Ukraine / Russian War
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
Hessian
Well-Known Member
UAVs hit perhaps dozens of Russian aircraft in the last 16 hours...deep in Russia. Delivery trucks brought in a swarm of armed UAVs and deployed them not far from strategic bases...losses are yet to be considered. Video has been taken of their bombers getting torched. Ukraine is hoping to have more bargaining power at the negotiations in Turkey.
Ruskies...how long will it take to build a few new air wings? Gonna ask NK to build them? not likely. China? Um, no.
Hope some heads are rolling in Moscow today.
Ruskies...how long will it take to build a few new air wings? Gonna ask NK to build them? not likely. China? Um, no.
Hope some heads are rolling in Moscow today.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
To be fair (I know, why be fair), Big Z ins't holding that book or looking like he has been "presented" with anything of worth. He looks exactly like someone tired of life who is being accosted for a photo in public (train station?), and the dude taking the photo is holding a book he can't see the title of and likely doesn't give two shets about.
This is on the level of "David Duke voted for Trump! Trump must be a racist!"
Ukraine wipes out dozens of Russian doomsday nuclear bombers in massive surprise attack on air bases, Kyiv says: ‘Russian Pearl Harbor’
Ukrainian forces stunned the Russian military Sunday after wiping out and damaging dozens of nuclear bombers and other aircraft with ambitious and complicated attacks that struck President Vladimir Putin’s air bases deep inside the country, Kyiv says.
Even pro-Moscow military bloggers are calling the strike — which used drones hidden in trucks — “the Russian Pearl Harbor.”
The attack came just a day before the leaders of Ukraine and Russia were potentially set to meet in Istanbul as part of US-backed cease-fire talks.
Ukraine Strike On Russian NUCLEAR FLEET Kept Secret From US ON PURPOSE, WW3 Fears ONCE AGAIN
Yeah brilliant attack, a STUPID move IMHO ..
Putin is NOT GOING TO BACK DOWN ....
costing Russian 100's of millions in aircraft losses does NOTHING to defend Ukraine .. same thing bombing the bridge
Over the last two days, we’ve learned that the Proxy War is experiencing a profound narrative shift. All three corporate media giants —NYT, WaPo, WSJ— ran different takes on the latest military developments. That’s never happened before. Of the three, the Journal’s story was the most even-handed, running yesterday below the headline, “Russia and Ukraine Ratchet Up War While Trying to Show Trump They Want Peace.”
Two things have happened. First, Ukraine and Russia met face-to-face in Turkey yesterday, their second “peace” meeting —alone, without the U.S.— and, in a tense, sixty-minute meeting, managed only to agree to swap a few more prisoners. Still, any agreement is progress.
One reason the meeting was so anxious and abbreviated was because one day before the parties assembled to continue peace talks, Ukraine unleashed surprise drone attacks on six military bases deep in Russia’s interior, and blew up a civilian railway bridge, massacring men, women, and children.
Kiev immediately released drone footage of its attack. Suicide drones sprang by surprise from commercial shipping containers (the boxes on the back of semis). Like a deranged Jack-in-the-box, Zelensky popped up and claimed the drones destroyed over 200 strategic Russian bombers and fighter jets, a number quietly revised down to 40 “damaged” planes.
Russia’s Ministry of War released its own briefing, which claimed the attacks had only “set fire to several aircraft.” Between Kiev and Moscow, the Russian figures are probably the most reliable. Since the start of the war, Ukraine has been a compulsive liar, always exaggerating its own accomplishments and minimizing its losses, and often just making things up. Moscow is far from perfect, but usually just omits reporting bad news rather than lying about it.
What the Russians have reported has been proven generally to be much more reliable.
For some reason I cannot understand, giddy flag-in-bio Ukraine supporters joyfully described Sunday’s sneak attacks as “Russia’s Pearl Harbor.” But in this scenario, Ukraine becomes the Japanese, and Russia the Americans. In World War II, the Japanese (Ukrainians) were the villains, and the Americans (Russians) wound up nuking them. Talk about a self-own. Zelensky should fire his propaganda guy.
As a lay observer —I’m merely lawyer, not a military strategist— I did not understand the hyperbolic excitement. Regardless of how many planes were destroyed, so what? Three years of war coverage barely mentioned Russia’s air forces. The Proxy War is a story of tanks, artillery, drones, missiles, and, very occasionally, of the Russian Black Sea naval fleet.
If the Ukrainians could have driven their drone containers anywhere, why not target Russia’s missile and drone factories? It’s a baffling mystery. In that sense, the attack almost seemed more aimed at disrupting the peace talks and scoring a cheap PR win than at improving Ukraine’s chances of winning.
But the media’s coverage was by far the more interesting part of the story. The Journal’s article, and especially that headline, was almost balanced. Though it sneered at Russia’s peace demands, calling them “maximalist,” it still reported the details more or less accurately. Absent were any of the old, goofy “interpolations” of what Putin really wants, like a revived Soviet empire or to become a planetary dictator.
We saw the entire spectrum of reporting. The bellicose New York Times ran four breathless stories celebrating the Ukrainian attacks. “Ukraine Shows It Can Still Flip the Script on How Wars Are Waged,” one headline triumphantly blared. Maybe. But the prospect of weapons smuggled in containers isn’t that new; it was in the news as early as 2022, and we even discussed it here in C&C (albeit referencing missiles instead of suicide drones). And last year’s headlines unveiled the Israeli exploding pager strike, which was an arguably more creative sneak attack.
By contrast, a muted Washington Post seemed unimpressed. The story was only covered in a single op-ed, which conceded the attacks’ failure to achieve any strategic significance by calling the drone strikes “only a psychological victory.” The piece surveyed two regular WaPo columnists in an interview format. Max Boot said, “It probably won’t be a big change on the battlefield.” Jim Geraghty opined, “This is primarily a psychological and symbolic blow.”
Beyond that, the editorial discussion quickly lost interest in Ukraine, and shifted into U.S. security. Like, how the Chinese have been buying up land near U.S. military bases: What if the Chinese staged drones there? The columnists then wondered whether Trump’s “Golden Dome” project should focus more on counter-drone tech instead of ICBM shielding. All great questions; none complimentary to Kiev.
Only the Journal considered the effect of the attacks on the next day’s peace talks. Normally in lockstep, this time, all three big corporate media mouthpieces covered the full spectrum of takes from white-hot, lukewarm, to cold.
It is fascinating that the unified Ukraine narrative appears to be in free fall.
www.coffeeandcovid.com
Two things have happened. First, Ukraine and Russia met face-to-face in Turkey yesterday, their second “peace” meeting —alone, without the U.S.— and, in a tense, sixty-minute meeting, managed only to agree to swap a few more prisoners. Still, any agreement is progress.
One reason the meeting was so anxious and abbreviated was because one day before the parties assembled to continue peace talks, Ukraine unleashed surprise drone attacks on six military bases deep in Russia’s interior, and blew up a civilian railway bridge, massacring men, women, and children.
Kiev immediately released drone footage of its attack. Suicide drones sprang by surprise from commercial shipping containers (the boxes on the back of semis). Like a deranged Jack-in-the-box, Zelensky popped up and claimed the drones destroyed over 200 strategic Russian bombers and fighter jets, a number quietly revised down to 40 “damaged” planes.
Russia’s Ministry of War released its own briefing, which claimed the attacks had only “set fire to several aircraft.” Between Kiev and Moscow, the Russian figures are probably the most reliable. Since the start of the war, Ukraine has been a compulsive liar, always exaggerating its own accomplishments and minimizing its losses, and often just making things up. Moscow is far from perfect, but usually just omits reporting bad news rather than lying about it.
What the Russians have reported has been proven generally to be much more reliable.
For some reason I cannot understand, giddy flag-in-bio Ukraine supporters joyfully described Sunday’s sneak attacks as “Russia’s Pearl Harbor.” But in this scenario, Ukraine becomes the Japanese, and Russia the Americans. In World War II, the Japanese (Ukrainians) were the villains, and the Americans (Russians) wound up nuking them. Talk about a self-own. Zelensky should fire his propaganda guy.
As a lay observer —I’m merely lawyer, not a military strategist— I did not understand the hyperbolic excitement. Regardless of how many planes were destroyed, so what? Three years of war coverage barely mentioned Russia’s air forces. The Proxy War is a story of tanks, artillery, drones, missiles, and, very occasionally, of the Russian Black Sea naval fleet.
If the Ukrainians could have driven their drone containers anywhere, why not target Russia’s missile and drone factories? It’s a baffling mystery. In that sense, the attack almost seemed more aimed at disrupting the peace talks and scoring a cheap PR win than at improving Ukraine’s chances of winning.
But the media’s coverage was by far the more interesting part of the story. The Journal’s article, and especially that headline, was almost balanced. Though it sneered at Russia’s peace demands, calling them “maximalist,” it still reported the details more or less accurately. Absent were any of the old, goofy “interpolations” of what Putin really wants, like a revived Soviet empire or to become a planetary dictator.We saw the entire spectrum of reporting. The bellicose New York Times ran four breathless stories celebrating the Ukrainian attacks. “Ukraine Shows It Can Still Flip the Script on How Wars Are Waged,” one headline triumphantly blared. Maybe. But the prospect of weapons smuggled in containers isn’t that new; it was in the news as early as 2022, and we even discussed it here in C&C (albeit referencing missiles instead of suicide drones). And last year’s headlines unveiled the Israeli exploding pager strike, which was an arguably more creative sneak attack.
By contrast, a muted Washington Post seemed unimpressed. The story was only covered in a single op-ed, which conceded the attacks’ failure to achieve any strategic significance by calling the drone strikes “only a psychological victory.” The piece surveyed two regular WaPo columnists in an interview format. Max Boot said, “It probably won’t be a big change on the battlefield.” Jim Geraghty opined, “This is primarily a psychological and symbolic blow.”
Beyond that, the editorial discussion quickly lost interest in Ukraine, and shifted into U.S. security. Like, how the Chinese have been buying up land near U.S. military bases: What if the Chinese staged drones there? The columnists then wondered whether Trump’s “Golden Dome” project should focus more on counter-drone tech instead of ICBM shielding. All great questions; none complimentary to Kiev.
Only the Journal considered the effect of the attacks on the next day’s peace talks. Normally in lockstep, this time, all three big corporate media mouthpieces covered the full spectrum of takes from white-hot, lukewarm, to cold.
It is fascinating that the unified Ukraine narrative appears to be in free fall.
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Max Boot’s Ghoulish Pearl Harbor Analogy Reveals What He Really Wants From The Russo-Ukraine War
Ukraine claims that it hit 41 Russian aircraft during its attack, while at least one Russian source said only 13 planes were damaged, according to the NYT. Western experts estimated that around 20 Russian “strategic aircraft” were destroyed or damaged, including 10 long-range strategic bombers. Before the attack, Russia had an estimated 80 strategic bombers, so depending on whether all the planes hit during Ukraine’s attack were strategic bombers or other types of planes, Russia may have lost between 12 percent and half of its bomber fleet. That’s not insignificant, but in the grand scheme of the ongoing war, it’s not the knockout blow that Ukraine needed to bring Russia to its knees.
Boot hand waves this fact, writing, “Operation Spiderweb will not be a decisive blow against the Russian military any more than the Pearl Harbor attack was a decisive blow against the U.S. military. But just as Pearl Harbor signaled that Japan would be a far more formidable foe than most Westerners had expected, Sunday’s attack shows, yet again, that the Ukrainians are proving far more resilient and adaptable fighters than anyone had anticipated before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion more than three years ago.”
But if that kind of maneuver doesn’t achieve some kind of overarching strategic advantage for the side that executes it, it usually just ends up kicking the hornet’s nest, as Imperial Japan can attest. The Japanese in battle after battle in the Pacific showed their (oftentimes literal) suicidal courage and dedication to their cause, but it ended with the Japanese signing the instrument of surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, all the same.
Rather than tip the scales in favor of the Ukrainians at the ongoing peace negotiations in Turkey, the recent attack appears to have had the opposite effect on the Russians. In response, Russian media reportedly described the operation as a “terrorist attack,” and the Russian envoys unveiled a new memorandum on proposed peace terms. Under their plan, Russia would officially gain Crimea and the eastern regions of Ukraine that have seen the bulk of the frontline fighting during the war, NBC News reported. Additionally, Ukraine would have to reduce the size of its army and adopt a “neutral” stance between Russia and the Western powers.
The Russo-Ukraine war has developed into a war of attrition since the failure of Russia’s dash for the Ukrainian capital in early 2022, resembling the trench warfare of World War I more than the blitzkrieg the country experienced during World War II. The Japanese had a similar strategy to wear down Allied resolve by defending heavily fortified islands to the last man. But in wars of attrition, the side with the larger economy almost always wins out in the end. Russia’s GDP is about 10 times larger than Ukraine’s, and it’s been patently clear for years now that Ukraine is kept afloat only by the mountain of foreign aid provided by the West.
Boot and his neocon pals seem to have the same opinion of Russia as Hitler did right before the German invasion of the Soviet Union in mid-1941: “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”
But underestimating Russian resolve often proves a catastrophic mistake. It didn’t work out for Napoleon, and it didn’t work out for Hitler. Russia has proven time and again its willingness to endure massive casualties and embarrassing setbacks to achieve its goals.
The development and utilization of new drone technology may give Ukraine a tactical edge in the short term, as Boot argues, but no amount of wonder weapons can change the fundamentals of war: industrial capacity and manpower. The Germans made incredible strides in military technology during World War II, including the first jet aircraft, but it wasn’t enough to turn the tide.
Boot might be somewhat correct that Ukraine has utilized an innovative technology, drones, in a clever way, but the larger strategic move hasn’t “rewritten the rules of war” at all. It’s an operation utilized by desperate nations that often feel they have no other way to gain an advantage, and it rarely works out. Boot and his ilk laud it not because they actually believe that it will give Ukraine an advantage in negotiations, but because they crave the inevitable escalation. Never mind that this inches Russia closer to a nuclear response. The raw destruction is all that matters to these people, especially when it’s directed toward a particularly hated bogeyman.
PJay
Well-Known Member
"I do not believe that the recent escalation against Russia's strategic bomber fleet was authorized by or coordinated with President Trump. Rather, it is my view that the Deep State is now acting outside of the control of the elected leadership of our nation. I believe that these persons inside (some outside) our Deep State are engaged in a deliberate effort to provoke Russia into a major confrontation with the West, including the United States. The time is now to take aggressive action against those who abuse their authority as government employees to manipulate the elected leadership of our nation. I’ll have much more to say very soon. Intelligence doesn’t sleep, it develops."
PJay
Well-Known Member
Bank account records show Senator Lindsey Graham is laundering money from the Ukraine war back into his personal bank accounts.
CIA Officer says it’s “significant amounts of money” being laundered back to Senator Lindsey Graham
“Let me say something about Senator Graham. There will be news coming out in the next couple of months about how he has profited financially off of money that came out of Ukraine, laundered through Latvia and made it way into his bank account. And now we're talking significant amounts of money. Department of justice is looking at it. Those are serious allegations leveled by CIA officer, former CIA officer Larry Johnson.“
CIA Officer says it’s “significant amounts of money” being laundered back to Senator Lindsey Graham
“Let me say something about Senator Graham. There will be news coming out in the next couple of months about how he has profited financially off of money that came out of Ukraine, laundered through Latvia and made it way into his bank account. And now we're talking significant amounts of money. Department of justice is looking at it. Those are serious allegations leveled by CIA officer, former CIA officer Larry Johnson.“