kraze
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Posts posted by kraze
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3 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:
My view is pure old school MAD deterrence: 'if one nuke is blown up to create a dirty bomb, mofos, then two do.'
The second would be Kursk NPP, 3GW, just 100km from the frontier.
The difference is that when russia'll do it - all the "human rights" organizations will take a soul-crushingly neutral stance with "let's not get ahead of ourselves". Just like they (heck, even some Western governments) did with the Kakhovka dam.
But if Ukraine will do it in retaliation - you'll see every "human rights" defender blaming us for being horrible genocidal terrorists that are absolutely evil and must be stopped at all costs - and taking away all the Western support will be a good start.
I mean you don't have to go far back in history (or too far in geolocation, just across a sea and then some) for a similar example. I've been told in this very thread that I shouldn't bring Israel up because they are absolute evil since they retaliated in kind on several occasions.So nah. Pretty sure we will be told right away "no retaliation or else", since we want to win the war and liberate our gloriously acute radiation syndrome inducing, lands.
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43 minutes ago, kluge said:
Multiple governments have clearly signaled that they would respond to such an event by deploying conventional forces in Ukraine. I see no major reasons to believe that this won't be the case.
Let me be cynical (realistic) here and say there will be no response and blowing up NPP will be heavily downplayed with arguments like "we need to investigate first to determine who is responsible based on facts" and "ambient radiation in Romania increased only by 3.6 roentgens, not great not terrible". After all most of the nuclear fallout will remain on a Ukrainian soil since this isn't RBMK and you can't turn it into a proper nuclear bomb like in Chernobyl - but you can turn it into a dirty bomb with a fairly limited radius.
I think after russians do it and there will be no consequences* for them - the only question that will remain is "tactical nukes when".*sanctions aren't consequences, russians are broke and live in wooden barracks. They don't care if they get no iPhone, can't afford it anyway.
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12 minutes ago, sburke said:
I think you are jumping to a conclusion too early. We have a lot of time yet to play out for war crimes trials. One article cited above is Lukashenko possibly having a card to play in turning over Wagner folks to The Hague. I get this is the “immediate gratification is too slow” era, but the fat lady isn’t schedule to sing for quite a while yet.
I don't think potential war crime trials 10-20 years down the line help much with irradiated lands and the general course of the war now. And that's what LFP means.
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24 minutes ago, dan/california said:
The next time Steve tells you the game works the way it does because you cannot see ANYTHING out of a Russian tank, he is going to show you this video as proof.
Ah but T62 is a 4 seater tank because it has no auto loader. Only 3 crewmen exited. So either a commander or a gunner got killed.
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39 minutes ago, Tux said:
They have a job to do I suppose, and in the long-term they have a point.
I think I understand both their request and the likely ‘response’ from Ukraine. Both equally valid in their own ways and contexts.Except they aren't requesting the same from Russia.
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47 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:
"Human Rights Watch urges Ukraine to stop using AP mines (as promised).
I don't like war, I don't like this killing and slaughtering and suffering, and I don't like the use of mines. Period.
But are these Human Rights Watch-people insane???
Asking this NOW? In a full-blown existantial war???
How ignorant and naive can you be?
because "human rights" organizations don't give an F about human rights. They are getting millions of USD of funding for pretending they care and it's obvious they don't want to upset one of the primary cash providers. Which isn't Ukraine in this war.
Can't buy another cool SUV if nobody is paying for it, am I right?
HRW, Red Cross, Amnesty, OSCE, whatever other trash. It's all the same. Old people who simply post words on the internet. -
24 minutes ago, strac_sap said:
I've been wondering about this. Given the war why haven't all the heads been rolling? My assumption is that these are the loyalists around him, period. But I feel like this is the group that would understand this better.
As an aside, I noticed this in the US during Iraq in the early 2000's. Generals were not getting fired even when outcomes were bad. I recall an article that read something like: "Privates in the army are punished more for losing a rifle than Generals for losing a war." EDIT: Here is the article.
Because for heads to get rolling - they would need to admit they are losing to Ukrainians.
But since they are winning the war against whole NATO - no need to replace anyone. -
4 hours ago, Butschi said:
That's probably because you didn't recognize it as deep fake.
It's really of no consequence how long it has been around. The technology is developing at what looks like an exponential rate. Sorry to say but "at least for a decade" says that you don't know much about the topic. Most of what constitutes modern "AI" (machine learning methods is a better word) hasn't even been around that long. Much of it not even half a decade.
Ugh no. If there was some deepfake legit enough - the target of it would've been up in arms about it defending themselves trying to disprove it. But nah. Uncanny valley is something Hollywood with its budgets has been battling for decades now - ironically the only "deepfake" that came closest was Rachel in BR2049 and even that one looked really off. We are talking visual artists that are absolute best on the planet. After all "AI" (in reality it's just a glorified finite state machine) can only iterate on what humans do.
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4 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
The problem is that roughly 30% of the population believes anything they READ because they have defective information filters (combination biology and environment). In the world of politics, all you need to do is fool some of the people some of the time and you win an election, get support for undermining democracy, and then do bad things.
Steve
Yes but you don't need deepfakes for that, just headlines. It's the lack of long attention span that gets exploited. Since they aren't reading anything past headlines anyway - no need to put any extra effort.
In fact I'd bet making a quality deepfake that looks believable enough for the masses is already far beyond where it gets into diminished results territory. After all russians tried to do a deepfake of Zelenskyy back in February of 2022 if you remember - it looked horribly uncanny and we are talking government with enough budget that has militarized IT. -
Just now, The_MonkeyKing said:
That is something I, or anybody can do with a couple of $ 20-a-month subscriptions and a couple of hours of time.
Just think what professionals with a budget can do. And indeed are doing.
Deepfake scare has been going on for at least a decade now, but I haven't seen a single deepfake video that looked legit. And if so called "professionals with a budget" would be able to do something with all of it - they would.
In any case this particular video looked as if someone took a still Freeman image and simply animated it by stretching and squishing parts of the photo which is what made it look so unreal. -
1 hour ago, DesertFox said:
Sorry OT. Just a reminder that we have to be very careful about what we see or hear online. Not every time it is what it appears to be.
Nah, it's horribly uncanny valley.
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48 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
He just used the frustration of his troops to build their loyalty as the sensible commander who wanted to spare them from being shoved into the meatgrinder.
Unless it's Bakhmut.
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20 minutes ago, Vic4 said:
How is it that the Chechens have managed to avoid any significant deployment/action throughout the war?
Why wouldn’t Putin/MOD be using them as fodder similar to Wagner as opposed to say VDV/Spetsnaz who have taken tremendous losses and are “ethnic”/core Russians and presumably much more loyal than the Chechens?
I assume Putin/Russia needs Chechnya to absolutely remain in the Russian fold during the conflict, but it seems Putin does not have any leverage to force them to commit significantly. Also concurrently, it would seem logical that the more Russia loses its core forces, Kadyrov’s options and strength only grow exponentially.
Ironically the TikTok bearded clowns seem to be coming out on top of all combatants. What am I missing?
Easy. Chechens are basically the only putin's personal terrorist army left. They are to terrorize civilians, they are the only ones willing to do it in Russia* and they have no military training to fight somebody armed with a gun.
Every russian is afraid of Chechens because they managed to defeat russian army twice over the course of just 5 years - so they kinda have that default "+2 to intimidation" skill by just being Chechen.
Irony is that I have no idea how anyone even thought they will be ever to battle Wagner, the armed guys.
*like actually terrorize, e.g. by stuffing a bottle up their asshole - actually happened, none of that pussy OMOH that can only beat some chicks and arrest a few old ladies, but instantly disperses come some resistance.
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Another thing this Prig mess has exposed is how BS the argument of russian "opposition" about "state propaganda" is - that they use to excuse their terminal impotency.
Putin called Prig a terrorist and a criminal. State media was trashing him all day.
And yet in Rostov crowds were greeting him as a warhero and making selfies en masse, with a guy that cuts heads off - in a state, where you are supposedly arrested for retweets.
No russian cares about "state propaganda" - they all know how things really are, they know about the genocide of Ukrainians just like they know that Russia is losing the war and they blame putin for it.
Which is how Prig happened in the first place.
So when you repost Khodorkovsky, Navalny, Kasparov or any other cuckold from their crowd - remember this.
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Well apart from 13 pilots dead as of now, which is admittedly a superb result for a single day, this "coup" resulted in two other casualties among "good russians".
Sobchak openly supported putin.
Khodorkovsky openly supported Prig.
Wonder how either of these "liberals" feels now? Probably wtf'ing over blowing their load prematurely and nullifying any credibility certain wishful thinkers provided them with.
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2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
The big IF is whether or not they can box Putin up in a post-regime. The guy has billions and powerful friends as well as enemies.
Another spin. What is this whole theatre is to give Russia an excuse to pull out of Ukraine? Putin’s sidelined, “for the good and internal security of the Federation”, “we taught them a lesson but now we must heal” or whatever horsesh#t they come up with. Russia really needed an excuse to get the hell out and somehow not fall apart in the process, those whose, stunt could have set the conditions for that…but again Putin would have to be removed from the picture for this to work.
Nah, you are being too rational. Whole Prig's action was exactly because he believes Ukraine isn't conquered because the top is infested with Soviet idiots. And I mean he's right about the latter part.
Conquering Ukraine and eliminating the nation is a cornerstone of Russian empire existing. Anything else but total victory is the end.
It's literally why they keep pursuing maximalist targets despite not having a chance.
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4 minutes ago, kevinkin said:
BBC:
Earlier today, Svitlana Tikhanovskaya, the opposition leader who challenged Lukashenko in 2020 presidential elections, said the Wagner’s rebellion “is the best chance to kick the Russian military out from [Belarus]”.
“If we miss this chance,” she said in her video appeal, “Russia will do to us exactly what they did to Ukraine.”
Could their people take to the streets again? More headaches and distractions for Russia.
Except Belarus has no russian military apart from a skeleton training crew.
Tikhanovskaya is also that person that demanded Ukraine to "liberate" (e.g. forcibly put her in power) Belarus.
She's rotten.
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Just now, Grigb said:
Shoigy and Gerasimov are nothing more but a executors of Putin commands. Next ones will be the same.
If putin caved in that means he's willing to give military reigns to prig instead of losing all reigns.
So he most likely will be a talking head that will keep telling us prig's today's salary review application was part of the SMO plan, while military may as well may be under prig.
The stakes were highest since 1917. Prig is not dumb to get just faces replaced out of it.
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3 minutes ago, Grigb said:
We still got 6 downed helicopters and one very valuable coms aircraft.
Something to soften the bitter pill.
Let's hope it will just have some internal consequences for russians.
Problem is - they will most likely replace shoigu and gerasimov with Wagner guys. And those are far more competent.
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Sigh. Well at least some russians died.
What a disappointing "coup".
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10 minutes ago, womble said:
Entirely possible, I'll warrant. And now we hear tales of elements of "capable" (although who knows how reliable?) units being airlifted around the RUF, so is Prig on a clock: get safe before those arrivals can shake themselves out into fighting formations and close the noose?
There are internal security elements though, which should be reliable supporters of the regime. I would have thought OMON formations would have the engineer capacity to deny river crossings to the rebels. Maybe they're moving so fast that the high-ups can't get their heads around the idea of destroying Rodina infrastructure to slow the progress of malcontents.
Or maybe putin bet everything on not trying to lose this war, after all OMON was moved to Ukraine as well to suppress rebellions on occupied territories - which in turn simply left the gates wide open for Prig.
I bet putin trusted his personal cook so much - he would not think his bff will ever backstab him.
But this is Russia. An emperor can never show weakness. And losing wars is showing the worst possible weakness.
Somebody would have to exploit the once in a lifetime opportunity. Especially a guy that was gifted a whole personal army to. It was supposed to be putin's private army though.
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15 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
155th naval infantry brigade, decimated in battle for Pavlivka and Vuhledar has took Putin side
All 11 of them
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15 minutes ago, womble said:
Having seized the SMO (and thus the regime) by the jugular in Rostov, it makes no sense that they send a "flying column" north, unsupported, unless they have cast-iron certainty that they won't be opposed or cut off. For me, this signals that Prig is confident he has friends in high places. Stalling them at a river crossing and blocking them from withdrawal, reinforcement or resupply shouldn't be beyond even Shoigu and Gerasimov's limited conceptual and physical resources, which seems to still include the RU air force, and definitely includes more artillery and shells than the flying column could possibly be carrying alongwith themselves.
I think there's simply no army left in Russia to stop them. Remember the disgraceful "Victory Day" with a single T34? It's that simple.
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17 minutes ago, Grigb said:
RU Nats are confused - it looks like only construction workers and some road police were sent to stop Wagnerites march to Moscow
Wonder why can't they just send actual soldiers.
Oh right.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted · Edited by kraze
during the "coup" Prig was getting support and approval from russians that putin was getting in '00s. I don't think what oligarchs think even matters at this point. 1917 happened because Nikolai II lost the war so russians put in power those that would not lose again. And this wasn't 1917 - yet what we saw was that there is a high chance that a bunch of zeks could've taken Moscow and looted Rubliovka.
if anything oligarchs will be the first to get killed once russians take to the streets because the war was lost. Not their first time.