Well looky, looky! At least ol' Lindsey appears to have grown a testicular sac on this one.....

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gra...agues-110000608.html

Graham’s U-turns have Senate colleagues fed up: ‘Annoying,’ ‘tiresome’

Republican and Democratic senators who have worked for years with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are fuming over his decision to oppose a $95 billion defense and foreign aid package.

Architects of the bill saw Graham’s support as crucial to mustering a majority of Republican senators to vote for it and apply as much pressure as possible on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to bring it up on the House floor.

With Graham voting no, the bill fell short of that goal even with 22 GOP votes in favor, and now it is considered unlikely to pass the House.
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One last comment. Yeah...F--K those RINO shitheads that voted in favor of this piece of excrement, ESPECIALLY that phukktard Cornyn!!!

Great news! Last thing I expected was Graham using sense. Russia should be in Kyiv by summer then.

quote:

Originally posted by pulicords:

quote:

Originally posted by Carpentermaass84:
Here's a very good read from Scott Ritter detailing Ukrainian terrorist attacks against Russian civilians and Ruasian infrastructure in Crimea. Absolutely disgusting what Biden is endorsing with OUR money

https://www.rt.com/russia/5925...a-ukrainian-misrule/

A great read if you're into the official propaganda arm of Putin:RT=RUSSIA TODAY (The most current version of Pravda).

Convicted Pedophile/Former FBI Agent Scott Ritter is hardly a respect source/journalist. Do a bit of research on this guy and his publisher (RT), before you present him as having an ounce of credibility.

Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been found guilty of unlawful contact with a minor following an online sex sting operation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-13089135

Notice what happens when you go against the liberal media..? The charges are baseless just like those against Trump. We live in an age when you can be politically assassinated if you dare to question.

Russia Today is more pro-Trump than Fox News at this point so I'm more inclined to believe their journalists than anything the mainstream media tries to peddle.

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
You rooting for the rooskies to take Poland and Finland back too?

I'm not rooting for any "side". Maybe if someone could articulate the strategic importance of Ukraine, Finland, or Poland is to the US I would give a fuck. If the argument were good enough I might support US boots on the ground but that argument doesn't exist. The bullshit line "it's for democracy" doesn't go very far with me. In reality that argument is dead on arrival as far as I'm concerned. I also want to know how Russia making closer ties to China doesn't hurt the US strategically. I have yet to hear a coherent argument on how China-Russia acting together doesn't hurt us.

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:

quote:

Originally posted by ScreamingCockatoo:
You rooting for the rooskies to take Poland and Finland back too?

<snip>. The bullshit line "it's for democracy"

That quoted part is rarely seen. The Lib use is "our" democracy, that gives the game away.

Newsies, commentators and activists hit the ivory soap standard; 99 and 99/100 pure, standard on that. I'm just speaking for myself but "our democracy" and my republic are very different birds.

quote:

Originally posted by wishfull thinker:

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:
<snip>. The bullshit line "it's for democracy"

That quoted part is rarely seen. The Lib use is "our" democracy, that gives the game away.

Newsies, commentators and activists hit the ivory soap standard; 99 and 99/100 pure, standard on that. I'm just speaking for myself but "our democracy" and my republic are very different birds.

That is a very good way to put it wishful. That one is filed in the vault for future discussions with a few people I know that still support our effort in Ukraine.

quote:

You rooting for the rooskies to take Poland and Finland back too?

If NATO countries don't start ponying up their dues, I'm just about at the point where I don't give the first shit if Russia takes all of them.

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
If NATO countries don't start ponying up their dues, I'm just about at the point where I don't give the first shit if Russia takes all of them.

Same. Truly not our problem. We need to focus on the western hemisphere.

quote:

Originally posted by wishfull thinker:

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:
<snip>. The bullshit line "it's for democracy"

That quoted part is rarely seen.

I disagree. I've seen it a lot, and a number of times on this forum.

I assume Germany will fall behind on their NATO commitments soon.

https://rumble.com/v4ee2y6-ger...TheLibertyDaily&ep=2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIiwXg6AUAg

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

quote:

Originally posted by egregore:
If NATO countries don't start ponying up their dues, I'm just about at the point where I don't give the first shit if Russia takes all of them.

Same. Truly not our problem. We need to focus on the western hemisphere.

quote:

Originally posted by wishfull thinker:

quote:

Originally posted by Bytes:
<snip>. The bullshit line "it's for democracy"

That quoted part is rarely seen.

I disagree. I've seen it a lot, and a number of times on this forum.

We might disagree but I want to make sure we disagree and don’t misunderstand. My point is that the libs and GDCs use the term “our democracy” which I reflexively hear as “my democracy not your democracy you redneck troll”. “Democracy” without the proprietary ‘our’ is different to my ears and mind and is used here all the time, including by me.

“Our democracy” makes my skin crawl.

Still friends?

quote:

Originally posted by wishfull thinker:
We might disagree but I want to make sure we disagree and don’t misunderstand.

Yes, and let me clarify a bit: I have seen it here, and had it used on me personally in debates (as recently as a few months ago) about our involvement in Ukraine that if I love democracy or care for others to have it that I should support Ukraine. It's every bit the red herring that it is when the leftists in our country use the term when talking about domestic affairs.

The only part I disagree with you about is that it is rarely seen. I see it often on Reddit, have had it used on my personally in conversation at least a half dozen times in the past two years, and I have seen it used on this forum a number of times - this notion that we're defending and supporting a supposed democracy in Ukraine vs I dunno, I guess what we're supposing is a totalitarian regime in Russia. Zelensky has declared martial law which has suspended the upcoming election, so that should be the last I ever hear of Ukraine being a democracy of any stripe.

I’ve grown so tired of the War Pigs on every side…they only look at how they can extract money from us at every turn of the road…

https://youtu.be/Y0N5bgoTpes?si=LxCnHByg6FOOBMqt

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:

quote:

Originally posted by wishfull thinker:
We might disagree but I want to make sure we disagree and don’t misunderstand.

<snip>

The only part I disagree with you about is that it is rarely seen. I see it often on Reddit, have had it used on my personally in conversation at least a half dozen times in the past two years, and I have seen it used on this forum a number of times - this notion that we're defending and supporting a supposed democracy in Ukraine vs I dunno, I guess what we're supposing is a totalitarian regime in Russia. Zelensky has declared martial law which has suspended the upcoming election, so that should be the last I ever hear of Ukraine being a democracy of any stripe.

Got it, your seeing it in term of Ukraine makes your point.

Ukraine outnumbered, outgunned, ground down by relentless Russia

https://news.yahoo.com/ukraine...47.html?guccounter=1

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - As the Ukraine war enters its third year, the infantry of 59th Brigade are confronting a bleak reality: they're running out of soldiers and ammunition to resist their Russian invaders.

One platoon commander who goes by his call sign "Tygr" estimated that just 60-70% of the several thousand men in the brigade at the start of the conflict were still serving. The rest had been killed, wounded or signed off for reasons such as old age or illness.

Heavy casualties at the hands of Russian forces have been compounded by dreadful conditions on the eastern front, with frozen soil turning into thick mud in unseasonably warm temperatures, playing havoc with soldiers' health.

"The weather is rain, snow, rain, snow. People get ill with simple flu or angina as a result. They're out of action for some time, and there is nobody to replace them," said a company commander in the brigade with the call sign "Limuzyn". "The most immediate problem in every unit is lack of people."

On the cusp of the second anniversary of its Feb. 24 invasion, Vladimir Putin's Russia is in the ascendancy in a conflict that combines attritional trench combat reminiscent of World War One with high-tech drone warfare that's sending tens of thousands of machines into the skies above.

Moscow has made small gains in recent months and claimed a major victory at the weekend when it took control of Avdiivka in the hotly contested eastern Donetsk region. A spokesperson for 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, one of the units that tried to hold the town, said the defenders were outnumbered seven to one.

Reuters spoke to more than 20 soldiers and commanders in infantry, drone and artillery units on different sections of the 1,000-km frontlines in eastern and southern Ukraine.

While still motivated to fight Russian occupation, they spoke of the challenges of holding off a larger and better supplied enemy as military support from the West slows despite pleas for more from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Another commander in the 59th Brigade, who only gave his first name Hryhoriy, described relentless attacks from groups of five to seven Russian soldiers who would push forward up to 10 times a day in what he called "meat assaults" - highly costly to the Russians but also a major threat to his troops.

"When one or two defensive positions are fighting off these assaults all day, the guys get tired," Hryhoriy said as he and his exhausted men were afforded a brief rotation away from the frontlines near the Russian-occupied eastern city of Donetsk.

"Weapons break, and if there is no possibility of bringing them more ammunition or changing their weapons, then you understand what this leads to."

Russia's defence ministry didn't respond to a request for comment on the state of play on the frontlines.

Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Ivan Havryliuk told Reuters that Ukraine had been forced onto the defensive by a lack of artillery ammunition and rockets, and that Kyiv was expecting Russia to intensify its assaults on several fronts.

"If there are further delays to the necessary military aid, the situation on the front could become even more difficult for us," he said in a written response.

WANTED: FIGHTERS AND AMMO

Kyiv relies heavily on money and equipment from abroad to fund its war effort, but with $61 billion in U.S. aid held up by political bickering in Washington it is looking more exposed than at any time since the start of the invasion.

A soldier serving in a GRAD rocket artillery unit, whose call sign is "Skorpion", said that his launcher, which uses Soviet-designed ammunition held by few of Ukraine's allies, was now operating at about 30% of maximum capacity.

"It became like this recently," he said. "There aren't as many foreign munitions."

Artillery shells are also in short supply as a result of Western countries' inability to keep up the pace of shipments for a drawn-out war. On top of the U.S. supply pause, the EU has conceded it will miss its target to supply a million shells to Ukraine by March by nearly half.

Michael Kofman, a senior fellow and Russian military specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington-based think-tank, estimated that Russia's artillery was firing at five times the rate of Ukraine's, a figure that Hryhoriy of the 59th Brigade also gave.

"Ukraine is not getting a sufficient amount of artillery ammunition to meet its minimum defensive needs, and this is not a sustainable situation moving forward," Kofman added.

Moscow now controls almost a fifth of Ukrainian territory including the Crimea peninsula it annexed in 2014, even if the frontlines of the war have largely stagnated in the last 14 months.

Ukrainian officials have said their armed forces number around 800,000, while in December Putin ordered Russia's forces to be increased by 170,000 troops to 1.3 million.

Beyond personnel, Moscow's defence spending dwarfs that of Ukraine. In 2024 it earmarked $109 billion for the sector, more than twice Ukraine's equivalent target of $43.8 billion.

A new law aimed at mobilising 450-500,000 more Ukrainians is slowly making its way through parliament, but for some soldiers fighting now, significant reinforcements seem a distant hope.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov recently referred to Ukraine's artillery ammunition deficit as "critical" in a letter to the European Union, urging its national leaders to do more to bolster supplies.

His letter said Ukraine's "absolute critical daily minimum requirement" was 6,000 artillery shells, but his forces were able to fire just 2,000 a day, the Financial Times reported.

DRONE WAR ON MASSIVE SCALE

Conventional warplanes are a relatively rare sight over the frontlines, largely because air defences act as a deterrent. Yet a different battle is raging in the skies, with both sides striving for the upper hand in drone technology.

Drones - or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) - are cheap to produce and can surveil enemy movements and drop ordnance with pinpoint accuracy.

Kyiv has overseen a boom in drone production and innovation and is developing advanced, long-range UAVs, while Moscow has more than matched its rival with huge investments of its own, allowed it to nullify Ukraine's early advantage.

The scale is astonishing.

On the Ukrainian side alone, more than 300,000 drones were ordered from producers last year and more than 100,000 sent to the front, digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov told Reuters.

A strong focus now is on light, nimble FPV drones, where operators, or pilots, get a first-person view from an onboard camera. President Zelenskiy has set a target for Ukraine to produce one million FPV drones this year in light of the battlefield advantages delivered by the technology.

Limuzyn, the company commander in the 59th Brigade, said Russia's widespread use of drones had make it difficult for Ukrainian troops to establish or strengthen fortified positions.

"Our guys start to do something, a drone sees them, and a second drone arrives to drop something onto them."

Drones have also forced the Russians to move valuable vehicles and weapons systems back by several kilometres, according to two Ukrainian drone pilots in different units.

"It's now very hard to find vehicles to hit... most vehicles are 9-10 km away or more," said a pilot in the 24th Brigade with the call sign "Nato". "At the beginning they were very comfortable being 7 km away."

Two other Ukrainian drone pilots, "Leleka" and "Darwin", both serving in the elite Achilles drone unit of the 92nd Brigade, described queues of two or three UAVs sometimes forming above the battlefield, waiting to hit enemy targets.

Leleka recalled watching four drones from different Ukrainian units coming in to strike a target on one occasion: "It's like taxis at the airport, one drone comes, then another, then a third."

The same situation is true for the Russians, whose drones now comfortably outnumber Ukraine's, according to Ukrainian pilots from three units. The Russian defence ministry said this month that the country had ramped up its production of military drones in the past year, without giving figures.

As the use from drones grows, both sides are bolstering deployment of electronic warfare systems which can disrupt the frequencies that feed commands from the pilot to the drone, making them drop out of the sky or miss their target.

Darwin, a 20-year-old who dropped out of medical school to enlist when Russia invaded, compared the current drone arms race to that between aviation and air defence: planes dominated in World War Two, but modern air defence systems greatly limited their use in this war, he said.

"In future, I am sure there will be an analogous situation with drones: The concentration and effectiveness of electronic warfare will become so big that any connection between an aerial vehicle and its pilot will become impossible."

Yeah, the next logical leap is UAV’s preloaded with AI, with parameters for targeting and such that they can operate independently. We spent twenty years at war in the Middle East against people who were technologically far behind and that drove our technology and weapons development in many ways. I can’t imagine what another five or ten year war between near-peers on the European continent will look like, but beyond all the other ramifications, I think we’re witnessing the start of another huge leap forward in technology. The mini-drones and drone swarms warned of by sci fi writers and scientists in years past will probably become a thing, if they aren’t already. All AI driven, no doubt.

Now is your chance to support Ukraine, no need to stay behind your keyboard.


Zelensky Opens Ukraine's National Guard To Foreigners Amid Severe Manpower Crisis

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...vere-manpower-crisis

Ukraine's devastating troop losses are long past crisis levels, and its forces are in retreat along some key front line areas, particularly in the region outside Avdiivka in Donetsk after Russia captured the city Saturday. The New York Times observed of the aftermath, "Without dominant hills, larger rivers or extensive fortifications of the kind it built around Avdiivka over the better part of a decade, Ukraine will probably have to cede more ground to hold back Russian units."

"They don’t have a well-established secondary line to pull back to," one analyst was cited in the Times as saying. Ukraine's leadership has long been mulling a new mass mobilization and conscription drive, which has received immense pushback from the war-wearied population. But instead of implementing that controversial measure domestically, President Zelensky is going a different route. He on Wednesday signed a decree opening up Ukraine's military forces to "foreigners and stateless persons."

They can now volunteer to serve in Ukraine's National Guard, per the new order, and may sign a contract at the private, sergeant, or officer levels depending on their qualifications.

Ukrainian media reports say, "To join the National Guard, foreign citizens need to apply to the territorial center for recruitment and social support (TSC) at their place of residence or directly to the military unit in which they want to serve." Foreigners can join for an initial three-year period, with higher ranks possibly being committed for up to five years.

What's more is that "Foreign women can also be recruited for military service if there are vacant female military positions," according to the reports.

While Ukraine from the start of the Russian invasion two years ago has always promoted its foreign legion, or "International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine" - this new law directly integrates foreign fighters into regular Ukrainian military units - an unprecedented step.

However, it's highly unlikely Kiev will suddenly see a flood of new recruits, given the carnage at the front lines. Ukrainians themselves are often scared of being shipped to the fighting, as the ongoing crisis of recruiters taking young men off the streets has lately demonstrated.

Just last week, Zelensky proposed that foreign fighters be given Ukrainian citizenship...



In the opening months of the war there was a trend of British, American, and European volunteers flooding into Kiev to join the fight. Many were killed - possibly in the dozens or more over the course of the war. However, this trend quickly slowed as soon as it became clear Ukraine was in for a long, grinding and bloody fight against a superior-armed Russia, which also has more manpower to draw on.

Many volunteers were known to simply hang out in bars in Kiev or far Western Lviv, very far from actual fighting, while posting to Instagram or YouTube to gain followers and social media clout.

quote:

Many volunteers were known to simply hang out in bars in Kiev or far Western Lviv, very far from actual fighting, while posting to Instagram or YouTube to gain followers and social media clout.

We don't want to actually fight the Russians... but how can we get in on the grift?

Oh, boy. Yeah, sign me up for my three year tour fighting the Russians with Ukrainian citizenship as a reward. Lemme get my wife to enlist, too.

I would bet a month's wages that Zelensky pulled this number out of his arse.


31,000 Ukrainian troops killed since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy says

https://apnews.com/article/ukr...56a4d990736e85af57c4

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action in the two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Zelenskyy said that the number was far lower than estimates given by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government.

“31,000 Ukrainian military personnel have been killed in this war. Not 300,000, not 150,000, not whatever Putin and his deceitful circle have been lying about. But nevertheless, each of these losses is a great sacrifice for us”, Zelenskyy said at the “Ukraine. Year 2024” forum in Kyiv.

more at link