But sure I'm noone at all.
Ukrainian artillery advantage
Article here
Edit: I see now there’s follow up to growing bridgehead
“””
According to Russian sources, Ukraine continues to bring armor and artillery across the river at Krynky
”””
Thats new assuming Russians sources are not lying
I found this from 2016 interesting
https://defence-blog.com/ukrainian-military-engineers-built-560-m-span-pontoon-bridge-over-the-dnieper-river/
If he's so easily dismissed, why not point out where Traumazone is historically inaccurate rather than simply ad hominem attack him? Or might that be because you haven't watched it?
The basic argument of the series is that Russia never had the chance to become a democracy after the fall of Communism because the Oligarchs stole power (along with vast swathes of the sovereign wealth of the nation). I'm curious as to how you could argue against this since even the 1991 election of Boris Yeltsin was criticised as not being entiely fair due to the interference of Soviet media and the chief prosecutor and no "election" since would meet the UN standards of "free and fair" (and most by rather a long way).
I wouldn't completely agree with that. It definitely "had a chance", it just let that chance slip by allowing the rise of the Oligarchs. I wouldn't blame anyone personally for it, but other countries have avoided the same outcome following the collapse of dictatorial power. And, of course, many have not.
What happened to Russia was unfortunate tho avoidable if corruption wasn’t so deeply ingrained into the culture
However the real tragedy is how Russians not only don’t want to learn from their mistakes but are actively trying rewrite their history and argue rabidly against anyone pointing at the emperor’s naked history
Yesterday I saw a video of them floating a Cesar across the river.
A Rubicon has been crossed :)
And many generations of Russians having all of their decisions made for them. Each one was just a number under the communist system, and when they turned to the capitalist system, no one had a clue what was happening. When the Communism collapsed, the powers that be at the time calculated the value of the state, divided it by the population nr, and each citizen was given his or her share. The clever guys collected these shares from a gullible public, the majority of whom didn't have a clue what the piece of paper was, they were bartered for as little as a loaf of bread a share. Throw the corruption that had always existed, even under the Communists, and what you have today is the result. And the way the changeover was handled , overnight " painful but necessary medicine" guaranteed it would be a disaster. To this day, there's a communist party in Russia, and many people long for its return.
Are you sure it's crossing the Dnipro? I could see the Russians letting Ukraine having that bridgehead if it's too costly to hold. Due to the sand dune desert the Russians have to funnel their troops and attack from just two sides. They might decide it's not worth it and entrench themselves further back. Would be good for Ukraine to push them back a bit but couldn't see them making it past the dunes.
Thats because Putin has unashamedly turned Russia into a criminal enterprise, pure and simple. And he rules through terror, there was a post here recently where 300 young people were at a show, and the band started singing anti-war songs. But some one alerted the *police *and when they came, they stopped the show and made everyone lie down on the floor. Then over the next couple of hours, each person was questioned and had all their details taken. Most likely, next stop for the men will be a callup for military enlistment. Such actions just hammer home to Russians that if they cross the line, they will pay the price.
*( this is one of the biggest problems facing anyone protesting against Putin, the informers, a leftover from the communist era and is the main reason why Russians have very low trust levels, especially with strangers )
I'll post the video again if I come across it.
So the Russian authorities can basically pardon anybody they like with 6 months military service. And they don't even have to risk their lives. They could be chilling on a beach in Crimea if they wanted.
I don't think there'll be too many Russians comfortably chilling on a beach in Crimea this summer!🤣
Something interesting may be going on in Kaliningrad: Russia may be moving its S400 air defence systems back to Moscow, of Rostov or somewhere else threatened by Ukraine:
So much for the threats posed by those warmongering NATO neighbours: Poland, Lithuania, and those deadly new NATO threats, Sweden and Finland.😀
Is Kaliningrad in range of any of Ukraine's drones?
And I'd say that what imprisonment he did serve, was not in one of the regular prisons either, most likely a work camp, based in an agricultural setting. Actually come to think of it, it's a wonder Putin didn't give him a medal for removing a troublesome thorn in his side...
The bigger issue is going to be the fact that Kaliningrad does not have any overland connection with Russia. Any attack would either have to come from the Baltic Sea, which is highly unlikely, or have to cross NATO airspace, which NATO probably wouldn't look too kindly on any attack from, or transiting through, said airspace. There are numerous airborne AEW&C, ELINT and SIGINT assets airborne close to the Russian & Belorussian borders at any given time, and Russia is just looking for an excuse to take one of them out. A drone attack on Kaliningrad would provide that pretext.
It's been reported today that one of the men imprisoned in 2014 for involvement in the murder of Moscow journalist Anna Politkovskaya has been released.
He was sentenced to 20 years, and has just completed a 6 month tour of duty in Ukraine earning him a Presidential pardon.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67414517
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