So, he has to force people into service to replace 31K? Sure, yeah, we believe that !

Zelensky says Ukraine’s counteroffensive plans leaked to Russia

https://www.france24.com/en/eu...ans-leaked-to-russia

Ukraine’s counteroffensive in 2023, powered by billions of dollars in Western arms, largely fell flat, failing to break through multiple lines of Russian defences and fortifications.

“Our counteroffensive action plans were on the Kremlin’s table before the counteroffensive actions began,” Zelensky said Sunday at a press conference in Kyiv.

His office subsequently confirmed to AFP that Zelensky was referring to Moscow obtaining sensitive military planning information.

Zelensky did not provide any other details on the leak.

He went on to say that Kyiv was preparing “several” versions of its battlefield strategy for 2024 to help avoid a repeat.

Asked whether Ukraine had plans for another attempt at a counteroffensive this year, he said: “We have a plan, a clear plan. Several plans will be prepared because of information leaks.”

Russian forces are now back on the advance across eastern Ukraine, having captured the symbolic frontline town of Avdiivka and seeking to press their advantage in ammunition and manpower.

I’m not inclined to believe anything that grifting clown says at this point, but I also don’t have any problem believing the Russians managed to get that intel through whatever means. Assuming they did, I also don’t believe it would have mattered much if they hadn’t. Ukraine doesn’t have the numbers or the manufacturing to keep up with Russia, and it doesn’t seem like NATO actually cares to give enough to make the difference, despite all the vociferous declarations to the contrary. Zelensky can point fingers all he wants, but it’s clear as day that he isn’t going to pull this off, even if he had a totally loyal compliment of pants-sniffers.

Nato doesn't have the manufacturing to keep up with Russia

https://www.breitbart.com/poli...sia-war-2-year-mark/

CIA Built "12 Secret Spy Bases" In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade, NYT Report Confirms

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...decade-bombshell-nyt

On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing so long prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine's intelligence services has "transformed" the former Soviet state and its capabilities into "Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today."

This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders' communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.

A main source of the NYT revelations—disclosures which might come as no surprise to those never willing to so easily swallow the mainstream 'official' narrative of events—is identified as a top intelligence commander named Gen. Serhii Dvoretskiy.

Clearly, Kiev and Washington now want world to know of the deep intelligence relationship they tried to conceal for over the past decade. It is perhaps a kind of warning to Moscow at a moment Ukraine's forces are in retreat: the US is fighting hand in glove with the Ukrainians. And yet the revelations contained in the NY Times report also confirm what President Putin has precisely accused Washington of all along.

While the lengthy NYT report is full of fresh revelations and confirmation of just how deeply the CIA has always been involved in Ukraine, below are seven of the biggest contained in the story...

Description of secret spy bunker

The report contains a surprisingly detailed description of one of the 'secret' underground command centers established by the CIA near the Russian border... location undisclosed of course:

Not far away, a discreet passageway descends to a subterranean bunker where teams of Ukrainian soldiers track Russian spy satellites and eavesdrop on conversations between Russian commanders. On one screen, a red line followed the route of an explosive drone threading through Russian air defenses from a point in central Ukraine to a target in the Russian city of Rostov.

The underground bunker, built to replace the destroyed command center in the months after Russia’s invasion, is a secret nerve center of Ukraine’s military.

There is also one more secret: The base is almost fully financed, and partly equipped, by the CIA.

Elite commando force

Within two years after the 2014 West-backed coup in Ukraine, the CIA had set up a training program for elite Ukrainian operatives:

Around 2016, the CIA began training an elite Ukrainian commando force — known as Unit 2245 — which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems. (One officer in the unit was Kyrylo Budanov, now the general leading Ukraine’s military intelligence.)

And the CIA also helped train a new generation of Ukrainian spies who operated inside Russia, across Europe, and in Cuba and other places where the Russians have a large presence.

Ukraine transformed into an "intelligence-gathering hub"

The US intelligence network in Ukraine (which is tantamount to NATO intelligence network too) has in reality been more extensive than pretty much all prior media speculation has envisioned. Ukraine has long been a massive "intelligence gathering hub" for Washington and its partners:

In more than 200 interviews, current and former officials in Ukraine, the United States and Europe described a partnership that nearly foundered from mutual distrust before it steadily expanded, turning Ukraine into an intelligence-gathering hub that intercepted more Russian communications than the CIA station in Kyiv, Ukraine, could initially handle. Many of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence and matters of sensitive diplomacy.

Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is more dependent on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy lines. And they are increasingly at risk: If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kyiv, the CIA may have to scale back.

Huge NYT admission that Putin was basically right

Below is a hugely ironic excerpt from the Times report. The section begins by noting that Putin has repeatedly blamed the US-NATO for expanding its military and intelligence infrastructure into Ukraine. Not only had this precisely been going on for the past decade, as is now being admitted, but was presented by the Kremlin as a key cause of the Russian invasion of Feb.24, 2022. Putin and his officials were adamant on the eve of the invasion that NATO was militarizing Ukraine. The Times appears to now fully admit that, yes - this was actually the case:

Putin has long blamed Western intelligence agencies for manipulating Kyiv and sowing anti-Russia sentiment in Ukraine.

Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the CIA, together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow.

...U.S. officials were often reluctant to fully engage, fearing that Ukrainian officials could not be trusted, and worrying about provoking the Kremlin.Yet a tight circle of Ukrainian intelligence officials assiduously courted the CIA and gradually made themselves vital to the Americans. In 2015, Gen. Valeriy Kondratiuk, then Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, arrived at a meeting with the CIA’s deputy station chief and without warning handed over a stack of top-secret files.

2014 Coup... and Crimea

The report indirectly references this very critical period which set Ukraine and Russian on their tragic collision course:

With violence escalating, an unmarked U.S. government plane touched down at an airport in Kyiv carrying John Brennan, then the director of the CIA. He told Nalyvaichenko that the CIA was interested in developing a relationship but only at a pace the agency was comfortable with, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

To the CIA, the unknown question was how long Nalyvaichenko and the pro-Western government would be around. The CIA had been burned before in Ukraine.

...The result was a delicate balancing act. The CIA was supposed to strengthen Ukraine’s intelligence agencies without provoking the Russians. The red lines were never precisely clear, which created a persistent tension in the partnership.

More at link

From January:

https://twitter.com/MariaMatei.../1743658029893984735

I just got back from Ukraine, where I was visiting some friends.

Everything we have heard about what’s happening in Ukraine is a lie.

The reality is darker, bleaker, and unequivocally hopeless. There is no such thing as Ukraine "winning" this war.

- By their estimates, they have lost over one million of their sons, fathers and husbands; an entire generation is gone.
- Even in the Southwest, where the anti-Russian sentiment is long-standing, citizens are reluctant or straight-up scared to publicly criticize Zelensky; they will go to jail.
- In every village and town, the streets, shops, and restaurants are mostly absent of men.
- The few men who remain are terrified of leaving their homes for fear of being kidnapped into conscription. Some have resorted to begging friends to break their legs to avoid service.
- Army search parties take place early in the morning, when men leave their homes to go to work. They ambush and kidnap them off the streets and within 3-4 hours they get listed in the army and taken away straight to the front lines with minimal or no training at all; it is "a death sentence."
- It's getting worse every day. Where I was staying, a dentist had just been taken by security forces on his way to work, leaving behind two small children. Every day, 3-5 dead bodies keep arriving from the front lines.
- Mothers and wives fight tooth and nail with the armed forces, beg and plead not to have their men taken away. They try bribing, which sometimes works, but most of the time they are met with physical violence and death threats.
- The territory celebrated as having been "won back" from Russia has been reduced to rubble and is uninhabitable. Regardless, there is no one left to live there and displaced families will likely never return.
- They see the way the war has been reported, at home and abroad. It's a "joke" and "propaganda." They say: “Look around: is this winning?”.
- Worse, some have been hoaxed into believing that once Ukrainians forces are exhausted, American soldiers will come in to replace them and “win the war”.

There is no ambiguity in these people. The war was for nothing - a travesty. The outcome always was, and is, clear. The people are hopeless, utterly destroyed, and living in an unending nightmare.

They are pleading for an end, any end - most likely the same "peace" that could have been achieved two years ago. In their minds, they have already lost, for their sons, fathers and husbands are gone, and their country has been destroyed. There is no "victory" that can change that.

Make no mistake, they are angry with Putin. But they are also angry with Zelensky and the West. They have lost everything, worst of all, hope and faith, and cannot comprehend why Zelenky wishes to continue the current trajectory, the one of human devastation.

I didn't witness the war; but what I saw was absolutely heart-breaking.

Shame on the people, regardless of their intentions, who have supported this war. And shame on the media for continuing to lie about it.

Had Zelensky just moved aside and let Putin take control of Ukraine then regular Ukrainians wouldn't have had to suffer. The arrogance and greed of one man has doomed an entire generation of people who only wanted to live in peace with Russians. One million Ukrainian military deaths is on the low end. The Russian MOD reported a kill to death ratio in their favor of 10-1 which means that recent reports of 300,000+ Russian casualties equals over 3,000,000 Ukrainian dead. Mike Johnson and our party are doing their best to speed up Ukraine's defeat but I'm genuinely concerned about NATO countries increasing production and prolonging this.

No mention in the ZH article regarding the obscene amount of $’s that the CIA stole from the U.S. taxpayer to fund their meddling and dirty work in Ukraine since 2014 / 2016, and the NYT’s article is pay-walled.

Does anyone have a NYT’s subscription to see if any $’s sums are mentioned there?!

I am guessing “no” due to the righteous outrage that would follow (as-if the scumbags in control of the country would give two shits).

I don't have the hubris to tell a man to give up his freedom because fighting isn't worth it.

Not my war, not my Freedom.

I would fund it for years.

The more we weaken Russia without spilling our blood the more it seems worth it.

Once Russia is reduced to shambles it becomes Xi vs the free world.

Coming next to the world screen East meets West in the China Sea

What are you talking about. Try plain English, please. I can't make heads or tails of what you're trying to say.

quote:

The more we weaken Russia without spilling our blood the more it seems worth it.

Yeah, we're doing a bang-up job of it.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
I don't have the hubris to tell a man to give up his freedom because fighting isn't worth it.
Not my war, not my Freedom.

You should have just stopped there. You are right about [a man] fighting for [his] freedom.
But you are also right that it's "Not my war, not my Freedom."

When you start funding it, it becomes your war and you put the freedom of your countrymen at risk. If you don't think that $130 billion borrowed, newly created, inflation causing dollars doesn't put your countrymen at risk you probably think all of that money just grows on trees.

We are not leaving Russia "reduced to shambles". If anything, we are strengthening them and driving them into the arms of China and we are hastening the end of the dollar as a reserve currency.

Russia was reduced from a global threat to a mere rival and nuisance when the Soviet Union dissolved.

quote:

We are not leaving Russia "reduced to shambles"

Germany was "reduced to shambles" following World War I, and look what it became.

Everyone should really be looking at what we're becoming through all of this!

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
Everyone should really be looking at what we're becoming through all of this!

What might that be?

A country with a severely depleted stock of military armament, a country with a weakened and inflationary economy due to the borrowing (printing!) of BILLIONS of dollars to fund (and prolong!) this endeavor, thus jeopardizing the position of the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency while strengthening the BRIX nations, and a country whose actions through promulgating this proxy war has pushed our adversaries together creating economic (and potentially military) alliances that are detrimental to the US.

quote:

The reality is darker, bleaker, and unequivocally hopeless. There is no such thing as Ukraine "winning" this war.

- By their estimates, they have lost over one million of their sons, fathers and husbands; an entire generation is gone.
- Even in the Southwest, where the anti-Russian sentiment is long-standing, citizens are reluctant or straight-up scared to publicly criticize Zelensky; they will go to jail.
- In every village and town, the streets, shops, and restaurants are mostly absent of men.
- The few men who remain are terrified of leaving their homes for fear of being kidnapped into conscription. Some have resorted to begging friends to break their legs to avoid service.
- Army search parties take place early in the morning, when men leave their homes to go to work. They ambush and kidnap them off the streets and within 3-4 hours they get listed in the army and taken away straight to the front lines with minimal or no training at all; it is "a death sentence."
- It's getting worse every day. Where I was staying, a dentist had just been taken by security forces on his way to work, leaving behind two small children. Every day, 3-5 dead bodies keep arriving from the front lines.
- Mothers and wives fight tooth and nail with the armed forces, beg and plead not to have their men taken away. They try bribing, which sometimes works, but most of the time they are met with physical violence and death threats.
- The territory celebrated as having been "won back" from Russia has been reduced to rubble and is uninhabitable. Regardless, there is no one left to live there and displaced families will likely never return.
- They see the way the war has been reported, at home and abroad. It's a "joke" and "propaganda." They say: “Look around: is this winning?”.
- Worse, some have been hoaxed into believing that once Ukrainians forces are exhausted, American soldiers will come in to replace them and “win the war”.

This is totally false Russian propaganda. Yesterday I spoke with a Ukrainian whose brother is in Kharkiv and a Russian from Rostov-on -Don. Many do not understand the differences between Western Ukraine & Eastern Ukraine. As I have stated before I can not write much more info to insure my Russian family are not harmed. I would be happy to discuss more details with anyone by phone.

Oh, yes, Russian propaganda. Sure

quote:

Oh, yes, Russian propaganda. Sure

Call me! Send an email & I will return with my phone number.

Anush, I got an unsolicited email from you after I posted in this thread months ago.

Yes, you have extended family there. And yes we need to support this nonsense, etc. Stop it. It wreaks of desperation. And no, the American public has had more than enough of this. It is over.