quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
Fuck Russia. Fuck Belarus.
Let the Ukes keep on slaughtering them.
They're killing them 20+ to 1.

Lol, where are you getting these numbers from?

I listened to intercepted phone calls from Russian soldiers to their wives. Soldier states his country is leaving the bodies on the battle field for a half year and just bones remain. They speak of their huge losses. I have heard 400,000 dead and wounded Ukrainian fighters and 290,000 Russians. Receant battles have Ukrain smashing Russian armor in huge numbers. I hope they keep up this pace.

Anyone who thinks Russia is going to withdraw is dreaming. Likely what will happen is that within a year, a truce will be declared and Russia will end up keeping the territory they have gained. The Ukraine does not have the power to regain what they've lost, and now that this war is no longer the pet project for the I-support-the-current-thing dimwits, Zelenskyy will come to a point where all his bold talk will have to be set aside to let reality rule the day.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
Fuck Russia. Fuck Belarus.
Let the Ukes keep on slaughtering them.
They're killing them 20+ to 1.

Lol, where are you getting these numbers from?

It's unbelievable to me the people buying into this Ukraine propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

You think the Russians are winning?
The only thing they're winning are the propaganda wars.
Hook line and sinker. Russia is reporting troop deaths like China reported covid deaths.
Russia has resorted back to human wave attacks.
And can't keep a jack in the box together long enough to be effective.

Oh and Kiev still stands.

What everyone 'thinks' is going on over there is all based on whichever propaganda people want to believe...That's it! Pick your poison...None of it can be believed at this point and it's been that way since the beginning! Ukraine has their version, Russia has their version, and the west/NATO (led by the US) yet has another version! Seems everyone has a version of who's winning, but one thing's for certain...EVERYONE is Losing!

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
Russia has resorted back to human wave attacks.

Where are you getting this from? A citation would be helpful.

Yahoo news - Ukraine bureau...OK

Time Magazine launched a rhetorical hypersonic missile into the heart of Ukraine’s war effort yesterday, with a full-sized, bright-red cover story gaily headlined, “‘Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’ Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight.”

They didn’t come right out and call Zelensky Hitler, but they called him Hitler. I’ll show you how, in a minute.

The cover’s sub-headline didn’t help keep Ukraine in the fight. I guess keeping Ukraine in the fight is Zelensky’s problem:



As John F. Kennedy quipped after the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Where are all the Counteroffensive’s™ parents now?

And that was just the cover. Now, I’m old enough to remember back when media wasn’t allowed to say anything critical about the Ukraine war effort. Slava Ukraini! and all that rot. But, between the article’s soaring rhetoric and its fascinating, behind-the-scenes personal interest anecdotes, yesterday’s long-format story (which ran for pages and pages) took a bloody dental appliance and methodically vivisected whatever is left of Ukraine’s faltering chances.

The context for the story was last months’ trip when Zelensky’s went to Washington trick or treating but went home with a mostly-empty bag, with one or two lonely homemade ziplocks down at the bottom containing nuts and raisins and no candy. His reception in D.C. was downright frosty: “Congressional leaders declined to let Zelensky deliver a public address on Capitol Hill.” No, thanks.

Time said the Ukrainian president had hoped his visit would boost lawmakers’ confidence in the war, like in times past, but this year his costume just didn’t fit right or something. Apparently, at this point most folks are no longer interested in sending any more borrowed money to further enrich corrupt oligarchs:

Public support for aid to Ukraine has been in decline for months in the U.S., and Zelensky’s visit did nothing to revive it. Some 41% of Americans want Congress to provide more weapons to Kyiv, down from 65% in June, when Ukraine began a major counteroffensive, according to a Reuters survey taken shortly after Zelensky’s departure. That offensive has proceeded at an excruciating pace and with enormous losses, making it ever more difficult for Zelensky to convince partners that victory is around the corner. With the outbreak of war in Israel, even keeping the world’s attention on Ukraine has become a major challenge.

Well, Times’ cover story isn’t going to help those poll numbers any. Zelensky is probably already regretting it, but he invited Time’s reporters to travel back to Ukraine with him, perhaps hoping for some positive coverage. Boy was he wrong. The first thing Time’s reporter did was interview the former comedian’s staff, and it wasn’t funny, at all:

On my first day in Kyiv, I asked one member of his circle how the President was feeling. The response came without a second’s hesitation: “Angry.” His usual sense of humor, his tendency to liven up a meeting in the war room with a bit of banter or a bawdy joke, none of that has survived into the second year of all-out war. “Now he walks in, gets the updates, gives the orders, and walks out,” says one longtime member of his team. Another tells me that, most of all, Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.

Zelensky sounds kind of bitter. In fact, he sounds a lot like Hitler in the bunker at the end of World War Two, doesn’t he? The analogy was drawn more closely than you might think. It’s almost like Time, scribbling furiously between the lines, was secretly conjuring the image of a frail German leader pounding the table and screaming at subordinates. Consider this next paragraph that basically reported Zelensky has become delusional:

Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, (Zelensky) does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace. On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. “He deludes himself,” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.”

As Mark Twain once said, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Time continued drawing an invisible line directly between Ukraine in 2023 and Berlin in 1945. For instance, Time said Zelensky’s military commanders are starting to ignore his increasingly clueless orders:

(A senior Ukrainian military officer reports that) some front-line commanders have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President. “They just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line,” he says. “But we can’t win a war that way.”
Some commanders have little choice in second-guessing orders from the top. At one point in early October, he said, Kyiv demanded an operation to “retake” the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? “They don’t have the men or the weapons,” says the officer. “Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?”

That was bad enough. But then Time really started sticking the surgical blade in even deeper. This next sentence may have changed history. It’s difficult to underestimate the impact of this next assessment, an assessment made by a single Time reporter quoting an anonymous Ukrainian official, but it will echo a million times down Congress’s marble halls.

Time reported that sending more expensive weapons and ammo would be useless at this point:

In some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition. One of Zelensky’s close aides tells me that even if the U.S. and its allies come through with all the weapons they have pledged, “we don’t have the men to use them.”

All the young soldiers are dead now. Ukraine’s remaining fighters have an average age of forty-three. And, said Times, they aren’t exactly the healthiest bunch of men you ever saw. “This is Ukraine, not Scandinavia.” Time even found a way to make it Zelensky’s fault.

Responding to Western criticism of the widespread, corrupt practice of Ukrainian families paying conscription agents for medical waivers, Zelensky — maybe channeling President Reagan during the Air Traffic Controller strike — fired them all. Buh bye.

It wasn’t the best idea he ever had:

On August 11th, Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country. The decision was intended to signal his commitment to fighting graft. But the move backfired, according to the senior military officer, as recruitment nearly ground to a halt without leadership. The fired officials also proved difficult to replace, in part because the reputation of the draft offices had been tainted. “Who wants that job?” the officer asks. “It’s like putting a sign on your back that says: corrupt.”

At this point in the article, Time had pretty conclusively won the argument that sending more aid to Ukraine would be effectively useless, because there aren’t enough men to use more weapons, and there’s no way for Ukraine to recruit any more men, since its conscription service has collapsed. But, to make sure its intended victim was completely dead, Times piled on.

The article explained, even if the manpower problem could be solved, more aid would just be stolen at this point anyway:

Amid all the pressure to root out corruption, I assumed, perhaps naively, that officials in Ukraine would think twice before taking a bribe or pocketing state funds. But when I made this point to a top presidential adviser in early October, he asked me to turn off my audio recorder so he could speak more freely. “Simon, you’re mistaken,” he says. “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”

Doesn’t sound like a very good advertisement for sending even more money to Ukraine, does it?

Channelling even more Zelensky-as-defiant-Hitler, the Times article began and ended the same way: Zelensky stubbornly refuses to consider any kind of peace deal, or anything short of complete victory against the Russians. The reporter didn’t come right out and say it, but the hint that Zelensky is completely delusional and should be immediately replaced could not have been more strongly suggested.

Finally — this morning, all the major Establishment Media outlets ran headlines referencing Time’s story. They are making sure the bad news gets broad coverage. If I had to bet, I would bet that Zelensky is living on borrowed time. It is very difficult to conceive how any kind of substantial Ukraine aid package could possibly survive this report.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...nker-tuesday-october

So, unsurprisingly, all the Ukraine fiasco has accomplished is making a lot of crooks and con men rich and killing a lot of people.

Those making the decisions don't want peace, they want to prolong the war, right up to the last Ukrainian even! It's curious that NOBODY is really talking about peace, and nearly EVERYONE is still talking about prolonging the war! Everytime anyone talks about peace they are undermined or discredited, possible peace talks are skuttled, etc, including most recently that by Alexander Lukashenko, the President of Belarus...And so, all the killing and unnecessary death(s) must continue!

If "winning" the war against Russia remains the goal, then there will be no peace, because that will never happen.

The stuff from the Times reads more true than anything I’ve seen in the news the last twenty months.

quote:

Originally posted by sse:
If "winning" the war against Russia remains the goal, then there will be no peace, because that will never happen.

Why not? They lost a war in 89 and ran home with their tail between their legs. Then they lost another one in 96. The rumours of Red Army invincibility are greatly exaggerated.

Apparently Russia's not the only country to leave Afghanistan with their tail between their legs! Of course, in our case those in charge had their heads up their ass!

Zelenskyy Official Admits, “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”

The only people who deny financial corruption in Ukraine are those who benefit from it. That group includes U.S. politicians who gleefully send billions of taxpayer funds into the country of Ukraine while capturing returns in the process.

U.S. advisors and consultants, along with private sector contractors and multinational corporations like Blackrock are all beneficiaries of the vast sums of money being dumped into Ukraine. We all know this. So, on one hand it is simple to see why the Ukraine government officials would use the same opportunity to enrich themselves

After all, U.S. taxpayers are not only buying bombs, missiles and bullets with the money sent to Ukraine, we are also paying the salaries and pensions of the same government officials who are skimming the proceeds. The corruption is everywhere, and every entity is participating in the graft in one form or another.

Zelenskyy’s wife goes shopping in Paris during the war. Where exactly do politicians think she is getting the money to spend on glitzy holiday vacations? Everybody knows exactly what is going on. The glaringly obvious theft is a large part of the contention the American people have with this insufferable effort to fund Ukraine.

During a lengthy Time Magazine article, one of the close and key advisors to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted the corrupt stealing of US funds are widespread. In addition to the theft, the overall tone of the Time Magazine article paints the war effort in Ukraine, what we have always called ‘World War Reddit’ for its mostly theatrical value, as a lost cause. This is not surprising; however, for Time Mag to make such an admission, that does indicate a narrative shift in the overall effort.

TIME – […] Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”

[…] As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption. Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.

The decision was intended to signal his commitment to fighting graft. But the move backfired, according to the senior military officer, as recruitment nearly ground to a halt without leadership. The fired officials also proved difficult to replace, in part because the reputation of the draft offices had been tainted. “Who wants that job?” the officer asks. “It’s like putting a sign on your back that says: corrupt.”

[…] Amid all the pressure to root out corruption, I assumed, perhaps naively, that officials in Ukraine would think twice before taking a bribe or pocketing state funds. But when I made this point to a top presidential adviser in early October, he asked me to turn off my audio recorder so he could speak more freely. “Simon, you’re mistaken,” he says. “People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.”

Even the firing of the Defense Minister did not make officials “feel any fear,” he adds, because the purge took too long to materialize. The President was warned in February that corruption had grown rife inside the ministry, but he dithered for more than six months, giving his allies multiple chances to deal with the problems quietly or explain them away. By the time he acted ahead of his U.S. visit, “it was too late,” says another senior presidential adviser. Ukraine’s Western allies were already aware of the scandal by then. Soldiers at the front had begun making off-color jokes about “Reznikov’s eggs,” a new metaphor for corruption. “The reputational damage was done,” says the adviser. (more)

Time Magazine, a far-left ideological ally of the Biden regime, is publishing this at the same time that congress is debating another request for billions of more dollars in Ukraine aid. The timing here would indicate a substantive shift in position for the leftist media. Perhaps they are starting to realize, the bloom is off the ruse.

World War Reddit, written, produced and directed by: Nuland, Blinken and Sullivan.



https://theconservativetreehou...omorrow/#more-252603

quote:

Originally posted by echidna:

quote:

Originally posted by sse:
If "winning" the war against Russia remains the goal, then there will be no peace, because that will never happen.

Why not? They lost a war in 89 and ran home with their tail between their legs. Then they lost another one in 96. The rumours of Red Army invincibility are greatly exaggerated.

What scenario(s) do you perceive in which Russia will just wrap up and withdraw troops?

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
Apparently Russia's not the only country to leave Afghanistan with their tail between their legs! Of course, in our case those in charge had their heads up their ass!

Well, yeah. Nobody is invincible and the enemy always gets a vote. Exactly the point.

quote:

Originally posted by sse:

quote:

Originally posted by echidna:

quote:

Originally posted by sse:
If "winning" the war against Russia remains the goal, then there will be no peace, because that will never happen.

Why not? They lost a war in 89 and ran home with their tail between their legs. Then they lost another one in 96. The rumours of Red Army invincibility are greatly exaggerated.

What scenario(s) do you perceive in which Russia will just wrap up and withdraw troops?

There are many scenarios, but this is exactly what they did both in 89 and 96. And if we are to go deeper in history, in 1905, 1917, 1921 and 1939.