34 minutes ago, Enrico_sw said:

 

Say what you want about this guy's past actions/ideas, but he is good at giving speeches. Extremely good. Not because of the way he talks (his creed is genuine and direct talk to the electors), but because of the symbols he wields.

 

 

Agreed, I watched half of his speech.  Really outstanding skill and mesmerizing.  Speaks with incredible conviction, even if it's BS.

 

Trump was always a great comedian too.  

Tbh from what I've seen this is the best public speaking he has ever done.  He had a good speechwriter.

On 3/4/2023 at 5:29 PM, Cult Icon said:

Russia annihilated the city Marinka, literally into ashes.  

 

Looks like an atom bomb blew up on top of it.

 

 

But apparently NATO should stop supporting Ukraine and let Russia do this to all of Ukraine. Okay. 

2 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

 

But apparently NATO should stop supporting Ukraine and let Russia do this to all of Ukraine. Okay. 

 

This war is getting nastier. The Russians can get very violent (ike in the Chechen wars).

 

The choice of helping (or not) a nation is very difficult to understand sometimes. For example, why is there no help for the Armenians that are getting massacred by the Azeris?

 

https://www.newsweek.com/azerbaijans-war-crimeswhy-world-can-no-longer-stay-silent-opinion-1750013

https://providencemag.com/2022/12/azerbaijan-is-torturing-and-beheading-armenians/

 

This woman was massacred by the Azeris. Tortured, mutilated and raped.

 

This is a horrible crime, but seems to get few attention in the mainstream media. Why? I don't know and don't understand.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Anush_Apetyan

After the genocide of the Armenians by the Turkish in 1915 (a century ago), I don't understand why there's not more attention about the fate of the Armenians in the mainstream media.

 

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-armenian-genocide-1915-16-overview

Quote

Serj Tankian: Armenians Are Defending Their Homeland From a Brutal, Putin-Backed Autocrat’s Army. Why Won’t the World Help?

The System of a Down frontman asks: Faced with Azerbaijan's aggression and alleged war crimes against Armenia, when will the global community act?

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/serj-tankian-system-of-a-down-azerbaijan-armenians-1234613877/

 

 

16 hours ago, SympathysSilhouette said:

 

But apparently NATO should stop supporting Ukraine and let Russia do this to all of Ukraine. Okay. 

 

Not a moral question but Ukraine/NATO is losing the war and it's not worthwhile to fight wars that you are losing.  Russia will steadily exterminate Ukrainian infantry masses and to their perspective, future insurgents unless some kind of strategic reversal happens.

 

China, which has the world's largest industrial base and second more powerful military is backing Russia, and increasingly open about it as of late.  Of Russia's allies, they provided the most economic support.   They own a lot of assets in Ukraine as well.  There are signs that they are also providing covert direct military support.  

 

China military is more powerful than all of European NATO combined and can potentially outproduce the US in a conflict.

 

If they get open about supporting Russia directly, Russia firepower will multiply.  China uses the same artillery calibers as Russia and one of their main battle tanks uses the T-72 chasis.

The Bakhmut area is looking like an operational-level defeat with strategic ramifications for NATO/Ukraine right now unless something miraculous happens, and Wagner screws up somehow.

Overall, American foreign policy has been criminal after the US defeats in the middle east.  The US is busy making enemies of Russia and China.  In particular how stupid is it that the US is making enemies of CHINA?

 

US military is also transitioning from counter-insurgency to WAR with China and Russia, which is world war 3.

 

Suicidally idiotic.  If the US military industrial complex want to fabricate excuses to make war they can chose small 3rd world countries, not the no. 1 economic superpower, no. 2 military power and the no. 3 military power.

 

On 3/7/2023 at 12:36 PM, Enrico_sw said:

 

This war is getting nastier. The Russians can get very violent (ike in the Chechen wars).

 

 

 

General Kvashnin in 1995 (in charge of planning the 2nd Chechen war, Chief of General Staff Russian armed forces):

 

"We will beat the Chechens to pulp, so that the present generation will be too terrified to fight Russia again. Let Western observers come to Grozny and see what we have done to our own city, so that they shall know what may happen to their towns if they get rough with Russia. But you know, Pavel, in 20–30 years a new generation of Chechens that did not see the Russian army in action will grow up and they will again rebel, so we’ll have to smash them down all over again"

 

Ukrainian Chief of General staff Zalzuzny also told Economist that the Russian approach is similar to the 2nd Chechen War.

 

I would say that a major difference is in scale; Ukraine is massive compared to Chechnya.  The battle of Grozny is comparable to the battle of Mariupol alone.

 

My hunch is that Putin/Gerisimov are effected by Chechnya and will manage things in a similar but also different way.  They know that they had a 8-9 year insurgency in Chechnya and would want to finish off the Ukrainians in a way that makes the insurgency smaller after the conventional ground war. 

 

Gerisimov also has advocated "hybrid warfare"/asymmetrical war for his career, which is fighting war in a staggered and strange way with emphasis on economic and political factors while abandoning classical approaches to conventional war fighting.  I think this is part of the reason why the Russian approach to Ukraine is so bizarre.  In order to surprise NATO they had to start the war with a small, underfunded army and now they are scaling up with triple the budget.  They are being helped militarily by China, Iran, North Korea plus economic help from China, Turkey, India and other allied countries.

 

I think they will try to turn Ukraine into the European Somalia by making them ultra-poor.  Their GDP per capita has already dropped to around $2000/per person.  They will also try to drag out the war to be very long, going for many years and will try to kill and cripple as many Ukrainian fighters and future insurgents as possible.

 

Ukraine requests 50 billion dollars in 2022 just to keep the country running, plus 2 billion dollars a month to repair the damage from Russian missile strikes to civilian infrastructure.  In the short run the West can donate them but as the war goes on for years it is less likely.  Also excess NATO equipment and stockpiles are depleted and Ukraine is reliant on new production.  All in all this is costing the West hundreds of billions of dollars and if the war continues for years, it will turn into a multi-trillion dollar war for the West.

 

Now I see that Putin has literally 'outsourced' the attack combat to the private sector with mercenary forces.  I think he is doing this because in the Chechen wars, he had to deal with a lot of political problems from the use of Russian conscripts in the war.  Instead with PMCs he doesn't have to deal with the political risks and damage to his regime. 

 

"The Anglo-saxons are getting crazier", episode 215062341302

6 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

 

General Kvashnin in 1995 (in charge of planning the 2nd Chechen war, Chief of General Staff Russian armed forces):

 

"We will beat the Chechens to pulp, so that the present generation will be too terrified to fight Russia again. Let Western observers come to Grozny and see what we have done to our own city, so that they shall know what may happen to their towns if they get rough with Russia. But you know, Pavel, in 20–30 years a new generation of Chechens that did not see the Russian army in action will grow up and they will again rebel, so we’ll have to smash them down all over again"

 

Ukrainian Chief of General staff Zalzuzny also told Economist that the Russian approach is similar to the 2nd Chechen War.

 

I would say that a major difference is in scale; Ukraine is massive compared to Chechnya.  The battle of Grozny is comparable to the battle of Mariupol alone.

 

My hunch is that Putin/Gerisimov are effected by Chechnya and will manage things in a similar but also different way.  They know that they had a 8-9 year insurgency in Chechnya and would want to finish off the Ukrainians in a way that makes the insurgency smaller after the conventional ground war. 

 

Gerisimov also has advocated "hybrid warfare"/asymmetrical war for his career, which is fighting war in a staggered and strange way with emphasis on economic and political factors while abandoning classical approaches to conventional war fighting.  I think this is part of the reason why the Russian approach to Ukraine is so bizarre.  In order to surprise NATO they had to start the war with a small, underfunded army and now they are scaling up with triple the budget.  They are being helped militarily by China, Iran, North Korea plus economic help from China, Turkey, India and other allied countries.

 

I think they will try to turn Ukraine into the European Somalia by making them ultra-poor.  Their GDP per capita has already dropped to around $2000/per person.  They will also try to drag out the war to be very long, going for many years and will try to kill and cripple as many Ukrainian fighters and future insurgents as possible.

 

Ukraine requests 50 billion dollars in 2022 just to keep the country running, plus 2 billion dollars a month to repair the damage from Russian missile strikes to civilian infrastructure.  In the short run the West can donate them but as the war goes on for years it is less likely.  Also excess NATO equipment and stockpiles are depleted and Ukraine is reliant on new production.  All in all this is costing the West hundreds of billions of dollars and if the war continues for years, it will turn into a multi-trillion dollar war for the West.

 

Now I see that Putin has literally 'outsourced' the attack combat to the private sector with mercenary forces.  I think he is doing this because in the Chechen wars, he had to deal with a lot of political problems from the use of Russian conscripts in the war.  Instead with PMCs he doesn't have to deal with the political risks and damage to his regime. 

 

 

Interesting analysis, thanks. When do you think Putin will stop the war? Will he be content with a Ukraine that's split in two (West/East) or does he intend to completely subvert them?

 

5 minutes ago, Enrico_sw said:

"The Anglo-saxons are getting crazier", episode 215062341302

 

Another episode...

 

46 minutes ago, Enrico_sw said:

 

Interesting analysis, thanks. When do you think Putin will stop the war? Will he be content with a Ukraine that's split in two (West/East) or does he intend to completely subvert them?

 

 

I think the primary purpose of the war is actually NOT! Ukraine, but a massive political, military, and economic transformation of Russia.  Ukraine is the catalyst.

 

Putin wants Ukraine de-militarized first and foremost.  If Ukraine is de-militarized and the Ukrainian conventional forces surrender, then Russia could start talking to the West & NATO on how they want to manage the peace.  De-militarization at this point, will involve 7 figure casualties and a multi-year war given the way things are going.   This could be converting Ukraine to a de-militarized zone.

 

The China Peace plan Wang Yi attempted to work out with the West wanted current positions in Ukraine to remain and the borders between Russia and Ukraine to be demilitarized very deep into the country.

 

I observed that overall, the Russian economic and political management has been much better than the military and Putin is actually more concerned with Russia's realignment with Asia and the Middle East than the war itself.  The BRICS now has Iran and Saudi Arabia being consider on joining. 

 

 

 

 

Zelensky and Ukrainian leadership may have ordered Ukraine to launch a desperate counteroffensive with their operational reserves in the Donbass.  They do not properly report how many units they have but Russians think they have 12 brigades. 

 

There may be a climatic battle in the Donbass of sorts. Meanwhile the Wagner PMC has fought its way to the AZOM, which is like the Azovstal in Mariupol and are contesting it already.

 

 

My money is that if the Ukrainians attack, they will do so once Wagner has almost or already consolidated the city and is somewhat tired and weakened.  Then if Russians defeat their attack, their mission in the Donbass becomes easier as a lot of garrison troops in the other cities are now eliminated.

Prizoghin has emerged as the most interesting and remarkable personality of the war for me.

 

Love him or hate him he is the real life version of "Big Boss" from the Metal Gear Solid games.