I was able to sit down last night and go over what has been happening in Ukraine. One of the things I detected is the shift in feeling towards the conflict. Initially it was the joy of a bully being stopped by the weakling and David Facing Goliath, but now it looks like people are seeing the bully actually bleeding the poor bespectacled kid and stealing his lunch money.
Putin has no morals and no remorse. The Soviet Russian military doctrine has been (like the Chinese) to throw quantity rather than quality against the enemy. If it takes 5 Russian soldiers to kill one Ukranian, they will send 6. A three-mile-long military column got minced to death by the Ukrainians? Next, they sent a 40-mile column. They have enough population to get conscripts from and enough industrial base to build more armored vehicles. Again, they have 5,000 RPGs, they will build 5,001 BMPs and Eff Your Valiant Effort.
And if that was not bad enough, the Soviets Russians discarded any idea they had of making this a strickt attack against military targets and now everything is fair game, including civilian areas.
#Ukraine ?? #Kharkiv
The aftermath of #Russian ?? air raids over night. pic.twitter.com/16OyWqr6Ny— Grumpy Skipper (@_SkipperGrumpy) March 4, 2022
I believe Putin is embarrassed that it has been 2 weeks of attacks against Ukraine and still it has not been conquered. What was supposed to be (and probably sold as) a simple blitzkrieg operation turned out to be a dragging slug fest. They tried to apply Western warfare doctrine only to have the old school partisan resistance they were famous for in places like Stalingrad, throw back at them. Now they are going full Kosack and will not give a damn about what other countries think or how many civilian casualties and displacements will they cause.
And this is just pure speculation on my part, but we won’t see any real harsh US sanctions against Russia because of possible personal blackmail against the administration. My suspicion is that they have enough dirt to bring down two of the three branches of Government. Yes, just a feeling, pure speculation and nothing but conspiracy theory … which means 6 months down the road we may find I was right.
You know, when it started the Russians did not target civilians, they went after military targets and airports.
On day One the Ukrainian government involved their civilians into the fight and it was applauded as a great move on this blog and on other platforms.
I objected the idea because it did change the untrained civilians into untrained combatants, there was also plenty of evidence going round that some newly armed civilians used the guns to execute other civilians for whatever reasons (“collaborator” and “spy” are always good excuses).
Also I criticized the praxis of the Ukrainian army to fortify positions IN the cities and thus deliberately putting civilians into harms way and even attacking Russian troops despite civilians getting caught in the crossfire (on such video was posted on this blog, the AFV crushing the civilian car)
In the last days we had plenty of videos from rag-tag Ukrainian groups, clearly not uniform soldiers, attacking Russian convoys and filming the aftermath.
In fact, I have seen more videos from these “militias” than from the regular Army.
And people are outraged or surprised that the Russians say “fuck it” and bomb the cities?
Russia started the war, but the Ukraine made it a total war while the western nations cheered.
As always it’s the civilians doing the bleeding. But what important is if someone on the other side of the world can proudly type from his armchair that it’s a great honor to die for it’s country, right?
Russia is the aggressor and the West is a failure. Simple as that.
And I said it before and say it again:
The Ukrainian government is pulling a Hamas, sacrificing it’s own civilians for international support because they were too corrupt to build up their defenses even though the threat was clear.
But their president is pictured with an ill-fitting tactical vest and somehow 2 years of media and government distrust are out of the window.
In Autumn 1914, the German Empire invaded neutral Belgium on the way to executing the Schlieffen Plan to force France to capitulate. The truth regarding civilian attacks on the German Army has been lost to history and propaganda (on both sides). As near as I can tell, some elements of the German Army came under sniper fire from either civilians or out of uniform reserves. The German command used these incidents to warn the invading forces that Belgian civilians were attacking German troops, Some, or all, unit commanders decided to treat all civilians as armed combatants. This led to atrocities, that brought the British Empire into the war. So yes, involving civilians in a real war gets ugly quickly and has unintended consequences for both sides. As to the situation in Ukraine, the propaganda wars have gotten so rampant I don’t know what to believe.
As an aside, the combination of having to divert troops to the eastern front to stop an unexpectedly rapid advance by the Russian army, and the delays encountered in reducing the Belgian forts around Liege, and the involvement of Britain, the Schlieffen Plan got bogged down and the Western Front devolved into stalemate.
I’m getting really tired of Mr. Weasel.
If you can’t understand the difference between aggression and defense, you can’t think.
Oh get a grip on your righteous rage.
I am in no way, shape or form using these things synonymous. I made it pretty clear, LITERALLY, who the aggressor is in the scenario. I even spelled it out in the comment you replied to.
So don’t you dare and try to paint me as something I am not by claiming something I did not say or endorse.
One poster on here doesn’t mind a short few hours of nuclear war, better than interrupting business for a few days/weeks/whatever, don’t you know?
The only thing I know for certain about all this is, 1. Russia has invaded Ukraine, and 2. Everything being reported on it is either propaganda or fake. The only way to know what is actually happening is to be there, and none of us are.
Even if you were there, how much would you actually see and understand. Anything outside of your direct observation will likely be the same, rumor, innuendo, and propaganda we are getting here in the West.
Russians are not necessarily the bad guys here.
Ukrainians are not necessarily the good guys here.
One thing for certain, we’re not the good guys. We could’ve prevented this, yet we said ‘Let’s you and him fight’.
One other thing, for certain you cannot believe one thing in the American press, especially CNN, which you’ve posted two images here. I would not be surprised whatsoever to find that the convoy was a years old training exercise.
Some of the worst video I’ve seen though is the aftermath of what TiredWeasel said above. A handful of dudes took on a column with their fancy new weapons and got turned into piles of meat and goo combined with the shattered splinters of the trees they were “hiding” in.
One other thing for certain, Russia planned for this, even our reaction, with the tacit approval of China. War is bad for business (for them) and at the end of the day, you’ll see a large chunk of the world pivot from US controlled financial systems. Apple pay and Google pay stopping for normie Russins who have no part and had no say about this will have consequences worldwide. I’ll never touch them for sure now.
So…what should the US have done?
What would the US have done? The same thing they are doing right now, allowing an invasion across the southern border to all comers, come one, come all, they are welcomed and given your tax dollars in by the billions. I think I’m going to go to Mexihellholeco and invade back across for the goodies, Heaven knows I’m not getting anything now. And since Buyden is still supporting Russia and paying for this invasion into Ukraine, that is what the Ukrainians should have done, welcomed the Russians in as new citizens.
A side note, the invaders from Mexihellholeco have killed more Americans than the Russians have killed in Ukraine.