Everything has a breaking point. It's inconceivable that there aren't growing widespread mutterings and discontent among families & neighbours affected. Morale whether military or public is crucial.
What if they told him he had cancer, and the shock gave him a heart attack? I could live with that.
Out a window the best option, it's the only way to peace, everyone can blame dead Putin and get better terms.
I think I would rather the heart attack option over the cancer one,
I would be afraid of what he would do if he was told he only 6 months to live from cancer.
Putin has always lived a healthy lifestyle and probably gets healthcare and nutrition on the level of the queen. If he lives another 20 years it wouldn't surprise me.
Let's hope not. Hopefully he dies in the next 5 to 10 years sometime. The sooner the better. I hope he even dies before this War he started in Ukraine is over and without a succeser appointed because Russia will be in disarray then and there war efforts will collapse and they will have to pull back.
It looks great and all but you can bet your bottom dollar Orbán has no shame and whatever kickbacks, incentives or blackmail exist to keep him sweet with Moscow, they ain't gonna disappear 'cos he got a good telling to by Zelensky.
Is a striking picture though, isn't it? One a 45 year-old man clearly aged by war and privation, dressed with the pragmatism of someone constantly juggling battlefields and boardrooms; the other a corpulent toad, clearly distant from anything resembling hardship, wearing the scowl beloved of the wannabe hardman.
The preview doesn't appear so worth posting an edited version here!
We really have to give credit to the new Argentinian President for the seating arrangement that allowed Zelensky to finally corner and tear into obese ratf****r Orban, totally unencumbered.
This is great:
https://x.com/jayinkyiv/status/1733971306243104998?s=46
No thanks.
6 weeks sounds about right. But remember, this has also been a front line position since 2014. So you could almost say they’ve been trying for 10 years at this point.
Russia sanctioning itself now
The question is when if ever the masses rise up doesn't look likely as until they do little will change .
Having lots of bodies to throw at the lines in Ukraine to make minimal gains for the cost of thousands won't be enough to bring anything close to victory in Ukraine for putin in my opinion. The Ukrainian armed forces have made serious inroads into making putin's war machine less effective and that will mean continued attacks by putin's forces will continue to cost more and more as they have less effective weapons to strike at the Ukrainians. The latest count by Ukraine for artillery systems they have knocked out is over 8000 and it has been said that early success in attacks by putin's forces relied on this artillery to damage the Ukrainian defensive lines before the troops were sent in. As time goes on attacks by putin's forces will keep costing more and the Ukrainians who have joined the armed forces to defend their country will continue to improve as a fighting force even if that means needing to rely more on their own arms industry as time goes on.
It may be convenient now for putin, that any opposition to his power can simply be sent to the front lines to die, but for a country to hemorrhage the huge numbers of people at the start of their economically productive lives is going to cripple the russian federation for long into the future. They have the largest area of land of any one country but even before the invasion of Ukraine lacked the manpower to make full use of their available resources. It is easy to put on a veneer of affluence for the select few in moskow but in recent days we have seen images of ques for food in parts of putin's empire and in spite of some believing the elite still being happy in the big cities is all that is important I think the people mourning their children that putin has sent to their deaths for nothing will get a taste for action to depose him once they realise they face starvation and misery if he stays in power. A happy elite will not be able to protect putin in the face of the millions who should stand up to his brutality.
Cancer and Russian political “heart attacks” don’t care for lifestyle or diet much.
Putin quite obviously wanted a quick war over in weeks if not days, and cement his name in history books, the attempts to reframe and reinvent Putin as some sort of 42D chess genius with some sort of long term plan when just this summer we got an example of just how naked this emperor would be funny if so many people were not dying because of his hubris.
My only hope is he's stressed to bits with how badly this war is going and as we all know stress kills. It's a real shame his not already in his eighties.
On a side now anybody know how many weeks this all out assault in Avdiivka has been going? I feel like it's 6 week's now but maybe it's more. Wouldn't it be great if we reached the New year and Russia didn't make any gains.
Putin is what 71 now in a country with sub Saharan male life expectancy (probably lower now thanks to himself) with no clear succession to the throne of Empire which will likely lead to a civil war as everyone scrambles for power in the most sanctioned country.
Time is not on his side.
What I meant about the long haul really was Putin can sustain it by the looks of things he has plenty of bodies who he has no regard for to send to the front .I don't know the full cost to Ukraine in terms of losses but it must be high .At the moment it looks like a bit of a stalemate so it looks a tall order for Ukraine to get the total victory most of us want .Can they keep up the support hopefully they can but some countries seem to be wavering a little .Unfortunately Putin doesn't seem to be as isolated as many of us hoped watching him this week in the UAE and sanctions don't appear to be hitting the well heeled in Russia which is the only real chance of stirring up something .
Everything Russia has done to stymie the Ukrainian Summer offensive are things the AFU can do to make any hope of Russian advancement similarly grinding and slow. Short of a total collapse in international support, I don't see Russia making any great changes to the frontline, especially if Ukraine takes the aid its getting and focuses it on defence and let Russian grunts run at their guns.
It's not so much that the long haul suits Putin. If the long haul suited him, then why would Russia have attempted a rapid combined arms operation in Feb 2022, as if they wanted to achieve their military aims quickly and with minimum casualties? Pretty much like every invading army would look to do, because no one actually wants a long haul. It's he who must suit the long haul because it is the only avenue left to achieving his ambition.
thomil, thank you for taking the time to post this.
Zelensky visiting White House tommorow
Or in the Great War (2) celebrations I can show more medals than you......
If you think about that situation for more than a few seconds, I’m sure it’ll be apparent that the immigrants caught up in this drafting/conscription are victims of desperation and circumstance, not stupidity
….
Until the educated middle classes in Moscow, Petersburg etc are queuing for and stockpiling food scenes like this are irrelevant. In the same way they don't care about all the dead soldiers from provinces and prisons
Not sure of the exact numbers now as over 1000 were allowed to be fast tracked at a different border crossing that opened a line to allow empty trucks through.
To my knowledge the reason the trucks were railed into polland is due to backlog of polish trucks been blocked.
Tit for tat I suppose.
Surprisingly the border protests are not blocking incoming trucks only exiting.
I had a feeling,was off line from Thursday night,seen it all over twitter people celebrating that they had somehow bypassed the blockades, any idea of the number of trucks now waiting last I seen it was close to 2000 trucks stuck at various locations that was over a week ago I think
Looks like a normal explosion in cold damp air , nothing unusual
No trucks have entered Ukraine by rail yet.
But trucks have entered Poland by rail and contained on by road.
The video that's on line full version shows that the train entering Poland not exiting.
He'd probably try and annex the Hungarian speaking area of Ukraine if he thought he'd get away with it. The Treaty of Trianon's legacy is one that still hangs over Hungarian politics. In the survey referenced the article below 67% of Hungarians believed that parts of neighbouring countries belonged to them.
It's not just Poland,it's Slovakia and Hungary,they showed some trucks being brought in on train cars the other day claiming that the blockades has been broken ,I get the feeling that it's not happening at all as claimed
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