patrick.net

Ceffer says

Can children and old men operate those spiffy planes?

Are they harder to
operate than the rest of overhyped and fragile Western weaponry?

PS. Or was it just a "Reeeee!" in a form
of rhetorical question?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pentagon-says-it-accidentally-overvalued-us-military-aid-to-ukraine-by-3-billion_5277252.html?utm_source=share-btn-copylink

Military aid, including weapons and ammunition, sent by the United States to Ukraine was overestimated by at least $3 billion owing to an accounting mistake by the Pentagon, Defense Department officials have said.

“During our regular oversight process of presidential drawdown packages, the Department discovered inconsistencies in equipment valuation for Ukraine,” said Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

Gosh, a cynical person might think they are getting worried about the money laundering scam getting fully exposed.

Unless Greece and/or Turkey decide to give up their F16s (unlikely with them hating each other) that leaves Poland with 48 planes to give. Now Poland might just give all of them to the Ukraine (they've been busy making hate you gestures to the Russians), but that just ain't gonna change the war even if some other countries give a few token planes.

They run just over $100 million each and need maintenance pretty much after every flight. So not only do the pilots need about 4 months training but the ground crews about that much too and the ground crews need the equipment.

Looks like we will be able to see how they perform in an area peppered with SAMs. Maybe we will get to see some real dogfights. Brand new Ukie pilots for the planes fresh outta training, but superior to most Russian crap aircraft.

Here's a list of who has how many.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-16-fms.htm

Guess that impregnable has become pregnable. It only cost a ten or twenty to one ratio of Ukrainian soldiers' lives to lose Bakhmut.

Hey, youse, the mud is hardening, too, so guess what's next? I don't have the chops to really know why this city is so important, but the rumor is there are centralized DUMBs that lead to other DUMBs in Ukraine

https://t.me/BannonWarRoom/5919

Are there any verified casualty figures?

I bet all those planes make purty explosions.

Onvacation says

Are there any verified casualty figures?

I think MSM reports a few Ukrainian soldiers got hangnails.

Yay, liberation!

Freedom of Russia Legion declares liberation of a settlement in Belgorod Oblast

“The advanced units have entered Grayvoron. We are moving forward. Russia will be free,” the Legion’s post read.

Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod Oblast, confirmed there had been an armed incursion into the territory of the oblast’s Grayvoron District...

...
The Freedom of Russia Legion is a unit within the Armed Forces of Ukraine, established in March 2022 to combat the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It comprises defectors from the Russian Armed Forces and other Russian volunteers who had not previously served in military units.

Previously, fighters from the Russian Volunteer Corps, who are engaged in combat against the Russian army in Ukraine, reported that they had once again infiltrated Russian territory. They released videos of themselves alongside signs displaying the names of settlements in Russian oblasts bordering Ukraine.

According to the videos, RVC volunteers are currently located in the settlements of Bezludovka (Belgorod Oblast, Russia), Churovichi (Bryansk Oblast, Russia), and Lyubimovka (Kursk Oblast, Russia).

Long live BeNR, BrNR and KNR!!

PS. Correct me if I'm wrong but none such incursions ever happened before the start of the SCHMO. If everything is going according to plan, did Pukin plan this too?

Acting on the concept of "security (a.k.a buffer) zone" wholeheartedly endorsed by Pukin and his flock:

Andrii Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine's Defence Intelligence, has described the events taking place in Russia's Belgorod Oblast on 22 May as the creation of a "security zone" to protect Ukrainian citizens.

Quote from Yusov: "Yes, today the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Legion of Freedom of Russia, which consist of citizens of the Russian Federation, launched an operation to liberate these territories of Belgorod Oblast from the so-called Putin regime and push back the enemy in order to create a certain security zone for the protection of the Ukrainian civilian population."

Details: Yusov stressed that the operation was conducted exclusively by Russian citizens.

Background:

On the afternoon of 22 May, the Russian Volunteer Corps, who claim to be fighting on the side of Ukraine, and the Legion of Freedom of Russia announced the liberation of the village of Kozinka in Russia's Belgorod Oblast.

Distraction from the ringing failure in Bakhmut. Why don't they just send out titty girls with twirling glitter pasties to dance on the border.

Ceffer says

Distraction from the ringing failure in Bakhmut.

You mean Bakhmut was a ringing failure for Russia - right?

How many months and dead Russians did it take for Russia to finally rubble this city and plant their flag?

How many more Bakhmut's does Russia have in the gas tank?

socal2 says

You mean Bakhmut was a ringing failure for Russia - right?

I guess the propaganda is now claiming knowledge of alternate dimensions.

Russians in Belgorod are crying as they see that their region is under attack.

The crying woman asks “what have we done to deserve something like this”?

Still no self-reflection in sight

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1660674430748508161?ref_src=patrick.net

Ceffer says

socal2 says

You mean Bakhmut was a ringing failure for Russia - right?

I guess the propaganda is now claiming knowledge of alternate dimensions.

Remember, this is what US "reliable sources" tell us.


original link

I don't know how bad Russian propaganda is and I KNOW they produce propaganda. I can see the United States just completely lying about Ukraine going into Russia. Not saying the US did this, I don't know.

What I do know, is not one fucking thing can be trusted from our government or "news" at this point. I don't know why people even care to try to follow what is SUPPOSEDLY going on in this conflict at this point.

The government lies about the Ghost of Kiev, the battle at Snake Island (ever look at where Snake Island is and how small it is? : https://goo.gl/maps/XZmU5PVduxxMXy6V6)

Why do people treat this like a football game where they have a "team" they're supporting?

It's just a fucking slaughter.

richwicks says

Why do people treat this like a football game where they have a "team" they're supporting?

It's just a fucking slaughter.

100% agreed. Does it even matter whether you are on the "right" side of a war if there are zero serious efforts to end the bloodshed and solve the conflict via diplomacy? It doesn't, and it's not a sports match. I've read that European countries are starting to pressure both parties to negotiate and resolve this idiotic and painful war via diplomacy asap. One can hope they will put enough pressure onto z and p to effect this.

LOL! CNN propaganda toilet on the TV at the gym said that Ukraine is denying that Bakhmut was taken.

mell says

100% agreed. Does it even matter whether you are on the "right" side of a war if there are zero serious efforts to end the bloodshed and solve the conflict via diplomacy?

Why pick sides even? The results will be the results, it's ENTIRELY irrelevant who you root for. Don't support either side.

mell says

I've read that European countries are starting to pressure both parties to negotiate and resolve this idiotic and painful war via diplomacy asap.

God I hope so.

richwicks says

Why pick sides even? The results will be the results, it's ENTIRELY irrelevant who you root for. Don't support either side.

It's reasonable to be on the side of those being invaded, similar to the principle of helping someone in self defense. I don't think it's irrelevant. But in this case the conflict has been going on forever with provocations and aggressions on both sides, so anybody providing fuel to the fire without demanding serious talks is just whoring out the poor soldiers on either side

mell says

It's reasonable to be on the side of those being invaded, similar to the principle of helping someone in self defense.

I'd say the United States invaded Ukraine when they overthrew it. When was the last time the US took control over another country and it turned out for the better? The US overthrew Iran, overthrew what many argue wasn't REALLY a democracy (who cares?) setup a dictatorship, setup a secret police called SAVAK who were so savage, only nuts continued to resist them, only to have the nuts take over Iran.

IF Ukraine is successful (which I doubt), same thing is going to happen. It always happens.

Tired of this shit. We have to stop overthrowing nations, it doesn't help us, doesn't help them, and it ends always in a triple distilled class A fuckup. Every fucking time.

And then the geniuses that did this shit, get a fucking promotion.

This has been going on since before I was fucking born. It's been going on for 70 years, it ultimately hurts this nation every goddamned time, the population is forced to pay for it, the media lies about it, and we do it again, and again, and again, and again.

I just want this shit to end. It's torture to be around people who don't know anything about what the US has done in the past, they they have fucked up in the past (despite them living through it), and then having them cheer on the next goddamned disaster like "this time we'll win!!!!".

The CLOSEST thing we've come to in a win, it's Iraq, and that was a Pyrrhic Victory at best oh, and we only had to spend a few trillion and kill 800,000 people to do it, while making "the mistake" that there was a secret weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq. So embarrassing to have a bunch of fucking liars getting away with it again, and again, and again and again, and nobody around me notices it.

The real invasion was the SOROS/NATO color revolution in 2014, bronco'd by Victoria the Serpent Nuland, breaking every promise and treaty NATO ever made to Russia after WWII. Aside from the Nazis and their supporters, the Ukrainians are otherwise innocent bystanders.

Ceffer says

The real invasion was the SOROS/NATO color revolution in 2014, bronco'd by Victoria the Serpent Nuland, breaking every promise and treaty NATO ever made to Russia after WWII. Aside from the Nazis and their supporters, the Ukrainians are otherwise innocent bystanders.

There was another "revolution" as well, the Orange Revolution in 2004 & 5.

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

Who knows? You can't trust information on Wikipedia anymore, you can't trust the EU, you certainly can't trust the US government, you can't trust the CIA, you can't trust the FIB. HOWEVER: it's possible that the Orange Revolution was actually a real revolution. It's possible that the election was initially stolen. It may very well have been.

The election between Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych was claimed to be stolen for Yanukovych, after protests, a bunch of supposedly (and possibly) fair international observers came in, did a revote, Yushchenko won.

5 years later, it was between the same two, same sort of international observation, and this time Yanukovych won.

I wouldn't care, except that I know for certain the US had a hand in 2014 ousting of Yanukovych and installing Arseniy Yatseniuk dragging us into direct conflict, AGAIN.

If you look at the maps of how people vote, maybe the country should have just agreed to split up.

Sorry, propaganda subscribers.
"What happened in Russia's Belgrorod Region.
https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1331437/pg1
Wasn't an operation by any Russian Separatist militias instated it was by Ukrainian Forces.

Ukrainian Forces came near by Russia's Belgrorod Region border with tanks and hmmvs were caught on videos recently.
A number of Ukrainian soldiers were either killed or captured.
Ukraine sent about 50 men dressed as Russian militia
In vid it shows the American made hmmvs and several other armored vehlics positioned.
Attacks Inside Russia, Belgrorod
Captured Ukrainian vehlics.
Vehlics captured"

richwicks says

Who knows? You can't trust information on Wikipedia anymore, you can't trust the EU, you certainly can't trust the US government, you can't trust the CIA, you can't trust the FIB.

But you can trust Rich Wicks. The internet is pure truth.

All kidding aside. Who can you trust...

PeopleUnited says

But you can trust Rich Wicks. The internet is pure truth.

No it's not.

The Internet is everything. It contains the truth, but it contains more bullshit than truth.

The television is pure bullshit.

I can be wrong, I recognize that completely. However, I know how to find the truth. Any lie, any story, unless it's EXCELLENTLY created, has contradictions in it. The truth doesn't. When you find "a story" that you can't find a "plot hole" in, either you're missing the plot hole, you've found an amazing story, or you're found the truth.

PeopleUnited says

All kidding aside. Who can you trust...

People who don't produce contradictions, and when they do, listen to you when you point out the contradictions, and either explain how you're wrong, or adjust to be correct.

It's laborious process.

I know so many smart people and everybody makes mistakes. It's really hard to see you're wrong, unless you have another person telling you "hey, stupid, what about this?" At this point, I learn almost exclusively through my errors.

You have to drop your ego, your defenses. It's a normal reaction to want to "win" an argument, don't do that. If you're wrong, accept it. When I'm shown to be wrong, I don't immediately admit it. I have to search and think to see if I'm not being tripped up, if the "fact" given to me is really correct, if it's incongruent with my thinking - if I can fit it into my model, and if the fact is correct, and it's incongruent with my thinking, I'm wrong.

You have to understand HOW you're wrong, not just "you're wrong".

Again, eliminate cognitive dissonance as well. When you have two ideas that conflict, ONE is wrong for certain, eliminate one, and move on. I've been doing this since I was 25 and I continue to do it.

Ultimately you have to trust yourself, and other people that trust themselves. There's honest people out there, but most are just followers. They will just defer to authorities without question, we just saw this over that last 3 years. The people who rejected this insanity, they do some level of thinking.

20K KIA to take a town the size of Gilroy (and put themselves into a potential encirclement in the process) :

The head of the Wagner mercenary force has said that 20,000 of its fighters have been killed in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and warned that Russia could face another revolution if its leadership did not improve its handling of the war.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said 20% of the 50,000 convicts Wagner had recruited, and a similar number of its regular troops, had been killed over several months in the fight for Bakhmut.
Prigozhin pointed to the social disparity underlined by the war, with the sons of the poor being sent back from the front in zinc coffins while the children of the elite “shook their arses” in the sun.
“This divide can end as in 1917 with a revolution,” he said in an interview posted on his channel on the Telegram messaging app. “First the soldiers will stand up, and after that – their loved ones will rise up. There are already tens of thousands of them – relatives of those killed. And there will probably be hundreds of thousands – we cannot avoid that.”

Sounds like he's getting tired of winning THAT bigly....

More Prigozhin: https://twitter.com/albafella1/status/1661149881015193600?ref_src=patrick.net

RWSGFY says

20K KIA to take a town the size of Gilroy (and put themselves into a potential encirclement in the process) :

The head of the Wagner mercenary force has said that 20,000 of its fighters have been killed in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, and warned that Russia could face another revolution if its leadership did not improve its handling of the war.
Yevgeny Prigozhin said 20% of the 50,000 convicts Wagner had recruited, and a similar number of (some text omitted to shorten quote...) of the elite “shook their arses” in the sun.
“This divide can end as in 1917 with a revolution,” he said in an interview posted on his channel on the Telegram messaging app. “First the soldiers will stand up, and after that – their loved ones will rise up. There are already tens of thousands of them – relatives of those killed. And there will probably be hundreds of thousands – we cannot avoid that.”

Sounds like he's getting tired of winning THAT bigly....

I doubt any part of this story is true.

The US, for some reason, wants regime change in Russia. From my LIMITED interactions with Russians (not expatriates, but Russians) none of them oppose the current government. I don't have a good sample size, but from my LIMITED knowledge, they largely agree with the government and don't oppose it.

Anyhow, I find it unlikely that 20,000 Russians were killed. That would be like 1/3 the KIA in this war so far, IF I am to believe the "Discord leaks". It's just more bullshit from our lying government, and lying media, that lies to us constantly and continually.

That's what they always say just before Russia unconditionally surrenders to Ukraine.

"The West is desperate to avoid having any meaningful discussion or review of the Battle of Bakhmut because it was such a massive loss. Think about it — a small “private” paramilitary force backed by former Chef with no military experience, forced Ukraine’s NATO-trained and supplied Army to retreat.

This is a very important point. Conventional military doctrine stipulates that an army attacking an entrenched force will need at least three times more soldiers than the defending force.. Looks like Russia is very unconventional. The Wagner Group’s 32,000 fighters defeated a Ukrainian force that employed over 120,000 troops, inflicting 70% casualties on the Ukrainians. Russia is writing new chapters for military academies and war colleges on how to attack and defeat a numerically superior force entrenched in fortifications."https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/judge-napolitano-larry-johnson-discuss-aftermath-bakhmut-why/

Is it constitutional to send jet fighters to fight a war that congress has not declared? Rhetorical.

Onvacation says

Is it constitutional to send jet fighters to fight a war that congress has not declared? Rhetorical.

Seriously? We have sent US soldiers to fight when Congress has not declared war. Why would they follow the Constitution now?

Onvacation says

Is it constitutional to send jet fighters to fight a war that congress has not declared? Rhetorical.

Fighters is materiel. No war declaration required to send materiel. And there is a solid legal basis for helping the victim of an illegal invasion, starting with the UN Charter and ending with the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.

THE KREMLIN HAS A SECURITY PROBLEM

Drone attacks in Moscow, incursions over the border—Russians are starting to wonder whether Putin really does have, as he promised, “everything under control.”

By Anna Nemtsova

MAY 25, 2023

President Vladimir Putin sustains his power on the promise to Russians that he has, as he put it in 2010, “everything under control.” This week’s attack on the southern Belgorod region, launched from Ukraine, would have been alarming under any circumstances, but Putin’s posture as the man in command makes it particularly hard to explain away.

A string of bad news that began earlier this month suggests to Russians that their security system is crumbling. First came the drone attack on the roof of Putin’s residence in the Kremlin on May 4. Now comes an incursion into Belgorod, demonstrating that a year and a half into the war, the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which is in charge of the borders, does not have the manpower to protect against small units attacking from Ukraine. Russia was not even able to secure a nearby storage site for nuclear-weapons components, known as Belgorod-22—instead it reportedly moved the materiel away.

Russians in the border regions are beginning to realize that the war that has destroyed dozens of towns and villages in Ukraine is coming to their own land. Nobody seemed to be defending Belgorod, so on Tuesday, locals demanded answers from their governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, in a live chat on Vkontakte, a social-networking site.

Governor Gladkov read the questions aloud: “They said that everything was under control, that fortifications have been built, some pyramids and so on, but the enemy is coming to our regional center by tanks. Why is the border full of holes?” he read from one message. “And we are not mentioning the constant artillery and mortar fire, wounded residents—how come?”

The complaint seemed valid enough. And the more information that emerged, the more the episode risked turning the entire nationalist rationale behind Russia’s war in Ukraine back on the Kremlin: The invaders were Russian nationalists serving in the Ukrainian armed forces who claimed that they were liberating Russia from Putin’s regime.

Somebody had to be honest with locals, and Governor Gladkov, surprisingly, was. “I agree with you,” he said, looking tired and grim. “I have many more questions for the Defense Ministry than you.” He called on his listeners to draw their own conclusions “from the mistakes that have been made.”

Russians have been drawing conclusions rather quickly this week. Thousands jumped into their vehicles and left their villages in the Belgorod region, without waiting for further explanation or assistance from the security services. One video shows local residents trying to break into an old Soviet bomb shelter, screaming at the top of their lungs.

Ilya Ponomarev is a former member of Russia’s Parliament now in exile. He acts as a spokesperson for the Freedom of Russia Legion, the anti-Kremlin group that crossed into the Belgorod region.

Ponomarev told me that the legion’s soldiers were “just four kilometers away” from the Belgorod-22 nuclear-storage site, and that the group’s goal was to demonstrate to Russians that their border was unprotected.

The attack seems to have struck its psychological target. Tsargrad, a nationalist television channel in Russia, headlined a program with the question of whether, after a year of “bombs raining on … Russian regions,” the “special military operation” in Ukraine was coming to resemble the second Chechen war. The comparison jabbed at dark memories of fighting that killed thousands of civilians in the Northern Caucasus and created streams of internal migrants.

Now again, Russians have been internally displaced. “This is just a shock; there is no safe place in the south,” 72-year-old Nina Mikhailova, a pensioner from Russia’s Krasnodar region, south of Belgorod, told me by phone on Tuesday. “There is no end to this war, to killings, and nobody tells us when or how it will end. The jokes and threats about nuclear mushrooms are not funny. If the only solution is to nuke America, we are all in real trouble.”

Boris Vishnevsky, a city-council member in St. Petersburg, is one of the very few opposition figures left in government in Russia. I spoke with him by phone yesterday. Russia’s generals, he observed, can “promise us to destroy everything alive coming our way”—but then they will come up against the problem that “the FSB, who are actually responsible for protecting the borders, are busy hunting down and imprisoning Russians for their posts on social media.”

This week, some of my Russian friends said they caught themselves walking around with their mouths open in absolute shock. “The border is supposed to be protected by the FSB, but it is not; they just look more and more like some dumb thugs,” a former Russian member of parliament, Gennady Gudkov, himself a veteran of the KGB, told me on Tuesday. Like many of his friends and colleagues in Moscow, he gasped at the news of tanks and armored vehicles rolling from Ukraine to Russia, unstopped. Nothing was under control.

Putin pretends to love history. While his security services were in Belgorod chasing armed invaders from Ukraine, he was staring at a French map, allegedly dated from the mid-17th century, with the word Ukraine on it, but still insisting that Ukraine did not exist before the Soviet times.

Meanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, is building political capital from every failure of the Russian military. When the attack began from Ukraine, and the legion took over village after village, Prigozhin took aim at the armed forces on his Telegram channel: “Instead of providing security for the state, some of them are dividing cash and the others make fools of themselves. There is no leadership, no desire and no personalities ready to defend their country.”
Ukraine, however, is only getting stronger, according to Prigozhin: “Ukraine had 500 tanks in the beginning of our special operation and now they have 5,000. If before, 20,000 of their men knew how to fight, now 400,000 men know how to fight. So it turns out we militarized them in a big way.”

Prigozhin has predicted an apocalyptic ending for Putin’s regime as a result of the attack on Belgorod. “People will come out with pitchforks to the streets,” he told Russian media. When that day arrives, he warns, he will be the one taking the situation under control: “And then we come.”

richwicks says

Anyhow, I find it unlikely that 20,000 Russians were killed.

It's more. Likely many more. And same with Ukraine. Nobody is telling the truth. We're giving weapons and money, but this has nothing to do with our government lying. WE don't even know. This is unlike any war in recent history. Why doesn't NBC have the likes of Richard Engel in a helmet and vest over there reporting? You're simply not seeing that. This is an extremely violent war.

Fact is they're prisoners and no one gives a fuck. You think they actually track the numbers on the Russian or Ukrainian side that died? That would be admitting defeat.

Any clips you see of fighting is of trained forces. That's not what's going on. These are a bunch of drunks thinking it's a paintball game with real bullets because they slammed a bottle of vodka after getting let out of prison to fight. We'll know when this war gets real when average Russians have to get involved.

WookieMan says

It's more. Likely many more. And same with Ukraine. Nobody is telling the truth. We're giving weapons and money, but this has nothing to do with our government lying. WE don't even know. This is unlike any war in recent history.

On the contrary, this is exactly like recent wars. How many Afghans were killed in the 20 year war? How many Syrians? Libyans? Yemenis? Somalis? It's ESTIMATED that 800,000 Iraqis were killed, but we don't really know.

WookieMan says

Why doesn't NBC have the likes of Richard Engel in a helmet and vest over there reporting? You're simply not seeing that. This is an extremely violent war.

Oh come on, we've not had real news in 30 years. Here, I'll prove it:


original link


That was recorded back I think in 1990, when we still had those big satellite dishes and could pick of direct feeds without commercials from networks. You get to see them fucking around during a commercial break. They were in no danger, and it's quite possible the entire thing was completely faked.

WookieMan says

Fact is they're prisoners and no one gives a fuck. You think they actually track the numbers on the Russian or Ukrainian side that died? That would be admitting defeat.

Look, the intelligence agencies are filled with liars, assholes, criminals, in shitheads - but at the end of the day, you need accurate information.

They know the outcome of this war already. Delaying a resolution to the war, just gives them one more day, one more day, one more day... They continue it so they won't be as embarrassed when they lose it. I know what their plan is, just let the public forget there was EVER a war in Ukraine, let it go on for THAT long. We are still at war in Syria. When's the last time you heard about it?

WookieMan says

Any clips you see of fighting is of trained forces. That's not what's going on. These are a bunch of drunks thinking it's a paintball game with real bullets because they slammed a bottle of vodka after getting let out of prison to fight. We'll know when this war gets real when average Russians have to get involved.

I think the war is essentially over, and it will just be low level conflict for years. I mean, what is going on in Syria, or Yemen, or Somalia? We don't know.

Fuck our media. Worthless sob's.