Russia-Ukraine War

Well, I was thinking that with the big nr of top military arrests currently in progress, is it just Putin's paranoia, or was there in fact an actual coup being planned?

defenestration,

A word which, in Russia, happens a lot, but a word that is not used a lot.

Whenever that Russian president says something I'm inclined to think the opposite. He is just too untrustworthy. Can't see him been toppled just yet. More likely this statement is something he agreed to say when he spoke to Jin pin in China.

Russian Kharkiv gains are getting reversed

The goon, the witch & Co.

I'd love to see the Chinese Wikipedia entry on Mao Zedong. I'm guessing there might be a few…lacunae.

https://x.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1794091622595977631

Another gem from Darth.

I don't think that it was an attempt to overthrow Putin. He stopped at Rostov Na Don, where he expected to find Gerasimov and Shoigu, but they were not there. So, leaving the bulk of his troops in Rostov, he proceeded on towards Moscow. And the world held its breath, and Putin and co. departed to safer places. Then short of Moscow the convoy stopped, and a conversation took place, after which Prigozhin turned around and went back to Rostov. And the rest is history as they say. Its my guess that Putin and Prigozhin talked together when the convoy was stopped, and whatever was discussed, made Prigozhin happy enough to take the convoy back to Rostov. But he only went to Moscow to see Putin and have a meeting with him personally. If he had planned a coup, why would he not take all of his troops with him? If it had been a genuine coup, it would have succeeded. And Prigozhin was confident that his friendship with Putin would mean that he had some leeway with him.

which basically then rules out negotiations

Polish Foreign Minister is quite forthright in his views in todays Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/25/poland-foreign-minister-radoslaw-sikorski-long-term-rearmament-europe

The analysis of the current political and military situation from Radosław Sikorski contains the following advices:

Poland is spending 4% of its GDP on defence and Sikorski said other countries had catching up to do. He said this required a military reorientation, adding that during the period of the “peace dividend and expeditionary warfare, we focused on high-value, hi-tech platforms and weapons. We are only now rediscovering that actually you just need millions of shells. You need large volumes of low-tech stuff as well.” He said: “We have allowed all those production facilities to be closed down after the end of the cold war. It costs money to persuade companies to keep production lines in reserve. We just didn’t pay the money. That was part of the peace dividend. And with hindsight it looks like a mistake. It is obvious that Europe is lagging behind, and the EU’s defence and technological and industrial base suffers from years of underinvestment.”

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On the issue of Ukrainians avoiding conscription, Sikorski said: “Ukraine has to tell us what she wants us to do about their citizens. What I certainly don’t believe is that there is a human right to be paid social security for being a draft dodger. Those people fighting at the front also have human rights.” He said any scheme to restrict benefits had to be on a European-wide basis or else those avoiding the draft would start benefit shopping across Europe.

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He was sceptical about Russian threats to use nuclear weapons, saying: “The Americans have told the Russians that if you explode a nuke, even if it doesn’t kill anybody, we will hit all your targets [positions] in Ukraine with conventional weapons, we’ll destroy all of them. “I think that’s a credible threat. Also, the Chinese and the Indians have read Russia the riot act. And it’s no child’s play because if that taboo were also to be breached, like the taboo of not changing borders by force, China knows that Japan and Korea would go nuclear, and presumably they don’t want that.”

Some salient points there and if you don't like his views, well then write to Polish Foreign Minister, Radosław Sikorski and complain. To me, it all reads like good sound advice in line with what we know.

Poland should just roll into Kaliningrad to hell

The armed forces of Ukraine have been releasing their count on personnel losses they have inflicted on putin's terrorists attacking their country since February 2022 and the count has now passed the half million mark. putin has a lot of blood on his hands as do the people of russia who allow him to remain in power.

I suppose that one of the things that's keeping him in power is the very fact that he had absolutely no compunction about killing the first half million, it will not bother him to kill the next half million, and if you protest, you will find yourself in the next half million!!

It's culture to inform on your neighbours to the Kremlin. It's culture to step over starving next door neighbours and selfishly say glad that's not me. It's culture to sneer at countries that are not russia protesting on the streets and say that it's a sign of weakness (probably top down propaganda from the kremlin to say that is weakness not strength). It's culture to believe in it's own fallacy of a master civilisation on the planet and everyone else is wrong (kremlin propaganda again). It's culture to believe that the Kremlin is immune to every international law going and there never is consequences to breaking them. It's culture to say the people are peaceful while the people become dog when a uniform comes on. It's a culture that sees sheep jumping off a cliff to death just because the one in front jumped and no thought is ever given why. Russian culture. A non human only number culture.