Jebus what have I just read in last few pages
the gaz(light)prom employees are getting desperate
I guess if they don’t hit those firehose of manure spreading targets, it’s their own neck on the line next to be sent to the trenches to die for emperor Putin
Ukrainian military figures. So the actual figure is probably a number between what the US estimates and what the Ukrainians give.
PT, on the assumption that you are a very balanced and very objective individual and give careful thought to what you post here, is there any chance you will comment on all the utterances coming out of Russia re they being all very true and not of a propaganda in nature eg Putin’s statements - especially from Jan 1st 2021, what’s said on the Current Affairs programmes on RussianTV stations, statements from Lavrov (Ru minister for foreign affairs) , comments by some US politicians - Especially MTG
Why are Russia struggling to take Ukraine?
More nonsense.
Nonsense you appear to have quite the difficulty addressing or debunking point by point.
You've clearly been brainwashed by the propaganda, if you think the western financial contribution to this conflict is not a significant burden. Just take one look at the political tension in the US, and it's obvious that a nation carrying obscene levels of national debt is starting to question what exactly is being accomplished here.
Russia are not going to lose this war. Ukraine is in ruins. None of that is worth the price that's being paid, and the public are starting to wake up to this fact.
Russia already has. Many tens of thousands of their people dead, hundreds of thousands of young men and women have left the country, the largest sanctions package in history that's ever tightening, a military forced back from initial gains by a far smaller opposing force, NATO adding long standing neutral countries right on its doorstep, Europe's purses that have been open since the early 1980's closed for at least a generation, a Ukraine in ruins they can't afford to rebuild, an economy temporarily propped up by military spending, external investment, including from BRICS, fallen off a cliff, China increasingly and openly pulling back, because this nonsense is bad for business and Russia's tiny economy won't fill that gap, ever. And that's before Russia has to deal with any "peace" that comes after in their occupied territories. That never goes well for long for invading forces no matter who they are.
But again, people are waking up to that nonsensical rubbish too because very few people actually believe that Russia are any sort of legitimate threat to Europe or the world. You would really have to be very gullible, to swallow such lazy propaganda efforts.
Military invasions of sovereign nations killing and injuring countless numbers of people, displacing millions more tend to make such things much easier to swallow. Military invasions of a European nation also tends to make people see Russia as a legitimate threat to Europe.
The numbers are shrinking rapidly though.
Oh you fervently hope that and I suppose if you say it often enough you just might believe it.
There is something both hilarious and sad about Russians trying to Rus-splain how death of 450,000 of their countrymen and destruction of a good chunk of their military equipment without the loss of a single NATO soldier in what they claim is an all out open war of civilisation with “west” and NATO is “just a scratch”
The destruction of their Soviet origin stockpiles is astonishing really. From stuff that was cutting edge to 1940s era equipment. The deaths even more so. Think that the nearly half a million figure is too high. Still absolutely horrific by any standards, particularly more modern ones.
Daily updates here https://www.minusrus.com/en
Eh?
Polish President Andrzej Duda discussed Ukraine and the Middle East with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a meeting in New York at which the former US president said he was 'behind Poland all the way'
Sometimes I wonder is Trump actually the real president at the mo and not Biden .. Note no mention of behind Ukraine.
Damn
We don't really know exactly how many Russians have died so far, but even going with the low end BBC estimate of 50,000, that alone would be absolutely staggering within the timeframe, from a western perspective at least. That's nearly as many confirmed KIAs as the US suffered in Vietnam in the decade or so they were involved. That's nearly as many soldiers as were killed on all sides in the Yugoslav wars. Again, this is only the Russian low estimate. It's almost certainly more than 50,000 but maybe not quite as high as 450,000, which I think is what the Ukrainian military are reporting themselves and is on Minusrus. FWIW, Russian sources are reporting they've killed the same figure of Ukrainian soldiers.
The fog of war is thick at the moment and these figures will probably only come into sharp focus whenever this conflict ends and some proper independent verification can happen.
Talks a good game but seems fundamentally untrustworthy
The black swan event ?
The real purpose of the biolabs (a la Twitter)
The Biolabs are necessary for the mass-production of Budanovs, who according to the Russians gets assassinated once a month, and they are also necessary for the production of the shrinking ray used to put the British crew in the storm shadow missile.
The estimate of confirmed in newspapers dead on Russian side is waay on the small side, these are the soldiers whose bodies returned in some sort of shape and more importantly whose families were descent enough to buy an obituary in a paper. Russian military has a direct interest in not confirming someone is dead as that would mean payouts to families.
We see both on this thread and in innumerable videos just how little Russians value the lives of their men, often abandoning or looting wounded, never mind the abuse of their own soldiers they film
And then there’s the 35,000 Wagner criminals killed in Bakhmut alone, no one will pay for an obituary for them
On Ukrainian side with have Zelensky who gave us figures
On Russian side you have endless lies upon lies, Russian estimates and claims are less worthy and useful than a fanny rag in a shared bathroom of a Moscow whorehouse
To read your posts, you would think that it's all over, done and dusted, Ukraine defeated and occupied, Russian flags over Kiev and time for the Kremlin to start the celebrations. But you are mistaken Poon. It's far from over, and when normal arms shipments commence, you and Putin will become painfully aware of it. Putin's Russia is doomed, and it's he and not the west who will buckle first.
Yes, the fog of war. Or another name for it is propaganda.
And it has been really quite unintelligent propaganda from the west.
Western sources: "Russian military is weak, pathetic, useless… comically inept…"
Also western sources: "Ukraine is struggling… I know we've given them eyewatering amounts of military aid, but they need much more to defeat this useless Russian army…"
Also western sources: "Putin and Russia are grave threat to Europe and the world. Putin will reform the soviet union and take back Alaska if we don't stop him now…"
No wonder people in the west are losing interest in this conflict, and particularly the Americans. How could anyone with a smidgen of intelligence believe all these contradictory messages being put out there? It's ridiculous… the west has actually shot itself in the foot with how poorly they've played the information war, despite having almost total control over it. Own goals don't come much bigger.
Most people either don't believe the numbers of dead, or at this point just don't have a clue what to believe.
We can be reasonably confident that its somewhere between that high and low watermark, but just where it sits will be impossible to say at this point.
Obviously there are injuries in addition to killings. From a Ukrainian perspective, a Russian soldier who has been injured to the point of being permanently 'combat ineffective', i.e. rendered an invalid, is almost as much use to them.
Not to mention having to scrounge around the world for manpower and weapons…..yeah, things are going well for Putin allright!!! NOT.
You mean like Russia didn't pose any threat to Ukraine back in 2022? Or for that matter, Crimea? If you want confirmation of Russia's intent, wait until they deny it. Proven over and over.
The brain drain is a very valid point. Russia still produces top talent, but as with anywhere on earth, few educated and ambitious people chose to remain under a de facto dictatorship where their talents are not appreciated. Putin rewards a small sector of Russian society, none of whom make any meaningful contribution to Russian life, culture of science.
Even as a non-techie I've noticed the number of Russian and Belarussian IT workers drifting westwards over the past 15 years. It seemed as though if you had a tech idea and needed motivated top notch programmers, Russia was the place to look.
Well, the Russian military is quite inept, especially vs their reputation prior to the outset of this phase of the war. We can remember their complete failure to take the country in a lightning offensive and their comedy caravan of tanks that was one long traffic jam toward Kyiv, and after two full years of war, they're still bogged down in the east. Judging by their two great 'victories' of the last year, Bakhmut and Avdiivka, there is absolutely no art to the way they wage offensive war since then, even after they've had two years to 'learn'. They basically just shell towns until they're not there anymore and then hope to raise their flag on the resultant moonscape.
You mention the Americans losing interest nearly within the same 24 hours as Republican house speaker Mike Johnson finally offering to table another massive aid package to the country, and this is after repeated calls for more aid to Ukraine from Biden over the last year which has been repeatedly poo-poo'd by the Republicans. More accurate to say the Republicans have a lack of interest in Ukraine than Americans in general. Not that Biden can win in the eyes of his detractors because, in another case of conflicting propaganda from trolls, he's a hawk when he's arming Ukraine and an unreliable partner when he's blocked from doing so.
When you've lived and rebelled under a genocidal dictatorship, stood up to unrestrained, corrupt, omnipotent power and risked jail for standing in the street with a placard, come back to me and I'll listen to your condemnation of those who suffer in silence for fear of their families being targeted. If anything, its us in the West who enabled the War on Terror and the ongoing abuse of power by successive Israeli governments who should be navel gazing in shame.
Of course there are plenty of ordinary Russians with twisted morals who gladly support any form of military chest thumping on the grounds of nationalism, who were ecstatic at the idea of going to war. Every country and every generation has them. We've had Catholic priests in our own country actively participate in terrorism and the defence of terrorists. But of course every country will defend their own support of murders on the basis of "ah yeah, but our situation was different".
I work in the industry your observation is partially correct
Those born in USSR and not just Russia before 1990 are top notch engineers most of whom especially the better ones left long ago and are very very good
Those born after 1990 are mediocre at best and dangerous in the code and configurations they produce at worst, I’ve seen better results from Indian colleagues than those in St Petersburg before the offices closed at start of war
Now obviously older engineers would have more experience, but there is a marked decrease in quality and education after the fall of USSR
So, how many more "massive aid packages" do you think Ukraine will need, to defeat this inept Russian military?
And how many more years will they need to defeat an army that is very obviously inferior to them?
Your solution is for Ukraine to stop fighting and give in to a leader who has genocidal goals.... I also wouldn't be classifying the invasion as particularly successful when the Russian war machine failed to complete it in over two years...
They found a good use for all them bodies
https://m.censor.net/en/video_news/3484620/russian_official_suggests_heating_russian_homes_with_heat_from_burning_bodies_in_crematoria_its_very
Your saying on one hand Russia are no threat to the west and on the other saying they can’t be defeated. Which is it?
By the way your at nothing trying to convince people here that Russia are no threat to the west. They are very successfully trying to de-stabilize the entire western world with their insidious mis information campaigns. They are a massive massive threat. Pouring billions of their wealth into such poisonous bullsh1t while their country goes to sh1t.
"However many it takes".
It won't be a little, though.
Russians have historically been very dogged on defense, even when offensively they sucked. 1940/41 is a case in point. They are also a learning organisation, which has improved a lot in some ways since 2022. (1940/41 is another case in point). Field Marshall Montgomery observed that Rule 1 on Page 1 in the Book of War is "Never March on Moscow".
Fortunately for the Ukrainians, they have no intention of doing so and have set a far more attainable goal. Ukraine needs to hold on until the West gets its collective ass in gear. I agree with you that dollars alone will not kill Russians. But it permits those things which will, which, overly slowly though it's happening in my opinion, the West is starting to generate. But generate, it's doing.
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