danfrodo

on a more serious note, I suspect one of the best current perquisites of being in 'Putin's Pasdarans' is that you are immune from being sent to die in Ukraine. Start shipping them to war and they might just do the coup themselves.

Am I correct from this picture in understanding that cossack males can be made pregnant? Looks like he's got twins in the tummy. He won't be assaulting across any fields anytime soon.

So now I worry RU will grab some local guys, dress them up in SOF garb, shoot them and say "saboteurs found and killed by brave RU forces in vicious firefight. This is the team that did terror attack on local civilian airport in crimea." This is good propaganda, of course, because it identifies issue & solves it cleanly. It's tragic because they murder innocents to pull it off.

that is a really good point. These videos are gonna be all over RU social media.

speaking of partisan activity, I wonder what will be the reaction of RU? Most folks here know the germans practiced extensive collective punishment for partisan activity in WW2. What will RU do? Will it be just up to local commanders? Orders at a higher level? RU so far has shown it couldn't care less about war crimes, even stunningly obvious mass murder of POWs, so I am definitely worried about what they will do to civilians in hot areas.

Super villian and certified genius Putin getting whupped by a comedian and his friends. Better than fiction.

Ongoing, systematic degradation of RU military power without UKR suffering casualties. Taking out command, logistics, arty via CB, and now going for the airfields. I guess this is why UKR is fine being patient before launching major ground attacks.

I think Finns don't want St Petersburg. They'll just stop at the 1939 border like last time. I wouldn't want any part RU. Oh, except that oily part.

Wow, what a night: 1. crimea attack: tactically lovely because it reduces RU air power in the south. Strategically, lots of fun -- If Putin admits it's UKR attack and rants about retaliation, etc, he's also showing how increasingly powerless he is. Good times for Putler. If UKR starts hitting all the airfields then RU aircraft will have to stage pretty far away, dramatically reducing number of sorties per day during (hopefully) coming offensive. 2. I'm going to Roger Waters house to take all his best musical gear. Any one want in on this? We'll duct tape him to a chair then say "cease fire!" once all the good stuff is safely packed away in our van. I bet he's got some great vintage stuff. I agree that war is bad. I am anti-war. But Waters' posturing is so sickeningly naive. What would Hitler have given for a cease fire after June 1940? After December 1941? November 1942? Yes, let's do this, where aggressor takes whatever he wants and then just yells 'cease fire'. Starting w Waters' house. Way better than actually having to work to pay for things. 3. I must correct my posts from yesterday where I stated RU had only gained ~1km. They have gained ~10km. And are stuck.

Heh heh heh. Wait until they drive a bunch of equipment all the way across crimea and up to the river. Let them get repairs nearly done. Then blast it. I can picture UKR HIMARS guys rolling around on their dugout floor, laughing until they can barely breath at these schmucks -- everyone on earth knows everything RU does to that bridge is doomed, yet they have to keep at it because Putin says so, over & over & over & over. Gawd, I do love this. That's an interesting analogy, maybe the best one yet. If any of y'all have not read about this, you should. It's a fascinating story. Can't wait until RU starts filling barrels w supplies and trying to float them across the river.

A while ago a veteran on this forum said MRAPS are terrible for anything outside of driving on roads that might have mines. He hated them, I recall. Too tall, bad ergonomics, bad off road, etc. I would think better than driving around in little pickup trucks but he felt otherwise.

Now that is interesting. I wonder what's up? I wonder how much ammo RU forces have stockpiled? And what is the rate of re-supply? Once the rate-in is less than the rate-out, things are going to get interesting. Hopefully RU will make the wise decision and try to mount an offensive out of this bridgehead. Preferably planned at the very highest level of RU military decision making by Herr Putler himself. If the bridgehead is compressed, the only bad news is that left bank RU arty will be in range of front lines. August is shaping up to be a very interesting month. On the nuke plant subject: I suspect if RU were to cause a radiation disaster, they would of course blame it on HIMARS. And no one would believe that except Amnesty. But this would be a massive escalation -- I think it would cause EU to become more aggressive, not less. RU handling this so stupidly, as I've mentioned before. Instead of saying "this is internal civil war, stay out, we just want peace", they continually say "watch out, we're craaaaaazy, and you're all next!"

I think the same map has been generated for every single RU operation in Donbas. The Pisky attack was supposed to break the lines there & follow the road net to then cut off bakhmut. Before that were attacks toward Avdivka. And I think most of us here will be willing to bet on the outcome: big barrage for a day or so, UKR pulls back, RU gains ~1km or so. RU stalls. over & over & over & over again.

I should not take joy from someone's murder. But in this case and others like it I will make an exception. Kudos to the partisans! I wonder how much latent partisan power is just waiting for its moment to strike in concert w UAF operations. I guess we'll see, and probably soon.

So our real time test of the "RU spent offensively" theory continues. After lots of noise & panic & such..... RU has moved maybe a kilometer?? Current situation favors the 'spent' camp. They have attacks in other areas but don't seem to be taking anything in those attacks. So the ~1km advance seems to be it, after a week.

So a once widely respected organization destroys itself in one fell swoop. Nice job RU bot/CEO. Maybe they should bring in Noam Chomsky also. I have a feeling their grass roots contibutors will mostly be pulling out. But Putin will happily make up the difference. This org is now dead to me.

My apologies, Huba. You will get the gold star if major Kharkiv offensive occurs, not the dapper & dastardly Dan/CA. Sebastopol? -- Now you are really getting optimistic!

well, Dan/CA will get a gold star if it turns out that Kharkiv is the real offensive. I think he's the one that suggested hitting there once RU moved all its forces west. So where would RU get forces to bolster Kharkiv? And what would UKR objectives be? Might be just to get RU forces out of arty range of the city. Maybe they have big plan to take Kupyansk and totally unhinge a huge section of the front. Kherson would still happen I would think, just at a slower pace. the one thing that we can safely say is that UKR now acts and RU reacts.

Thou hast returned I was worried maybe Putin's agents had gotten to you.

OK OK, I admit that some planes are cool. Especially P51s. And spitfires. and FW190s, ME109s. And F4 phantoms. And corsairs. and P47 thunderbolts. Oh, and stukas. and B24s. And zeros. and of course P38s, super cool. But other than those, planes are mostly just kinda cool.

OK, I gotta give you that. After much praying and reading of scripture, it appears I overstated my case. I agree w you that airplanes are not false gods. They are gods but are lesser gods relative to The Most Exalted High Gods (tracked armored vehicles). Wheeled armored vehicles are the offspring of High Gods w mortals, so are demi-gods.

Well, interesting night of posts last night. but what is a Tankie? I happened to get some education on that this very morning. Markos at DailyKos lets the tankie nutbags speak for themselves. Talk about seeing the world in black/white like some kind of cultists. And Noam Chomsky now thinks ....what???? LIBERAL SITE, ENTER AT OWN RISK: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/6/2114833/-Ukraine-Update-Oh-goodie-the-Tankies-are-losing-their-minds-over-Pelosi-and-NATO On the Pelosi thing, I think both sides have very good points about whether the timing of this is good or bad. It does show that US is standing behind Taiwan. And it does greatly raise tensions. I dunno which of these matters more right now and going forward. From Haiduk's post above, it looks like RU thinks it can keep supplies going to Kherson. I hope this has same success as flying supplies into Stalingrad.

maybe don't announce ATACMS. Just let it be a nice surprise on the kerch bridge. Now that would a fun to see the RU nat posts after that. And pisky has fallen. So either RU can still fight offensively or UKR decided to put it's forces elsewhere. Or UKR actually tried to hold on but lost due to shortages of men & material -- that seems unlike but it's possible. The plot thickens.

So is it my imagination or has Russian artillery greatly diminished from what it was 2 months ago? Sometimes I forget just how much ordnance RU was throwing at UKR until rather recently. So between CB, burned out barrels, and supply dumps exploding, there seems to have been an effect.

Beautiful video. Damn, I love tanks. Always have, always will. Even russian-designed tanks (as long as they fly UKR flag). I think tanks are not obsolete, because God loves tanks. If he did not love them, he would not have made them so beautiful. Lots of people like airplanes, but they worship a false god. Tanks are God's chosen war machines.