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Fernando

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Everything posted by Fernando

  1. That theory about men in blue sweaters (and shirts) might not be as crazy as it looks at first glance
  2. 99% of the people doesn't really know what the Pope said. They only know what other people say the Pope has said. Few people go to sources (in this case the transcription or even the actual interview is just a Google search away) to check if what others say about something is really true. That's the world we are living now. And then we are amazed at how we can be manipulated so easily.
  3. I usually don't defend the Pope, but it seems to me that this time he has been very careful in what he has said. The problem is people without a basic level of verbal or reading comprehension. That's a BIG problem. Nowadays, you have to speak for fools, or you will not be understood by a lot of people.
  4. Pope's message is directed to BOTH countries. He does not even mention the words "Russia" or "Ukraine" as countries. He speaks of the "war in Ukraine" as a geographical location. "Raise the flag to negotiate" can be understood as an expression which means that both countries should negotiate rather than fight a war until the end.
  5. It was done in Italian indeed I have posted above the transcription in English and Italian of the relevant excerpt. You can watch the relevant fragment of the interview here: https://www.rsi.ch/play/tv/-/video/un-estratto-dellintervista-a-papa-francesco-1?urn=urn:rsi:video:2091800
  6. Pope Francisco is not Italian, but full Argentine. He was born and he lived in Argentina until he was elected Pope. If you speaks Spanish you can even detect some of his Argentinian accent when he speaks Italian.
  7. I think Pope Francisco was speaking in a general way: Question: In Ukraine there are those who ask for the courage of surrender, of the white flag. But others say that this would legitimize the strongest. What do you think? “It's an interpretation. But I believe that those who see the situation, those who think about the people, those who have the courage to raise the white flag and to negotiate are stronger. And today it can be negotiated with the help of international powers. The word negotiate is a courageous word. When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you need to have the courage to negotiate. You are ashamed, but with how many deaths will it end? Negotiate in time, look for some country to act as a mediator. Today, for example in the war in Ukraine, there are many who want to act as mediators. Turkey offered itself for this. And other. Don't be ashamed to negotiate before things get worse." In Ucraina c’è chi chiede il coraggio della resa, della bandiera bianca. Ma altri dicono che così si legittimerebbe il più forte. Cosa pensa? “È un’interpretazione. Ma credo che è più forte chi vede la situazione, chi pensa al popolo, chi ha il coraggio della bandiera bianca, di negoziare. E oggi si può negoziare con l’aiuto delle potenze internazionali. La parola negoziare è una parola coraggiosa. Quando vedi che sei sconfitto, che le cose non vanno, occorre avere il coraggio di negoziare. Hai vergogna, ma con quante morti finirà? Negoziare in tempo, cercare qualche paese che faccia da mediatore. Oggi, per esempio nella guerra in Ucraina, ci sono tanti che vogliono fare da mediatore. La Turchia, si è offerta per questo. E altri. Non abbiate vergogna di negoziare prima che la cosa sia peggiore”. https://www.euronews.com/2024/03/10/pope-francis-ukraine-should-have-courage-of-the-white-flag A white flag has two meanings: 1. I surrender 2. I want to speak/parley/negotiate with you.
  8. With soldiers deployed so bunched together, I'm not surprised that Russian infantry suffers such catastrophic casualties again and again.
  9. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. India has about 1,4 billion people. It has more than enough misinformed or uninformed stupids (like any other country, but India has a larger population)
  10. https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russia-creates-two-new-military-districts-in-reorganization-move/ Russia Creates Two New Military Districts in Reorganization Move Russia has reorganized its military-administrative structure. Two new military districts have been deployed instead of the liquidated Western District, as stated in the new decree of the president of the Russian Federation. On February 26, 2024, Vladimir Putin signed Decree No. 141, “On the Military-Administrative Division of the Russian Federation,” which reorganized the military-administrative structure of the Russian army. According to the decree, the Western Military District in the Russian Federation is divided into two smaller ones: Moscow and Leningrad. Instead, the Northern Fleet lost the status of a district.
  11. A percussion cap muket? Regarding weapons it seems U.S. Army was in worse situation than the UKR army today.
  12. In so far the only source is the GUR. There is no information from official Spanish sources yet.
  13. [...] The selection form focuses on a partial and weaker (and easier to refute) representation of the opponent's position. Then the easier refutation of this weaker position is claimed to refute the opponent's complete position. [...]
  14. Yes, Maginot Line wonderfully worked indeed. Like the Mannerheim line, the Gustav line, the Sigfried Line, the Molotov/Stalin Line etc. All of them were a great success stopping cold the enemy offensives they faced and allowing their side to win the battle, didn't they? Especially for the French, who expected a war of attrition, denial and corrosion but found themselves facing a war of movement and maneuver instead.
  15. Maginot Line 2.0. Good luck finding the troops to man a border which is about 800 km long. Hope it works this time.
  16. What makes a move bold or reckless is not the results. A reckless move may be succesful while a bold move may be a failure indeed, though it is also true that mos reckless moves fail.
  17. 1. If you don't have enough information, so you move basically in the dark, your move is not bold, but reckless.
  18. Bold means you may take risks, but if your move fails, then you are still alive and you can still react. Reckless means that if you gamble fails, then you are toast. Rommel was usually bold. Hitler was reckless.
  19. Fine. It's not a comment that can be taken seriously.
  20. 1. The tactical level always has an effect on the operational and strategic level. The EPR (The People's Army of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War) had some of the best generals in the Spanish army of the time. Their plans at an operational and strategic level were generally excellent and withouth a fault. The EPR received more and better material, some of it was very modern for the time and better than de German and Italian one.. What was missing from the EPR? The tactics to make those plans and new material work. A house is built from the foundation. If your army does not work at the tactical level, you can have all the operational and strategic plans you want, which generally those plans at the operational and strategic level will not work as intended. By the way, the Germans in 1918 had the tactics but not the means. Not everything is tactics. You also need the means to put tactics into practice. 2. The Ukrainians managed to carry out a Blitzkrieg-style operation in the Kharkov area, attacking at the Russian weakest point and exploiting the success operationally with an advance in that area that forced the Russians to abandon the part of the front closest to Kharkov and retreat to the Svatove line. There, I don't think there was much denial. But if you then let the front stagnate for months, let the enemy reinforce itself with 300,000 men, plant millions of mines (no one has calculated how many mines Russia has left from the stock it had before the war and how many it can manufacture per month ) it is not strange that things change. The Ukrainians evidently made a superlative effort in 2022 that is to be admired, and they could not make a greater effort because we, their allies, have done nothing but procrastinate shipments of ammunition and material. That said, it seems to me that attacking the strongest points of the Russian lines and persisting in the offensive once it was clear that it had failed, as if we were in a 21st century Somme or Verdun, as did by Zaluzhnyi, is not the best idea. And staying hidden in the trenches playing to see who is the last one to survive a drone attack, praying that Putin's dictatorship magically falls apart, as you seems to advocate, doesn't seem like a good idea to me either. 3. I have not said that Russia has won by attrition. I have said that if we adopt an attrition-only strategy, Russia has a better chance of winning in the long run. 4. I'm sorry but I don't believe in corrosive warfare as the inevitable way to fight the war in Ukraine. Every war implies, of course, a wear and tear of one's own army, and of the enemy's army too. But reducing everything to a war of attrition shows an inability to leave the mental framework that fosters it and an extreme simplification of war: if I kill more than you, until you run out of soldiers, ammunition, resources and will, then I win. Therefore I need more bombs, more missiles and more grenades, until there is nothing left of the adversary. Which by the way, the enemy will do the same. Eye by eye, we will all go blind. It may be the only way to act in a nuclear war, but I don't think is the only option in a conventional one. You say "If Ukraine goes this way they can, at worst, freeze this thing. A Korean Peninsula outcome is definitely a possibility, and frankly it is not a bad one." Everything indicates that this is the possibility. However, I would not like it if I were Ukrainian. What is clear is that if the Ukrainians dedicate themselves exclusively to fighting a war of attrition, the Korea Peninsula result is what they will get ...if they are lucky. Rommel said that you must be bold, but you can never be reckless. It's exactly what I think. If you give up everything and sink into a war of attrition in Ukraine, you will not be reckless indeed, but what is also certain is that you will not be bold either.
  21. I was speaking of the mental framework. In 1918, both sides found ways to breach a heavily defended entrenched enemy front and advance. That was not the case in 1915-1917 (Caporetto excepted).
  22. Infiltration tactics initially worked because small groups did not engage in fighting to take the strongpoints they found. They used tactics that could be defined as proto-blitzkrieg. They surpassed the strongpoints and it was the troops that followed them that faced those strongpoints, which at that moment they were defended by troops in positions that had been surpassed, with enemies in their rear and with communications cut off. In Ukraine it seems that these groups do not really infiltrate, but rather take strong point by strong point without any idea of deep penetration and exploitation of the gap. I wouldn't call them true infiltration tactics, but small attacks which try to have a cumulative effect.
  23. What I have said is that 1918, which had NOTHING to do with the previous period from 1915 to 1917, essentially saw a battle of tactics and ideas that broke the stalemate. The Germans introduced infiltration tactics and new ways of using artillery. The Allies countered them by introducing defense-in-depth tactics. Wherever Germans or Allies used the same tactics used in 1915-1917 (Caporetto excepted, which was a case of use of the new tactics), they repeated the disaster of the previous years. What I have wanted to say all this time is that forming a strategy of attrition, fighting positionally until you are left with the last living soldier, seems to me to be a huge mistake. And I think Zelensky thinks the same.
  24. Of course. Ukraine doesn't need a John Bell Hood 2.0. Before launching an attack, you need to have a real chance of an offensive being successful. What I am saying is that surrendering to a general strategy of attrition would be a mistake for Ukraine.
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