dimyh

How large do they gotta be? Ohhhh I thought you meant goats!

I really really hope this story is true. Nothing more aggy than being foiled by a single goat. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/06/20/7353684/ Goat accidentally neutralises several invaders in Zaporizhzhia Oblast MONDAY, 20 JUNE 2022, 21:30 5226 0Додати у вибране Mykhailo Zagorodniy – Monday, 20 June 2022 A nanny goat has injured several Russian servicemen by triggering their tripwires with pinned grenades in the village of Kinski Rozdory in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Ukraine’s Chief Intelligence Directorate has shared a curious incident that happened at a local hospital. A total of 40 invaders have been stationed at the medical institution in Kinski Rozdory. The Russian military installed a "circular defence" and placed tripwires around the perimeter of the hospital. The aggressors regretted this decision after a goat from a neighbouring farm decided to pay a visit to the hospital. As the frightened animal moved chaotically around the area, she accidentally "disposed of" several grenades. The unexpected "guest’s" actions triggered a chain reaction, wounding several Russian soldiers to varying degrees. It is not currently known whether the goat survived the incident.

A short video on Kalingrad/Crimea as exclaves containing key ports along with some of the back history. Also I believe some of Russia's support in Syria was to have a friendly port accessible outside of the Bosphorus. Would be a damn shame if they lost the ability to store those rustbuckets...

Just in time for my Sunday walk - new Perun video doing a deep dive on the economies. Lots of tidbits in here but in summary both sides can keep this war running financially for quite a while. What's interesting is that the new Ladamobiles are coming out but with no automated seatbelts, airbags, other electronic features, etc. So we can look forward to more entertaining dashcam footage!

Well I give them this much, the Ruskies believe in truth in advertising: we are going to kill your men and steal your children. They probably have a mural around back showing what they do with the women.

I think Putin lost his strategic goals the moment he sent troops across the border. Even if they had mopped up in a couple of weeks his strategic goal to rebuild the USSR 2.0 was going to be a long time failure. The results would have been a regalvanized NATO, a pissed Ukrainian populace that would have to be policed for years, plus all the other sunk costs for the war. All to have the same inevitable economic collapse vs the west. What we are fighting for now is just trying to accelerate the decline of an aging empire and making a point that naked power grabs are not to be tolerated. The Russian casualties are definitely encouraging. This is going to boil down to the Battle of the Benches. Whoever can organize and train up the JV team is going to make the difference. My concern the past few weeks is just not hearing enough about the UA reinforcements. And that their most experienced front lines may have getting ground down hard too. If we can start to see consistent gains in Kherson then I could be more confident, it's just tough to be patient when people's lives are on the line.

I'm basing my assumption that once Russia's offensive fizzles out that they are going to sue for peace with territorial claims for whatever clay that their orcs are currently looting. I think they are very desperate to come out of this with Luhansk, Donetsk, and bonus prize of Kherson oblasts. If Ukraine can't mount a successive counter offensive and this war becomes a stalemate through winter I could see Germany, France, and Italy start clamoring for a peace settlement which could include loosening of the sanctions.

I'm not the financial whiz but here are some articles about the state of the Russian economy. While holding steady in the short term, the long term prospects look bleak. Unfortunately its not going to be an immediate deterioration and I'm still worried that EU/US doesn't have the appetite to keep up sanctions for a conclusive victory. CEO of Sberbank (Russia) already describing a decade long recovery to reach pre-sanctions levels. https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/GLOBAL-PORTS-HOLDING-PLC-34897151/news/Russian-economy-may-need-a-decade-to-return-to-pre-sanctions-levels-Sberbank-says-40752045/ (Reuters) - Russia's economy may need a decade to return to the pre-sanctions levels of 2021, the chief executive of the country's top bank Sberbank said on Friday, as economic curbs have cut the country off from half of its trade. Western nations imposed economic sanctions on Russia, the most severe a nation in a modern history has faced, after Moscow sent troops to Ukraine on Feb. 24 calling it "special military operation". Russian assets took an immediate hit and consumer prices have soared, prompting authorities to introduce capital controls, hike the key rate and curb foreign investors' ability to sell their assets in Russia. German Gref, whose bank is seen as a proxy for the Russian economy by holding the majority of the household deposits and corporate loans, estimated on Friday that countries that hit Russia with sanctions accounted for 56% of its exports and 51% of imports. "This is a threat to 15% of the country's gross domestic product, the bulk of the economy is under the fire," Gref, a former economy minister, told Russia's annual international economic forum in St Petersburg. "As a result - and if we do nothing - we may need around a decade to return economy to the 2021 levels," Gref said, calling for structural reforming of the Russian economy. Sanctions on Russian banks have largely curbed financial transactions with foreign counterparts while Russia is also blocked from receiving equipment and parts essential for its car, energy and air industries. According to Gref, cargo shipments have fallen by six times while transportation by the sea and by air was also obstructed as sanctions prevented Russian airlines from flying westbound and ships under Russian flag were banned entrance to EU ports. While admitting major setbacks, Russian officials have said that the economy is doing better than initially expected, with some flows already diversifying and higher energy prices - partially resulting from sanctions - helping the state revenues. As European Union prepares to ditch Russian fossil fuels by 2027, Russia has re-routed over a half of its oil supplies to Asia, Alexander Dyukov, head of the country's third biggest oil producer Gazprom Neft, told the same forum. Dmitry Pankov, chief executive with Delo Group which operates Russia's top railway cargo company Transcontainer and Global Ports firm with sea terminals in the country's north-west, far east and south, said that while the drop in cargo shipments continues, Asian clients started to emerge. "They are not global (cargo sea) lines - mostly local operators," he told the same forum on Friday. (Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Alison Williams) © Reuters 2022

I mean they did slaughter a bunch of traffic lights but should we really count them in the Russian totals?

DAMN THOSE RUDE AMERICANS!

More on the Ukes counter offensive towards Kherson. The one consistent tactical advantage has been the flexibility and mobility of the Ukrainian infantry. Since they have an inverse composition problem than the Russians, with more foot soldiers and not enough heavy firepower, maybe they can leverage broad counter attacks to negate losses vs the main Russian attack force. Russia has adapted from their initial mistake of trying to attack everywhere all at once. By amassing artillery they can achieve local domination to slowly grind out territory. The big question is if Ukrainian defensive lines around Severodonetsk/Lyshansk area can hold long enough for the counter offensives to score wins in the south. Especially unsure if the Ukrainian forces have enough to quickly regain Kherson. They might get bogged down in urban fighting. Overall it is still a major attritional war but if they keep a fluid counter attack strategy going they might be able to out maneuver the Russians who can only push when they have artillery dominance.

Unfortunately France and HRE are different culture groups so even after annexing Crimea and starting another no CB war its not going to generate enough AE to trigger a coalition.

Quality video from Perun that covers a lot of the manpower issues on the Russian side that atom has been talking about since the start of the war. I'm not quite as optimistic in the overall outcome as you are due to concerns about western longterm support (money and heavy hardware) and stomach for a prolonged conflict if this turns into an attritional stalemate. But definitely agree that the Russian manpower/machinery ratios are out of whack and a severe limitation on an extended offensive push.

Tl;dr - I wish there was a game where I could stab Putin in the face. And express the duality of man.

As bullshit it may be, I can understand some of the sentiment. Personally I feel entirely weak and ineffectual watching this shit rage on in Ukraine. Aside from donating a little cash, I feel like I'm pacing the sidelines, unable to do anything but keep up with news reports. So I daydream about making my own story, fighting the good fight, or better yet, a game that allows me to live in that fantasy. In that regards I do have a game pitch to sell to a developer like Naughty Dog. A game like the Last of Us: a linear storyline with survival gameplay mechanics. It would be inspired by Man on Fire, Apocalypse Now, and Going After Cacciato. Basically a revenge story but mixed with alt-history fantasy of trying to survive in a major warzone as an average citizen. Prologue: You start out as a normal Ukrainian dad, with wife and a couple of kids, living in Odesa. You have a normal office type job, possibly a software engineer, someone moderately well off but not an exceptional individual. A typical Ukrainian everyman. There are rumors of the Russian invasion but you are blowing it off as just a political scare and not a real threat. Which is shattered on Feb 24th and you quickly have to scramble on a plan to evacuate your family and figure out what you are going to be doing. A tearful goodbye to your family as you ship them off on a bus ride to Lviv and eventually over the border to Poland (with an Easter egg of @Brisketexan's kid handing out breakfast burritos and chatting up the ladies in the background). The local militia doesn't have any concrete plans for you so you take the opportunity to go check on the rest of your family: your parents and your brother living in Kherson. Act 1: As you journey east, you keep checking on news updates as you struggle to figure out what is going on and what best to do. Tidbits of news are dropped at different checkpoints. Finally making it into Kherson you find your parent but your brother has already moved east to report to duty in Mariupol. After a long discussion you can't convince them to evacuate, they think they are safe as long as they don't do anything wrong. You decide to push on to Mariupol to find your brother. Now you are starting to see more of war first hand, Russian troops are setting up checkpoints, you are seeing protestors stymy the invaders, some light shelling of cars and residents, and you are having to be more careful moving east. Eventually you make your way to Mariupol only to find it surrounded and under siege. You manage to find your way in, making connections with resistance groups and running various missions to help civilians in need while you still are trying to figure out what happened to your brother. You get to witness first hand some of brutality as you are still not enlisted to fight but simply someone trying to help people where needed. You are running around, bedding down in various places each night, meeting new people and hearing their stories when you get captured by a couple of Russians. They are marching you back when you get rescued by a couple of Azov guys and your...brother. Act 2: Reunited with your sibling you find he's been learning from a few of the Azov guys and fighting throughout the city but everything is clamping down. Morale is down and while many are still steadfast they understand if people can get out then they won't hold it against them. So y'all hear about some of the humanitarian corridors and plan to sneak out that way but witness first hand the Russians reneging on the deal. It becomes one clusterfuck after another, sneaking through lines, but finally escaping from the city only to find y'all bouncing from town to town, trying to stay clear of the heavy action. You get picked up by a couple of Ukrainian soldiers making a resupply run to Sievierodonetsk where you connect with the other defensive forces in the area. Again caught in the action, you are running small missions supporting the regular ops teams, and learning to handle rifles and seeing NLAWS in action. Everything seems to be holding fine when a Russian artillery barrage catches everyone by surprise. Y'all are both knocked unconscious and wake up to find yourself firmly behind Russian lines as POWs. Also with you is a Russian deserter who is being held for refusing to fight. Between torture sessions that you and your brother are going through, you find out more of the perspective of the Russian soldier - originally a conscript deceived into signing a contact and never quite understood the full magnitude of the "special operation". Things are looking bleak when a counterattack levels part of the base and all 3 of y'all manage to escape. Deep in enemy territory y'all continue to evade forces until a Ukrainian drone strike ends up killing your brother. Now its just you and the deserter in a full panic fire drill. Act 3: Y'all manage to escape to a calm zone. You are crushed, seeing your brother fragged right in front of your eyes. You are sick of all the bullshit witnessed first hand and you see the only way to make it stop is to cut the head off the snake --- kill Putin. The Russian is sick of the war too and he just wants to go home. So y'all concoct a new plan: help each other get through Russia until y'all reach his hometown of Kursk. Once there you will be on your own to infiltrate Moscow and perform the impossible. Y'all do make it to Kursk and you get to meet his parents with you disguised as a fellow soldier that was "released" from duty. However his parents are full propaganda swallowers and don't believe their own son's description of the war. Sick of his refusal to fight they kick y'all out. Now he is crushed too and decides to join you on the crazy assassination mission. Working into Moscow you do find out that there is a growing resistance movement upset about all of the crackdowns ("Once you have taken away our voices all we have left are our fists"). Y'all manage to hook up with this group and take on some sabotage missions and getting some precious intel on Putin's estate. With the resistance growing into a full bloom near civil war, you and the Russian deserter manage to make it into the compound. Putin's security forces are lighter than normal due to either busy dealing with protesters/resistance attacks or simply being paid off/jumping ship due to Putin's treatment, you have a slim chance of success. Artfully working your way through the compound, hiding under dramatically long tables, you manage to take out the guards and corner Putin where you proceed to: Bash. His. Disgusting. Goblin. Face. In. Epilogue: Once the climatic thrill of the kill subsides, you and your new Russian buddy realize it is not going fix everything but it is a big step to ending this nonsensical war. You invite him back to your home, to start up a new life in Ukraine, and rebuild from this misery. Y'all leave Moscow with Z symbols crashing down or being burned away to make it back to Kyiv where you wife and kids are returned. After a nice tearful reunion, the whole gang loads up in a car for a road trip back to Odesa, with new uncle Yuri laughing it up with your kids. So yeah a full-fledged happy ending but hopefully a sobering journey through the helplessness of war. Gameplay is not going to be a Call of Duty run-n-gun type of action game but more focused on stealth and survival against the backdrop of a near total war. There should be enough time to meet the other common citizens caught in the crossfires and to hear their personal stories. The first half of the game could be very factual, including real events from the conflict so that those stories are not forgotten. Plus interspersed nuggets such as the Bucha massacres to highlight that this is the first major war to fully include social media. Towards the midpoint it will veer into alt-history territory, where we can imagine your little journey becoming this epic assassination mission. At a meta level the story would have an underlying theme of how media/propaganda can be manipulated. Gamers should check out the events in the game and try to figure out which events were based on real moments and which ones were just pure fiction. Because one thing is very clear about this entire war: manipulating the propaganda to entice the population is dangerous enough, but for Putin to buy-in so deeply as well is catastrophic. Not all Russians buy-in to this nonsense but enough do to make this war possible. Getting people to (rationally) think for themselves is an important first defense against willful misinformation.

Quality New Yorker article covering the amassed push in the Donbas. https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-fight-to-survive-russias-onslaught-in-eastern-ukraine RU using local numerical superiority in men but mainly artillery to grind out incremental gains. Without the heavy equipment UA is in a bind to defend longterm plus we are in a race to see which side can mobilize their bench into the game. Not sure how much longer before we can see some of those UA reserves deployed to the front. Problem is they are losing much of their experienced troops and that will be hard to replace. Russia is doing the one thing that they excel at which is mass artillery to combat bomb areas. We'll see how long they can ride that one trick pony. Some experts were previously predicting that mid June would be the point that the Russian advance would start to stall. So hope that comes to fruition before Putin clamps down on current territorial gains and starts negotiating for a cease fire plus annexation terms.

Ukrainian version of a lowrider. Gotdamn they ridin low!

Or possibly

In honor of Ray, this is my new fantasy if I run into one of these Z fucksticks in person. Especially some of these annoying TV pundits.

Still concerned about the Russian push thru Popansa area. Here is a video of UA withdrawing from Lyman area but unlike the Ruskies they will stop and pick up their own guys.

So I have been watching this channel for the past couple of weeks. American guy giving a pretty standard daily recap, frankly most of his stuff s already covered by this thread, but what he does well is updating a map with all of the changes on the various fronts. Now he is adding a new 3D topographical map which is very cool to see. Just needs a couple of smoldering tanks to make it feel 100% authentic. https://youtu.be/Vrg1KAk4PUM

Not sure if already posted but too fun to pass up. One of the better Hitler-Putin mashups.

This is actually a good sign, good in the sense that Putin still feels threatened by any objectivity. If Putin was orchestrating a shift in his PR machine to explain that the special operation is tougher than expected then that would give him a couple of avenues forward. If he only holds onto minimal objectives (annex donbas, inflict economic pain) then tampering down expectations will make that minor "win" more palatable to the populace. Or if he insists on holding out for bigger gains, then that is only possible through a full mobilization which again is only possible if their general populace feels threatened by Ukraine. Instead they are still playing up super high expectations. All for a war with vague strategic goals. Plus having one of his PR staff go off-script in the first place means there is a lack of oversight with the message. As this war stretches on without major successes then there is going to be more and more opportunities for that war message to drift off point. Or eventually tuned out or recognized as the bullshit that it is.