patrick.net

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.

Liberated from electric bills:

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

More Russian propaganda to disguise the fact that Ukraine is WINNING BIGLY! A few more billions, and Ukraine will be over the top!

https://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=223321

Lindsey Graham was with Deep State McCain in Ukraine in 2016, telling the Ukrainians how they are going to get support from Washington so they can go on the “offensive” against Russia in 2017.

You can only poke a bear for so long...

Onvacation says

"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. "

Well, who overthrew the democratically elected government of the Ukraine in 2014 and installed the current Nazi regime? Was it Russia or the USA?

Answer: The USA.

And who started killing Ukraine's Russian speakers for speaking Russian? Was it Russia or the Ukrainian Nazis?

Answer: The Ukrainian Nazis.

Therefore, the aggressor here is not Putin but Lindsey Graham and his neoCon ilk.

The_Deplorable says

Lindsey Graham: "Your fight is our fight... Enough of the Russian aggression... Our fight is not with the Russian people but with Putin. "

What annoys me, is these bastards are always saying "the LAST thing we want is war!!!"

That's all the want.

'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

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!

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/never-give-up-wednesday-may-31-2023?publication_id=463409&post_id=125040561&isFreemail=true

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.

Patrick says

and meanwhile ordinary Ukrainians are being ground into hamburger to keep the game going a little longer.

Both sides are. This has been the most unreported war I've witnessed in my lifetime. It's likely too dangerous for war correspondents to be near active combat. So reports are from non-war front areas. I think both are losing way more than they thought they would.

Russia has the advantage in human bodies to throw at it. They'll be fucked for 50 years though if this gets into 7 figures dead or crippled. And I think that's the US goal as we all know what this really is.

Patrick says

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.

I think that Ukraine is waiting until June 22nd to start it's offensive.

Patrick says

" https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/never-give-up-wednesday-may-31-2023?publication_id=463409&post_id=125040561&isFreemail=true "

From The link:

"Russia’s attacks seem strategic and if they can be believed, effective."

The Russian strategy is attrition and it is very effective. At this point they are defeating NATO, the US and the Ukrainian army - whatever little is left. The Ukrainians are now resorting to fragging.

"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.

The Ukrainian Counter-offensive is as non-existant as the Great Russian offensive.

The_Deplorable says

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 in nearly a year after Russia's embarrassing retreat from Kyiv and Kharkiv? How does that work?

What do you know that Prigozhin doesn't?

-----------------------------

"Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Tuesday that the "special military operation" Russia launched against Ukraine hasn't achieved the results that the Kremlin expected and that Ukraine now has one of the world's most powerful armies.

Russia sought to "demilitarize" Ukraine, but has instead militarized it with some of the best weapons in the world, Prigozhin said, echoing the justifications Russian President Vladimir Putin gave when launching his full-scale invasion against the neighboring country on February 24, 2022.

"The special military operation was done for the sake of denazification and demilitarization. Thus, the denazification of Ukraine, which we talked about, we made Ukraine a nation that is known to everyone all over the world...Ukraine has become a country that is known absolutely everywhere."
https://www.newsweek.com/wagner-group-prigozhin-interview-kremlin-ukraine-war-backfired-1802332

Seems like both sides want to have a frag an officer day.

Those press ganged grannies, old men and children in F16s are going to be quite formidable. That is, after they construct all the specialized runways, servicing auxiliaries and repair facilities that the Russkies don't immolate as fast as they are built.

socal2 says

"Russia supposedly wiped out the Ukrainian army, but still can't make any meaningful territorial gains..."

Again, the Russian strategy is attrition, not territorial gains. There is a difference. The US and NATO want Russia to attack but the Russians are not biting.

"...after Russia's embarrassing retreat from Kyiv and Kharkiv..."

That was not a retreat but a tactical move to boost the defensive line and the strategy of attrition.

"What do you know that Prigozhin doesn't?"

Prigozhin is a friend of Putin and Putin doesn't mind the Prigozhin lose cannon.

RWSGFY says

'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

Don't you recognize that stuff like this is specifically designed to manipulate your emotional state?

This is a claim being made in thedailymail. Why would you, even for a moment, assume that an English "news" site would have the ability to get this information if it were true?

We're in an era where voices and video can be entirely computer generated. This is likely just Western propaganda, being reported as fact.

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?

socal2 says

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?

Nobody knows what the real numbers are, it's all propaganda. But it's foolish to clamor to some Putin-hating or Russian-hating narrative or feelings and wanting him to lose badly, Russia certainly isn't losing and has all the time of the world to make everyone fed up with this senseless proxy war. They don't need to win, just keep going and occupy crimea and donbass until people will stop supporting throwing money at the Ukrainians govt which does not benefit its people. Negotiations will end the senseless killings immediately.

Last Ukrainian navy combat ship sunk in Odessa. Odessa gird your loins, you're next?

socal2 says

"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."

Then how come Eastern Ukraine is now part of Russia? No answer.

"Yet you say that Ukraine has no army at all........or that it is greatly reduced from last year?"

Ukraine does not have an army and that is why their famous spring counteroffensive did not happen. Russia just captured Bakhmut where Ukraine lost over 50,000 soldiers.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/parasitic-prostitutes-thursday-june?publication_id=463409&post_id=125277192&isFreemail=true

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.

Ibid:

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?

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/whats-next/

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.

Patrick says

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.)

Just alternate universes! Makes me question all of Kunstler's musings going forward.

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?

Just watch all the propagandists on Russian TV. They sure as shit don't think Ukraine flopped. Prigozhin is saying that Ukraine's military is stronger and more united now than it was before the war.

socal2 says

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?

I predicted it would be a war of attrition before the war began:

https://patrick.net/post/1343140/2021-12-29-a-ukraine-war-and-the-end-of-russia?start=1#comment-1808895

The point of this war isn't to win it, it's to drain resources of the other side. The US, for some STUPID reason thinks that Russia needs "money" and in particular "American money". Russia thinks that the US and Europe need raw materials, food, and energy and will suffer shortages of them now matter how much "money" they have because of 40 years of neglect of infrastructures.

Gee, who will turn out to be right?

The MIC doesn't give a shit, they are making TONS of money off from war profiteering. They want the war to go on forever themselves. IF it destroys this nation? Well, they won't consider it their fault.

In truth, I don't even know if the Neocons who started this shit show particularly care about the nation. These are the same assholes that engineered 9/11 and wrote that incredibly stupid paper called "Rebuilding America's Defenses". It's really hard to tell if they are just fucking liars, are if they actually believe all their own bullshit. If they do believe their bullshit, they are insane.

https://cryptome.org/rad.htm

You have complete lunatics running the country, and they're obviously lunatics, it's very easy to show they are. Nobody cares. Nobody listens. I guess the country does deserve to fail.

RWSGFY says

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!

I would like to point out that a commercial airliner her the headquarters of the Department of Defense on 9/11 in Washington DC which is the most highly restricted airspace in the United States.

Of course, I think this was intended to happen. I think that was a false flag.

WookieMan says

Both sides are. This has been the most unreported war I've witnessed in my lifetime.

Oh come, no it isn't. We're at war with Syria, did you know that? How about Yemen and Somalia? We were at war in Afghanistan for 20 years, I remember trying to find out ANY information about what was going on there in 2013 and 2014, I wasn't even certain the war was going on.

This happens all the time. Out of sight, out of mind.