Ukraine is game to you? Part deux.
- Thread starter Slothur the Hasty
- Start date
- Status
Because Western powers have been bought and paid for with Russian oil & gas money. Gerhard Schroeder didn't get his board chairman seats for his business acumen.
Russian opposition these days is entirely toothless and exists only insofar as it is tolerated by the regime. The protests you see in the media are about as effective as those of the Canadian truckers.
Interesting post here: https://kenigtiger.livejournal.com/2121501.html - for context, this is the blog of Andrei Morozov, a Russian volunteer in the Lugansk People's Republic. He's been a well-known (in certain circles), let's say, character for many years now, well before 2014, and whatever else you may say about him, he seems to be honest - i.e. he says and writes what he thinks, and he's no great fan of Putin and his cronies either. Mishka here probably knows of him. As I remember, back in 2014, he went to Novorossiya to volunteer, got arrested as a spy and given the literal third degree. The locals figured they were dealing with a crazy person rather than a spy, so they tossed him back into Russia, and he went and volunteered again, this time successfully. A true believer in legacy of USSR, if you will, although I would not expect most here to recognize the differences between his point of view and official Kremlin line. Still, it's an interesting window into what the other side is thinking. I ran his post through Google Translate and cleaned it up where the algorithm got confused.
By the way, about the Javelins. About Javelins and corpse eaters.
I terribly want to sleep, but it's time to wake up and sit down to do urgent work. And, while the daily running around has not yet begun, something must still be said. To close the matter of Javelins.
Some probably remember this post of mine, written in response to articles by journalists Kramnik and Soyustov published simultaneously at the end of 2017 that Javelins will not change the "balance of power" in the Donbass. Both articles were a very graphic example of how a person can sell honor and conscience for "a place in the sun." It was just then that it was announced that deliveries of Javelins to Ukraine would begin, and it was necessary to reassure the people - this, they say, is nothing to worry about. The balance of power will not change.
I really don't like to share personal correspondence, but here I have to. It's necessary. Because it's very clear. The other day, when this began, just when they kicked me out of Facebook, Kramnik wrote to me in a personal FB. Here is what he wrote:
No, it was you who signed me up there. And this is your opinion. But the opinion of an alarmist working for ukrs does not interest me.
Tue 12:54
So, huh, how much did those javelines help your ukrs?
Here is the message that immediately after the words about the "alarmist working for ukrs." The war has just begun, and the court "experts" are already savoring the quick, almost bloodless victory, yes. TRADITIONS.
Given that, in reality, the presence of a modern ATGM with a tandem warhead in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, capable of confidently hitting any tank of the People’s Militia of the LPR and DPR from 2+ kilometers, as I expected, had a very negative effect on our ability to actively tie down the reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which could be transferred near Kharkov.
I'm not going to escalate now, but something tells me that Kramnik won't tell what happened to Shchastya. Why, after the news about his capture by the PM of the LPR, no more news is coming. I can now begin to list the dead, give the figures of losses, including the number of AFVs lost by the LPR PM, name other places where the LPR PM performed, to put it mildly, poorly. Where fighting did not go the the way it went and so far it’s still going for “Peter” near Trekhizbenka. "Peter" is a miraculously surviving product of a secret Soviet program to breed a hybrid of a paratrooper and a St. Petersburg intellectual, who retired from the army in the 90s with the rank of major. "Peter" is a terrible force, he is now having a premier performance, last summer in the hospitals, the doctors put him back together from spare parts, he became like new. In terms of the level of training, he is far ahead of the average current Russian army officer by a wide margin (verified).
But this is precisely a piece of the human factor, and not a system. And the fact that he managed to take Trekhizbenka with competent preparation and surprise will no longer work as hard as one would wish. And these same Javelins, even in the face of not the defense of the PM Corps without the help of Russia, but Russian offensives from everywhere plus the offensive of the PM Corps, will change the balance of power. They are already changing it and will continue to change it very noticeably, prohibiting our attacks using armored vehicles in key areas and turning maneuver warfare in the LPR sector into a slow and bloody gnaw through the enemy’s defenses. With all the attendant losses and special effects, alas. The pace of our attack was reduced, our armor was knocked out by javelins, we got covered by artillery and knocked back. Regrouped. Breaking through such a defense, or at least forcing the enemy to keep reserves behind it with constant pressure, is not exactly pleasurable.
On this topic, this is what I want to tell Kramnik and all the other singers of Russian military power, who for years have been replicating soothing mantras about how things are with the military potential of Donbass. To all Kramniks, Soyustovs, non-fascists Steshin, Shurygin, Romanosikovs and others.
Fuck you. Go fuck yourself, you fucking opportunists who are now killing our fighters. It seems to you that you just stuck to the state tit, "So what? Everyone does it if they can." In reality, you are corpse eaters, feeding on the dead who died through your fault. Through the fault of those who for years have been spreading hatred moods in Russian society. Let us recall the same Shurygin, who lied and dodged in an attempt to accuse me of defeatism when I described Debal. (No, I didn’t forget that my second goal for after the war, after the first one - “Make sure that Ataman Kozitsyn is hanged for crimes against the inhabitants of the LPR committed in 2014” is “Smash Shurygin’s fucking face for calling me a coward and a REMF") How many people will die now, have already died, due to the fact that people like Shurygin did their best to prevent lessons from being learned from Debali?
You won't go to war on your own, because, well, what whith your family, children, age, all that. You will earn money on this war, telling about it what they tell you to say and the way they tell you to say. You yourselves are cadaverous worms, and you feed your precious children with corpse meat.
Tell you what - get yourselves into far dark corner and hang yourselves there so as not to spoil the landscape. Perhaps in this case, without having before your eyes a constant example of successful accommodation as a lifestyle, your children will grow up as normal people. There is probably a chance for them.
Whether or not I am a coward or a defeatist - it has already been verified a hundred times. Both in Debal and in March 2020 at 148.9, where there was no living place around our trenches from the craters and the Ukrainian BMPs cut down the forest when they hit us for days on end, but we, after sitting through the shelling, again took picks and shovels and dug, dug, dug so that after a week-long tour at the front I was missing the letters on the keyboard for two days. But all the same, I packed my things and went back to the front - to dig further, so that ours guys could properly gain a foothold on the "Pool" captured from the ukrs. And I was tearing myself from the computer and the soldering iron to go there. There, where others were exiled as in a penal battalion, for drunken escapades. "Peter" on Facebook, by the way, has our pictures from there.
They told me - we need equipment, we need medicine, we need batteries on the radio, URGENTLY! I sit down at the computer and deal with CCAN (Centre for Coordination of Aid to Novorossiya) issues. They told me that this needs to be fixed. I sit down with the soldering iron. They say go to war. I will go to war. I'm in the army, I follow orders. And we will still win (or not). And you - die, scum. Die quickly so that you don't spoil the air. That's all I have to tell you until the end of your lives, spoiled by servility and adaptability, a little more than completely.
I terribly want to sleep, but it's time to wake up and sit down to do urgent work. And, while the daily running around has not yet begun, something must still be said. To close the matter of Javelins.
Some probably remember this post of mine, written in response to articles by journalists Kramnik and Soyustov published simultaneously at the end of 2017 that Javelins will not change the "balance of power" in the Donbass. Both articles were a very graphic example of how a person can sell honor and conscience for "a place in the sun." It was just then that it was announced that deliveries of Javelins to Ukraine would begin, and it was necessary to reassure the people - this, they say, is nothing to worry about. The balance of power will not change.
I really don't like to share personal correspondence, but here I have to. It's necessary. Because it's very clear. The other day, when this began, just when they kicked me out of Facebook, Kramnik wrote to me in a personal FB. Here is what he wrote:
No, it was you who signed me up there. And this is your opinion. But the opinion of an alarmist working for ukrs does not interest me.
Tue 12:54
So, huh, how much did those javelines help your ukrs?
Here is the message that immediately after the words about the "alarmist working for ukrs." The war has just begun, and the court "experts" are already savoring the quick, almost bloodless victory, yes. TRADITIONS.
Given that, in reality, the presence of a modern ATGM with a tandem warhead in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, capable of confidently hitting any tank of the People’s Militia of the LPR and DPR from 2+ kilometers, as I expected, had a very negative effect on our ability to actively tie down the reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which could be transferred near Kharkov.
I'm not going to escalate now, but something tells me that Kramnik won't tell what happened to Shchastya. Why, after the news about his capture by the PM of the LPR, no more news is coming. I can now begin to list the dead, give the figures of losses, including the number of AFVs lost by the LPR PM, name other places where the LPR PM performed, to put it mildly, poorly. Where fighting did not go the the way it went and so far it’s still going for “Peter” near Trekhizbenka. "Peter" is a miraculously surviving product of a secret Soviet program to breed a hybrid of a paratrooper and a St. Petersburg intellectual, who retired from the army in the 90s with the rank of major. "Peter" is a terrible force, he is now having a premier performance, last summer in the hospitals, the doctors put him back together from spare parts, he became like new. In terms of the level of training, he is far ahead of the average current Russian army officer by a wide margin (verified).
But this is precisely a piece of the human factor, and not a system. And the fact that he managed to take Trekhizbenka with competent preparation and surprise will no longer work as hard as one would wish. And these same Javelins, even in the face of not the defense of the PM Corps without the help of Russia, but Russian offensives from everywhere plus the offensive of the PM Corps, will change the balance of power. They are already changing it and will continue to change it very noticeably, prohibiting our attacks using armored vehicles in key areas and turning maneuver warfare in the LPR sector into a slow and bloody gnaw through the enemy’s defenses. With all the attendant losses and special effects, alas. The pace of our attack was reduced, our armor was knocked out by javelins, we got covered by artillery and knocked back. Regrouped. Breaking through such a defense, or at least forcing the enemy to keep reserves behind it with constant pressure, is not exactly pleasurable.
On this topic, this is what I want to tell Kramnik and all the other singers of Russian military power, who for years have been replicating soothing mantras about how things are with the military potential of Donbass. To all Kramniks, Soyustovs, non-fascists Steshin, Shurygin, Romanosikovs and others.
Fuck you. Go fuck yourself, you fucking opportunists who are now killing our fighters. It seems to you that you just stuck to the state tit, "So what? Everyone does it if they can." In reality, you are corpse eaters, feeding on the dead who died through your fault. Through the fault of those who for years have been spreading hatred moods in Russian society. Let us recall the same Shurygin, who lied and dodged in an attempt to accuse me of defeatism when I described Debal. (No, I didn’t forget that my second goal for after the war, after the first one - “Make sure that Ataman Kozitsyn is hanged for crimes against the inhabitants of the LPR committed in 2014” is “Smash Shurygin’s fucking face for calling me a coward and a REMF") How many people will die now, have already died, due to the fact that people like Shurygin did their best to prevent lessons from being learned from Debali?
You won't go to war on your own, because, well, what whith your family, children, age, all that. You will earn money on this war, telling about it what they tell you to say and the way they tell you to say. You yourselves are cadaverous worms, and you feed your precious children with corpse meat.
Tell you what - get yourselves into far dark corner and hang yourselves there so as not to spoil the landscape. Perhaps in this case, without having before your eyes a constant example of successful accommodation as a lifestyle, your children will grow up as normal people. There is probably a chance for them.
Whether or not I am a coward or a defeatist - it has already been verified a hundred times. Both in Debal and in March 2020 at 148.9, where there was no living place around our trenches from the craters and the Ukrainian BMPs cut down the forest when they hit us for days on end, but we, after sitting through the shelling, again took picks and shovels and dug, dug, dug so that after a week-long tour at the front I was missing the letters on the keyboard for two days. But all the same, I packed my things and went back to the front - to dig further, so that ours guys could properly gain a foothold on the "Pool" captured from the ukrs. And I was tearing myself from the computer and the soldering iron to go there. There, where others were exiled as in a penal battalion, for drunken escapades. "Peter" on Facebook, by the way, has our pictures from there.
They told me - we need equipment, we need medicine, we need batteries on the radio, URGENTLY! I sit down at the computer and deal with CCAN (Centre for Coordination of Aid to Novorossiya) issues. They told me that this needs to be fixed. I sit down with the soldering iron. They say go to war. I will go to war. I'm in the army, I follow orders. And we will still win (or not). And you - die, scum. Die quickly so that you don't spoil the air. That's all I have to tell you until the end of your lives, spoiled by servility and adaptability, a little more than completely.
Uh, what? You do realize that Ukraine has no NG of its own and just serves (well, served) as a transit route for Russian gas, right?
Older models of Buk and S-300. The missiles themselves are decades old as well, so the performance and reliability of their solid motors is anybody's guess. Not sure if they have any S-200 left operational.
If anyone in the white house had any balls, there'd be UFOs swatting down everything flying over Ukraine without asking questions, with officials taking a page out of Russians' own playbook and denying anything is happening. "You lost another plane? Sucks to be you, pay more attention to engine maintenance next time"
Keep in mind that a whole lot of what we're seeing here is just as detached from reality as the purported reports reaching Putin. A whole lot of photos and videos, to say nothing about the unsubstantiated claims, are either doctored, or made out of whole cloth, or misattributed, or taken from other places and/or times.
The 'sources' tend to parrot one another, so repeating means absolutely nothing. It will take a good long while before we find out what has actually been happening the last few days.
I've seen Ukrainian sources try to pass off their own Buk hit by Russian helicopters as a Russian column ambushed by their forces. A Ukrainian An-26 shot down on the first day has been brought up as proof of a half-dozen different Russian planes brought down. Etc, etc. There's very little coming out of the area that seems, at least at first glance, incontrovertible, and both sides are putting out massive amounts of bullshit.
In a possibly apocryphal story about the famed Russian general Alexander Suvorov, when asked by his secretary how many dead Turks to report in a letter to the Empress (Catherine the Great), he replied "Write more - why have any pity on these heathens?".
It's for internal consumption. They want to say 'See, we offered peace talks! The other side refused! They're warmongering nazis and we're peace-loving liberators!'
On the contrary, this is very traditional. A large number of British officers have made careers out of fighting for foreign powers (just not against Britain) while on half-pay. Thomas Cochrane is probably the most famous example, but there have been many more.
Compensate those private companies with seized Russian assets. I wonder what the balance sheet would look like in the end.
--------------
I went to have a look through a number of Russian forums - not news sites, just communities like this one. It's fascinating how different a war they're seeing from their side. Russian army is successfully executing large-scale encirclements, losses are minor and inconsequential, ukrainian nazis are dying en masse, running out of fuel and ammunition, shooting each other in panic, Zelensky has already tried to capitulate three times and was thwarted by the evil westerners, the sanctions are only encouraging Russia to develop into a strong and prosperous autarky, if the West makes any sudden moves they'll be countered with nuclear ballistic missiles... again, this is not official news, this is what normal people are discussing among themselves.
Off the top of my head, list of dictators deposed who didn’t commit suicide:
Executed:
Hussein
Mussolini
Ceausescu
Qaddafi
Tojo
Deposed, not executed:
Mubarak
Papadopolous
Duvalier
Amin
Milosevic
Pahlavi
Ben Ali
Pinochet
Dictators who committed suicide:
Hitler
Oh, yes. Dictators are known for their suicidal tendencies.
If you're going to include Hitler, then you should also count at least Antonescu (executed) and Horthy (died in exile). Pinochet's case is somewhat more complex than most as well, and if you include him, then Galtieri should also be on the list, along with Juan Peron. Ferdinand Macros is another name that comes to mind, dying in exile in USA a few years after being deposed.
I don't think there is a direct English equivalent, but it means that we're so much stronger than the enemy that it's enough for us to throw our hats at them (shapka = hat, kidat' = to throw) to win. This image was used, unironically, in late Russian Empire propaganda, but following the massive failures of Russo-Japanese War and the Great War it has become a purely derogatory term, as in being deluded into an assumption of an easy and effortless victory, whereas the reality is anything but.
Unless backed up by rock-solid proof, any 'words' going around these days are someone's personal fantasy.
Keep in mind that they're on the tail end of three decades of deindustrialization and conversion into a resource-extraction economy. There were signs that the Syrian campaign had put serious stress on their supply and logistics, and this war is much more intensive.
The ability of modern Taiwanese military to defend this fortress is somewhat questionable though. That said, right now, with all the world eyes on Ukraine, would be the perfect time to quietly deploy some nukes on Taiwan. Call it Operation Yukon.
Officially, they're sending MiG-29s, yes. Unofficially, I can't help but wonder if it's a cover for deploying UFOs and disavowing all their activity as performed by Ukrainian MiGs.
I've seen someone from Russia comment that this is a good approximation of what a '41 preemptive strike by Red Army against Germany would've looked like.
From where I sit, it looks like they're trying to re-enact Americans' 'shock and awe' and 'thunder runs', but faring about as well as the Pakistanis did in '71 at re-enacting Israeli Air Force's Operation Focus.
No, it's just the latest round of gun vs. armor. Tanks equipped with modern active protection systems swat down those fragile, slow ATGMs with remarkable ease. Back in the 30s, it looked like the lightweight, rapid-firing anti-tank gun has rendered the tank obsolete - but progress in automotive components allowed the tanks to put on enough armor that guns big enough to punch through it became too big to remain practical. ATGMs replaced anti-tank guns, but now progress in electronics is allowing for effective counters to ATGMs.
The tanks and other AFVs dying in Ukraine now is no different from mass casualties taken by T-26s and BTs during the Spanish Civil War - they simply belong to a generation that has become obsolete.
I think Tojo can actually be counted as a suicide. The Tokyo trials were a carefully choreographed affair, designed to make Tojo a fall guy for everyone else, and he played his part knowing he's going to be executed.
Just as a point of reference. 'khuynyy' is not a word. 'Khuyovyi', based on the same basic root, is, but it refers to something of extremely poor quality; i.e. if that Smerch munition had failed to inflict any damage, then it would be referred to as 'khuyovyi'. The word you're probably looking for is 'yobanyi' or 'blyadski'. This concludes the impromptu lesson in Russian profanity
Gaza'2014, dozens of ATGMs launched at IDF tanks, including Kornets, not a single hit. Trophy works, and everyone who is anyone is buying it. Raytheon has jerked the US Army around for years with their promises of Quick Kill until the army gave up and queued up to buy Trophy along with everyone else.
Russians have an old term for it, 'апоплектический удар табакеркою' - it's difficult to translate directly, but the word удар (udar) means both a physical blow and a medical stroke (although this latter meaning is somewhat archaic), and when Emperor Paul I was murdered in a palace coup, his official cause of death was listed as an 'apoplectic stroke', but, as the story goes, the actual killing blow was delivered with a snuffbox swung at his head by one of the conspirators. 'Apoplectic stroke of the snuffbox' comes close, I think, but does not quite convey the whole meaning.
When a Turkish F-16 swatted down a Russian Su-24 that strayed into Turkish airspace (and the shootdown itself occurred over Syria), he huffed and he puffed and ultimately he did nothing whatsoever.
Again, a dozen MiG-29s, even with Israeli upgrades that they've received, won't tip the scales of this conflict in any significant fashion. What can do it is a hundred or so F-35s, operating as UFOs, with RoEs that say 'anything airborne over Ukraine, shoot it without any questions asked'. If Russians pitch a fit, tell them to lay off the boyaryshnik; if you're drunk to the point where you're imagining flying saucers, that shit ain't healthy.
From what I see, most Russians - I'm talking people on the street here - simply don't comprehend how inconsequential their country is in the framework of global economy. For example, they seriously think that without Russia as a market, Airbus is going to go bankrupt.
Yes. That Airbus. There are people in Russia who think this completely unironically.
Could've sworn Elvira Nabiullina (head of Central Bank of Russia) had announced that they're suspending currency interventions a couple days ago. Also, reports from people on the ground have USD breaking 250+ rubles in places that actually sell them.
Paul Samuelson, "the father of modern economics", Nobel prize laureate, was predicting that USSR economy will overtake the USA Real Soon Now, almost all the way to USSR's collapse.
The bar for this has been set pretty low by the little green men in 2014.
I'm sure he can hire a bunch of Russians as replacements; they're going to come pretty cheap quite soon.
It'd be considerably more interesting to investigate the sources of funding of all the groups who've been advocating the retirement of nuclear power and replacing it with Russian natgas. How many of them are useful idiots, and how many are paid Russian agents? Normally everything with 'green' attached to it is a sacred cow immune from any and all suspicion, but in current political climate, this just might be possible...
I wouldn't automatically assume this. Ukraine has domestic production of Korsar and Stugna ATGMs, those are rough equivalents of Metis-M (but with laser guidance) and Kornet respectively. I've seen estimates that they had some 700 launchers and 7800 missiles of both types combined. By comparison, they had received 150 Javelin launchers with 1200 missiles, along with 2200 single-use NLAWs. They also have large numbers of old Soviet era ATGMs and RPGs, although it's a big question how many of those are still functional.
- Status