Here is one guys view, allegedly from Kyiv(Kiev):



I have learned enough over my lifetime to know that we all need to think for ourselves and to question everything.

Hard to get past the fact according to him that the US somehow annihilated all of the 1st world water and power infrastructure that they had in Afghanistan/Iraq etc.

Not saying he’s wrong about Russia, but… jeeze.

quote:

Originally posted by stkfox:
How come with all the thousands of cell phones these days no has any pics/footage of the Ukraine/Russian firefights, I mean if they’re stopping them cold in many areas? All we get is an explosion here and there on camera. And the one Russian tank that the Ukraines found stopped on the road, they offered to tow back to Russia for them. Something very strange about the whole stinking deal!

I know that they've banned all amateur radio out of there, perhaps they've banned cell service/internet as well. Just a WAG.

quote:

Originally posted by stkfox:
How come with all the thousands of cell phones these days no has any pics/footage of the Ukraine/Russian firefights, I mean if they’re stopping them cold in many areas? All we get is an explosion here and there on camera. And the one Russian tank that the Ukraines found stopped on the road, they offered to tow back to Russia for them. Something very strange about the whole stinking deal!

Dunno. I wouldn’t be walking around with a cellphone in an active combat zone, though. Dunno exactly how it’d work, but between hackers (we’re supposed to be worrying about cyberattacks, right?) and just “better RF detectors than radio shack sells”, I’d think it’d be easy for the Russians to find someone with a cellphone on them. Well, one that’s turned on, anyway.

Also, if you livestream anything, that’s just telling the Russians exactly where you are.

quote:

Here is one guys view, allegedly from Kyiv(Kiev):

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This guy is a good example of bad Russian disinformation or propaganda. He is a joke. Tariq Aziz and Baghdad Bob were more believable. Please no more pure propaganda. Reminds me of the garbage produced by Radio Moscow in the 50s and 60s. They simply made up news stories that made Americans look bad.

Vladimir Pozner had class and understood American culture because he was bright and lived in New York. This guy is no Pozner.

quote:

Originally posted by stkfox:
How come with all the thousands of cell phones these days no has any pics/footage of the Ukraine/Russian firefights, I mean if they’re stopping them cold in many areas? All we get is an explosion here and there on camera. And the one Russian tank that the Ukraines found stopped on the road, they offered to tow back to Russia for them. Something very strange about the whole stinking deal!

I'll guess that they're too busy dodging incoming fire and returning fire to stop and take selfies of the battle. Perhaps they're not that good at multi-tasking.

quote:

Originally posted by leavemebe:
Here is one guys view, allegedly from Kyiv(Kiev):



I have learned enough over my lifetime to know that we all need to think for ourselves and to question everything.

Did you listen to the whole thing? I'd agree with first half. Second half, nope.

He's digging in his (and his country's) heels to protect their sovereignty. Weapons in citizens hands? Yes, you are fighting to protect your capital within only days of a war, it should take weeks to months to reach a capital, possibly years if it was a even match. They are down to guerilla warfare at this point. Either their country survives or becomes a providence of Russia under their control.

Heavy armament within population centers? Do you suggest more civilians with AKs or something effective at light armored vehicles and tanks?

Conscription? Yes it's a last resort any nation would fall back to in order to preserve itself.

Yes surrender would be "safer", but many people are unwilling to be subjects and prefer freedom.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Yes, you are fighting to protect your capital within only days of a war, it should take weeks to months to reach a capital, possibly years if it was a even match.

Umm… the Ukrainian capital is less than 50 miles from a hostile border (Belarus) that the Russians invaded from.

I don’t care who you are, it’s not taking years to take a capital 50 miles from a border, especially if you have the element of surprise.

If I were Ukrainian I’d probably consider going to Moscow and fucking things up. I’m surprised there haven’t been more Ukrainians to see the writing on the wall and consider taking the war to Russia’s capital. I’d do to the Russians what is happening to the Ukrainians as best I could.

I saw a van with graffiti burning in Moscow with a “this is war” or some such statement on it but I’m sad to not be seeing more of that.

It changes your mindset when all of a sudden the war comes to your home town.

quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Yes, you are fighting to protect your capital within only days of a war, it should take weeks to months to reach a capital, possibly years if it was a even match.

Umm… the Ukrainian capital is less than 50 miles from a hostile border (Belarus) that the Russians invaded from.

I don’t care who you are, it’s not taking years to take a capital 50 miles from a border, especially if you have the element of surprise.

What is that quote again by Napoleon about “taking Vienna”?

quote:

Originally posted by reloader-1:

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:
Yes, you are fighting to protect your capital within only days of a war, it should take weeks to months to reach a capital, possibly years if it was a even match.

Umm… the Ukrainian capital is less than 50 miles from a hostile border (Belarus) that the Russians invaded from.

I don’t care who you are, it’s not taking years to take a capital 50 miles from a border, especially if you have the element of surprise.

Glad you agree with me that there's a sense of urgency, I guess I did probably way underestimate how serious it is and the need to dig in. If they want to keep their sovereignty they best do whatever they can to survive.

I found a few notes about the situation on the ground on Etsy from a Ukrainian Etsy "shop" owner from Kyiv who has had to temporarily close her metal figure business due to the fighting. The situation is becoming increasingly dire as food and water supplies dwindle but the Ukrainians don't want to give up. Helen's notes follow:

24.02
We will contact each of you who ordered figures.
But this may take several weeks.
We don't know anything yet. We are just horrified!
Be patient! Please!
We will open as soon as we are safe!!!

26.02
I will reply to everyone who writes...
I see all your letters, words of support, and now we really need it. Feel that you are not alone.
Our family is in Kyiv. For the third day we have been having a waking nightmare. Rockets are flying at Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine, most of the time we are in the basement. Explosions are heard right now.
Yesterday, many civilians died in Ukraine, and even more were wounded. When we found out how many children suffered, we cried.
They thought that we would meet them here with flowers... THEY WAS WRONG!
Our army, police and civil defense are fighting for our country and the safety of our children.

27.02
In a few days, many people will run out of food and money. We have already started helping the elderly. If you want to help - buy one of the products and put a review "No war in Ukraine". While it can be done in our store on ebay.
Our family still has food and water. Now you can't go outside. Our police and civil defense are catching sabotage groups. There are a lot of them! Perhaps it will turn out to buy something on Monday-Tuesday. There is almost nothing left in the shops.
In any case, our family will somehow organize the issue of water and food for those who need it.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/Hetm...=nla_listing_details (Note: you have to click "More" to read this notes.)

A small favor to ask any member with a subscription; there was an opinion piece written in the Wall Street Journal, by former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, last updated 27 Feb. The piece is titled Putin Gambles that the West is Weak.

It's reportedly a piece worth reading but, so far, I haven't found a source that isn't behind a paywall. There are a couple articles with similar titles.

If someone has a subscription and would be willing to post it here I'd appreciate it.

quote:

Originally posted by stickman428:
If I were Ukrainian I’d probably consider going to Moscow and fucking things up. I’m surprised there haven’t been more Ukrainians to see the writing on the wall and consider taking the war to Russia’s capital. I’d do to the Russians what is happening to the Ukrainians as best I could.

I saw a van with graffiti burning in Moscow with a “this is war” or some such statement on it but I’m sad to not be seeing more of that.

It changes your mindset when all of a sudden the war comes to your home town.

I too had these thoughts. And tonight I have in mind that 17 mile long mess of mostly troop carrying trucks. Covered with nothing but canvas and tree limbs. They should be drone striking the shit out if that. Even better, close on it with 15 miles of small arms and shoot it up good. Dont wait untill it gets to the capitol. Take the damn fight too them.

Putin Gambles That the West Is Weak
Both militarily and culturally, we’ve been derelict in our duty to defend our civilization.

By Tony Abbott

“The bullying of small nations by big ones, the trampling of justice and decency in the pursuit of national aggrandizement, and reckless indifference to human life, should have no place in our world.”

Those were my words to the Australian Parliament on the morning of July 17, 2014, when a Russian missile battery had shot down flight MH17, killing 38 Australians among the 298 on board, as Russian proxies seized the Donbas. If it wasn’t yet obvious in 2008, when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, it should certainly have been six years later, when he annexed the Crimea, that Mr. Putin was bent on the restoration of greater Russia—and to hell with the freedom and independence of the countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

Yet since then, Western democracies have culpably failed to boost their military capability while indulging acts of economic and cultural self-harm.

Take the U.K., the West’s second-strongest military power. The total number of British defense personnel dropped from about 600,000 in the 1950s to 300,000 in the 1960s and about 150,000 now. British forces in Europe declined from 80,000 in the 1950s to 50,000 in the 1960s to 25,000 in 1994 (still including one tank division), before dwindling to zero in Germany by 2020 and 1,000 in Estonia (placed there after 2015 in reaction to Russia’s renewed threat). In response to Russia’s blitzkrieg on Ukraine, the U.K. government has just announced that this force will be boosted to an armored brigade of fewer than 3,000. Given that the U.K. has provided by far the strongest response to the current crisis, it’s little wonder Mr. Putin thinks the West is weak and easily distracted.

In 2014 I was criticized for contemplating the dispatch of Australian troops to Ukraine. Fortunately, this became unnecessary once the rebels’ sponsors relented and allowed the repatriation of our dead.

In retrospect, Ukraine’s fate was probably sealed when President Biden said last month that America might not respond to a “minor incursion” and definitively ruled out “boots on the ground.” No consideration whatever appears to have been given to declaring a “no fly” zone for Russian military aircraft over Ukraine, even though that had been done to protect Iraqi Kurds against Saddam Hussein and would have given the Ukrainian army a much fairer fight against the Russians’ greater numbers.

America’s unwillingness to take risks to protect Ukraine, a democracy of more than 40 million people, is now fueling doubts about the risks the U.S. might run to help defend other countries that were once controlled by Russia—especially the Baltic states, which are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It’s obvious that small countries are largely helpless in the absence of collective defense and that countries that won’t or can’t fight an aggressor are doomed to negotiate the best possible surrender.

Yet the West’s bigger surrender has been economic and cultural. For at least 15 years, much of Western policy has been directed to reducing carbon-dioxide emissions. In Australia, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd declared that climate change is the “great moral challenge” of our time. The British Parliament, along with many others, has officially declared a “climate emergency.” Last week, as the air raid sirens wailed over Kyiv, John Kerry worried that the Ukraine crisis would produce “massive emissions” and distract the world from climate change.

Reducing emissions is an important policy objective but should never be governments’ main task—especially when it entails risking significant economic damage and putting national security at risk. Europe has been busily closing down coal-fired power stations (and in Germany even emissions-free nuclear ones) only to become dependent on Russian gas that Mr. Putin can turn off and on like a tap. Here in Australia, we’re set on closing coal-fired power stations without any base-load substitute even while our thermal coal exports surge to record levels (including to China, an even more dangerous strategic competitor than Russia). It’s the private sector that’s doing this, an unforgivable folly reminiscent of Lenin’s reported quip that the “capitalists will sell us the rope by which we hang them.”

Then there’s globalization, which has undoubtedly made the world richer but at the cost (as we’ve only lately come to realize) of strengthening the West’s competitors and exporting its manufacturing base. Free trade should continue to be promoted but principally between countries with comparable standards of living and only between democracies that respect the rule of law.

The worst contemporary folly is the constant undermining of Western civilization, history and national virtues. Partly it is deliberate subversion by cultural Marxists, but mostly it’s the polite acquiescence of diffident and historically ignorant people conditioned not to give offence. These days the rights of men who want to be women routinely trump those of women who don’t want to face unfair competition in sport. Religious free speech is still OK, as long it’s not the Bible you’re quoting. Martin Luther King’s famous plea that his children be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, would be denounced on most Western campuses as an example of “colorblind racism.” “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” couldn’t be made today due to politically correct wowserism. And I wonder how many students are still taught to take pride in Australia Day, which celebrates the founding of a country that’s as free, fair and prosperous as any on earth.

A Western world that has spent two years sacrificing freedom to preserve life is hardly going to sacrifice life to preserve freedom. Or at least that’s how it must look to the hard men in Moscow and Beijing. As Churchill said of the Munich sellout in 1938, this is “the first foretaste of a bitter cup that will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

Mr. Abbott served as prime minister of Australia, 2013-15.

LINK

quote:

Ukraine’s fate was probably sealed when President Biden said last month that America might not respond to a “minor incursion”

Yeah, no shit.

Break through paywalls using this site:
https://archive.ph/

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sfArW6zppYw" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

Yes pretty much where I’m at.

Lightning fast. Much obliged sir.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Putin Gambles That the West Is Weak
...

If it wasn’t yet obvious in 2008, when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, it should certainly have been six years later, when he annexed the Crimea, that Mr. Putin was bent on the restoration of greater Russia—and to hell with the freedom and independence of the countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.

...

quote:

In retrospect, Ukraine’s fate was probably sealed when President Biden said last month that America might not respond to a “minor incursion” and definitively ruled out “boots on the ground.” No consideration whatever appears to have been given to declaring a “no fly” zone for Russian military aircraft over Ukraine, even though that had been done to protect Iraqi Kurds against Saddam Hussein and would have given the Ukrainian army a much fairer fight against the Russians’ greater numbers.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Three American presidents. Three presidential administrations dealing with Russian invasions. The first one, President Bush, I could excuse as a President focused on fighting two wars and who was under attack from the Left to such an extent that his image as a powerful leader, his cache, had been sufficiently damaged and distracted as to not be able to effectively deal with the invasion of Georgia.

But, President Obama failing to learn from the Georgian invasion while Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula, and President Biden failing to learn from both the invasions of Georgia and Crimea, and prepare as Russia slowly masses troops and supplies around the border of Ukraine over almost a year is inexcusable.

I find it mind boggling that successive American presidents refused to learn from the challenges and failings of previous ones. How could the option of denying air superiority to the Russians through enforcement of a no-fly zone over Ukraine air space not, at least, have been considered by the Biden administration or NATO?

quote:

America’s unwillingness to take risks to protect Ukraine, a democracy of more than 40 million people, is now fueling doubts about the risks the U.S. might run to help defend other countries that were once controlled by Russia—especially the Baltic states, which are part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

I've made this same point myself. With every agreement an American president reneges on (without legal cause), with every partnership or coalition that is abandoned, with every promise broken, with every traditional American value that slowly becomes too costly or risky to fight for, the U.S. loses standing and becomes weaker in the world.