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SL Xpress

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Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. TOW missile at work. It's a beautiful sight.
  2. Yes. The short answer (which I'm not that good at) is that Wagner was departing Bakhmut, and they were demining Russian mines so they could do so. The Lt. Colonel in question told his men to open fire on them. Wagner then took him prisoner, apparently tortured and interrogated him, and got him to confess on camera he was drunk and angry towards them. Then they released him. A few days later he releases another video explaining his actions, basically calling the Wagner soldiers assholes, saying they blatantly stole Russian military equipment and supplies. I'm sure there's more to the story, since they had operated in the same theater for quite a while, but we have multiple points of confirmation that it really did happen, including from the people involved on both sides. No one is exactly denying it. Hope that helps.
  3. Hahaha! I know. Those Russians with their zany domestic squabbles.
  4. "We have a very important thing: Our freedom, democracy and law." As well as launching artillery at Russian forces, Olha has been publishing videos on TikTok about life on the front lines. How a young mum became a warrior On February 24 last year, Olha woke to the sound of Russian missiles hitting Ukraine's capital. She went to her 18-year-old brother's room and asked him if he wanted to leave the city. "He said, 'No, I want to defend my country'," she said. The next day, Olha, her brother and mother joined a long queue and enlisted with Ukraine's armed forces. Her mother and brother are now serving as combat medics. As she prepares for the much-anticipated counteroffensive, the junior lieutenant has an extra sense of motivation. She is fighting for a better future for her seven-year-old son. He has spent the past 15 months living with his aunt in another country. "One week before the invasion, I got information that Russia was ready for war," she said. "So I just bought the tickets, and I told my son that it's better to be in a safe place. For him, it's a little bit difficult because he likes his school, his friends, and he is asking me every time, 'Mum, when I can go back home?' "I say to him 'a little bit later, please'. I'm happy that he never heard the sounds of explosions, and never heard the sound of sirens. It's important for his psychological health." To explain why she made the sacrifice of being separated from her son, Olha quoted her younger brother who had just won a law scholarship to study at Kyiv University. "My brother said, 'I don't want to study law because we don't need to study law if Russia comes to our country. There is no law in Russia and people have no rules'," she said. "So we have to defend our country. And then we can think about the future." Olha's family are originally from Kramatorsk in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. She was there when Russian-backed separatists seized government buildings in 2014 at the beginning of the war. For her, this is another motivation to stay and fight. "I was a witness to Russian crimes, military crimes in 2014 when they entered our territories and took control," she said. "People got killed and tortured, and I cannot live with these things. I have to defend my country." Inside the Battle of Bakhmut In the long days and nights on the front lines in Bakhmut, Olha said she got to know her enemy. "In Bakhmut we've seen the real face of Russia. The face of murder. We've seen cruelties and medieval things," she said. Her unit, which serves inside the 241st Brigade, fought against the notorious Wagner mercenary group and other battalions from the Russian armed forces. Wagner famously recruited murderers, rapists and drug dealers from inside the Russian prison system. Their founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has estimated that 20,000 of their troops died in the city. Previously Wagner mercenaries have been accused of filming the execution of two of their recruits with sledgehammers after they allegedly deserted their units. Olha described Wagner units as "the most cruel and mad" she came up against and said they forced their own troops at gunpoint to de-mine her unit's defensive positions. "They were using people for de-mining territories. That's medieval. They were doing it to make a hole in our defence and then to attack our positions," she says. "Behind them were guys with machine guns in case they decided to go back, their commanders would kill them." By contrast, Olha said her unit always looks out for each other. "Morale is very important for every unit. We are friends. Your team is your shelter. If there is bad morale, all of us could die," she said. Of 42 members of her unit, only three were professional soldiers prior to the invasion. Their ranks include lawyers, an economist, a surgeon and businessmen. "But after a year of war and three times in Bakhmut, probably all of us are professionals now," she laughed. "All of them have decided that the freedom is very important for them, and they can die for freedom." While some questioned Ukraine's strategy of trying to hold Bakhmut for as long as it could, Olha is adamant it made tactical sense. "It was the right strategy. Because if you put a finger in the mouths of Russians, they will bite off an arm," she said. "I think that we performed our combat task perfectly … their assault potential is now lower than before." Dispatches from the front While fighting in Bakhmut, Olha became a hit on TikTok, gaining over 130,000 followers thanks to her daily dispatches from the front lines. "That was not my idea," she said laughing. "I have a friend, and he said, 'You know, people in Ukraine don't have the right information about Bakhmut. They think that everything is very bad. So can you make a small video?' "Then I tried to make a video every day in Bakhmut and people started to be more confident in our success." With her growing online following, the woman known as Witch has become one of the faces of Ukraine's resistance against Russian invaders. Soon, she expects to be involved in Ukraine's counteroffensive, which could begin at any moment. Like all units that have been rotated from out of the front lines, Olha's platoon has been busy familiarising themselves with new equipment and tactics. "We have been studying and training so much for the counteroffensive," she said. "We've trained every day and have had very difficult, very exhausting trainings." Olha said her unit is confident they and the rest of Ukraine's armed forces can do the job when the time comes. "We have the support of our allies. We have good weapons. We have high motivation. We have really good people who knows how to fight, with good battle experience," she said. "So I'm sure that the counteroffensive will be successful." She’s a future president of Ukraine. No doubt about it. And she doesn’t know how much she wants @Brisketexan yet. She’ll learn, though. They all do.
  5. Ukraine-Germany soccer match breaks out into chants of solidarity:
  6. When she says "we'll do nothing," what does that actually mean? What exactly is Germany/NATO supposed to do to stop Russia from mining a titanium dioxide manufacturing plant? Doing nothing was 2014. What we're seeing now is most definitely doing something. It could be more, but it sure could be a whole lot less, too.
  7. There is zero chance this is going to go well for the Russians. Looks like a case of use 'em or lose 'em based on this map. But who knows. There's so much horseshit on the Russian side it's hard to wade through it all. But I have no confidence in Russian leadership to have any kind of tactical awareness beyond meat into the meat grinder. It's not like they're sending in specially trained assault troops. It's just whoever is handy. It's some kind of delaying action - if it's even real. As an aside, I am very impressed with Ukraine's ability to maintain the offensive along so many vectors. I hope they're able to keep some momentum going.
  8. Yeah, those were Russians. In the video you can see they're equipped with bolt action rifles from the camera shots inside the trench. They don't really stand a chance against AKs. Doesn't make it less dangerous for the guys on the assault squad, though. As you can see from the video, they can still get hit. And these positions have to be neutralized one by one. No shortcuts.
  9. Here's a really good video of an assault in the direction of Bakhmut. I only know this because it's the 3rd Separate Assault brigade and that's where they're operating. These are generally very experienced fighters working with older kit.
  10. Eugene Rumer is a very smart man. Much smarter than me. Having said that, I hate that article.
  11. Lot of dust in the air watching that video.
  12. I'll be honest. I think it would be fun to have a Director's Cup three peat. But it pales in comparison to a baseball national championship. Especially with this team, that didn't seem to have the pieces for it (honestly, still doesn't seem to have the pieces, but someone forgot to tell them that). When the baseball team could come in fifth at the CWS that would be one thing, but when Stanford came in 3rd in men's T&F, that changed the math in the wrong direction. I'm not bothered by a 2nd place finish. Let's come back and take it next year, if that ends up being the case. It's a sterling showing by the athletic department as a whole. Again. And with beach volleyball coming online, that has the potential to at least let one of the sports have an off year and still maximize points somewhat. I don't think it will happen next year because the pieces won't be in place, but I bet Texas is competing for national championships in beach volleyball very soon. Stanford's big advantage, even with the new scoring system, is that with 31 programs overall, they get to use points from the best program results among the 11 sports teams they field above 20. Texas only gets to use the 20 programs they actually field, because there aren't any extras.
  13. Well, I can tell you what they've done in other places, and it's without a doubt put the meat up front to soak things up. The problem is, they run out of meat, and then it all becomes meat. Because they don't really have the ability to think any other way. That all went out the window when they shot their load in the opening parts of the war. Russia had a very professional core part of their army, but it no longer exists. Not really. Just parts of it, and then they added so many mobilized to their ranks willy nilly it doesn't have anywhere near the same cohesion. All I know is that Ukraine is having success with their offensive so far. Way more than Russia ever did over the last 9 months, when Ukraine's lines were static, and Russia just kept throwing bodies at it. To me this bodes well. How well, I have no idea, but I like what I'm seeing so far. I think my favorite part is where Russians talk about the strategy of letting Ukraine's offensive push peter out, then they counter attack and push them back again. That ain't happening. I can't even really imagine what Russia is going to do if Ukraine manages a big breach in their final defense lines. I don't know if that's going to occur or not, but I'm hopeful.
  14. Fuck Russia right up the ass. "We are continuing our rescue operation in the south of Ukraine, and we have managed to evacuate about 4,000 people. Dozens of towns and villages remain flooded, with the worst situation still in the temporarily occupied part of Kherson region. Russian terrorists continue to shell evacuation routes, evacuation points, boats that take people away... Today, as a result of one of these attacks, three people were killed. Ten more people were injured, including two police officers. It was an evacuation from Kardashynka, an occupied village on the left bank of Kherson region... The occupiers created this disaster by blowing up the dam, leaving people to their fate in flooded towns and villages, and then shelling the boats that are trying to take people away... Even beasts are more moral than you, Russian state."
  15. If you can no longer see your penis, is it still there? I wonder if he has assistants that wipe his ass with towels, the way Mangino used to.
  16. No? I mean, it took a full fledged invasion to change their tune even slightly. To me, what has happened surrounding the dam sabotage - not just the destruction itself, both short and long term, but making sure it was as much of a humanitarian disaster as possible - confiscating and destroying flotation devices, opening fire on anyone trying to evacuate after the dam break was discovered, shelling evacuation centers, refusing to allow UN personnel to assist people suffering from the devastation - should put a nail in the coffin for what Ukraine is dealing with, and the extent to which Russia/Putin will go. They're making preparations for a mass mobilization of basically any man who can fog a mirror and isn't in a high enough place of power to be able to say no. They're leaning on their historical precedence for simply throwing meat into the meat grinder until the enemy gives in, but they simply don't have as much meat compared to everyone else as they used to, while refusing to acknowledge it. You didn't include Macron, but he's just as bad in many ways. And these are the ones on Ukraine's side. God forbid the opposition took over. I won't go down the list of EU/NATO countries and the problems with each one, but the short answer is that they're full of either small populations with tiny economies, countries heading headlong towards democracies in name only, or countries with oppositions who don't want to have anything to do with Ukraine. That's a broad generalization, but there's more than a kernel of truth in there. I'm all in on Ukraine's side, and have been for almost a decade now. Mostly I see shit like this and just remind myself to be grateful for the support given. Germany has been instrumental in giving Ukraine the means to conduct the current offensive. Their air defense systems have almost certainly saved thousands of civilian lives. Maybe tens of thousands. They're very far from perfect, and it seemed to take forever for them to move their sluggish ass, but if Scholz wants to pretend his stupid fucking phone call is going to make a difference to Putin in terms of providing an offramp for this horseshit, in my mind it's the price we have to pay for Germany making a difference. Which they have. But no. There's a lack of understanding that Ukraine presents an existential threat to Russia. Not just in terms of being on its border while being more western oriented. But the possibility it may actually start having a much higher standard of living while doing so. That's the thing. It's bad enough as it is where Russians are just coming in and stealing shit wholesale because the Ukrainians are living better lives than they are at home. And Ukraine has a dogshit economy. Think if they became the kind of powerhouse I think they're capable of. It would look like the North/South Korea border and the West/East Germany border all over again. What Russian government is going to survive that?
  17. It's been their stated objective. They did have a brief moment where they proposed cutting down on the number of sports they fielded a few years ago. The alumni went apeshit and raised a bunch of money to keep any programs from being shut down.
  18. Personally I’d love to see another 9th inning collapse by Stanford. That was a fun way to win last night. My favorite was the fly ball caroming off the right fielder’s glove. I had that on repeat for a while.
  19. Stanford fields 31 sports. Ohio State leads the country with 35. I wouldn’t say it’s a private/public university issue. Stanford sees part of their mission as preparing Olympians. Texas has made an emphasis on excellence and superior funding in every sport we field. It’s just a difference in philosophy. I do think west coast schools naturally field more programs because of all the niche sports popular there. But who gives a shit? I like the way we do it. If I had my way they never would have changed the rules for the Directors Cup, though. This makes it fairer, but it makes no sense to me to create a metric that does anything other than encourage universities to field more sports teams. But it’s to our benefit, so I’ll take it. Also, fewer people paid attention when it was basically the Stanford Cup.
  20. They have it. So why not win it? It’s a sign of overall athletic department excellence. I think it’s kind of cool. At the same time we wouldn’t be in it if they didn’t change the rules to limit it to points scored based on the top 20 sports finishes. Stanford was the only winner with their 31 sports for a couple of decades. But I think it’s fun we’ve won both of them after the rule change and have a remote shot at a third one with the last sport deciding its champion. But if they’re in the championship game in Omaha and it’s coming down to the wire, I’m going to care about winning the baseball national championship. Not the implications for the Directors Cup. That shit is just extra. But I also don’t care if anyone else follows it or not. It’s not an end all be all.
  21. He has a 39 game streak of reaching base. That’s not the same thing, but it’s not nothing.
  22. There had to be a better way of making his point. The US isn't going to get that experience, either, because we wouldn't do such a thing. It's not a bug. It's a feature. And I don't know about the whole "no other Western-style military" thing. Is Israel not a western style military? How is he so sure no other western style military is capable of it? I'm all for being rah rah Ukraine, but there are plenty of ways to do that without hyperbole. Not impressed. This is about desperation on one level. Ukraine needs to do something to prove this isn't a static war of attrition, and they can't wait for Western allies to provide enough air power to neutralize the Russian advantage in the theater of operation. They've admitted as much. So they're going in anyway. God speed.
  23. This is not a guy you want to overcharge $5 at the Burger King drive thru.
  24. That was a storm shadow strike (doesn't change your point)., There aren't that many locals in the area. That's on the spit at the mouth of the Dnipro. It was a tourist area previously. I don't think Bucha had anything to do with partisans. The people responsible for those horrors were ordered to clear the area of human beings. Not as a reprisal, but as a strategy to sow terror and to make sure there wouldn't be any distractions. I'm not sure what you're referring to with Kharkiv. Russia has never occupied it. To me Russians are going to be vicious regardless. They abduct children. They blow up prisoners of war. They execute civilians with gunshots to the back of their heads. They blow up dams, but first make sure they've taken or destroyed every flotation device for the people who will be most impacted before they do so. Then they shoot at people who try to evacuate, and shell evacuation centers. They target hospitals and medical personnel, even setting up traps where they can target anyone taking away the wounded. They destroy any cultural references to the Ukrainian people. They burn books written in the Ukrainian language. They erase any reference to Ukraine, its culture, and its people in the history taught in the occupied areas. They keep food from being exported. They annex territory in sham referendums, even when it's likely they might have passed with a majority vote in a legitimate one. They threaten the use of nuclear weapons indiscriminately. They purposefully risk nuclear meltdown at the nuclear power plant under their control, up to and including using it as a hostage for staging military equipment. They imprison their own citizens to long terms simply for not agreeing with the war. They arrest American citizens and then give them no access to the outside world. I can't remember the exact quote, but someone above in the thread stated what they can't control, fuck, or steal, they simply destroy. I don't think destroying a building housing military personnel changes the equation much at all.
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