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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....
Is it constitutional to send jet fighters to fight a war that congress has not declared? Rhetorical.
Is it constitutional to send jet fighters to fight a war that congress has not declared? Rhetorical.
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.”
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.
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1662473990051381248?ref_src=patrick.net
Shebyekino, Belgorod region of the Russian Federation, after a series of strikes, a substation was hit. There is no light in the city
"Lindsey Graham was with Deep State McCain in Ukraine in 2016..."
Lindsey Graham: "Your fight is our fight... Enough of the Russian aggression... Our fight is not with the Russian people but with Putin. "
'You scum. You b - get your a* out of the offices!!': Moment Wagner chief EXPLODES with fury at Putin's minions over Moscow drone attacks... as humiliated Vlad admits on TV his air defence was shoddy
Over the last few days, Russia destroyed what it claimed was Ukraine’s entire military intelligence headquarters, an oxymoron to be sure, and killed a bunch more bunkered, underground war schemers, including some American and British advisors. Ukraine did not deny that, but retaliated with a swarm of drones launched deep into Russia at its capitol city, Moscow.
It’s not clear the Ukrainian drones did any significant damage. Moscow claims its air defense systems worked. ...
So none of it makes much sense. Russia’s attacks seem strategic and if they can be believed, effective. Ukraine’s counterattacks seem symbolic and mostly intended to deliberately poke the Russian bear. But the Russians have been remarkable patient to this point and not eager to take any of that kind of bait.
I’m also mystified by the endless corporate media chatter about the Ukrainian counteroffensive. I’m just asking, but in war, isn’t it usually best to keep your counteroffensives secret? This Ukraine counteroffensive has to be the most-publicized and slowest-starting counteroffensive in history.
... The absence of any strategic timing, and its interminable “almost starting,” make this whole counteroffensive smell like a psyop. It’s more like a marketing plan than a real military maneuver. I’m not saying there won’t ultimately be fighting and tanks and stuff, but it sure feels a lot like they’re daring the Russians to strike first.
Assuming they know what they are doing, it seems like there’s some kind of obscure military game of chicken going on, and meanwhile ordinary Ukrainians are being ground into hamburger to keep the game going a little longer.
and meanwhile ordinary Ukrainians are being ground into hamburger to keep the game going a little longer.
I’m also mystified by the endless corporate media chatter about the Ukrainian counteroffensive. I’m just asking, but in war, isn’t it usually best to keep your counteroffensives secret? This Ukraine counteroffensive has to be the most-publicized and slowest-starting counteroffensive in history.
" https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/never-give-up-wednesday-may-31-2023?publication_id=463409&post_id=125040561&isFreemail=true "
"Russia’s attacks seem strategic and if they can be believed, effective."
"I’m also mystified by the endless corporate media chatter about the Ukrainian counteroffensive... This Ukraine counteroffensive has to be the most-publicized and slowest-starting counteroffensive in history."
To have a counteroffensive you need an army and Ukraine does not have an army. The Russian strategy of attrition wiped them out.
"Russia supposedly wiped out the Ukrainian army, but still can't make any meaningful territorial gains..."
"...after Russia's embarrassing retreat from Kyiv and Kharkiv..."
"What do you know that Prigozhin doesn't?"
'You scum. You b - get your a* out of the offices!!': Moment Wagner chief EXPLODES with fury at Putin's minions over Moscow drone attacks... as humiliated Vlad admits on TV his air defence was shoddy
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12140065/Moment-Wagner-chief-EXPLODES-fury-Putins-minions-Moscow-drone-attacks.html
Prigozhin is a friend of Putin and Putin doesn't mind the Prigozhin lose cannon.
The_Deplorable says
Prigozhin is a friend of Putin and Putin doesn't mind the Prigozhin lose cannon.
Prigozhin said the Ukrainian army is much bigger and better trained and armed now than it was a year ago when the invasion first started.
Yet you say that Ukraine has no army at all........or that it is greatly reduced from last year?
"Prigozhin said the Ukrainian army is much bigger and better trained and armed now than it was a year ago when the invasion first started."
"Yet you say that Ukraine has no army at all........or that it is greatly reduced from last year?"
Reliable information about the sordid story has been hard to get hold of. But from various news reports I could stitch together it involves a cast of characters not even Hollywood could make up: a baby trading scheme with a now-jailed Native American Indian chief wherein Leavitt purchased a daughter in exchange for a used car, a peyote-fueled gay hypnotherapist — now arrested for abusing hypnotized patients, a bigger-than-life scam to bilk the federal government for funding shipments of live buffalo to Eastern Europe from Native American lands, and the weirdest, timeliest connection of all: Leavitt’s business partner was the former president of, wait for it, Ukraine.
Victor Yuschenko.
Yuschenko wasn’t just any former Ukraine president. He was instrumental in the Deep State-fueled Orange Revolution, which toppled Ukraine’s democratically-elected but inconveniently pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, and ultimately wound up installing actor-qua-war leader Zelenskyy.
For some unexplained reason, after Yuschenko finished assisting the U.S.’s Deep State in overthrowing Yanukovych, he moved on to Utah. The former Ukrainian National Bank President somehow got wrapped up with disgraced baby-trading Utah district attorney David Leavitt, who stands credibly accused of involvement in a large satanic pedophile ring, not to mention the cannibalism thing or the buffalo scam, in which the two partners intended the ship the hapless, wooly animals to Ukraine, and who knows what would happen to the poor beasts once they got there.
Katya, hold the chicken Kyiv! I rubbed my throbbing eyes in disbelief. What did CNN just casually say?
CNN said that the documents the House wants came from UKRAINE. Ukraine, again! And it said Bill Barr got them from Rudy Guiliani before the election. And then Bill Barr buried the incriminating documents under a government buffalo pen in Philadelphia, underneath a stack of cow patties so deep that even now the House is struggling to dig them out of the FBI’s top-secret manure mound.
You’ll remember, I’m sure, the Deep State’s allergic reaction to Trump’s single phone call asking Ukraine for information about Joe Biden’s “activities” there, which lead to Trump Impeachment Circus Number One. They called Trump’s call “election interference.” Kind of like how burying the Hunter Biden laptop story was election interface, but the good kind, but I digress.
I am also sure you will keenly recall Joe Biden’s famous hot-mic brag that he extorted Ukraine into firing its Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin, who was allegedly investigating him for bribery and who knows what else. Maybe cannibalistic pedophile stuff, who knows.
Anyway, who wants to bet that the Ukrainian documents Rudy Guiliani gave Bill Barr came from the fired prosecutor general, then Barr made them disappear, and now Wray is protecting them?
Oh wait, CNN confirmed the Comer document WAS one of Guiliani’s Ukrainian documents...
In other words, it’s starting to look like there is a WHOLE lot more to this Biden Bribery document than was originally advertised.
And how come every time some truly reprehensible crime story appears, there’s aways a link to Ukraine somewhere? Or is it just my imagination?
Have you forgotten our Ukraine project (Let’s you and him fight)? The idea was to bleed Russia dry because, you know… Russia! (They meddle in our elections… they collude with Trump… they tamper with our hopes and dreams….) It was years in the making, impeccably gamed-out in the State Department’s sub-basement. Secret Agent Man Hunter Biden, the then vice-president’s son, was even installed in the dark heart of Ukraine’s power center to… to do what, exactly? Never mind, because what secret agent men do is… secret!
The Ukraine bear trap was supposed to put Russia out-of-business for the foreseeable future. Didn’t work out. The crowning act of boobery was our demolition of the Nord Stream natgas pipelines, which had the predictable effect of putting our NATO allies out-of-business, while Russia turned around and found other customers for its gas. ...
So, let’s face it: Ukraine flopped. The main result of the Ukraine project is that it destroyed the tiny shred of what was left of America’s reputation for acting the global hegemon. In fact, Ukraine revealed that Russia has better weapons than we have (China, too) and that, given the emergence of hypersonic missiles, our gazillion-dollar aircraft carrier fleets are as obsolete as Roman triremes and liburnae. So, what’s our Plan B for defending Taiwan? (Hint: there is none.)
What’s next? Western Europe, facing its own collapse, will turn on America and refuse to continue pretending it can help out in Ukraine. NATO falls apart. (What to do with those vacant office buildings and idle employees?) Europe will have enough problems with its cratering industries and banking system. It may even be obvious to a few heads-of-state that the best outcome is to simply allow Russia to pacify and demilitarize the age-old borderland. After all, for the rolling decades since World War Two, Ukraine was not a problem for anyone until America made it one.
So, let’s face it: Ukraine flopped. The main result of the Ukraine project is that it destroyed the tiny shred of what was left of America’s reputation for acting the global hegemon. In fact, Ukraine revealed that Russia has better weapons than we have (China, too) and that, given the emergence of hypersonic missiles, our gazillion-dollar aircraft carrier fleets are as obsolete as Roman triremes and liburnae. So, what’s our Plan B for defending Taiwan? (Hint: there is none.)
There is alot of uncertainty in this war, but to categorically claim that Ukraine flopped is retarded. Did anyone really think 15 months ago that Russia would have to do major mobilizations and burn through their Wagner prisoners to occupy and defend less land than they had back in March 2022?
Fucking "superpower", with "second military in the world" over which amoebas like McGregor and his disciples are pissing their collective bed every night can't fucking close airspace over the capital and fucking Kremlin in particilar and from what - fucking slow and noisy drones. Nothing has changed since 1987 when Mattias Rust landed a Cessna-172 (a Cessna, Karl!) on Red fucking Square. Muahahahaha!
Both sides are. This has been the most unreported war I've witnessed in my lifetime.
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