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Posted
4 hours ago, bolverk said:

Summary of the latest from the Institute for the Study of War.

Kremlin rejects possibility of compromise and refuses to discuss ceasefire – ISW

Russia has rejected the possibility of any concessions in future peace talks regarding the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has stated that it will not make compromises, denied the possibility of deploying peacekeepers in Ukraine and dismissed the prospect of a ceasefire through talks.

Source: Institute for the Study of War (ISW)

Details: During a visit to the Moscow branch of the Defenders of the Fatherland Foundation on 6 March, Russia's ruler Vladimir Putin emphasised that Russia will not "give in to anyone" and intends to achieve peace conditions that will provide it with long-term guarantees.

Quote: "Putin has also declared 2025 the 'Year of the Defender of the Fatherland' – underlining Putin's efforts to prioritise militarising Russian society and rallying support behind Russia's war effort in Ukraine in 2025.

Putin stated that Russia 'will not give up' its 'own' territory in future peace negotiations – likely referring to illegally annexed territory in occupied Ukraine."

Details: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated at a press conference that Moscow will not consider any initiatives to deploy European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine. According to Lavrov, such actions would be tantamount to the deployment of NATO forces and therefore Russia would consider this move to be direct involvement of the Alliance in the war.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also stressed that any proposals that might give Ukraine a "respite" on the battlefield are unacceptable to the Kremlin.

Furthermore, Lavrov emphasised that Russia will insist on taking into account the so-called "root causes" of the war, which, as he claims, include halting NATO expansion and security guarantees for Russia. He claimed that US President Donald Trump understands these demands, whereas European countries are ignoring them.

Quote: "Russian officials often invoke the concept of 'root causes' to allude to their demands for NATO to abandon its open-door policy and to blame the West and Ukraine for Putin's decision to invade Ukraine."

To quote the ISW's Key Takeaways on 6 March:

  • Russian leader Vladimir Putin and other Kremlin officials explicitly rejected making any concessions in future peace negotiations or accepting any US, European, or Ukrainian peace proposals and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the possibility of a negotiated ceasefire on 6 March.
  • Russian officials will likely take advantage of the suspension of US military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine to spread a longstanding Russian information operation meant to falsely portray Russian victory as inevitable.
  • The Kremlin welcomed a Trump administration official's recent comments mischaracterising Russia's illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as a "proxy war", and Russian media portrayed the statement as an admission that the United States is a participant in the war.
  • US and Ukrainian delegations will conduct bilateral meetings in Saudi Arabia next week.
  • Ukrainian opposition politicians rejected the possibility of holding elections in Ukraine before the end of the war.
  • European countries continue to announce new military assistance packages and other measures to support the Ukrainian military.
  • Ukrainian forces recently advanced on the Pokrovsk front and Russian forces recently advanced on the Kupiansk, Borova, Siversk, Pokrovsk and Kurakhove fronts.
  • Russian leader Vladimir Putin attempted to assuage Russian fears about conscripts going to war amid continued reports that Russian military units are forcing conscripts to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD).

 

Trump holds grudges - It may be unwise for Putin to tell him to fuck off.

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Posted
17 minutes ago, Bevo said:

 

Trump holds grudges - It may be unwise for Putin to tell him to fuck off.

Counterpoint -- Trump is a bottom bitch when facing anyone who asserts power.  Trump only has "power" when he is punching way, way down.

trump-putin-GettyImages-1000209212.jpg?w

He'll do as he's told.  Because that's what little bitches do.

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Posted
23 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Counterpoint -- Trump is a bottom bitch when facing anyone who asserts power.  Trump only has "power" when he is punching way, way down.

trump-putin-GettyImages-1000209212.jpg?w

He'll do as he's told.  Because that's what little bitches do.

 

c074f298-df53-4097-a546-cf0979e17318_text.gif

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Posted

The reports and videos of Russian troops using a gas pipeline to as a means to get behind the Ukraine troops in the Sudzha area should be taken with a large salt shaker nearby.

I believe the pipeline is a 56” outside diameter pipeline, with a wall thickness of +/- 1.000 inch, making the inside diameter less than 54”. Certainly big enough to walk in, but not without bending over.

The video’s I saw of guys talking and smoking? High probability of BS.

Natural gas always includes richer gas molecules like propane and butane, which tends to condense over time and accumulate in the pipeline. These light hydrocarbons, along with any residual lube oil that is consumed in compressors, tend to leave an oily coating around the entire circumference and length of the pipeline. Any body that has changed oil in a car know what that looks, smells and feels like. Walking through that environment requires fresh air equipment, and you most certainly would not be smoking in there, and you would look and smell like a swamp rat when you came out.

Staying in the p/l for days would require a proportionate amount of air.

Cross country steel pipelines are meant to keep high pressure fluids inside, and there has never been a design basis I’m aware of that includes humans being able to get out from the inside without someone doing something from the outside. Unless your James Bond.  It is possible for them to egress via the “pig launchers/ receivers” at the various above ground stations, but that would require people to open the closures, either by remote control, or manually.  Ukraine would most likely have access to any distributed control system along the pipeline. Opening manually is not a wrench and a cheater bar operation, it would probably require would pneumatic equipment, and impact wrenches are a bit noisy.

No idea how another how well cell phones work inside a closed steel container, or a gps. But coordinated communications between those inside and outside the pipe seems problematic.

I suppose a Seal Team quality force could make it work without anybody knowing, but nothing we’ve seen in the past 3 years tells me the Huns are that force.

Andy Dufresne crawled though 500 yards of sewer. I guess a few Ruskies could do it for a case of vodka.

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Posted

No matter what happens in Kursk, it was always better to be fighting there than in Ukraine. Many Russian people got to see and interact with Ukrainian soldiers and Russian soldiers… 

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Posted

https://www.threads.net/@eugenemcparland/post/DHBcr-3McVo?xmt=AQGzGdqjpQe_n6f6sliyuwNoBMbkIpPihX9hkFdJwxQdKg

Another milestone"40,000+ russian vehicles have been destroyed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.The Ukraine Army continued to stand strong and destroy the enemy"Source: Ministry of Defence of Ukraine

 

https://www.threads.net/@angelica.shalagina/post/DHBeSErIPU2?xmt=AQGzGdqjpQe_n6f6sliyuwNoBMbkIpPihX9hkFdJwxQdKg

‼️Zelenskyy has arrived in Saudi Arabia, writes The Guardian.
Today the president will meet with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.
Ukrdiary

 

^Let's see if this also turns out to be a disaster when the US delegation shows up

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Posted
Just now, MillerEP said:

Today the president will meet with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.
Ukrdiary

 

^Let's see if this also turns out to be a disaster when the US delegation shows up

Zelensky sure as hell better make sure there are no bone saws in the room.

A meeting with the US and the Saudis?  His trust level should be -1000%.

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Posted
On 2/21/2025 at 8:38 AM, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

I've been wondering how Rubio was going to handle all this.  He's the most "traditional Republican" of the whole administration, and his post as SoS puts him in the face of the most non-traditional Republican stance the admin has taken -- buddying up to Russia.  It'll be interesting to see if he can (1) steer policy a little less Russia friendly (2) ends up getting at odds with Trump and having to resign (3) just tries to talk out of both sides of his mouth and survive for four years.

 

 

WaPo: Rubio saying there might be a restart of aid.  Notable is this funny paragraph

Quote

Rubio said the initial suspension of aid “came about because we felt the Ukrainians were not committed” to negotiations to end the three-year war to repel Russia’s invasion, but if that changes, U.S. policy will probably change too, he said Monday as he landed in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

Really?  Because the only thing your two bosses had to say was that Zelensky wasn't thankful enough, and we make foreign policy decisions based on the fee-fees of our leaders.

 

Quote

The Trump administration may resume U.S. military and intelligence support for Ukraine if its leaders commit to a peace process during a high stakes meeting Tuesday in Saudi Arabi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters.

 
 
 

Rubio said the initial suspension of aid “came about because we felt the Ukrainians were not committed” to negotiations to end the three-year war to repel Russia’s invasion, but if that changes, U.S. policy will probably change too, he said Monday as he landed in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

 

“My hope is we’ll have a really good meeting tomorrow and be in a different place,” he added.

 

Rubio’s meeting will be his first with senior Ukrainian officials since the Oval Office blow up between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that resulted in the aid being cut off.

 

The decision stunned Ukrainian officials and alarmed U.S. allies in Europe who are desperately hoping for the talks to restore U.S.-Ukrainian relations as a wave of Russian attacks has continued to hit government and residential buildings across Ukraine.

Ahead of Rubio’s arrival in Jeddah, U.S. officials said they were pleased at the high-level delegation Zelensky chose to send. “The fact that they’re coming here at senior levels is a good indication to us that they want to sit down, and they’re ready to move forward,” a senior State Department official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive talks.

 
 
 

The Ukrainian delegation will be led by Zelensky’s top aide, Andriy Yermak, alongside Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov and Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Pavlo Palisa. Rubio will be joined by White House national security adviser Michael Waltz and Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff.

Zelensky will not attend the meeting but will be in Saudi Arabia to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh.

“These are separate events,” a Ukrainian official told The Washington Post.

 
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top adviser, Andriy Yermak, attend a meeting with Vice President JD Vance during the Munich Security Conference in Germany last month. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

“We hope for results — both in bringing peace closer and in continuing support,” Zelensky said in a video address late Sunday.

Zelensky is under extraordinary pressure to placate the Trump administration and demonstrate support for the president’s diplomatic drive despite his unanswered push for a U.S. security guarantee that would deter Russia from reinvading Ukraine.

 
 
 

Trump has insisted that the United States be repaid for the more than $100 billion it has spent in its support for Kyiv since Russia invaded more than three years ago. To that end, Kyiv and Washington are negotiating a deal that would provide the United States access to rare earth minerals in Ukraine that U.S. officials say will provide a type of security guarantee for Ukraine given the presence of U.S. businesspeople — an arrangement many Ukrainian officials view as insufficient.

The Trump administration has ruled out allowing Ukraine into NATO, viewing that as placing new burdens on the United States and obviating a path to peace with Moscow.

Rubio emphasized that the conflict in Ukraine has calcified into a war of attrition and that neither Russia nor Ukraine can prevail militarily. He said both sides would have to accept concessions but that the first objective for U.S. officials was understanding Ukraine’s position.

 

“The most important thing that we have to leave here with is a strong sense that Ukraine is prepared to do difficult things — like the Russians will have to do difficult things — to end this conflict,” he said.

Rubio said the mineral deal was not a core focus of the meetings in Saudi Arabia, but emphasized that “it’s certainly a deal the president wants to see done … doesn’t necessarily have to be done tomorrow.”

Ukrainian officials have bristled at the way the Trump administration has handled the negotiations, in particular by excluding them from the initial talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.

Trump, who called Zelensky a “dictator” who was ungrateful for U.S. support, has softened his tone in recent days.

 

On Sunday, when asked whether he would consider lifting the intelligence pause, Trump said “we just about have. I mean, we really just about have, and we want to do anything we can to get Ukraine to be serious about getting something done.”

 
 

Among the types of intelligence that have been suspended is the provision of satellite imagery services used by Ukrainian artillery and drone units to assess quality targets and keep tabs on Russian positions and depots.

Rubio clarified that the Ukrainians are “already receiving defensive intelligence information as we speak.”

The United States also stopped the transfer of any of the $3.85 billion in remaining military equipment available for Ukraine as well as halted the delivery of weapons already in transit after having been approved by the Biden administration.

“The pause in aid broadly is something I hope we can resolve, obviously what happens tomorrow will be key to that,” Rubio added.

 

Posted

Also, 64D chess: Trump is a great ally by giving a boost to Zelensky!  From NYT

Trump’s Attacks Give Zelensky a Bit of a Reprieve at Home

The Ukrainian leader’s approval rating is rising, and critics have backed off after he was humiliated and criticized by President Trump, who has also demanded new elections in Ukraine.

 

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Posted
7 minutes ago, SuingToGetAMessageBoard? said:

Also, 64D chess: Trump is a great ally by giving a boost to Zelensky!  From NYT

Trump’s Attacks Give Zelensky a Bit of a Reprieve at Home

The Ukrainian leader’s approval rating is rising, and critics have backed off after he was humiliated and criticized by President Trump, who has also demanded new elections in Ukraine.

 

The US is truly unifying the western world, and is unifying the positions of the people within those countries.

Unfortunately, what is unifying them is their opposition to and hatred of the US.  Nothing draws folks together like a common enemy.  And that common enemy is....us.

Jesus monkeyfuck, the fucking stupidity.

4 minutes ago, Ghost of NMAS said:

Zelensky should demand new elections in the U.S. with international oversight

That would be the balls thing to do....but he's also a leader who is going to do what it takes to pursue his country's interests, not take the impetuous and juvenile path.

I know, that seems completely alien to those of us who live in Trumpistan, but there you are.

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Posted
8 hours ago, Schulz2.0 said:

 

If Russia is making slight gains in Kursk but losing gains in Donetsk, sounds like they made the choice to funnel resources into Kursk and can't handle both at the same time time.  It's not good for the Russians if they can't do both, not good in any way.

It'd be like the US invading Mexico, Mexico then pushing towards San Antonio, the US having to pull troops away from invading Mexico to defend/retake areas southwest of San Antonio, etc.

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Posted
8 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

If Russia is making slight gains in Kursk but losing gains in Donetsk, sounds like they made the choice to funnel resources into Kursk and can't handle both at the same time time.  It's not good for the Russians if they can't do both, not good in any way.

It'd be like the US invading Mexico, Mexico then pushing towards San Antonio, the US having to pull troops away from invading Mexico to defend/retake areas southwest of San Antonio, etc.

The gains in Kursk have largely been credited to the 10,000 new NK troops that replaced the original NK troops in Kursk.

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Posted
2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

If Russia is making slight gains in Kursk but losing gains in Donetsk, sounds like they made the choice to funnel resources into Kursk and can't handle both at the same time time.  It's not good for the Russians if they can't do both, not good in any way.

It'd be like the US invading Mexico, Mexico then pushing towards San Antonio, the US having to pull troops away from invading Mexico to defend/retake areas southwest of San Antonio, etc.

Does Ukraine have an Oklahoma, a Florida or an Ohio?  Because a trade might be there for the taking.

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Posted
4 hours ago, Schulz2.0 said:

The gains in Kursk have largely been credited to the 10,000 new NK troops that replaced the original NK troops in Kursk.

Then that's even worse, because there should be no excuse for Russia to lose anything in Donetsk if they are not moving pieces around the board like that.

Posted
1 hour ago, Parliament said:

Does Ukraine have an Oklahoma, a Florida or an Ohio?  Because a trade might be there for the taking.

I don't know about Ukraine, but Russia's got a dozen of them.

"He says he's already got one."

 

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Posted
9 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

The US is truly unifying the western world, and is unifying the positions of the people within those countries.

Unfortunately, what is unifying them is their opposition to and hatred of the US.  Nothing draws folks together like a common enemy.  And that common enemy is....us.

Jesus monkeyfuck, the fucking stupidity.

That would be the balls thing to do....but he's also a leader who is going to do what it takes to pursue his country's interests, not take the impetuous and juvenile path.

I know, that seems completely alien to those of us who live in Trumpistan, but there you are.


 

Thirty nations plan on meeting in Paris to discuss an international security force for Ukraine. But the US is not among them. For obvious reasons.

Quote

Military officials from more than 30 nations will take part in Paris talks on the creation of an international security force for Ukraine, a French military official said Monday.

Such an international force would aim to dissuade Russia from launching another offensive after any ceasefire in Ukraine comes into effect.

Quote

Army chiefs or their representatives from nearly all of the 32 nations of the NATO military alliance will attend the Paris talks — with the notable exception being the United States.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/paris-planning-talks-on-security-force-for-ukraine-expected-to-draw-more-than-30-nations

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Posted

image.thumb.png.85f1bf8bb6f6f46f00ea84e1a4c03248.png
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/world/europe/ukraine-russia-moscow-war-drones.html

Quote

 

Russian officials said Ukraine attacked Moscow before dawn on Tuesday with its largest long-range drone bombardment of the war, as both sides stepped up attacks ahead of talks intended to end three years of fighting.

Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said the attack was the largest against the city since the start of the war more than three years ago. At least two people were killed and 18 others were injured, the Russian authorities said, and the city’s four international airports, serving a metropolitan area of 21 million, were forced to temporarily suspend operations.

The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed to have shot down at least 91 drones in the region around Moscow and more than 240 drones directed at other targets across the country. The Ukrainian military did not have any immediate comment on the strikes.

President Vladimir V. Putin was briefed on the attack, according to Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman. Mr. Peskov said Russian air defenses were doing “a great job” but told reporters that the authorities “must remain on guard” because attacks would likely continue.

The predawn strikes — just hours before high-level delegations from Kyiv and the United States were scheduled to meet in Saudi Arabia to discuss a possible path toward ending the war — appeared intended to serve as a reminder that despite suffering attacks and enduring huge losses, Ukraine can still hit back at Russia.

Ukraine has proposed an immediate truce in the air, saying it would immediately stop long-range strikes into Russia if Moscow agreed to an equivalent halt.

That plan, supported by European nations, including France, is envisioned as a first step in building trust ahead of talks about the overall conflict, in which over a million Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded.

Ukrainian officials are expected to raise it again when they meet with U.S. officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. In addition to a partial truce in the air, Ukraine was also expected to press the case for a halt to strikes on the Black Sea to gauge whether Moscow was willing to take any steps to end the fighting.

When asked on Tuesday whether Moscow would agree to such a plan, Mr. Peskov said it was “impossible to talk about positions now” and that Russia expected the American side to inform Moscow about the results of talks with Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine plans to produce 30,000 long-range strike drones and 3,000 long-range missiles this year, building its domestic arms-making abilities even as U.S. military assistance remains suspended.

Russia has maintained its relentless bombardment of Ukrainian civilian and military institutions over the course of the war. Nearly every night in recent weeks, Russia has launched over 100 drones at targets across Ukraine, including at Kyiv, the capital.

The assaults — which frequently include a combination of ballistic and cruise missiles in an effort to saturate Ukrainian air defenses — persisted overnight Monday and into Tuesday.

The Ukrainian Air Force said that the latest attack from Russia included 126 drones and one ballistic missile.

Explosions echoed across Kyiv around midnight as air defense teams scrambled, and the Ukrainian Air Force said it shot down or disabled most of the drones as well as the missile.

At least one person was killed when a Russian drone struck a warehouse in Kharkiv and at least 17 others were injured in other attacks across the country, the Ukrainian authorities said. Drones hit the port city of Odesa in southern Ukraine, with the local authorities reporting fires in multiple locations.

Since President Trump spoke by telephone with President Vladimir V. Putin on Feb. 12 — the first official contact between the heads of state for the United States and Russia in years — more than 100 civilians have been killed in Russian strikes, according to data compiled by The New York Times based on reports from the Ukrainian authorities.

The intensifying strikes have been accompanied by shifting dynamics on the front lines, with Russian forces, assisted by thousands of North Korean soldiers, retaking a large part of the territory in Russia’s Kursk region that had been occupied by Ukrainian forces. In a statement on Tuesday, Russian defense ministry said that its forces had retaken more than 35 square miles of land in the Kursk region. That claim could not be independently verified.

Kyiv had hoped to use its control of that portion of land as leverage in any negotiations to end the war, but the recent developments may have changed that calculus, because the cost of holding the territory could outweigh any diplomatic gain.

With the Ukrainian salient in Kursk now collapsed to an area around Sudzha, about six miles across the border, and its supply lines under constant attack, their hold on the area is increasingly precarious.

The top Ukrainian military commander, Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Monday night that Kyiv was dispatching reinforcements. He rejected Russian claims that a large contingent of Ukrainian soldiers were at risk of encirclement.

“A decision was made to reinforce our group with the necessary forces and resources, including electronic warfare and drones,” he said. “Currently, there is no threat of encirclement of our units in the Kursk region.”

At the same time, there are signs that the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine has stalled. Russian forces have not advanced in over a week and Ukrainian forces have engaged in limited counterattacks to regain small patches of land, according to Ukrainian soldiers and military analysts who use combat footage to track the daily movements along the front.

In Moscow, railway tracks near the Domodedovo airport south of Moscow were damaged. At least 20 cars were burned at a parking lot in the nearby town of Domodedovo, according to Andrei Vorobyev, the region’s governor, who issued a statement. A 38-year-old security guard died on site because of the attack, Mr. Vorobyev said.

 

 

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Posted
19 minutes ago, HRSchenker said:

Holy shit this was a scary thing to wake up and see. I thought it was a ground invasion at first. 

Screenshot_20250311_063831_One UI Home.jpg

That would be awesome. Don't be a pussy. 

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Posted

This war might end badly, but it won't change the fact that Russians are all inbreeds without souls.  They send their own straight into machinegun fire, and leave their wounded to die.  Or even execute their wounded, as Mr. Vance says above.

Ukrainians are the opposite.  They spend millions of dollars putting veterans back together.  Like any human people would do.
 

 

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Posted
33 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

Depends.  Any joints in the hood that sell a great deconstructed burger?

My downstairs bathroom was a “no-go zone” after the last time I had one of those. 
I regret nothing. 

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