Русский корабль - иди нахуй

[Superhero 8830]

 

The main problem with this picture is there aren't enough Russians in it.

[Superhero 8830]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

 

Pause.

 

Enhance Image.

Edited April 9, 2022 by Superhero

[Bevo 13576]

7 minutes ago, Superhero said:

Enhance image.

I think that's a mannequin, not that there is anything wrong with that.

[Nivek 16928]

I'm so confused as to how Boris Johnson went from being a stooge for Brexit to being a stand up dude in the fight against tyranny.
Seems like the subject of a Pink Floyd double album.

It is not difficult to not be against mass murder.

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3868]

3 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

They can mobilize all they want, but they still need millions to actually occupy Ukraine, and they simply don't have the manpower and trucks to do that.  And Ukraine never even hit the full-on insurgency phase, and now they are boosting their air defenses, naval defenses, etc. as we speak.  

 

But if they try to do mass mobilization after Putin and the state media has been saying that things are going okay and that no conscripts are being used or needed....that's a FAFO moment.  And it will also cause some upheaval in Russian society - way too many would-be conscripts have bought their way out of being conscripts over the years, so that practice would have to end right then and there. And any internal resistance to men being called up is going to tie up troops/internal police/national guard, resources that Russia desperately needs in Ukraine.

I think Putin has to wrap something up by early May.  He can't wait the 4-6 months it would take to  go full on mass mobilization (from the moment war is declared to letters being sent out, to men showing up for induction, etc.), and he simply doesn't have the capability to get the untrained masses into combat anyways.

And war production......rifles and uniforms will be about it, and maybe trucks.  Way too many of their fancier systems either ended production many years ago, and would be hard to start back up quickly (think of all of the retooling needed, plus a large pool of technically skilled people to restart and produce the fancy stuff), or they rely too heavily on imports from the outside that they either are blocked from importing, or probably can't afford.

There is also the fact that right now, it takes a month or two of basic training plus a few more months of advanced training before a conscript is ready.  If they give them a month or two of training, and a rifle (or tell them to pick up the next rifle they see), it'll be a fucking slaughter of Russian youths.

As Rumsfeld said, “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish you had at a later time.”

To this point, US Intel is saying 40 RU BTG in the Donbass sector. UKa has already removed over 40 BTG(10 tanks to a BTG) from the board across the Ukraine.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

Article 2

  Reveal hidden contents

Spurred by Putin, Russians Turn on One Another Over the War
Citizens are denouncing one another, illustrating how the war is feeding paranoia and polarization in Russian society.

A screen last month in St. Petersburg, Russia, showing a “Z” symbol in the colors of the St. George ribbons.

Marina Dubrova, an English teacher on the Russian island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, showed an uplifting YouTube video to her eighth-grade class last month in which children, in Russian and Ukrainian, sing about a “world without war.”

After she played it, a group of girls stayed behind during recess and quizzed her on her views.

“Ukraine is a separate country, a separate one,” Ms. Dubrova, 57, told them.

“No longer,” one of the girls shot back.

A few days later, the police came to her school in the port town of Korsakov. In court, she heard a recording of that conversation, apparently made by one of the students. The judge handed down a $400 fine for “publicly discrediting” Russia’s Armed Forces. The school fired her, she said, for “amoral behavior.”

“It’s as though they’ve all plunged into some kind of madness,” Ms. Dubrova said in a phone interview, reflecting on the pro-war mood around her.

With President Vladimir V. Putin’s direct encouragement, Russians who support the war against Ukraine are starting to turn on the enemy within.

The episodes are not yet a mass phenomenon, but they illustrate the building paranoia and polarization in Russian society. Citizens are denouncing one another in an eerie echo of Stalin’s terror, spurred on by vicious official rhetoric from the state and enabled by far-reaching new laws that criminalize dissent.

There are reports of students turning in teachers and people telling on their neighbors and even the diners at the next table. In a mall in western Moscow, it was the “no to war” text displayed in a computer repair store and reported by a passer-by that got the store’s owner, Marat Grachev, detained by the police. In St. Petersburg, a local news outlet documented the furor over suspected pro-Western sympathies at the public library; it erupted after a library official mistook the image of a Soviet scholar on a poster for that of Mark Twain.

Marat Grachev was fined more than $1,200 for the “No War” sign hanging in his computer repair store in Moscow.

In the western region of Kaliningrad, the authorities sent residents text messages urging them to provide phone numbers and email addresses of “provocateurs” in connection with the “special operation” in Ukraine, Russian newspapers reported; they can do so conveniently through a specialized account in the Telegram messaging app. A nationalist political party launched a website urging Russians to report “pests” in the elite.

“I am absolutely sure that a cleansing will begin,” Dmitri Kuznetsov, the member of Parliament behind the website, said in an interview, predicting that the process would accelerate after the “active phase” of the war ended. He then clarified: “We don’t want anyone to be shot, and we don’t even want people to go to prison.”

But it is the history of mass execution and political imprisonment in the Soviet era, and the denunciation of fellow citizens encouraged by the state, that now looms over Russia’s deepening climate of repression. Mr. Putin set the tone in a speech on March 16, declaring that Russian society needed a “self-purification” in which people would “distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into their mouths.”

In the Soviet logic, those who choose not to report their fellow citizens could be viewed as being suspect themselves.

“In these conditions, fear is settling into people again,” said Nikita Petrov, a leading scholar of the Soviet secret police. “And that fear dictates that you report.”

In March, Mr. Putin signed a law that punishes public statements contradicting the government line on what the Kremlin terms its “special military operation” in Ukraine with as much as 15 years in prison. It was a harsh but necessary measure, the Kremlin said, given the West’s “information war” against Russia.

Prosecutors have already used the law against more than 400 people, according to the OVD-Info rights group, including a man who held up a piece of paper with eight asterisks on it. “No to war” in Russian has eight letters.

Graffiti reading “No to war” in Russian on an advertising board in St. Petersburg last month.

“This is some kind of enormous joke that we, to our misfortune, are living in,” Aleksandra Bayeva, the head of OVD-Info’s legal department, said of the absurdity of some of the war-related prosecutions. She said she had seen a sharp rise in the frequency of people reporting on their fellow citizens.

“Repressions are not just done by the hands of the state authorities,” she said. “They are also done by the hands of regular citizens.”

In most cases, the punishments related to war criticism have been limited to fines; for the more than 15,000 antiwar protesters arrested since the invasion began on Feb. 24, fines are the most common penalty, though some were sentenced to as many as 30 days in jail, Ms. Bayeva said. But some people are being threatened with longer prison terms.

In the western city of Penza, another English teacher, Irina Gen, arrived in class one day and found a giant “Z” scrawled on the chalkboard. The Russian government has been promoting the letter as a symbol of support for the war, after it was seen painted as an identifying marker on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine.

Ms. Gen told her students it looked like half a swastika.

Later, an eighth grader asked her why Russia was being banned from sports competitions in Europe.

“I think that’s the right thing to do,” Ms. Gen responded. “Until Russia starts behaving in a civilized manner, this will continue forever.”

“But we don’t know all the details,” a girl said, referring to the war.

“That’s right, you don’t know anything at all,” Ms. Gen said.

A recording of that exchange appeared on a popular account on Telegram that often posts inside information about criminal cases. The Federal Security Service, a successor agency to the K.G.B., called her in and warned her that her words blaming Russia for the bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, last month were “100 percent a criminal case.”

She is now being investigated for causing “grave consequences” under last month’s censorship law, punishable by 10 to 15 years in prison.

Ms. Gen, 45, said she found little support among her students or from her school, and quit her job this month. When she talked in class about her opposition to the war, she said she felt “hatred” toward her radiating from some of her students.

“My point of view did not resonate in the hearts and minds of basically anyone,” she said in an interview.

The “Z” symbol on a building in St. Petersburg. It has become a symbol of support for the war.

But others who have been the targets of denunciation by fellow citizens drew more hopeful lessons from the experience. On Sakhalin Island, after local news outlets reported on Ms. Dubrova’s case, one of her former students raised $150 in a day for her, before Ms. Dubrova told her to stop and said she would pay the fine herself. On Friday, Ms. Dubrova handed the money over to a local dog shelter.

In Moscow, Mr. Grachev, the computer repair store owner, said he found it remarkable that not one of his hundreds of customers threatened to turn him in for the “no to war” text that he prominently displayed on a screen behind the counter for several weeks after the invasion. After all, he noted, he was forced to double the price of some services because of Western sanctions, surely angering some of his customers. Instead, many thanked him.

The man who apparently turned in Mr. Grachev was a passer-by he refers to as a “grandpa” who, he said, twice warned his employees in late March that they were violating the law. Mr. Grachev, 35, said he believed the man was convinced he was doing his civic duty by reporting the store to the police, and most likely did not have access to information beyond state propaganda.

Mr. Grachev was fined 100,000 rubles, more than $1,200. A Moscow politician wrote about the case on social media, including Mr. Grachev’s bank details for anyone who wanted to help. Enough money to cover the fine arrived within two hours, Mr. Grachev said.

He received 250,000 rubles in total, he said, from about 250 separate donations, and he plans to donate the surplus to OVD-Info, which provided him with legal aid.

“In practice, we see that not everything is so bad,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Grachev is now pondering how to replace his “no to war” sign. He is considering: “There was a sign here for which a 100,000 ruble fine was imposed.”

 

 fake news.

[MillerEP 30455]

Another crime of Kadyrov's terrorists

 After the racists attacked the private sector, the Kadyrovites were sent to clean up. The video shows the cry of a woman shouting "Natasha", apparently Natasha is wounded or dead. After the shot, the woman's scream subsides.

 looking for a location

 

[MillerEP 30455]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

I'm not saying he's not doing us a favor, it's just slow as shit and makes the page jump all over the place when they are loading.

I already cut back how many I do in one post. I can cut it down further. Or is the problem that I have too many in general on one page?

[ABSR 5311]

3 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

I already cut back how many I do in one post. I can cut it down further. Or is the problem that I have too many in general on one page?

You’re doing Gods work…keep it up!

[InkaUtexas 25918]

4 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

I already cut back how many I do in one post. I can cut it down further. Or is the problem that I have too many in general on one page?

Keep it up. It is the Surl. Someone is always going to bitch. 

[Bevo 13576]

Quote

He wrote that Russians peed in his children's room, ate canned food for cats and stole his panties.

 

[MillerEP 30455]

Parachute bombs began to be dropped on Kharkiv. The photo was published by «Suspilne”. Kharkiv. Mayor Terekhov warned about the bombs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/u00pso/parachute_bombs_began_to_be_dropped_on_kharkiv/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

Over 110 thousand  citizens joined the Territorial Defense Forces of @ArmedForcesUkr , more than 450 volunteer formations of territorial communities were formed, more than 100 territorial defense fighters have state awards.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tzshbu/over_110_thousand_citizens_joined_the_territorial/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

Italy donates 50 fire brigade vehicles to Ukraine

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tzw5ww/italy_donates_50_fire_brigade_vehicles_to_ukraine/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

S&P downgrade indicates Russia headed for historic default | AP News

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/u028i0/sp_downgrade_indicates_russia_headed_for_historic/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

Russian shipyards halt production of ships due to lack of foreign components - intelligence

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/tzz5vm/russian_shipyards_halt_production_of_ships_due_to/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

Today, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland joined the Global Export Controls Coalition - "a force multiplier in cutting Russia and Belarus off from the commodities, technologies, and software necessary to sustain their aggression" in Ukraine. Updated membership map of the Coalition below

https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/u019to/today_iceland_liechtenstein_norway_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

 

[atomheartbevo 89659]

1 hour ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

To this point, US Intel is saying 40 RU BTG in the Donbass sector. UKa has already removed over 40 BTG(10 tanks to a BTG) from the board across the Ukraine.

And the Ukrainians are removing some top-tier Russian stuff, including top-tier tanks, plus irreplaceable stuff like command & control vehicles, comms vehicles, fire control, etc.

[SaucyJack 3488]

1 hour ago, MillerEP said:

I already cut back how many I do in one post. I can cut it down further. Or is the problem that I have too many in general on one page?

Thanks for the info.  I don't mind the glitches.  Thanks.

[cactusflinthead 27598]

2 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

No. Watch it all. Just cuz you cannot scroll quickly when taking a shit and watching on your phone means nothing. 

We all, the entire world, needs to be witness. @MillerEP is doing damn good work. His sources are known, he is not posting political shit and is doing us all a favor. 

Agreed. The page bounce is a small price to pay. It's a dense topic. He has been on top of it. 

 

[elfenix 34238]

The issue I've had a few times is that twitter quits.

[cactusflinthead 27598]

8 minutes ago, elfenix said:

The issue I've had a few times is that twitter quits.

I have had Twitter crash a lot recently. Right in the middle of scrolling. Not just seize up or send me back to new tweets, completely close and shut down.

[Johnny Chimpo 478]

3 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

I'm not saying he's not doing us a favor, it's just slow as shit and makes the page jump all over the place when they are loading.

My phone will stop loading pages and it’s impossible for me to read the rest of a page, it shits out then reloads the page constantly trying to complete it unsuccessfully. 

[DaggerHorns 3085]

1 minute ago, Johnny Chimpo said:

My phone will stop loading pages and it’s impossible for me to read the rest of a page, it shits out then reloads the page constantly trying to complete it unsuccessfully. 

Same here. It makes it extremely difficult to view dead Russians.

[atomheartbevo 89659]

32 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

I have had Twitter crash a lot recently. Right in the middle of scrolling. Not just seize up or send me back to new tweets, completely close and shut down.

3 minutes ago, Johnny Chimpo said:

My phone will stop loading pages and it’s impossible for me to read the rest of a page, it shits out then reloads the page constantly trying to complete it unsuccessfully. 

This is what I'm getting.  Twitter can be quite shitty at times when a bunch of tweets are together, almost like it thinks you are loading too many or something and just stops and tries to reload.  It's not a bandwidth problem for me, and it's not like the browser is having an issue with memory or anything.

 

 

Edited April 10, 2022 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89659]

This is by Chernobyl.

It looks kind of substandard compared to what our soldiers were doing in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

[Johnny Chimpo 478]

For the record I appreciate all the posts going on here, I just want to be able to read them all as well. 

[Bevo 13576]

8 minutes ago, Johnny Chimpo said:

For the record I appreciate all the posts going on here, I just want to be able to read them all as well. 

It is fine on my laptop but not so much on my phone. So, I use my laptop.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

2 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Keep it up. It is the Surl. Someone is always going to bitch. 

i wouldn't be bitching if it wasn't making the thread unreadable on mobile.

[MadBurgerMaker 404]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

And the Ukrainians are removing some top-tier Russian stuff, including top-tier tanks, plus irreplaceable stuff like command & control vehicles, comms vehicles, fire control, etc.

Lots and lots of trucks too.  Most of which don't seem to have any armor at all, unless you count the driver/passenger/troops in the back as a sort of ablative armor.

[Schulz2.0 28951]

28 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

This is by Chernobyl.

It looks kind of substandard compared to what our soldiers were doing in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

[bolverk 29671]

2 hours ago, MillerEP said:

Today, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland joined the Global Export Controls Coalition - "a force multiplier in cutting Russia and Belarus off from the commodities, technologies, and software necessary to sustain their aggression" in Ukraine. Updated membership map of the Coalition below

Look out, y'all. Liechtenstein is in the house!

[Sawbonz 27548]

3 hours ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

UKa has already removed over 40 BTG(10 tanks to a BTG) from the board across the Ukraine.

[atomheartbevo 89659]

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

i wouldn't be bitching if it wasn't making the thread unreadable on mobile.

What's weird is if I'm browsing twitter directly on the web on my phone, no problems.

I don't know where the amount becomes unreadable.

Edit: Nevermind, that's really tacky and those are old posts anyways.

Edited April 10, 2022 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89659]

For the Surly %.05ers what impact does this actually have on things

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/russia-first-default-century-looks-073000013.html

Quote

Russia’s first external default in a century now looks all but inevitable after another brutal week for the country’s finances.

First, the Treasury halted dollar debt payments from Russia’s accounts in U.S. banks, ramping up its restrictions on the country. Then, when an attempted hard-currency payment was blocked, Russia breached the terms on two bonds by paying investors rubles instead of dollar

Quote

Russia last defaulted in 1998, but on domestic debt. The last one on foreign debt was in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution. S&P said Saturday that it had declared Russia in a selective default after it used rubles to make a payment on a dollar-denominated bond on April 4.

There’s still uncertainty about what’s next and further twists can’t be ruled out.

The dollar bonds that were serviced in rubles this week have 30-day grace periods, giving Finance Minister Anton Siluanov time to find a workaround or push his argument that this isn’t a default because a payment was technically made. This week he said the rubles transferred in lieu of dollars can be converted for creditors just as soon as the reserves freeze is eased.

“Western countries are trying in every possible way to make Russia declare default,” Siluanov told state news service Tass this week. He also said Russia will use “other mechanisms” to make payments.

In the meantime, the financial world waits for an official judgment on whether a default event has occurred.

Quote

According to Tim Ash, an emerging-markets strategist at Bluebay Asset Management, there will be no quick fix for Russia because sanctions are set to stay and no one will want to do business there.

“Putin has crossed the rubicon with his actions in Ukraine,” he said. “Russia will be in default for perhaps a decade. That means no access to international capital markets, very high costs of borrowing even from the Chinese, no investment, no growth, low living standards. It’s a terrible outlook for Russia and Russians.”

Putin ordering Western assets to be seized ensured that a lot of companies won't want to risk doing business there anytime soon.

[JesusSweatDuck 17781]

Sounds like you fuckers with iPhones using Safari should try to upgrade or switch to a real browser

[Pato del Muerto 52492]

8 minutes ago, JesusSweatDuck said:

Sounds like you fuckers with iPhones using Safari should try to upgrade or switch to a real browser

Happens to me with iPhone running chrome 

[atomheartbevo 89659]

15 minutes ago, JesusSweatDuck said:

Sounds like you fuckers with iPhones using Safari should try to upgrade or switch to a real browser

6 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Happens to me with iPhone running chrome 

Chrome on iOS uses Safari's rendering engine.

[Johnny Chimpo 478]

Happens on safari and duck duck go. I usually use duck duck go but safari can take the length a little more with the Twitter embeds. It cries uncle after a while though. 

[atomheartbevo 89659]

Ukrainian airforce: 13 Russian aerial targets destroyed. Russia lost five UAVs, four missiles, three airplanes, and one helicopter on April 9, according to the Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Seems like their aircraft tallies have been going up lately, which could be coinciding with Starstreaks coming into the theater.

Given that their casualty and armor estimates seem a lot more reliable than many of us originally thought, would be interesting if they can keep up this pace.

It also seems like Russia is flying a lot more UAVs. 

[NorthLoop 14195]

People still use iPhones? 

 

I mean besides my wife and daughter.

Edited April 10, 2022 by NorthLoop

[MillerEP 30455]

 

[Scheiss Meister 8407]

5 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Ukrainian airforce: 13 Russian aerial targets destroyed. Russia lost five UAVs, four missiles, three airplanes, and one helicopter on April 9, according to the Air Force Command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Seems like their aircraft tallies have been going up lately, which could be coinciding with Starstreaks coming into the theater.

Given that their casualty and armor estimates seem a lot more reliable than many of us originally thought, would be interesting if they can keep up this pace.

It also seems like Russia is flying a lot more UAVs. 

Maybe it's that Ukraine is killing more UAVs.

[MillerEP 30455]

^Hopefully that means they're coming around

 

[Stringer 1438]

It’s hilarious that people are reading a thread on a genocide and complaining about how it shows up on their mobile browser.

Glad we are keeping everything in perspective….

[MillerEP 30455]

 

[MillerEP 30455]

I'm going to do just 3 per post, let me know if it freaks out your phones.

[Scheiss Meister 8407]

4 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

^Hopefully that means they're coming around

 

Re the first tweet: they certainly hit an underground store of something flammable, but I don't see the volcanic and sporadic secondary explosions that one usually sees from ammo dumps.  Diesel fuel, maybe?

[atomheartbevo 89659]

MSM is starting to talk about the new Russian theater commander and how he has extensive experience in Syria.

Quote

Dvornikov, 60, was the first commander of Russia’s military operations in Syria, after Putin sent troops there in September 2015 to back the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. During Dvornikov’s command in Syria from September 2015 to June 2016, Russian aircraft backed the Assad regime and its allies as they laid siege to rebel-held eastern Aleppo, bombarding densely populated neighborhoods and causing major civilian casualties. The city fell to Syrian government forces in December 2016.  

Every time I'm scrolling through Rob Lee's twitter feed, and I see something about "served in Syria" I know it's going to be an obituary notice.

"Served in Syria" is like those blue and white striped shirts.  There is nothing special about it anymore, because either Syria was an absolute cakewalk compared to this, or none of them learned a fucking thing there.

And the only cities that the Russians are going to lay waste to these days are Russian-speaking cities for the most part.  Fucking brilliant.

[NorthLoop 14195]

My Ukrainian coworker has been fucking stalwart thorugh this whole thing. She's from Bila Tserkva, which is 40 min SW of Kyiv.. lucky on the geographical scale that they're SW instead of NE. 

When I first started talking to her about this months ago I looked up the history of her town. They were sacked by Ghengis Khan in the 13th century. They lost 22k from Stalin's famine in 1932.. They had their entire Jewish population murdered by the Nazis in 1941. 

This is a town of 200k. That's a little bit smaller than Lubbock, a little bit bigger than Waco. 

This little city has a history that dwarfs anything we have. Right now they're lucky that they were on the west side of the Dneiper to get the treatment that Bucha had. Her whole family is still there. I want to chat with her every day about the shit I read here but I know she won't have the same enthusiasm I have about Bayraktar videos because she's probably just exhausted thinking about all of it. 

Anyways.. there were a few weeks there where I was gonna be asking you fucks for donations to help get her family out. Right now it looks like the orcs wont' be threatening her town for awhile. Let me tell you this. This chick has been through hell as far as worrying about her family for the last month, and she has never not showed up and busted her ass at work - even after we told her she could take as much time off as she needed. 

[MadBurgerMaker 404]

32 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

I'm going to do just 3 per post, let me know if it freaks out your phones.

Its not affecting me in a meaningful way, but is there a way to maybe keep posting as many as you want, but make all but a few of your choosing just regular links instead of the whole thing? Not really sure how to word this.  Too much booze.

 

[956 Worldwide 34710]

“The Mariupol City Council reports on the location where occupiers collect the bodies of dead civilians, with photographs.

According to them, hundreds of bodies daily are brought to similar locations, where they are transferred to mass graves or mobile crematoria.”

 

[Pato del Muerto 52492]

Does this site render things that are spoilered and closed?  Or only when you open them?  If that would work maybe @MillerEP wouldn’t mind doing that. 
 

doesn’t really bother me though, I just ignore the thread for a few hours. 

[atomheartbevo 89659]

[956 Worldwide 34710]

Really good long article on how the “New Iron Curtain” looks and the shift from a tripwire strategy to denial for the Russians in the Baltic Zone.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/03/how-europe-is-entering-a-dark-new-age-of-division

Quote

The new danger is prompting new thinking. “The Nato ‘tripwire’ plan in essence was to be able to retake the Baltics from [bases in] Poland in the event that Russians invaded,” says Kross. “Only now are we seeing a shift in mentality towards actually seriously defending the Baltics in the first place.” At the defence ministry, Salm agrees that the tripwire strategy would mean accepting “parts of the Baltics occupied and cities wiped off the face of the Earth”. He argues that Nato needs to shift to an approach of “deterrence by denial”, or credibly showing Russia’s military planners that they cannot occupy the Baltics: “We need permanent boots-on-the ground, large-scale exercises, a war-fighting division-level command, reinforcement and reserves, and a full air combat power to ensure air supremacy.”