Sure.
I mock the rhetorical pose because why obfuscate when he would could just own up to the "all actions taken against the Evil Empire are justified" position?
Here is what peace loving Russian liberation looks like
- Thread starter SchlongConery
- Start date
I mock the rhetorical pose because why obfuscate when he would could just own up to the "all actions taken against the Evil Empire are justified" position?
There is no obfuscation because the "evil empire" IS the reason for the war.
Russia is the fox in the hen house. But I am more concerned with who opened the doors for the fox in the first place. That is the real culprit
I wonder if this polecat found itself in a Russian trench whether it would be killed, tortured or raped first?
So according to you NATO has been strengthening Russia this whole time and providing opportunities for it to exercise evil intent.But I am more concerned with who opened the doors for the fox in the first place. That is the real culprit
Interesting.
Yes, and now Putin has fallen into NATO's trap as he had no choice but to invade and suffer an embarrassing loss to the biggest baddest country in the world.
NATO has clearly outplayed Putin.
RUSSIA’S MILITARY PERFORMANCE DOESN’T MATCH THE PROPAGANDA
Ted Snider
May 3, 2023
American government and media statements have led the public to believe that the Russian military has been shockingly ineffective and there should confident optimism for a Ukrainian victory. Ukrainians have indeed fought courageously and performed above expectation. But there has been a vast gulf between private and public assessments. Recent leaks have confirmed what has long been suggested: there is a need to re-evaluate the performance of the Russian army and to recalibrate the optimistic expectations.
The ridiculing and mocking of the Russian military has been possible only because of a deliberate self-delusion that demanded turning away from two important admissions.
First, in the three quarters of a century since the United States became the world’s dominant power, it has seldom decisively won a war or fully achieved its explicit policy goal for going to war. Honestly evaluating Russia’s military performance requires comparing it to the exemplar of recent American wars. The United States has consistently failed to defeat armies far more ragtag than the modern Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Since Vietnam, the United States has failed to achieve its military and political goals in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya. After twenty years of fighting in Afghanistan, the U.S. was forced to withdraw. They were in disarray; the Taliban is back in power. The United States has twice withdrawn from Iraq because their government refused to capitulate to Status of Forces Agreements. The first withdrawal left Saddam Hussein in power; the second removed him and left Iran (not the U.S.) strengthened in Iraq. The war in Libya left a failed state to bleed weapons into extremist movements throughout North Africa. In none of these wars did the United States leave victorious nor with their foreign policy objectives achieved. Each of them left a government in power that was not pro-American. The war in Syria has also left Bashar al-Assad in power.
If the Russian military has fared badly against the modern Ukrainian army, it has fared no worse than the United States has against much less modern adversaries.
The second point is the reason why Russia is fighting such a modern Ukrainian army. Ukraine has become a de facto member of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies are providing everything but the bodies in the war against Russia. Moscow is not pulling off this level of performance against Kiev: it is pulling off this level of performance against the combined resources of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies have provided and maintained the weapons, trained the Ukrainian soldiers to use them, and provided the intelligence on where to target them. The U.S. is providing “stepped up feeds of intelligence about the position of Russian forces, highlighting weaknesses in the Russian lines.” The U.S. has essentially assumed planning, conducting war-games, and “suggesting” which “avenues…were likely to be more successful.” In March, the U.S. hosted members of the Ukrainian military at an American military base in Germany for war games to strategize for the next phase of the war. In April, they “held tabletop exercises with Ukrainian military leaders to demonstrate how different offensive scenarios could play out” in the expected counter offensive, for which the U.S. has “worked” with Ukraine “in terms of their surprise,” according to General Christopher Cavoli.
But even though Russia is facing an enhanced Ukrainian military, recent leaks confirm what private assessments have long suggested: Ukraine’s losses have been understated while its prospects have been overstated, and Russia’s losses have been overstated while its achievements have been understated.
Long before the recent leaks revealed that many more Ukrainian soldiers than Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded on the battlefield, that Ukraine will be out of antiaircraft missiles by early
May, that they are short of troops and ammunition and their counteroffensive will fall “well short” of its goals, attaining, at best, only “modest territorial gains,” U.S. generals and government officials had been quietly admitting as much.
In February, The Washington Post reported that privately the U.S. intelligence’s “sobering assessment” that retaking Crimea “is beyond the capability of Ukraine’s army” has been “reiterated to multiple committees on Capitol Hill over the last several weeks.” As early as November, 2022, U.S. officials shared that assessment with Ukraine, suggesting they “start thinking about [their] realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea.” That same month, western military analysts began to warn of an “inflection point” at which Ukraine’s battlefield gains were at an apex. And on January 21, 2023, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said publicly that Ukraine would not be able to retake all of its territory.
But it was not only that Ukraine’s ambitions had been inflated and their prospects overstated. Their losses had also been understated. Despite public claims of parity in losses or worse for Russia, the leaked reports of a much higher ratio of Ukrainian deaths and casualties to Russian deaths and casualties had been forecasted by military analysts who frequently put the ratio of soldiers killed at closer to 7:1 or 10:1 Ukrainian versus Russian losses. Der Spiegel has reported that German intelligence is “alarmed” by the “high losses suffered by the Ukrainian army” in the battle for Bakhmut. They told German politicians in a secret meeting that the loss of life for Ukrainian soldiers is in “three-digit number” every day on that battleground alone. The Washington Post has reported that the most highly trained and experienced Ukrainian soldiers are “all dead or wounded.”
And it is not only Ukrainian losses that may have been understated. Russian losses, ineptitude, and material setbacks may have been just as overstated. After suffering high casualties at the beginning of
the war, Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary, says Russia began to pursue a more methodical battlefield strategy and lowered their losses.
On April 26, General Cavoli, the commander of United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, gave a congressional audience of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee a report that is very different from what they’d been told just a month earlier. The public is constantly told that Putin is throwing his soldiers into a meatgrinder. General Mark Milley recently reported that Russian troops are “getting slaughtered.” He told the House Armed Services Committee in late March, “It’s a slaughter-fest for the Russians. They’re getting hammered in the vicinity of Bahkmut.”
But in April, General Cavoli told that same body, “The Russian ground force has been degenerated somewhat by this conflict; although it is bigger today than it was at the beginning of the conflict.” And it is not only the ground force. Cavoli went on to report, “The air force has lost very little: they’ve lost eighty planes. They have another one thousand fighters and fighter bombers. The navy has lost one ship.”
And as for the larger Russian military, Cavoli said, “Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict…despite all of the efforts they’ve undertaken inside Ukraine.”
Historian Geoffrey Roberts, an authority on Soviet military history, told me:
“Russia’s Armed Forces have made many mistakes and suffered severe setbacks during the course of its war with Ukraine and NATO, but overall it has performed very well. Like the Red Army during the Second World War, the Russian military has shown itself to be a resilient, adaptable, creative, and highly effective learning organization—a modern war-making machine whose lessons and experience—positive and negative—will be studied by General Staffs and military academies for generations to come.”
After initial territorial setbacks, the Ukrainian military countered with two shocking victories in Kharkiv and Kherson provinces. But in each of those cases, Russia seems to have either decided to leave or redeployed, offering little defense. Military analyst and ret. Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis has pointed out that in each situation where the Russian military “chose to stand and fight, Ukraine has not defeated them.” Russia has not lost a battle it has chosen to fight.
Since then, the Russian military has settled itself in Bakhmut where, like death’s maw, it has devoured everyone Kiev has sent in to displace it. A Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut has said that “the exchange rate of trading our lives for theirs favors the Russians. If this goes on like this, we could run out.” Daniel Davis has pointed out that, even if Ukraine were to launch and win a counteroffensive, the rate of casualties and deaths would be so high, they would “have spent [their] last remaining force with which to conduct offensives” or future operations. Military historian Geoffrey Roberts recently told an interviewer, “if the war continues for much longer, I am worried that Ukraine will collapse as a state.”
Professor Hill argued in November 2022 that “had Zelensky’s Ukrainian government been willing to negotiate back in April [2022] then the eventual outcome on the ground would probably have ended up being better for Ukraine than is likely to be the case today or in the future.” It’s a prognosis, he told me, that still stands.
The Ukrainian military may have performed above expectation, and the Russian military may have performed below expectation. But recent statements, both leaked and on the record, suggest the need for an updated, more sincere evaluation. Russia is not struggling only against the Ukrainian Armed Forces: they are struggling against a military seriously swollen by NATO resources, training,
and planning. And even still, they are faring no worse than the U.S. military has fared against much less equipped, trained, and prepared forces over the past several decades. The dismissive mocking of the Russian military has been helped by underestimating Ukrainian losses, overestimating Ukrainian capabilities, and by overestimating Russian losses and degeneration and underestimating Russian capabilities and achievements.
Both senior U.S. military leadership and major western media must begin reassessing the Russian military and its capabilities for what they are, instead of how narratives wish them to be.
libertarianinstitute.org
Ted Snider
May 3, 2023
American government and media statements have led the public to believe that the Russian military has been shockingly ineffective and there should confident optimism for a Ukrainian victory. Ukrainians have indeed fought courageously and performed above expectation. But there has been a vast gulf between private and public assessments. Recent leaks have confirmed what has long been suggested: there is a need to re-evaluate the performance of the Russian army and to recalibrate the optimistic expectations.
The ridiculing and mocking of the Russian military has been possible only because of a deliberate self-delusion that demanded turning away from two important admissions.
First, in the three quarters of a century since the United States became the world’s dominant power, it has seldom decisively won a war or fully achieved its explicit policy goal for going to war. Honestly evaluating Russia’s military performance requires comparing it to the exemplar of recent American wars. The United States has consistently failed to defeat armies far more ragtag than the modern Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Since Vietnam, the United States has failed to achieve its military and political goals in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya. After twenty years of fighting in Afghanistan, the U.S. was forced to withdraw. They were in disarray; the Taliban is back in power. The United States has twice withdrawn from Iraq because their government refused to capitulate to Status of Forces Agreements. The first withdrawal left Saddam Hussein in power; the second removed him and left Iran (not the U.S.) strengthened in Iraq. The war in Libya left a failed state to bleed weapons into extremist movements throughout North Africa. In none of these wars did the United States leave victorious nor with their foreign policy objectives achieved. Each of them left a government in power that was not pro-American. The war in Syria has also left Bashar al-Assad in power.
If the Russian military has fared badly against the modern Ukrainian army, it has fared no worse than the United States has against much less modern adversaries.
The second point is the reason why Russia is fighting such a modern Ukrainian army. Ukraine has become a de facto member of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies are providing everything but the bodies in the war against Russia. Moscow is not pulling off this level of performance against Kiev: it is pulling off this level of performance against the combined resources of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies have provided and maintained the weapons, trained the Ukrainian soldiers to use them, and provided the intelligence on where to target them. The U.S. is providing “stepped up feeds of intelligence about the position of Russian forces, highlighting weaknesses in the Russian lines.” The U.S. has essentially assumed planning, conducting war-games, and “suggesting” which “avenues…were likely to be more successful.” In March, the U.S. hosted members of the Ukrainian military at an American military base in Germany for war games to strategize for the next phase of the war. In April, they “held tabletop exercises with Ukrainian military leaders to demonstrate how different offensive scenarios could play out” in the expected counter offensive, for which the U.S. has “worked” with Ukraine “in terms of their surprise,” according to General Christopher Cavoli.
But even though Russia is facing an enhanced Ukrainian military, recent leaks confirm what private assessments have long suggested: Ukraine’s losses have been understated while its prospects have been overstated, and Russia’s losses have been overstated while its achievements have been understated.
Long before the recent leaks revealed that many more Ukrainian soldiers than Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded on the battlefield, that Ukraine will be out of antiaircraft missiles by early
May, that they are short of troops and ammunition and their counteroffensive will fall “well short” of its goals, attaining, at best, only “modest territorial gains,” U.S. generals and government officials had been quietly admitting as much.
In February, The Washington Post reported that privately the U.S. intelligence’s “sobering assessment” that retaking Crimea “is beyond the capability of Ukraine’s army” has been “reiterated to multiple committees on Capitol Hill over the last several weeks.” As early as November, 2022, U.S. officials shared that assessment with Ukraine, suggesting they “start thinking about [their] realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea.” That same month, western military analysts began to warn of an “inflection point” at which Ukraine’s battlefield gains were at an apex. And on January 21, 2023, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said publicly that Ukraine would not be able to retake all of its territory.
But it was not only that Ukraine’s ambitions had been inflated and their prospects overstated. Their losses had also been understated. Despite public claims of parity in losses or worse for Russia, the leaked reports of a much higher ratio of Ukrainian deaths and casualties to Russian deaths and casualties had been forecasted by military analysts who frequently put the ratio of soldiers killed at closer to 7:1 or 10:1 Ukrainian versus Russian losses. Der Spiegel has reported that German intelligence is “alarmed” by the “high losses suffered by the Ukrainian army” in the battle for Bakhmut. They told German politicians in a secret meeting that the loss of life for Ukrainian soldiers is in “three-digit number
And it is not only Ukrainian losses that may have been understated. Russian losses, ineptitude, and material setbacks may have been just as overstated. After suffering high casualties at the beginning of
the war, Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary, says Russia began to pursue a more methodical battlefield strategy and lowered their losses.
On April 26, General Cavoli, the commander of United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, gave a congressional audience of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee a report that is very different from what they’d been told just a month earlier. The public is constantly told that Putin is throwing his soldiers into a meatgrinder. General Mark Milley recently reported that Russian troops are “getting slaughtered.” He told the House Armed Services Committee in late March, “It’s a slaughter-fest for the Russians. They’re getting hammered in the vicinity of Bahkmut.”
But in April, General Cavoli told that same body, “The Russian ground force has been degenerated somewhat by this conflict; although it is bigger today than it was at the beginning of the conflict.” And it is not only the ground force. Cavoli went on to report, “The air force has lost very little: they’ve lost eighty planes. They have another one thousand fighters and fighter bombers. The navy has lost one ship.”
And as for the larger Russian military, Cavoli said, “Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict…despite all of the efforts they’ve undertaken inside Ukraine.”
Historian Geoffrey Roberts, an authority on Soviet military history, told me:
“Russia’s Armed Forces have made many mistakes and suffered severe setbacks during the course of its war with Ukraine and NATO, but overall it has performed very well. Like the Red Army during the Second World War, the Russian military has shown itself to be a resilient, adaptable, creative, and highly effective learning organization—a modern war-making machine whose lessons and experience—positive and negative—will be studied by General Staffs and military academies for generations to come.”
After initial territorial setbacks, the Ukrainian military countered with two shocking victories in Kharkiv and Kherson provinces. But in each of those cases, Russia seems to have either decided to leave or redeployed, offering little defense. Military analyst and ret. Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis has pointed out that in each situation where the Russian military “chose to stand and fight, Ukraine has not defeated them.” Russia has not lost a battle it has chosen to fight.
Since then, the Russian military has settled itself in Bakhmut where, like death’s maw, it has devoured everyone Kiev has sent in to displace it. A Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut has said that “the exchange rate of trading our lives for theirs favors the Russians. If this goes on like this, we could run out.” Daniel Davis has pointed out that, even if Ukraine were to launch and win a counteroffensive, the rate of casualties and deaths would be so high, they would “have spent [their] last remaining force with which to conduct offensives” or future operations. Military historian Geoffrey Roberts recently told an interviewer, “if the war continues for much longer, I am worried that Ukraine will collapse as a state.”
Professor Hill argued in November 2022 that “had Zelensky’s Ukrainian government been willing to negotiate back in April [2022] then the eventual outcome on the ground would probably have ended up being better for Ukraine than is likely to be the case today or in the future.” It’s a prognosis, he told me, that still stands.
The Ukrainian military may have performed above expectation, and the Russian military may have performed below expectation. But recent statements, both leaked and on the record, suggest the need for an updated, more sincere evaluation. Russia is not struggling only against the Ukrainian Armed Forces: they are struggling against a military seriously swollen by NATO resources, training,
and planning. And even still, they are faring no worse than the U.S. military has fared against much less equipped, trained, and prepared forces over the past several decades. The dismissive mocking of the Russian military has been helped by underestimating Ukrainian losses, overestimating Ukrainian capabilities, and by overestimating Russian losses and degeneration and underestimating Russian capabilities and achievements.
Both senior U.S. military leadership and major western media must begin reassessing the Russian military and its capabilities for what they are, instead of how narratives wish them to be.
Russia's Military Performance Doesn't Match the Propaganda | The Libertarian Institute
American government and media statements have led the public to believe that the Russian military has been shockingly ineffective and there should be confident optimism for a Ukrainian victory. Ukrainians have indeed fought courageously and performed above expectation. But there has been a vast...
libertarianinstitute.org
Last edited:
The proliferation of the modern weaponry and Russia 's failure to establish air supremacy has turn this conflict into a bloody stalemate. An excellent lesson for China in their upcoming invasion of Taiwan that, unless they can negate the Taiwanese and American air assets, all they'll accomplish will be sending a lot of made in China hardware to the bottom of the Taiwan strait.RUSSIA’S MILITARY PERFORMANCE DOESN’T MATCH THE PROPAGANDA
Ted Snider
May 3, 2023
American government and media statements have led the public to believe that the Russian military has been shockingly ineffective and there should confident optimism for a Ukrainian victory. Ukrainians have indeed fought courageously and performed above expectation. But there has been a vast gulf between private and public assessments. Recent leaks have confirmed what has long been suggested: there is a need to re-evaluate the performance of the Russian army and to recalibrate the optimistic expectations.
The ridiculing and mocking of the Russian military has been possible only because of a deliberate self-delusion that demanded turning away from two important admissions.
First, in the three quarters of a century since the United States became the world’s dominant power, it has seldom decisively won a war or fully achieved its explicit policy goal for going to war. Honestly evaluating Russia’s military performance requires comparing it to the exemplar of recent American wars. The United States has consistently failed to defeat armies far more ragtag than the modern Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Since Vietnam, the United States has failed to achieve its military and political goals in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Libya. After twenty years of fighting in Afghanistan, the U.S. was forced to withdraw. They were in disarray; the Taliban is back in power. The United States has twice withdrawn from Iraq because their government refused to capitulate to Status of Forces Agreements. The first withdrawal left Saddam Hussein in power; the second removed him and left Iran (not the U.S.) strengthened in Iraq. The war in Libya left a failed state to bleed weapons into extremist movements throughout North Africa. In none of these wars did the United States leave victorious nor with their foreign policy objectives achieved. Each of them left a government in power that was not pro-American. The war in Syria has also left Bashar al-Assad in power.
If the Russian military has fared badly against the modern Ukrainian army, it has fared no worse than the United States has against much less modern adversaries.
The second point is the reason why Russia is fighting such a modern Ukrainian army. Ukraine has become a de facto member of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies are providing everything but the bodies in the war against Russia. Moscow is not pulling off this level of performance against Kiev: it is pulling off this level of performance against the combined resources of NATO. The United States and its NATO allies have provided and maintained the weapons, trained the Ukrainian soldiers to use them, and provided the intelligence on where to target them. The U.S. is providing “stepped up feeds of intelligence about the position of Russian forces, highlighting weaknesses in the Russian lines.” The U.S. has essentially assumed planning, conducting war-games, and “suggesting” which “avenues…were likely to be more successful.” In March, the U.S. hosted members of the Ukrainian military at an American military base in Germany for war games to strategize for the next phase of the war. In April, they “held tabletop exercises with Ukrainian military leaders to demonstrate how different offensive scenarios could play out” in the expected counter offensive, for which the U.S. has “worked” with Ukraine “in terms of their surprise,” according to General Christopher Cavoli.
But even though Russia is facing an enhanced Ukrainian military, recent leaks confirm what private assessments have long suggested: Ukraine’s losses have been understated while its prospects have been overstated, and Russia’s losses have been overstated while its achievements have been understated.
Long before the recent leaks revealed that many more Ukrainian soldiers than Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded on the battlefield, that Ukraine will be out of antiaircraft missiles by early
May, that they are short of troops and ammunition and their counteroffensive will fall “well short” of its goals, attaining, at best, only “modest territorial gains,” U.S. generals and government officials had been quietly admitting as much.
In February, The Washington Post reported that privately the U.S. intelligence’s “sobering assessment” that retaking Crimea “is beyond the capability of Ukraine’s army” has been “reiterated to multiple committees on Capitol Hill over the last several weeks.” As early as November, 2022, U.S. officials shared that assessment with Ukraine, suggesting they “start thinking about [their] realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea.” That same month, western military analysts began to warn of an “inflection point” at which Ukraine’s battlefield gains were at an apex. And on January 21, 2023, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said publicly that Ukraine would not be able to retake all of its territory.
But it was not only that Ukraine’s ambitions had been inflated and their prospects overstated. Their losses had also been understated. Despite public claims of parity in losses or worse for Russia, the leaked reports of a much higher ratio of Ukrainian deaths and casualties to Russian deaths and casualties had been forecasted by military analysts who frequently put the ratio of soldiers killed at closer to 7:1 or 10:1 Ukrainian versus Russian losses. Der Spiegel has reported that German intelligence is “alarmed” by the “high losses suffered by the Ukrainian army” in the battle for Bakhmut. They told German politicians in a secret meeting that the loss of life for Ukrainian soldiers is in “three-digit number”every day on that battleground alone. The Washington Post has reported that the most highly trained and experienced Ukrainian soldiers are “all dead or wounded.”
And it is not only Ukrainian losses that may have been understated. Russian losses, ineptitude, and material setbacks may have been just as overstated. After suffering high casualties at the beginning of
the war, Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary, says Russia began to pursue a more methodical battlefield strategy and lowered their losses.
On April 26, General Cavoli, the commander of United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, gave a congressional audience of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee a report that is very different from what they’d been told just a month earlier. The public is constantly told that Putin is throwing his soldiers into a meatgrinder. General Mark Milley recently reported that Russian troops are “getting slaughtered.” He told the House Armed Services Committee in late March, “It’s a slaughter-fest for the Russians. They’re getting hammered in the vicinity of Bahkmut.”
But in April, General Cavoli told that same body, “The Russian ground force has been degenerated somewhat by this conflict; although it is bigger today than it was at the beginning of the conflict.” And it is not only the ground force. Cavoli went on to report, “The air force has lost very little: they’ve lost eighty planes. They have another one thousand fighters and fighter bombers. The navy has lost one ship.”
And as for the larger Russian military, Cavoli said, “Much of the Russian military has not been affected negatively by this conflict…despite all of the efforts they’ve undertaken inside Ukraine.”
Historian Geoffrey Roberts, an authority on Soviet military history, told me:
“Russia’s Armed Forces have made many mistakes and suffered severe setbacks during the course of its war with Ukraine and NATO, but overall it has performed very well. Like the Red Army during the Second World War, the Russian military has shown itself to be a resilient, adaptable, creative, and highly effective learning organization—a modern war-making machine whose lessons and experience—positive and negative—will be studied by General Staffs and military academies for generations to come.”
After initial territorial setbacks, the Ukrainian military countered with two shocking victories in Kharkiv and Kherson provinces. But in each of those cases, Russia seems to have either decided to leave or redeployed, offering little defense. Military analyst and ret. Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis has pointed out that in each situation where the Russian military “chose to stand and fight, Ukraine has not defeated them.” Russia has not lost a battle it has chosen to fight.
Since then, the Russian military has settled itself in Bakhmut where, like death’s maw, it has devoured everyone Kiev has sent in to displace it. A Ukrainian commander in Bakhmut has said that “the exchange rate of trading our lives for theirs favors the Russians. If this goes on like this, we could run out.” Daniel Davis has pointed out that, even if Ukraine were to launch and win a counteroffensive, the rate of casualties and deaths would be so high, they would “have spent [their] last remaining force with which to conduct offensives” or future operations. Military historian Geoffrey Roberts recently told an interviewer, “if the war continues for much longer, I am worried that Ukraine will collapse as a state.”
Professor Hill argued in November 2022 that “had Zelensky’s Ukrainian government been willing to negotiate back in April [2022] then the eventual outcome on the ground would probably have ended up being better for Ukraine than is likely to be the case today or in the future.” It’s a prognosis, he told me, that still stands.
The Ukrainian military may have performed above expectation, and the Russian military may have performed below expectation. But recent statements, both leaked and on the record, suggest the need for an updated, more sincere evaluation. Russia is not struggling only against the Ukrainian Armed Forces: they are struggling against a military seriously swollen by NATO resources, training,
and planning. And even still, they are faring no worse than the U.S. military has fared against much less equipped, trained, and prepared forces over the past several decades. The dismissive mocking of the Russian military has been helped by underestimating Ukrainian losses, overestimating Ukrainian capabilities, and by overestimating Russian losses and degeneration and underestimating Russian capabilities and achievements.
Both senior U.S. military leadership and major western media must begin reassessing the Russian military and its capabilities for what they are, instead of how narratives wish them to be.
Russia's Military Performance Doesn't Match the Propaganda | The Libertarian Institute
American government and media statements have led the public to believe that the Russian military has been shockingly ineffective and there should be confident optimism for a Ukrainian victory. Ukrainians have indeed fought courageously and performed above expectation. But there has been a vast...
You can't blame him (or anyone) for not being able to unfurl your ever-twisting narratives.
To you? Not twisted at all.
But the contortions you go through to spin everything, including Putin's and the Kremln's official statements, to make it all NATO and USA's fault are twisted logically and on their face.
But there is no changing your opinion so it's not relevant.
*Shrug*
I have always maintained that NATO provocation was the reason for the war and that everything else amounted to either propaganda, domestic or otherwise or statements of convenience.
Now the Chief of The Wagner Mercenary Russian group that are vital to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine has publicly threatened to withdraw from Ukraine.
he is pissed off with the manner in which The Russians have conducted themselves in Ukraine.
Wagner chief says his forces are dying as Russia’s military leaders ‘sit like fat cats’
Standing in front of the bodies of dozens of what he claims are his fighters killed in Russia’s war with Ukraine, the head of the private military company Wagner unleashed an expletive-laden challenge to Russia’s military leadership, and later blamed defense chiefs for “tens of thousands” of Wagner casualties.
“We are lacking 70% of the needed ammunition!” Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin says in a video posted Thursday on the Telegram messaging app.
Shining a small flashlight on the corpses laying outdoors near what appears to be the front lines of the war, Prigozhin claims they are the casualties of just one day of fighting.
“Shoigu, Gerasimov, where … is the ammunition?” says Prigozhin, calling out Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the Russian armed forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov.
“The blood is still fresh,” he says, pointing to the bodies behind him. “They came here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in your luxury offices.”
In another video statement, released Friday on Telegram, Prigozhin said, “The dead and wounded – and that’s tens of thousands of men – lie on the conscience of those who did not give us ammunition, and this is Defense Minister Shoigu and this is Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov.
“For tens of thousands of those killed and wounded, they will bear responsibility before their mothers and children, and I will make sure of that,” he added.
In the same video message, Prigozhin praised the former Deputy Defense Minister Mikhail Mizintsev, who has recently joined the Wagner Group as its deputy commander.
Prigozhin, whose Wagner mercenary group has taken on a growing role in the Ukraine conflict as Russian forces falter, has been highly visible on the front lines in recent months – where he has claimed credit for territorial gains, particularly in the battles raging around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Wagner fighters will ‘leave Bakhmut’ on May 10
Prigozhin’s call for more ammunition is not new, nor are his methods. He has repeatedly complained of receiving insufficient support from the Kremlin in the grueling fight for the eastern city.
In February, he made a similar appeal for ammunition, posting a picture on Telegram of a pile of corpses. Shortly after that posting, he made another saying a shipment of ammunition was on its way to the Wagner troops.
But the support does not seem to have lasted, at least to Prigozhin’s liking. Last weekend, he threatened to withdraw his troops from the city if Moscow didn’t provide more ammunition.
In a separate statement posted to Telegram on Friday, Prigozhin repeated the threat, saying his private military company would leave Bakhmut on May 10 due to a lack of ammunition.
“I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on May 10, 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the Defense Ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds,” Prigozhin said.
“I’m withdrawing Wagner PMC units because without ammunition, they are doomed to a senseless death,” said Prigozhin, adding that Wagner had fallen “out of favor with envious near-military bureaucrats.”
Signs of infighting in Moscow
Known for its disregard for the lives of its own soldiers, the Wagner group’s brutal and often lawless tactics are believed to have resulted in high numbers of casualties, as new recruits are sent into battle with little formal training – a process described by retired United States Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling as “like feeding meat to a meat grinder.”
'Feeding meat to a meat grinder': Analyst describes what new Russian soldiers are facing
01:57 - Source: CNN
But as Prigozhin’s stature has increased, so too have his clashes with Shoigu and Gerasimov, prompting speculation about possible elite infighting in Moscow as Russia’s military campaign fails to advance.
In February, he accused the two men of “treason” for their alleged failures to support and supply the Wagner group in Ukraine.
His newest challenge to Russian defense officials comes as Bakhmut remains heavily contested.
“These are someone’s f**king fathers and someone’s sons. And you f**kers who aren’t giving [us] ammunition, you b*tches, will have your guts eaten out in hell!” yelled Prigozhin in Thursday’s video.
he is pissed off with the manner in which The Russians have conducted themselves in Ukraine.
Wagner chief says his forces are dying as Russia’s military leaders ‘sit like fat cats’
Standing in front of the bodies of dozens of what he claims are his fighters killed in Russia’s war with Ukraine, the head of the private military company Wagner unleashed an expletive-laden challenge to Russia’s military leadership, and later blamed defense chiefs for “tens of thousands” of Wagner casualties.
“We are lacking 70% of the needed ammunition!” Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin says in a video posted Thursday on the Telegram messaging app.
Shining a small flashlight on the corpses laying outdoors near what appears to be the front lines of the war, Prigozhin claims they are the casualties of just one day of fighting.
“Shoigu, Gerasimov, where … is the ammunition?” says Prigozhin, calling out Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and chief of the Russian armed forces Gen. Valery Gerasimov.
“The blood is still fresh,” he says, pointing to the bodies behind him. “They came here as volunteers and are dying so you can sit like fat cats in your luxury offices.”
In another video statement, released Friday on Telegram, Prigozhin said, “The dead and wounded – and that’s tens of thousands of men – lie on the conscience of those who did not give us ammunition, and this is Defense Minister Shoigu and this is Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov.
“For tens of thousands of those killed and wounded, they will bear responsibility before their mothers and children, and I will make sure of that,” he added.
In the same video message, Prigozhin praised the former Deputy Defense Minister Mikhail Mizintsev, who has recently joined the Wagner Group as its deputy commander.
Prigozhin, whose Wagner mercenary group has taken on a growing role in the Ukraine conflict as Russian forces falter, has been highly visible on the front lines in recent months – where he has claimed credit for territorial gains, particularly in the battles raging around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut.
Wagner fighters will ‘leave Bakhmut’ on May 10
Prigozhin’s call for more ammunition is not new, nor are his methods. He has repeatedly complained of receiving insufficient support from the Kremlin in the grueling fight for the eastern city.
In February, he made a similar appeal for ammunition, posting a picture on Telegram of a pile of corpses. Shortly after that posting, he made another saying a shipment of ammunition was on its way to the Wagner troops.
But the support does not seem to have lasted, at least to Prigozhin’s liking. Last weekend, he threatened to withdraw his troops from the city if Moscow didn’t provide more ammunition.
In a separate statement posted to Telegram on Friday, Prigozhin repeated the threat, saying his private military company would leave Bakhmut on May 10 due to a lack of ammunition.
“I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on May 10, 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the Defense Ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds,” Prigozhin said.
“I’m withdrawing Wagner PMC units because without ammunition, they are doomed to a senseless death,” said Prigozhin, adding that Wagner had fallen “out of favor with envious near-military bureaucrats.”
Signs of infighting in Moscow
Known for its disregard for the lives of its own soldiers, the Wagner group’s brutal and often lawless tactics are believed to have resulted in high numbers of casualties, as new recruits are sent into battle with little formal training – a process described by retired United States Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling as “like feeding meat to a meat grinder.”
'Feeding meat to a meat grinder': Analyst describes what new Russian soldiers are facing
01:57 - Source: CNN
But as Prigozhin’s stature has increased, so too have his clashes with Shoigu and Gerasimov, prompting speculation about possible elite infighting in Moscow as Russia’s military campaign fails to advance.
In February, he accused the two men of “treason” for their alleged failures to support and supply the Wagner group in Ukraine.
His newest challenge to Russian defense officials comes as Bakhmut remains heavily contested.
“These are someone’s f**king fathers and someone’s sons. And you f**kers who aren’t giving [us] ammunition, you b*tches, will have your guts eaten out in hell!” yelled Prigozhin in Thursday’s video.
Then there is this:
(not sure how much is performative)
Everyone would if those are really the only 2 options and the details you included are correct. But there's very possibly a more options, or you're wrong about the details and option b actually costs more lives than a.
When Germany occupied the Sudetanland in 1938, in an effort to spare lives, a compromise was reached. There were no nukes yet, but certainly memories of the gas attacks were fresh in everyone's mind. How did the compromise work?
You're saying not compromising means more people will die than compromising will. But can you cite an occasion in history when that was true? Most historians agree that the attitude of appeasement in the lead up to WWII cost lives, that there was a chance to stop the German war machine before it was in full swing. So I can show where history says compromise cost more lives, and therefore there's a chance you're wrong in your assessment that compromise is the solution here. I'd love to see any example you can provide that shows the opposite.
Just look at the Anschluss. The German army was massed at the border, ready to go. Briefed and prepared for that new tactic: lightning war. The orders came in.... and everything stalled. The logistics was not prepared, the equipement was lacking, the troops lacking in training and supplies. But the West appeased and compromised. And then what happened? Germany had learned, and so the next time they employed their lightning war against Poland it went much better.
So what happens if you're wrong? We appease Russia, we compromise, and next time they launch a 3-Day Special Military Operation, they don't have logistics problems and get bogged down, their troops aren't fighting low morale, and their manufacturing has ramped up and improved.
So maybe you're right. Maybe option a leads to nuclear war. But if Putin is that crazy, then option b also likely leads to nuclear war. And if so, is it better to fight him now, when his logistics is a mess, when his forces are in disarray, when morale is low.... Or is it better to fight him later, after his fixed those problems?
Appeasement in the 30s lead to millions dead. Appeasement now might lead to billions dead. So maybe things aren't as cut and dry as you think. Maybe your black and white options are incomplete and it's not "A is B but B is amazing!" Maybe it's "A is horrible but B is the end of the world!"
Or perhaps option C is a long, drawn-out war of attrition in the mud that costs millions of lives but weakens the Russian war machine sufficiently that is rendered ineffective and Putin is forced to simply withdraw, or he dies and Russians elect a new government that pulls out, or some other outcome. Maybe we don't need to rush to A or B.
Or maybe A leads to the end of the world too. I'm not so naive that I think it's cut any dry. But it seems to me that B poses every bit as big a risk as A does, and none of us should be as certain as you seem to be that we've unlocked the ideal solution and the only reason the powers that be aren't listening is because they face nefarious ulterior motives.
I'm not sure why you keep adding hard line breaks to your text, but it makes it really hard to read. Are you using some garbage app that does that, or are you doing it manually?
@Valcazar you have a competitor
Sorry @DinkleMouse too long and verbose for me to read as I dont have the energy.
However, I owe you an apology about yesterday when I said you lied about having military experience. I was actually talking with Dutch Oven in mind for some reason as he posts right wing nonsense. I know, your username is right to the left. But for some reason I thought you were Dutch Oven
. So sorry about that. You do seem to know what you are talking about when it comes to the army etc., However, I dont believe you need any of that expertise to comment on what the US might do or how this proxy war will end -because these people with expertise are also the same ones who went looking for WMDs in Iraq, supported the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 80s etc., Plus you can always bank on the maliciousness of "US Interests" to speculate on what they may do next.Strange. It's no longer than your posts. You'll make posts that long but won't read them?@Valcazar you have a competitor
Sorry @DinkleMouse too long and verbose for me to read as I dont have the energy.
I wasn't kidding when I said I don't care. And I'm not saying that to sound aggressive, I mean you don't need to apologize because it doesn't bother me one way or the other. Unlike our friend and his Stolen Valour, I really don't have anything to prove, and no one should really care anyway.
I never said you did need experience. I explained in my reply that the reason I asked if you had experience was to gauge how much weight I personally wanted to give your opinion and whether to discuss with you (I'm paraphrasing). But since you got aggressive about it I also did some trolling. When people troll me, I troll back. I never said you were wrong, I never said you shouldn't or couldn't have an opinion, and I never said your opinion was invalid because you didn't have experience or expertise. I simply said I'd stick with my own and not follow up.
