Ukraine War

[Bama Chick 28596]

wait, he is on Ukraines side now? 

He took some Tyranol.

[UpperWestside 6216]

15 minutes ago, Chopper said:

They somehow ended up in a small town not too far from Pittsburgh. I got to Texas on my own in the '90s, thanks to some friends.

BTW here's an interesting thread about why the russians are having so much trouble driving in northern UKR winter weather - they apparently suck at maintenance, particularly in this case, tires.

 

Fantastic link man. This is the rare time that social media is doing good in connecting us as a world and educating us about seemingly mundane things that are actually a big deal. 

[cactusflinthead 27615]

 

[cactusflinthead 27615]

 

[Gil Bang 26099]

Artillery selfie douche is now POW

[cactusflinthead 27615]

 

[Pods 7594]

Cross-posting this from the DT. 

Footage of civilians murdered by Russian artillery in Charkov. Fucking barbaric. 

NSFW and very graphic. 

[Sbbruin 21912]

1 hour ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

The fucking specious argument the there was no invasion during the Trump administration therefore the Russians were afraid of Trump or otherwise intimidated is so fucking regarded.  Glad Bolton slapped that bitch.   Newsman is comedically satirical.

[Pods 7594]

Downed KA-52 helicopter

16 slides of captured, or destroyed Russian equipment, including 4 T-80U and a truck full of munitions. 

 

[pyrohornIII 4838]

8 hours ago, UpperWestside said:

I’d prefer they take that thing out into the North Atlantic and sink the thing on live TV. Let the other oligarchs decide just how long they would like to mess around before getting their own FAAFO moment.

All these things that are being seized need to be pressed into service to provide income streams for humanitarian efforts.  Simply sell the thing to some UAE moron for a fire sale price of 100M wouldn't do near as much good as turning them into long running income streams that pay back continually into the lower economic strata that paid for the shit to begin with.   Outfit it for cruises and use the money to pay into benefits for Ukrainian war widows and orphans funds.   

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

Video worth the watch

[TexLonghorn 5732]

The International Paralympic Commission has reversed their decision from yesterday when they said russian paralympic athletes could compete in the 2022 Winter Paralympic Games as neutrals, competing under the Paralympic flag.  Today, they have announced that both russia and belarus have been barred due to situations arising from athletes/teams/committees from other countries refusing to compete against those two countries. 

Kind of a weak statement: "At the IPC we are very firm believers that sport and politics should not mix," he said. "However, by no fault of its own the war has now come to these Games and behind the scenes many Governments are having an influence on our cherished event.", but an understandable decision.

Edited March 3, 2022 by TexLonghorn
There's four years of wasted russian performance-enhancing drugs down the toilet.

[Napoleon 8710]

1 hour ago, TexLonghorn said:

The International Paralympic Commission has reversed their decision from yesterday when they said russian paralympic athletes could compete in the 2022 Winter Paralympic Games as neutrals, competing under the Paralympic flag.  Today, they have announced that both russia and belarus have been barred due to situations arising from athletes/teams/committees from other countries refusing to compete against those two countries. 

Kind of a weak statement: "At the IPC we are very firm believers that sport and politics should not mix," he said. "However, by no fault of its own the war has now come to these Games and behind the scenes many Governments are having an influence on our cherished event.", but an understandable decision.

They’ll have a much bigger squad after this war is over.

[EastTexan 662]

12 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Response should be one word: "Sisu."

I keep letting myself think "well, these folks can't get any dumber.  They've maxed it out."  How foolish of me.  There is always a next level of idiocy, and there's always a Trumpkin, already standing there, having claimed it with his Trump flag and MAGA hat.

Well then let me tell you about the United States of America. It's a big country in North America. On the right is a whole bunch of water. It's called the Atlantic Ocean. On the left is another big patch of water. It's called the Pacific Ocean. On top is a big country called Canada. It is cold. On the bottom is another big country called Mexico. It is hot down there. The United States sits in the middle of all this.

[Nivek 17035]

 

No, I had it on Johnny Sack’s word that Trump was the deterrent.

And that anti-meteorite snake juice that I bought in Flagstaff is the reason the earth hasn’t been hit with another extinction event meteor. Thanks Moonbeam!

[pacman 7426]

http://deryugina.com/a-view-from-russian-academia/

Quote

1. Propaganda is literally EVERYWHERE. On TV it reaches absurd proportions, and besides that special bot farms write a huge number of online comments, forming a false public opinion and swaying those who are uncertain to their side.

 

 

This sounds familiar..

Quote

1. A non-trivial share of the people are idiots. They can’t or, for many reasons, don’t want to absorb non-one-sided information and just want to be “outside of politics”. And the most accessible information is, sadly, propaganda.

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by pacman

[Bozo_Casanova 26670]

13 hours ago, Lobo said:

Yeah, I guess I should have assumed some grandstanding.  But I can assure the good folks at the NRA (of which I am a former member)…it’s not heavily armed American households keeping our enemies at bay.  It’s the three green things…Atlantic, Pacific, and our defense budget.  That’s what keeps us warm at night.  The rest is just a dick contest.  And I’m tired of winning.  

It’s the domestic enemies we should be concerned about at the moment.

[texastough 1129]

Calling my shot, laugh all you want:

Ukraine mops the floor with the Russians in the next week or two

Putin is out (ousted, suicide, killed by his cronies etc)

Putin's cronies are persecuted and oligarchs are persona non grata in their own country and abroad

Populist opposition leader takes power in Russia and with the help/support of international community, sets up democracy and curbs corruption

World community strikes while the iron is hot and agrees to remove sanctions and provide aid only in return for denuclearization and substantial demilitarization 

profit

[Handcruser 2805]

Calling my shot, laugh all you want:
Ukraine mops the floor with the Russians in the next week or two
Putin is out (ousted, suicide, killed by his cronies etc)
Putin's cronies are persecuted and oligarchs are persona non grata in their own country and abroad
Populist opposition leader takes power in Russia and with the help/support of international community, sets up democracy and curbs corruption
World community strikes while the iron is hot and agrees to remove sanctions and provide aid only in return for denuclearization and substantial demilitarization 
profit

Lol

[Handcruser 2805]

Calling my shot, laugh all you want:
Ukraine mops the floor with the Russians in the next week or two
Putin is out (ousted, suicide, killed by his cronies etc)
Putin's cronies are persecuted and oligarchs are persona non grata in their own country and abroad
Populist opposition leader takes power in Russia and with the help/support of international community, sets up democracy and curbs corruption
World community strikes while the iron is hot and agrees to remove sanctions and provide aid only in return for denuclearization and substantial demilitarization 
profit

Lol

[Jive Turkey 12722]

 

[Dahobbs 17803]

1 hour ago, Nivek said:

No, I had it on Johnny Sack’s word that Trump was the deterrent.

And that anti-meteorite snake juice that I bought in Flagstaff is the reason the earth hasn’t been hit with another extinction event meteor. Thanks Moonbeam!

Haven't seen him around the last few days. Maybe he joined up to fight for Putin. 

[pacman 7426]

15 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Haven't seen him around the last few days. Maybe he joined up to fight for Putin. 

Maybe you are right, though I doubt Sack is a man of action.

[Captainant 27970]

8 minutes ago, pacman said:

Maybe you are right, though I doubt Sack is a man of action.

What are you talking about? Sack donates his couch change to hatian orphanages! That's action!!

[Dnaguy 12327]

1 hour ago, texastough said:

Calling my shot, laugh all you want:

Ukraine mops the floor with the Russians in the next week or two

Putin is out (ousted, suicide, killed by his cronies etc)

Putin's cronies are persecuted and oligarchs are persona non grata in their own country and abroad

Populist opposition leader takes power in Russia and with the help/support of international community, sets up democracy and curbs corruption

World community strikes while the iron is hot and agrees to remove sanctions and provide aid only in return for denuclearization and substantial demilitarization 

profit

[Hookah Horns 3083]

8 hours ago, Sbbruin said:

The fucking specious argument the there was no invasion during the Trump administration therefore the Russians were afraid of Trump or otherwise intimidated is so fucking regarded.  Glad Bolton slapped that bitch.   Newsman is comedically satirical.

The Trumpists are so good at gaslighting, it's hard to separate their knowing gaslighting from what they have actually deluded themselves to believe.

[NAVY 6834]

24 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

Wtf is that from? Lol. 

[jimmyjazz 46470]

4 minutes ago, NAVY said:

Wtf is that from? Lol. 

Consider this a PSA:

 

[Francisco 2.0 32432]

54 minutes ago, pacman said:

 

 

About this guy; Rolling Stone has an article up on him today:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russell-texas-bentley-putin-propaganda-ukraine-interview-1315433/

 

 

Quote

How does a 61-year-old former pot dealer named “Texas” end up filming videos in front of Z-marked tanks on the Russian side of the frontline in Donbas? 

Russell “Texas” Bentley has gone viral this week with a YouTube video in which he wears a black leather jacket and a revolutionary’s army-green cap. “This is Tejas on the frontline with the De-Nazifiers and the Liberators of Ukraine,” he twangs with all the camp of a Tarantino character. “These guys are tough. These guys are ready. And there’s plenty of ‘em,” Bentley boasts of the Russian soldiers behind him, adding: “We’re gettin’ ready to bring the hammer down. These guys are going to save and liberate all the good people of Ukraine. And the bad people? BOOM! Kick their ass.”

 

Quote

Bentley writes that his aim — which also happens to be Vladimir Putin’s aim — is to bring “Ukraine back into the Slavic family where it belongs and has been for 1,000 years.” As for the “bad people” he hopes to see the hammer dropped on? They seem to include not only the rulers of Ukraine but the leaders of his former American homeland. On VK — the Russian alternative to Facebook — Bentley posted that he was “heading west with the Liberators of Ukraine. We may stop in Kiev, we may stop on the English Channel. We may liberate the USA.”

 

Quote

On Tuesday, Rolling Stone reached Bentley at a hotel in Donetsk for an hour-long phone interview. Bentley describes himself as an “information warrior” for the Russian side. He has lived in the separatist areas of Eastern Ukraine since 2014 and is now a citizen of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic as well as of Russia. “I don’t give a fuck what they think about me in the United States,” he insists. “The government — or most of the people.”

 

Spoiler

Bentley’s backstory is as wild as his present circumstance. He’s a former marijuana legalization activist who once mounted a third-party bid for the Senate in Minnesota — in the 1990 election that brought Paul Welstone to Washington — before landing in prison for felony marijuana trafficking.

He was born Russell Bonner Bentley III to a wealthy family in Texas in 1960. “I grew up in a very exclusive area of Dallas called Highland Park,” he says. “It’s basically the Beverly Hills of Dallas.” Bentley was the “black sheep” of the family as a teenager, he says, drawn to hard left causes. “I was reading Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara” he says. “I understood the Vietnamese were right to defend their land against foreign invaders, and that the United States was wrong. I understood that Fidel and Che were right to overthrow the foreign masters that had turned Cuba into a casino and bordello.” Bentley insists: “I’m anti-racist. I’m anti-imperialist. I grew up supporting people’s rights to defend themselves.” (His commitment to democracy and self-determination was less developed.)

Bentley bills himself as an “auto-didact.” He dropped out of middle school, but later got his GED and spent some time in the U.S. Army. He then waited tables and partied for years on South Padre island, on the Texas coast, playing guitar in a group called the Asbestos Band. He says his preferred genre was “cow punk” — a mix of Johnny Cash and Johnny Rotten. But when that music failed to pack in the crowds, Bentley recalls, they started covering hits from hot MTV bands like ZZ Top, the Cure, and even Bryan Adams.

Known then as “Bongo” rather than “Texas,” Bentley followed a girlfriend to Minnesota, according to profile in Texas Monthly. There, Bentley got deep into the world of marijuana legalization, running for Senate in 1990 as a member of the pro-pot Grassroots Party, whose motto was “lower taxes, higher taxpayers.” He garnered nearly two percent of the statewide vote.

In the mid-1990s, Bentley made a radicalizing trip to Cuba where his socialist leanings hardened into communism. “I went with Pastors for Peace, with Medea Benjamin from Code Pink, and a bunch of those guys,” Bentley recalls. On the island, he met a captain in the Cuban army who told him that “a communist is someone that’s willing to fight for socialism.” He vowed then: “I’m going to quit being a pussy and calling myself a socialist; I am a communist.”

In his professional life, Bentley wasn’t just promoting pot, he was dealing it — importing substantial quantities of weed from Texas to Minnesota. And by 1996, Bentley got tripped up by the DEA. He was arrested for felony trafficking and sentenced to federal prison. But only months before he was scheduled to be released in 1999, according to court documents, Bentley broke out of the minimum security facility where he was being held. “I didn’t have to dig a tunnel or take anybody hostage,” he recalls. “But I did escape from prison.”

Bentley then lived on the lam, mostly in Washington state. He took part in the anti-globalization uprising against the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle in 1999, which he says “was the last time that I was really proud to be an American.” Bentley remained a fugitive for the better part of a decade before being recaptured in 2007. “They put me in a maximum security joint till the end of my sentence.” Bentley remained under supervised release — which included a ban on intoxicants and a mandated 12-step program — until 2012. 

Over the years, Bentley’s distrust of American power had been metastasizing. Today, he rattles off a list of American foreign policy sins dating from Ronald Reagan’s invasion of the island nation of Grenada and what he denounces as Bill Clinton’s “horrendous war crimes against Yugoslavia.” Growing conspiratorial, he insists that 9/11 was — at least in part — an inside job, citing his expertise in the U.S. Army as a demolition expert: “You can say what you want about building one and two, but building seven? Anyone that doesn’t understand that that was a pre-planned, pre-placed controlled demolition is either an idiot or a liar,” he claims. (Government investigators found the tower collapsed from the heat of uncontrolled fires.)

Bentley’s disgust grew through the “bogus” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he insists the final straw was the 2011 Western military action that toppled Muammar Gadhafi in Libya. “He was one of the greatest,” Bentley says fondly of the larger-than-life dictator whom the International Criminal Court accused of war crimes. Bentley says that when “Gadhafi was brutally murdered on video, it really pissed me off.” Bentley worked out his anger by donning rock climbing gear to scale a Marines recruiting billboard in Austin, defacing it with the words “FUCK NATO” in six-foot letters.

By the time the Maidan Revolution broke out in 2014 in Ukraine — toppling the Putin-backed government in Kyiv — Bentley was primed to see the events through the looking glass. “I knew it was exactly the work of the State Department and the CIA and Soros, of course,” Bentley recalls, invoking another conspiracy theory that Hungarian billionaire George Soros pulls the strings of American foreign policy. When he saw the unrest spill over into violent clashes in Odessa, Bentley sympathized with wounded pro-Russian separatists. 

Then Bentley came across video from the aftermath of an explosion in Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine, that local separatists blamed on a Ukrainian air strike. He recalls a video of a dying young woman with her legs blown off. “Her eyes looked into my soul,” he says, earnestly. “She was asking me, ‘What are you going to do about this? Are you going to go hold hands across America for peace, or sing Kumbaya?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m going to go kill some of the dudes that did this.’ And I have,” he insists.

Determined to head to the frontlines in Donbas, Bentley broke up with his yoga-instructor girlfriend, quit his job as an estimator for a tree-trimming company, and booked a flight for Rostov-on-Don, a Russian city on the Black Sea. Before he left Texas, he recorded a song about his belief that this was “armageddon” and he was choosing his side with “Novorussia.” He sang: “The U.S. is wrong, and I’ll do more to right it than just write this song.”

Bentley, then 54, was an unlikely foreign fighter. He didn’t speak Russian at the time, but made his way to the war-torn city of Donetsk where he hooked up with a fellow Russian-sympathist expat, a writer from Italy, who showed him around and helped Bentley hook up with the Vostok Battalion — a militia group linked to the Russian intelligence service.

“When I came here, I didn’t think I would live through the winter, bro,” says Bentley, who peppers his speech with surfer pronouns like dude and bro. “I didn’t hardly speak Russian. It was a major war with a full-on National Army against the people’s militia. And I was on the little guys’ side,” he says, adding he believed he was, “defending good people against abjectly evil people.”

Bentley has lived in the contested separatist regions of Donbas ever since, surrounded by a war that’s killed an estimated 14,000, with allegations of abuses and needless civilian casualties on both sides. Bentley says he’s since served as a military policeman and an “information warrior” — an English language propagandist for the Russian side, hosting a podcast called “Radio Free Donbas” and filming YouTube videos of the struggle in the region. He emphasizes he’s a volunteer for the cause: “I don’t get paid by the Donetsk People’s Republic. I don’t get paid by the Russians. I don’t get paid by anybody.”

Bentley became a citizen of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic in 2017, and became a citizen of Russia in 2020. Today, he grows belligerent when pressed on the contradictions of his decision to side with an authoritarian like Putin. ”What about Putin poisoning his political rivals?” I ask him, referring to Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who blames the Kremlin for poisoning him with a powerful nerve agent. 

Bentley shoots back: “Are you really that stupid or are you pretending to be that stupid?” He insists that it’s “a fucking question that only an idiot would fucking ask.” Bentley underscores that the alleged poisoning victims are still living. “Do you think that if Vladimir Putin, the head of the most powerful military in the world today, wanted to kill somebody that [he] would fail?” he asks. “That’s a really stupid question.” 

Like Putin, Bentley decries the Ukranian military as the sum of all evil, blasting them as “genuine, mass-murdering Nazis.” Bentley embellishes that the Ukrainian ranks are also swelled by “thousands of ISIS cannibals.” 

Invocations of Nazis are still politically potent in Russia, which suffered unfathomable losses at the hands of Hitler’s armies in World War II. But while Ukraine, like many nations, has extremist right-wing factions, there is no evidence its military is teeming with Nazis. To the contrary, Ukraine’s popularly elected president is Jewish, and several of his relatives were killed in the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum has denounced Putin for having “misrepresented and misappropriated Holocaust history” by “claiming falsely that democratic Ukraine needs to be ‘denazified.’” Shortly after I spoke to Bentley, news broke that Russian forces had shelled a Holocaust memorial in Kyiv.

I ask Bentley why he thinks anyone who calls themselves an “information warrior” should be trusted as an honest broker. 

“In every information war, there’s two sides,” he says.

“And you see yourself as on the side of truth?” I ask.

“The evidence speaks for itself,” he insists.

In the current conflict, Bentley boasts that “Russia is liberating Ukraine from foreign occupation.” I ask why the world is not seeing Russian troops greeted as liberators, and Ukranians are instead hunkering down and with AK-47s and Molotov cocktails preparing to defend their cities. “How in the hell can you even think you’re qualified to have an opinion on that?” Bentley snaps. “I was, today, 50 kilometers inside what was, two days ago, under Ukrainian Nazi occupation and the dudes there, the women there, had tears in their eyes thanking us for coming to liberate them after eight years of terrorism and oppression. How do you dare to say that?”

With the conversation growing heated, I ask a more muted question: If Bentley knows why Russian tanks have been marked with a “Z.” He says he’s heard differing explanations, from the swashbuckling — “the mark of Zorro” — to the mundane, deriving from the Russian word for west, zapad, which indicates the direction they’re traveling. “But I have my own personal theory,” he adds, “and it is that the ‘Z’ stands for Zelensky’s zhopa. Zelensky, of course, is the puppet president of Ukraine,” he says. “And zhopa is the Russian word for ‘ass.’ So all those machines are going to Zelensky’s ass. That’s my theory.”

Carrying on a conversation with Bentley is challenging. Though we share a common language, he’s committed himself to an alternate reality. “With U.S. politicians and mainstream media, including Rolling Stone,” he tells me, “everything they say is a lie. It is 180 degrees — the opposite direction from what is true.”

What is Bentley’s version of the truth? “Believe me, bro, this is very clear cut,” he says. “This is the battle, not just of Ukraine. This is the battle between good-and-evil for the future of the world. And right now, it’s looking like the world might just have a chance because us and our friends are kicking some Nazi ass right now.”

In reality, the balky Russian blitz of Ukraine has brought terror and bloodshed to a prosperous European nation, whose only real offense has been to chart a course independent of the aims of an unstable strongman in Moscow, who yearns to recapture the glory of a Russian empire.

Before he hangs up, Bentley signs off with a chilling little prayer for the battles ahead: 

“May God protect the innocent,” he says. “And may the rest of us get everything that we deserve.”

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Francisco 2.0

[Gil Bang 26099]

Fuck that guy

[Gil Bang 26099]

No link, but the word is Macron had a 90 minute phone call with Putin, and Putin isn’t taking his foot off the gas. Putin says no civilians are being harmed. Macron told him he’s lying to himself

[DigglerontheHoof 21273]

3 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

Fuck that guy

I have a good feeling Ukrainians will take care of this piece of shit. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23367]

2 hours ago, texastough said:

Calling my shot, laugh all you want:

Ukraine mops the floor with the Russians in the next week or two

Putin is out (ousted, suicide, killed by his cronies etc)

Putin's cronies are persecuted and oligarchs are persona non grata in their own country and abroad

Populist opposition leader takes power in Russia and with the help/support of international community, sets up democracy and curbs corruption

World community strikes while the iron is hot and agrees to remove sanctions and provide aid only in return for denuclearization and substantial demilitarization 

profit

While this is fantasy talk, I believe this is the beginning of the end for Putin.  The unknowns are the timetable, body count, and what comes after Putin in Russia.  If Russians decide to try some radical experiment again like communism, anarcho syndicalism, or democratic socialism should the West try to stop them?  Some hard questions for a post-Putin world and perhaps avoiding the mistakes of the recent past would be best. 

[Pescado_Rojo 19453]

2 hours ago, texastough said:

Calling my shot, laugh all you want:

Ukraine mops the floor with the Russians in the next week or two

Putin is out (ousted, suicide, killed by his cronies etc)

Putin's cronies are persecuted and oligarchs are persona non grata in their own country and abroad

Populist opposition leader takes power in Russia and with the help/support of international community, sets up democracy and curbs corruption

World community strikes while the iron is hot and agrees to remove sanctions and provide aid only in return for denuclearization and substantial demilitarization 

profit

Welcome to Surly Mr Clancy. 

[Longboard Horn 40843]

[Incredulity 11686]

2 hours ago, texastough said:

Calling my shot, laugh all you want:

Ukraine mops the floor with the Russians in the next week or two

Putin is out (ousted, suicide, killed by his cronies etc)

Putin's cronies are persecuted and oligarchs are persona non grata in their own country and abroad

Populist opposition leader takes power in Russia and with the help/support of international community, sets up democracy and curbs corruption

World community strikes while the iron is hot and agrees to remove sanctions and provide aid only in return for denuclearization and substantial demilitarization 

profit

There is a Zero, Point, Zero chance that any country with nukes gives them up after what has happened to Ukraine here.

[texastough 1129]

18 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

While this is fantasy talk, I believe this is the beginning of the end for Putin.  The unknowns are the timetable, body count, and what comes after Putin in Russia.  If Russians decide to try some radical experiment again like communism, anarcho syndicalism, or democratic socialism should the West try to stop them?  Some hard questions for a post-Putin world and perhaps avoiding the mistakes of the recent past would be best. 

I really do believe the first three bullets are likely. The denuclearization stuff may be a longshot but with the almost universal outrage and unprecedented sanctions, I think there's a chance. Shades of German de-arming post WWII.  Russia won't have enough money to maintain an effective nuclear arsenal anyway. If the right leader takes over, I can see him gladly trading nukes for economic rehabilitation and aid. The biggest bribe in history, if you will. It would probably cheaper for us than continuing the nuclear arms race with Russia.

[Dutchrudder 11159]

2 hours ago, Jive Turkey said:

 

There's also a very good chance that their phones aren't working, they have no comms, and they really don't know which direction to shoot them. 

[WhatTheBuck 28825]

33 minutes ago, Gil Bang said:

No link, but the word is Macron had a 90 minute phone call with Putin, and Putin isn’t taking his foot off the gas. Putin says no civilians are being harmed. Macron told him he’s lying to himself

No he’s not, Emmanuel. He’s lying to you. Putin knows damn well that he’s targeting and killing civilians. He’s done it before. He doesn’t care.

[RomaVicta 30072]

2 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

No he’s not, Emmanuel. He’s lying to you. Putin knows damn well that he’s targeting and killing civilians. He’s done it before. He doesn’t care.

Yep. It's total war. Anything to bring enough pain to your opponent that they give up. Kharkiv will be the model for other city assaults should the Russians overcome their logistical problems, poor vehicle maintenance (great link somewhere earlier about tire/vehicle maintenance), and the unwillingness some of their soldiers have to fight and likely poor morale everywhere.

Sherman's march from Atlanta to the sea. Nazi bombing London. Allies pounding Axis cities including the A-bombs. Romans, Carthiginians, Spartans, and Athenians "laying waste" the land of their enemies.

This game has always been tough on civilians. If the Russians can maintain the attack through the muddy season, I wonder if the Ukes should disperse their weapons into the countryside then abandon the cities to the Russians. Bleed the invader constantly over time. They're probably already doing that. I hope so. When the Russians set up artillery outside of Kyiv, declare it an open city.

As wise commanders from Fabius to Washington have realized, saving your fighting force is more important than any city or symbol. 

[Sbbruin 21912]

3 hours ago, texastough said:

Calling my shot, laugh all you want:

Ukraine mops the floor with the Russians in the next week or two

Putin is out (ousted, suicide, killed by his cronies etc)

Putin's cronies are persecuted and oligarchs are persona non grata in their own country and abroad

Populist opposition leader takes power in Russia and with the help/support of international community, sets up democracy and curbs corruption

World community strikes while the iron is hot and agrees to remove sanctions and provide aid only in return for denuclearization and substantial demilitarization 

profit

[Dahobbs 17803]

6 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

Sherman's march from Atlanta to the sea. Nazi bombing London. Allies pounding Axis cities including the A-bombs. Romans, Carthiginians, Spartans, and Athenians "laying waste" the land of their enemies.

Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

[LTbear 4172]

3 hours ago, texastough said:

Calling my shot, laugh all you want:

Ukraine mops the floor with the Russians in the next week or two

Putin is out (ousted, suicide, killed by his cronies etc)

Putin's cronies are persecuted and oligarchs are persona non grata in their own country and abroad

Populist opposition leader takes power in Russia and with the help/support of international community, sets up democracy and curbs corruption

World community strikes while the iron is hot and agrees to remove sanctions and provide aid only in return for denuclearization and substantial demilitarization 

profit

The yin to Brisket's yang.

[RDCanecutter 26550]

28 minutes ago, Dutchrudder said:

There's also a very good chance that their phones aren't working, they have no comms, and they really don't know which direction to shoot them. 

Maybe in some fantasy world where the Russian Army are fuck-ups who make mistakes. I wish it were so, but we are dealing with elite robot-Spartans here.

[Hook1997 5434]

Why the hell are we still importing Russian oil??   Has to be a we already paid for and ships that are still waiting to unload or something right?  Anyone know specifics on it.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Hook1997

[Chopper 17351]

There have been many coup attempts in Russia over the past 100 years. Only one was successful --when Brezhnev took out Krushchev in 1964. Meanwhile, almost every single leader of RU/CCCP, beginning with Stalin, was a coup target. Their internal track record of overthrowing evil dictators is bad. OTOH I doubt their country has experienced the type of severe economic turnaround and crisis, and international isolation, that they have run into very quickly in the current circumstance. The only way I can see that Putin climbs out of the mess he's created is if he is able to hang on to power for the next 2 years, and if trump or some other pro-Putin US president gets elected. The first thing trump would do is to scuttle sanctions and work to break-up the western alliance.

Edited March 3, 2022 by Chopper

[Brisketexan 105569]

9 minutes ago, LTbear said:

The yin to Brisket's yang.

And as usual, I would very, very much like to be completely wrong, and for the optimistic take to be completely right.  Would gladly return to eat a man-size portion of crow.

[Dutchrudder 11159]

11 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

So then what happened in Syria Rob? Did those "Russian Commandos" just spring up out of the dirt? Russia wasn't aggressive in that region under Trump?  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-syria.html. Syria also had Russian tanks, artillery, arms, etc supplied to them.  No reason to believe that these weren't approved by Putin himself to inject into the region and provide support to the Syrian government to aid in killing Syrian rebels, Kurds and American forces. Does that count as aggression?

Do you remember that the Russians supported the Assad regime? They pushed back against the US and it's allies in the region with the assistance of Russian air strikes. They go the US to the point that Donald Trump abruptly decided the US should surrender and leave the region.  Does that count as aggression?  Oh and they supported Assad's use of chemical weapons throughout the conflict, while we did nothing to even condemn or sanction it. Thousands of people died in Aleppo from nerve gas, and the US under Trump did nothing. Does that register on your radar?

By the way, the Kurds, who are pretty much the only slightly modern-thinking Muslim group in the Middle East, were left exposed, over extended on Syrian land they could not defend by themselves, and they got shelled by the Russia-backed Syrian government and Turkish forces immediately after US troops left the area. Weird how that incredibly spineless, careless, cruel display of yellow-belly decision making from Donald Trump goes completely unnoticed by the hordes of morons that support him. The Kurds were our allies, they deserved notice and time to retreat from those positions. Trump supporters want to cry about "BUT AFGHANISTAN!!!", which was also agreed to be surrendered under Trump, while completely ignoring that he gave away half of Syria and the protection of the Kurds for nothing. He all but guaranteed that Syria will eventually be controlled and run by the Assad/Russian regime by pulling out, something Putin would want. Odd how he played right into Putin's hands, it's almost like he was trying to get the US out of the way for him...

[Neonmoon 38130]

6 minutes ago, Hook1997 said:

 

Why the hell are we still importing Russian oil??   Has to be a we already paid for and ships that are still waiting to unload or something right?  Anyone know specifics on it.

The US just closed airspace to Russia 3 or 4 days after Europe. We don't act fast.

Additionally, the same idiots that say we are energy independent will get mad at Big Gov for stopping business from trading. 

[Dutchrudder 11159]

11 minutes ago, Hook1997 said:

Why the hell are we still importing Russian oil??   Has to be a we already paid for and ships that are still waiting to unload or something right?  Anyone know specifics on it.

I'm sure Joe Machin's neck snapped as soon as he turned around to offer West Virginia coal to help fill the energy supply void.