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Viper

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Viper

  1. More from Ahmed, he's really pushing this airdrop idea with so many of his extended family there going hungry
  2. Russia making a move on Transnistria? Does Putin think this will lend more domestic support for his election and mass conscription? Or is he feeling good about where things are heading with western political support? ⚡️The so-called "Transnistrian congress" will ask Moscow to annex Transnistria to Russia — Transnistrian opposition. According to a Transnistrian opponent Ghenadie Ciorba, quoted by INFOTAG, the so-called MPs of all levels of Transnistria are going to adopt a request to Moscow regarding the accession of the separatist region to the Russian Federation. Ciorba drew attention to the fact that the meeting will take place one day before the address of Putin to the Federal Assembly. The Transnistrian opposition does not rule out that this directive to organize the congress comes from Moscow itself. Ciorba assumes that the next day, on February 29, Putin will announce this request to the Assembly Federal, which will decide to proceed with the request. The opponent believes that the assembly in Tiraspol and the protest organized there recently against the so-called economic pressures of the Republic of Moldova are aimed at showing that the residents of Transnistria are against Chisinau. "This is where the recent statement of the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, comes from, that Moscow will not let its citizens in Transnistria suffer," Ciorba said. He called on the so-called MPs of the region to prevent the adoption of this decision, which would give Putin "a legitimate excuse to strike the territory of the Republic of Moldova, including Transnistria, under any pretext." Link to the article: https://deschide.md/ro/stiri/23/145323/Opozant-transnistrean-Congresul-a#google_vignette
  3. I like the song, but it's not really a country song. Of course I doubt I'd call every song on that chart country either.
  4. Wouldn't the same happen in Guyana?
  5. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1760059774392209803.html
  6. I'm team android, but the Market Share in the US is probably the better metric to use
  7. Sounds like a firsthand account of Avdiivka Casualty wise (WIA&KIA) Bahkmut was likely higher. Deaths only wise, Avdiivka was likely 2x worse for the Russians than Bahkmut. The easiest way to explain why is Terrain, and the built up fortifications. Even in the areas at the flanks. The opening day of RUs offensive in our sector over a dozen BMPs were destroyed before they even got within 800m of Ukrainian lines. The infantry on and in that initial assault were caught out in the open and mowed down rather quickly. One defensive operation that we were on, 16 of Chosen and 8 Ukrainians(javelin teams+snipers) destroyed 4 BMPs, damaged one that made it under a bridge with 6 others that escaped unharmed after dropping troops 300m+ away from the line in the field, 2 BTRs destroyed, 2 tanks one of which was destroyed by one of the craziest tank maneuvers by a UA tank team i ever saw and 70+ infantry killed or wounded. The Russians successfully pushed us out of the trench to another friendly trench (there was only 10 defenders in that 1 trench with reserve force and supporting fires/overwatch being provided from nearby trench 200m away) and took control of the trench. Which was then blown with demolitions, fpv and artillery once the surviving russians (around 12) grouped up into it. Our losses that day were 4 UA KIA, 2 Chosen KIA (Gander & Stremski) and everyone minor or moderately wounded with frag. The human cost of Russia's Avdiivka sector endeavor likely cost them 100k WIA&KIA easily. Day after day for 2 or 3 weeks they continously attempted to run armor at fortified lines. In our sector, after they ran out of BMPs&BTRs they used troop transport trucks(Kamaz type) to try and get infantry as close as possible. These vehicles more often then not were hit by fpv or drones waited for dismount and hit infantry with droppers. We made it a point to try and hit every enemy soldier still alive. If they crawled into a bunker, thermobaric. If they were crawling in an open field, grenade drop. Mid to end Nov though, something changed. No longer were the Russians attempting 50+ men assaults. They'd move in groups of 8-12 men. If 2 or 3 made it, they'd hide amongst the rubble. The next group would move 5-15 minutes behind the first and they'd do the same. Once the survivors regrouped and had 20 or so men spread in 2 or more positions, they'd then push forward while a new rear element pushed up from behind and they'd mass creeping fires and drones while doing so. Only stopping once the RU infantry were within 25-50m of our positions. They adapted their tactics to run as a mass of smaller human waves with less armor and more foot infantry to knock out a few meters of the killing fields or Grey area at a time. They didn't try to dig in. They just hid wherever they could. One position we consistently fought over ended up with dead soldiers stacked around it (obj kyiv). There was well over 100 Russians strewn about infront and inside of it. Our fallen(KIA) Ukrainians around 10 or so that were taken in the 3 weeks of holding it, we had organized to the rear area of the fighting line, in hopes of getting their remains out, some we were able to, others we werent. We did take dozens upon dozens of wounded trying to hold obj k and took a lot of wounded and killed trying to retrieve remains of fallen and wounded soldiers from positions(I'd say 20-35% of all our wounded in the sector was trying to get remains or wounded out). You'd spend more time trying to organize where to throw the dead or move the dead out of firing lines than attempting to rebuild the positions daily.
  8. was that the guy who when asked if he thinks he can win he said something like "no way, do you think I'm crazy?"
  9. Good comments from Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. I can understand how depressing it is to hope other governments will care about you (his family) more than your own government does. I cut out the political parts, but there is some hope with the Israelis looking to build a displacement/refugee centers and safe zone in the Hamas free parts of the north for the people in the south. (Although maybe it's just to ethnically cleanse them later, you know how bad the Israelis are at that)
  10. US Coast Guard intercepted Iranian weapons heading for the Houthis CENTCOM Intercepts Iranian Weapons Shipment Intended for Houthis TAMPA, Fla. – A U.S. Coast Guard cutter, forward deployed to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility, seized advanced conventional weapons and other lethal aid originating in Iran and bound to Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen from a vessel in the Arabian Sea on Jan. 28. The U.S. Coast Guard Sentinel-class fast-response cutter USCGC Clarence Sutphin Jr (WPC 1147), assigned to U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, located the vessel and boarded it in the Arabian Sea. The boarding team discovered over 200 packages that contained medium-range ballistic missile components, explosives, unmanned underwater/surface vehicle (UUV/USV) components, military-grade communication and network equipment, anti-tank guided missile launcher assemblies, and other military components. The direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer of such aid violates U.N. Security Council Resolution 2216 (as extended and renewed by resolutions 2675 and 2707). “This is yet another example of Iran’s malign activity in the region, ” said Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, CENTCOM commander. “Their continued supply of advanced conventional weapons to the Houthis is in direct violation of international law and continues to undermine the safety of international shipping and the free flow of commerce.” CENTCOM is committed to working with our allies and partners to counter the flow of Iranian lethal aid in the region by all lawful means including U.S. and U.N. sanctions and through interdictions.
  11. So this doesn't seem good. Wonder if it's the gps jamming in Königsberg that's been going on for the last few months or something more to do with online hacking and/disinformation campaigns or maybe new nuclear testing going on?
  12. Good interview of the Russian ambassador. Anyone find the whole thing?
  13. Not to Europe as a whole, but for the small Baltic states, Russia can do a lot of damage to them in the short term with sheer numbers and artillery and drones, but that's only if they can get a ceasefire with Ukraine and rebuild their supplies.
  14. I guess @Brisketexan and Putin do have something in common afterall https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/13/russia-puts-estonian-prime-minister-kaja-kallas-on-wanted-list
  15. TVA is in it, but there's been no Mobius nor Loki in any trailers so far. It almost looks like they're setting up the void at the end of time to be like a Secret Wars Battle World
  16. Not sure what the solution is here. They're obviously buying them through third parties in other countries, much like Ukraine does in Germany and other EU countries. They're already geofenced to only work at the frontline (which is why they stopped working for Ukraine when they advanced too quickly). There's probably too many and distribution too decentralized to be able to whitelist them. Reports are that the Russians are using up all the bandwidth to prevent the Ukrainians from using them for drone video feeds
  17. Tom Holland also touched on it. Wonder if he'll put out a long video on it
  18. A serious analysis of Putin's interview from a GWU ph.D professor. He has a good theory that Putin is an increasingly history obsessed boomer who doesn't understand why the rest of the world doesn't see everything the way he does. A few thoughts on the Tucker-Putin interview: Having watched the interview last night, I've been very interested in seeing the reaction here on this site. A lot of people have focused on 'Putin as an autistic history nerd' (good memes here), while others have stuck to variations on 'look how his history is a lie and bizarre and strange' or 'he whiffed the PR opportunity and didn't give MAGA anything.' Ok. The former is funny, the middle is standard signaling and positioning, and the latter is US politics brain. Fine! But there's really tremendous data in here if we want to look seriously. Some points below. First, the most important thing is indeed the half-hour history lesson. Not only did Putin start with this, and refuse to be interrupted, he even made a big show of gifting documents supporting his arguments to Tucker. What this tells us is that the history component to the Russo-Ukrainian War is not just a point of legitimation or a general casus belli, but the motivating factor for VVP personally. That's really big! I've argued for a year now that we should understand the proximate cause of the war to be Vladimir Putin's deepening historical obsessions, his sense of personal grievance, and the unique isolation that allowed this to fester in the runup to 2022. You can find an article making that case here: ridl.io/putin-s-agency…. If you've taken my undergraduate course on Russian Politics, it's there as well. This interview is strong supporting data for that framing. Note how often Putin dismisses NATO expansion as the reason for action, as well as how much he does not care about Ukrainian democracy qua democracy. He doesn't even think it is a democracy (note the coup discussions). Rather, he's clearly motivated - then and now - by historical concerns most of all. And this is important, which some observers may not quite get. He was not always like this! That is, the long rants about history that justify political action have become more and more common in the last ten years, and especially the last four or five. Which fits a model of growing obsession - which, incidentally, also aligns well with Putin's post-2012 sense that only he can stably rule Russia, and that he wants to bequeath a legacy. Tucker wasn't able to get an answer to the core question - why 2022 and not earlier - but this is good material for a obsession interpretation. Second, another element that came out strongly was Putin's sense of personal insult and snubbing. He is butthurt by his world leader colleagues. We have dozens of minutes of him talking about the Bushes, about documents signed by the French and Germans, about negotiations generally - all of which end with Russia not getting what was promised or it expected. That could be read simply as justification for Russia's actions (i.e., the hypocrisy of the West) but what is mostly communicated, verbally and through body language, is that Putin himself feels slighted, and that he does not understand why others do not see the world, and the consequences of events, as clearly as he does. This is also quite interesting. There is very little reason to believe this interview is anything less than the sincere views of Putin himself, as a smarter-than-average Russian boomer who is trying to explain why he's right, why he's been aggrieved, and why the other sides are just so stupid and shortsighted. He's booming really hard, it's very evident. He's not sharing everything, but he's telling you that he's not sharing everything with a knowing, paternalistic smile while he says it. And he really wants to get it through your thick skull what actually matters. Rurik, Yaroslav the Wise, 1654, Bohdan Khmelnitsky, the Soviet Union and the border changes, leaders just not being reasonable, etc etc. Third, I don't think we can understand this interview as some sort of functionalist strategic communication exercise at all. VVP clearly did not care to talk about US political issues, he did not "throw red meat to MAGA" or whatever, he did not rise to the bait several times to get on a cleaner messaging narrative that would sell with an international audience of illiberal or West-skeptical types. At all! It was the above, which means this interview was about what Vladimir Putin himself thought rather than what he thought would sell best. That's incredibly unusual for an interview like this. We didn't get anything about cancel culture, or gender ideology, or Biden being senile, or the US being this evil tentacled hegemon that threatens global peace. He was actually incredibly circumspect on that sort of thing. Much more so than in other venues in the recent past. This was Putin as pedagogue-in-chief, trying to educate Tucker not only about history, but also about how the world actually works. Look to the wandering discussion on the Orange Revolution, Yanukovych, the various negotiations, for that. The personal resentment comes out here in a distinct way, as disappointment and confusion as to why other international partners just don't get it the way VVP does. Truly, the most framed or set-up part of this interview was the point about the spring 2022 negotiations (note his arg that instead of the Battle of Kyiv being lost, it was a part of a negotiation that got cut short by Johnson's intervention - an interesting assertion). And Tucker got him to talk about future potential negotiations as well. That was also enlightening, as it reiterated Putin's world-weary points that the other side doesn't get it and is stubborn, and that there is a 'reasonable' way out if only leaders would be clear-eyed. This is important to keep in mind, especially as Putin seems quite confident the war is going well enough that he can just wait for negotiations to inevitably appear. Also note his regular recourse to proceduralism - negotiations are detailed, complicated, have many moving parts. The bureaucratic KGB and legal background always shines through with Putin at the end of the day. Finally, as I've noted, this interview was pretty strange. Tucker tried to move things in a way that fit his own views (NATO expansion, the 'who runs the US' question, demonic forces on earth (?)), which was pretty cringe. But he actually did a decent job overall (sorry!). He asked about Gershkovich and pushed fairly hard all things considered, he got steamrolled by VVP but managed to barely hold on given the very meandering discussion (Putin's framing of 2004 and 2013-14 is genuinely difficult to understand if you don't already know the events quite well), he didn't crash the interview so bad that it ended early, he figured out he had a unique opportunity to let Putin talk, and in doing so he provided us a unique window into VVP. It turns out that Putin says the same thing to Tucker as he does to Ru journos, with even more Putinsplaining. Which is illuminating! The history thing is the real deal, as is his belief that negotiations (in Russia's favor and in accordance with Putin's own sense of what is reasonable) are possible. Both of these things are really important for us to get at analytically. I'm still thinking about this, but those are some topline takeaways as I process it this morning.
  19. the insanity of Putin and the dunking thereon continue
  20. thought that was a good question to ask at the end and push for a better explanation. there's also some funny reactions and/or memes going around about his 30 minute 9th century history lecture to the why did you invade Ukraine when you did? question.
  21. TCU should have thought about that before hiring a Briles.
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