kraze
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Posts posted by kraze
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10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Because if he is sick, very sick, this means uncertainty within the regime. Uncertainty + stress = change. Nobody here thinks that Putin dying won't make Russia a happy and friendly place on Earth, but it matters. Things could get worse, they could get better, they might stay about the same. We won't know until after it happens.
Yeah, no
First of all, it seems he's been sick for at least a year if not several. Cancer is not always treatable, especially not pancreatic cancer. I live near the best cancer treatment centers in the world and I've known people that died not too long after getting their diagnosis. In other cases people survive, but they are effectively invalids.
Western medicine is great, but there's plenty of diseases it can't do much about. If Putin has a "bad case" of a nasty type of cancer, I doubt he'd make it more than 5 years. And as I said, we don't now how much time is already on his clock (if he has it).
Therefore, the questions remain... is Putin really sick? If so, what does he have? And if he has something, what stage is it at? I think there's enough evidence to suggest that he is definitely sick with something, so it really comes down to what does he have and how far along is it.
Steve
putin dying natural death, even if from cancer, will be extremely anti-climactic though.
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6 hours ago, chuckdyke said:
I think they just publish this to make us happy.
No idea why western press cares so much if he has cancer or whatever else at this point. With modern medicine (and he gets the absolute best of it) he can easily live for another 10 or even 20 years. So no illusions there.
Granted yet another reason I want putin to die is to see how those same journos, who repost news about putin having cancer monthly, will explain why nothing has changed after his death.
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2 hours ago, chuckdyke said:
Is this true?
It's Geraschenko, just like Arestovich and Tryxa. Even if their posts are sometimes half-truths - half-truths are still bad because they are still misinformation.
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12 hours ago, riptides said:
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Yeah, who was an absolute imperialistic filth and openly supported genocide of Ukrainians. An extremely bad example.
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11 hours ago, Butschi said:
How many Russians in how many western countries do you know about that you can make this claim? @cesmonkey explicitly said "at least some of the refugees". That means, in order to "prove this is not the case" you have to prove that not "at least some of the refugees" are altered, which means you have to prove that this applies to none of the refugees. So you better know about every Russian in every western country, otherwise your statement is wrong.
Simple:
You can see russians doing pro-war marches in various countries, Germany in particular being the weirdest example, where you see them rallying in support of genocide in the center of Berlin which should've been a huge no no alone.
But you do not see them doing any rallies in support of Ukraine. In fact usually it's everyone but russians doing it.
War, especially a genocidal one, makes things black and white - if somebody stays silent (especially in safety provided by the West) - that somebody probably simply does not exist in the first place.
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7 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:
One could equally argue that the exposure of the refugees to an open society and free media would forever intellectually alter the thinking of at least some of the refugees in a direction that will result in a more positive future for Russia.
Russians literally in every single western country prove this is not the case.
In fact to this very day you cannot name a single russian "freedom loving" leader of any "liberty adoring" faction of some kind in their whole history, both sides of the border. Just various shades of imperial insanity.
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17 minutes ago, CAZmaj said:
I was born and grew up in former Yugoslavia (not Serbian) which does make me quite partial to Ukrainians. I checked with my former coworkers of Ukranian origins and they fully endorse the following:
https://www.patreon.com/uaexplainers
21 HOURS AGO
9 things people still don’t get about UkraineThoughts from a bunch of stubborn Ukrainians after eight months of the invasion. Feel free to share this with people who still find it hard to understand why Ukrainians think or act in certain ways.
1. Ukraine will never surrender.
This is an existential war for Ukrainians. If we stop fighting, our homes will be turned into rubble, our children will be taken away, and our people will face mass terror. Every place that experienced Russian occupation in Ukraine has a similar story to tell: a story of mass graves, torture chambers, filtration camps, and forced deportations.All that means that Ukrainians are prepared to fight no matter how long it takes – because they are fighting for survival. Nobody “makes” Ukrainians fight – not the government and most certainly not the Western arms. With or without military or political support from the democratic world, Ukraine will keep on resisting – because we are fighting for our right to exist.
For us, the reality of perpetual military resistance is more acceptable than the reality of the Russian occupation.
2. None of us is okay – even if we say we are.
In the first weeks following the February 24 invasion, Ukrainians were in a state of shock and terror. The shock passed, but the collective trauma never started to heal. Every day people across Ukraine keep dying from Russian shelling. Every week new stories of horror of Russia’s genocidal campaign emerge. Each week brings a new little catastrophe – and every week a little part of us quietly dies inside.This has become the new norm Ukrainians are learning to navigate. So, when you ask a Ukrainian friend or colleague whether they’re okay, keep in mind that this question has lost its meaning to most of us. We are not okay and we don’t know if we’ll ever be okay again.
But we keep holding on. In a way, trying to be okay as Ukrainians is the final act of resistance against Russia’s attempt to wipe out everything that is Ukraine.
3. Ukraine is fighting against Russian colonialism, not just Putin.
Putin may have pulled the trigger, but the root of the invasion lies deeper than the current regime in Russia. For centuries, Russia has led colonial conquests from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Far East. It conquered and assimilated multiple indigenous peoples – and exterminated those who resisted.Russian colonialism remained largely under the radar this whole time, and its crimes are much less studied. As a result, the Russian imperial worldview has remained unchecked and unchallenged – and has expressed itself in multiple invasions since 1991: Transnistria, Ichkeria, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria.
The war might be paused when Putin’s regime implodes, but Ukrainians know all too well that a lasting peace is only possible with a decolonized and disarmed Russia that rethinks its past and future.
Until then, the untamed beast of Russian colonialism will seek to continue its imperial conquest in Ukraine and elsewhere.
4. Russian-speaking Ukrainians are not “more Russian.”
Yes, most Ukrainians are bilingual. Yes, 26% of Ukrainians are Russian-first speakers and 27% speak an equal amount of Russian and Ukrainian in their daily lives. But do you know why?While some foreigners still believe that it has mostly to do with ethnicity and political ideology, the widespread use of the Russian language in Ukraine is mostly the result of centuries-old Russification policy.
Since the 19th century, Ukrainians were deliberately banned from using their language in education, labor, and public spheres of life. The Russification process prevailed throughout Soviet rule. As a result, millions of Ukrainians switched to Russian and deliberately hid their Ukrainian traces. And Ukraine learned to exist successfully as a nation of bilinguals.
So, if you meet Ukrainians who speak Russian in their daily lives, do not assume they are “more Russian” than any other Ukrainian or that they support Russia in any way. They probably have a more interesting story to tell about language and identity – just ask them.
5. Ukraine never had a Nazi problem.
Not only Nazis in Ukraine had nothing to do with Russia’s invasion, but the entire notion of Ukraine being run by the far-right is and always has been ridiculous.The story of a “dangerous Nazi regime in Kyiv” has always been nothing more than a Russian propaganda myth. The idea of “Banderites” running amok was first voiced on Russian state TV when Ukrainians went to the streets to protest against a corrupt dictatorship in 2013. As Russia invaded and destabilized parts of Ukraine in 2014, it kept weaponizing and feeding the Nazi myth thus justifying its involvement and legitimizing the occupation.
Ukraine’s far-right movements have always been marginal and never had more than 5% of public support combined. Unlike many European states that do have a problem with far-right populism or Russia – a country running on aggressive fascist ethnonationalism for decades – Ukraine never really had a Nazi problem.
There is nothing humane or intellectual in trying to justify a brutal genocidal campaign by parroting propaganda claims crafted by the Kremlin. At this point, anyone trying to counterbalance Russian war crimes by appealing to the “Nazis in Ukraine” narrative is either a paid Russian shill or just a useful idiot. There is no point talking to these people anymore – we just need to stop providing them with a platform for spreading fascist propaganda.
6. Ukraine is a democracy. Zelensky acts as our representative.
Ukraine is not perfect. The issues with social trust, corruption, and poor state management have persisted for decades and hurt our country in various ways. But Ukrainians always fought back whenever authoritarianism loomed over: they protested in 2004 after a rigged election, and overthrew a corrupt wannabe dictator in 2014.And yes, Ukraine still has a lot to improve – which would have been a lot easier if we didn’t have to constantly defend ourselves from Russia’s territorial aggression since 2014. But despite an external threat, Ukraine remained devoted to democratic values and reforms.
Not many people understand that Zelensky – a President who received 73% of the public’s vote in 2019 – always speaks and acts on behalf of the Ukrainian people. Following the full-scale invasion, Zelensky’s actions received praise and support from 91% of Ukrainians.
There has never been such a clear connection between the President and the people in Ukraine – and there are probably not a lot of examples of such political unity in modern-day democracies. All notions of Zelensky forcing anything onto Ukrainians are completely out of touch with reality.
7. We will not shut up. Not anymore.
For too long, the Ukrainian perspectives were silenced by Russia and pro-Russian sentiments around the globe. Like many other nations colonized by Russia, Ukraine had to shut up and, at best, politely debate whatever Russians had to say.This colonial legacy has stayed long after 1991. Ukrainians were consistently denied agency: their pro-EU and pro-NATO choices were explained through conspiracies about the “US and NATO aggressive expansion.” Discussions about Ukraine often happened without Ukrainians themselves but with well-established carriers of the Russian colonial views on Ukraine.
All of this must remain in the past. We will not shut up and listen to another round of Russian imperial bull****, casual tone-deaf Westsplaining, or another Russian state-sponsored gaslighting campaign.
As the genocide against our people continues, we will remain unapologetically Ukrainian – and we will make sure our voices are loud and clear from now on.
8. Yes, we think all Russians are responsible for the war.
Ukrainians do not blame just Putin or the elites for the war – we blame the entire Russian nation. Putin and his cronies do not personally launch high-precision missiles at residential buildings. They don’t torture and mutilate civilians living under occupation. They don’t take away Ukrainian children and don’t try to “re-educate” them. They don’t loot, rape, and murder us. They don’t attack Ukrainians abroad or online. Ordinary Russians do all those things. All while the rest of them are silently and passively going along with the genocide for 8 months – or running away from their country and responsibility.Those who fight against Putin’s regime carry the burden of responsibility as well. Even if they tried to make it right – they failed, and that’s just a fact. They failed as a state, as a society, and now millions of Ukrainians are suffering from genocide because of this ongoing collective failure.
Until Russians recognize and own this political responsibility, there is nothing for us to talk about. Ukrainians have the right to a safe space without Russians – without their point of view, narratives, or offers to help. And there’s nothing hateful about that. It’s a matter of personal safety and healing trauma.
Keep in mind that, unlike most people around the world, Ukrainians have lived close to Russians for centuries. We speak and understand their language – and we can follow their conversations on social media and in real life. We know how xenophobic, chauvinistic, and cynical the average Russians are. And we perfectly realize how their imperial attitudes have made this war possible in the first place.
9. Ukrainians are afraid of what comes next. But we won’t surrender to our fears.
Some people think that Ukraine’s stubbornness may lead to a full-blown world war or a nuclear catastrophe. What these people fail to understand is that Ukrainians want peace more than anyone in the world. It’s our homes getting pillaged. It’s our children being murdered.The only country that tries to occupy a sovereign state all while blackmailing the rest of the world with nuclear catastrophe is Russia. Like it or not, the genie is out of the box – Russia is already a fascist dictatorship on nukes that invades its neighbors. It is already a threat to global security – and this has nothing to do with the way Ukraine resists. The entire notion that Ukraine can “escalate” the war by defending itself from an invasion within its internationally recognized borders is just absurd victim-blaming.
Ukrainians are afraid every night as we go to sleep and every morning while reading news of more death and destruction. But if we let our fears consume us, Russia will most likely win, and its illegal invasion, genocide, and nuclear blackmail will be rewarded. And this outcome is exactly what leads to another world war.
As Dmytro Kuleba recently said on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, “It’s absolutely normal not to have fear, yet to be afraid.” And that is exactly how it feels to be Ukrainian these eight months.
Yes, it's all correct.
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"Comrade Ivanov today your task is to bomb civilians in..."
"Say no more."
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1 hour ago, Haiduk said:
- UKR hasn't any reasons to blow up Nova Kahovka dam, in 1941 exactly Red Army has blown up DneproGES dam, to delay German advance
Yeah and it didn't delay German advance for a second, but resulted in ~100k dead civilians. Historians argue it was more of a retaliation towards Ukrainians for not supporting or actively opposing Red Army (duh)
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20 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Blowing the dam would essentially be an admission that Russia expects to lose the rest of Kherson, probably Zaporizhzhia as well and would likely fatally doom any hopes to make Crimea a viable territory should Russia continue to hold it.
I therefor predict Russia will blow the dam.
Yeah I don't get why some people think Russia cares about Crimea or people there. It's an occupied Ukrainian territory with people they consider "untermenschen" - they only need it as a fleet base. Blowing up the dam would mean they acknowledge they will not be able to hold and exploit fertile lands of Kherson area and will be done to deny Ukraine using them either - which is very very russian.
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9 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:
And I will once again call BS on this assertion. Cite a credible source on Red Army demographics.
I already provided you with such source the last time which describes demographics of RA and their change from '39 to '45. For some reason you didn't reply to it and we aren't doing the same dance again.
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34 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:
They have a rich tradition. 360000 KIA,WIA or missing and still emerging victorious. (Battle for Berlin. Never write them off. They were the Soviets though.
Not comparable, from 1944 russians were a minority in Red Army, throwing everybody else into the meat grinder, as discussed before.
When Red Army was mostly composed of russians in 1939-1942 - they've been chased off to Urals. If Germans weren't as violent and as barbaric as their former allies, which resulted in them losing local support in Ukraine and Belarus and locals rushing to join Red Army en masse in retaliation - the outcome on the eastern front could've been very different.
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Maybe he will announce "full" mobilization that requires 10 million mobilized
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More like the boy who cried wolf eventually
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1 hour ago, Grossman said:
2 stories on London this morning
1 London Guardian
Pro-Russian forces claim to have repulsed Ukrainian attempt to retake nuclear plant
An attempt to retake control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) by boats loaded with Ukrainian special forces has been repulsed, according to one of the Russian-installed officials in occupied eastern Ukraine.
The state-owned RIA Novosti news agency quotes Vladimir Rogov, one of the Russian-installed leaders in Zaporizhzhia, saying:
Last night , a large group of landing boats, crowded with militants of special operations forces, left the southern region of the city of Zaporizhzhia and other directions. The attempted landing was repulsed.
Rogov told the news agency that about 30 boats participated in the landing attempt, but that the situation was under control, and there were no plans to evacuate Enerhodar, the settlement attached to the ZNPP. RIA did not publish any evidence to back up the claims other than Rogov’s words.
Russian forces have occupied Europe’s largest nuclear power plant since the earliest days of the war. Both Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of firing on the power plant and risking a nuclear accident. Attempts to have the area declared a demilitarised zone for nuclear safety reasons have floundered. The ZNPP is located in Zaporizhzhia, one of the regions that Russia has claimed to “annex”.
2 The Sun reports that Mad Vlad is considering a nuclear demonstration.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20152793/vladimir-putin-nuclear-weapons-black-sea-ben-wallace/
Yes, this is the 5th time they are repulsing Ukrainian special forces trying to retake ZNPP. As usual no bodies or boats to show.
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Just now, keas66 said:
I'm not sure the apparently Russian Loving Israelis would stomach that .
To be fair on one hand we have "jews did holocaust" courtesy of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and on the other hand we have Israel cancelling any military talks with Ukraine after that very same MoFo said "giving any Israeli weapons to Ukraine will make us feel bad" yesterday. I think at this point Israel is more concerned with making an immediate 15% of their voters happy than long term issues with Iran or so it seems.
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15 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:
If West had balls, Iran would be pretty stupid in helping Russia - they have pretty big protests right now, and somebody giving it a push (e.g. delivering weapons to protesters) would put the Iran government in a world of hurt.
But Iran seems to be making the bet that West has no balls, and it seems to be paying off.
Yep, if West keeps being reactive - we may see Iran getting nukes by the end of this year or at the start of the next. And then they can finally be "deeply concerned" about that too.
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21 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:
I tend do believe rather not. If giving i.e Iran some required stuff (in exchange for more drones or frightening the west) then there´s no guarantee some is spreaded farer into islamic world. Israel would not just keep watching and China got to fear some might make it to the Uyghurs.
China, Russia and Iran are allies (or rather one is more and more like a master putting its dragon claws deeper into the other two). Besides Russia and China already helped DPRK get nukes and those are carefully watched by them. Iran would be going all in only if something HUGE like getting nukes was at stake, not to mention it already worked well and there was zero consequences from the West.
The truth is that certain Western powers are still very (purposefully) slow in their response, probably due to still hoping Russia and Ukraine will get tired and the war will get "frozen" and everybody will be doing business as usual once again. Hence the West is only being reactive instead of proactive. Hence the ban on tanks and talks about help with ADs only now getting serious, when it may just be too late in a month.
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16 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
Yes, that's why I said you can't really just decide to not fire the Stingers if you have them. But Putin might be hoping that you will run out of Stingers well before he runs out of Shaheds. So it might not only be the irrational terror bombing it's made out to be. I've seen several commentators saying it's a mystery why he attacks civilian targets this way, as it won't break civilian resolve, and it won't help won the war. But maybe it's not only a desperate act of evil.
It's a war that russians want to end with them exterminating as many of us as possible, even all of us if they decide so (as per their very own statements) - so any civilian casualties fall in with that goal. Don't even need to look for any sane reasoning after all the massacres they do in person from town to town. More dead Ukrainians is all that they truly want since they can't get any more land.
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8 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
The drone attacks are often portrayed as the desperate actions of Putin, trying to get revenge, maybe to please the infamous Russian "nats", but I've been wondering if a big part of the reason Russia is now sending in all those kamikaze drones is also that they hope they can deplete Ukrainian air defences this way?
According to Wikipedia, a Shahed-136 drone costs $20,000, while a Stinger missile costs $120,000. And sending up fighter planes to shoot down the drones wastes valuable time these planes could have been doing other things.
Some of the drones are of course lost to small arms fire or maybe just crash due to technical faults, so the final cost to Russia is probably a bit higher.
But it's not only about money, it's about supplies too. I don't know how limited the supply of Stingers and similar missiles is. Firing a stinger on a Shahed is a waste of a weapon that could down a Russian airplane, but it's a waste that Ukraine has to accept if they don't want the drone to reach Kyiv.
Since russians do not have air superiority and operate only near frontlines at best - most MANPADs remain unused, so diverting them to shoot down drones shouldn't put much of a dent in their numbers, not to mention that shooting down a $20.000 drone with a missile that costs $120.000 literally saves millions of $$ in repairs, not to mention lives.
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8 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:
but all minorities in Russia constitutes circa 15-19% of whole population depending on research methodology.
Because no methodology is really representative since the only country that can provide it is... Russia. The old trick here is that any member of any so called "minority" was being forced to register himself/herself as of "russian" nationality throughout whole USSR's existence because not being "russian" meant you were a second rate citizen (even more second rate really than others) that couldn't get any reasonable education or good job or even move to live in another city. It was part of the imperial attempts to erase ethnicities and turn them into "russians" (got so ridiculous - USSR was changing last names of children on birth to sound more "russian", KadyrOV is literally one such example) and something tells me not much has changed since 1991 in there.
But that's how you most likely get "minorities" being 15-19%. It can even mean many of those are people that simply refused to accept becoming "russian".
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1 hour ago, panzermartin said:
Is there a way for Ukraine to counter this? What if Russia goes all the way and the whole country is left with no electricity, no internet, transportation etc
They are going all the way. They are spamming us with drones mixed with whatever missiles they have left without cannibalizing their emergency stocks much. Zelenskyy claimed russians have 2400 Shaheds and since they throw at least 40 daily at us - they can keep going for 2 months non-stop even without more
chinese"iranian" drones and missiles.What will help is ADs that were asked for 6+ months ago.
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2 minutes ago, Maquisard manqué said:
Isn’t it actually a lot simpler and cruder? Whether someone has whiter skin? That’s your common-or-garden racist starting point.
Each country’s own social & ethnic makeup then results in more elaborate definitions of the “ok” group, but it’s always such a flawed definition- e.g. US, UK etc. fundamentally it’s just about people looking different and then a rationale being made to fit.
yeah but "whiter skin" is soon to be a minority even in Moscow where it shuts up and downs their head when they pass by chechens or dagestanis (or I guess tajiks now too) which are already quite numerous and also consider themselves superior to "whiter skin" and regularly bully them.
So it's a mess. But certainly "nats" should keep amplifying that mess until it reaches the boiling point.
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35 minutes ago, Maquisard manqué said:
Blaming their state for allowing other ethnicities in - even though they depend on them. So it’s kind of backfiring on the Russian state to have pushed this nationalist & racist crap.
But that's the thing. There's no core ethnicity in Russia. Every time some russian "nat" complains about other ethnicities - even I, being their neighbor, have no idea what he's talking about, especially since russian "nats" themselves look like a huge mix of all the ethnicities present in Russia.
But maybe hopefully every and each one of those 20-30 ethnicities in Russia considering themselves the "main" one is what leads to brutal downfall of the empire.
First of all, it seems he's been sick for at least a year if not several. Cancer is not always treatable, especially not pancreatic cancer. I live near the best cancer treatment centers in the world and I've known people that died not too long after getting their diagnosis. In other cases people survive, but they are effectively invalids.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Declarative levels never ever matter.
After all only a week ago Iran was still 'declaring' that they never ever sold a single drone to Russia. China also won't ever admit it's their drones simply put together at Iranian factories either.