How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[TheVulture]

Russian military warehouse hit in Luhansk region. Looks like ammo cooking off.

 

 

[chuckdyke]

42 minutes ago, Strykr45 said:

Has anyone researched the US BioWeapon/Lab connection to this situation ???

The secret society of flat earthers tried. 

[Strykr45]

20 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

я слышу голос от параши

I'm sorry.

Free speech is being discouraged here.

I will just go back to thinking I was in the "Old" USA.

I remember when we could question "Authority."

I never insulted anyone.

 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Strykr45

[kraze]

Clearly US biolabs in Ukraine are a real deal.

Otherwise how would you explain this terror attack by a flock of mutant nazi birds dropping modified covid on a column of peaceful russian liberators?

 

[LongLeftFlank]

Just now, Strykr45 said:

I'm sorry.

Free speech is being discouraged here.

I will just go back to thinking I was in the "Old" USA.

I remember when we could question "Authority.

 

OK, I actually believe this, as an actual Russian troll would have known to take his business elsewhere by now.

So, are you named after the war hero, the vehicle or the male p*rn star?

[btw, I can keep this going until it all vanishes in one giant modded mist. You should hear me when Nigerian scammers have the misfortune to reach me.]

[chuckdyke]

2 minutes ago, Strykr45 said:

I remember when we could question "Authority."

I live in Australia and will pass you the 'Talking Stick'. I talk first and go back to first year primary school. The teacher taught us that 2+2 equals 4. You were not allowed to state that it was 22. It was regarded as a stupid joke. Nothing to do with questioning authority. 

[LongLeftFlank]

3 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

I live in Australia and will pass you the 'Talking Stick'. I talk first and go back to first year primary school. The teacher taught us that 2+2 equals 4. You were not allowed to state that it was 22. It was regarded as a stupid joke. Nothing to do with questioning authority. 

Fiery, the angels fell.

Deep thunder rolled about their shores, burning with the fires of Auk!

 

 

Edited April 11, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[chuckdyke]

3 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Fiery, the angels fell.

Beautiful custom from the indigenous people. Just pick up a stick and the person who holds it can talk. When he is finished, he hands it over to the next person. If you make an *sshole of yourself, you get a bigger one aka a spear. That will be used to puncture your leg and you will be left behind to fend for yourself. Something they should do with Putin. 

Edited April 11, 2022 by chuckdyke

[dan/california]

Too tired for Russian trolls, I hope he enjoys the bread lines, and enjoys them more when they start adding sawdust to the bread. Night everybody.

Glory to Ukraine!

 

[DesertFox]

34 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

я слышу голос от параши

“Gegen Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.”

― Friedrich von Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, 1801

"Against stupidity Gods fight themselves in vain."

― Friedrich von Schiller, The Maid of Orleans, 1801

[LongLeftFlank]

1 minute ago, chuckdyke said:

Beautiful custom from the indigenous people. Just pick up a stick and the person who holds it can talk. When he is finished, he hands it over to the next person. 

 

 

[chuckdyke]

2 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Glory to Ukraine!

I concur they have some good looking sheilas there. 

[kraze]

14 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

The teacher taught us that 2+2 equals 4. You were not allowed to state that it was 22. 

Clearly your teacher never tried programming

[Bulletpoint]

The war in Ukraine has been the only thing on the BBC news page for more than a month now, but this morning, I noticed it's been pushed below the fold and replaced by coverage of the French elections.

I guess that means that the war is pretty much over now. Apart from a few places like Mariupol.

Putin wants to portray the withdrawal as a redeployment to focus on the east, but I think this basically just means he wants to hold on to the occupied areas. I don't see any massive new offensive happening - seems we're back to the situation before the war.

[TheVulture]

1 minute ago, Bulletpoint said:

The war in Ukraine has been the only thing on the BBC news page for more than a month now, but this morning, I noticed it's been pushed below the fold and replaced by coverage of the French elections.

I guess that means that the war is pretty much over now. Apart from a few places like Mariupol.

Putin wants to portray the withdrawal as a redeployment to focus on the east, but I think this basically just means he wants to hold on to the occupied areas. I don't see any massive new offensive happening - seems we're back to the situation before the war.

BBC news, like most UK news, suffers from an obsession with human interest stories. Journalists are pretty much trained to care about nothing else it seems. They don't know how to cover a war except ion the big situation changes (Russia invades, Ukraine wins battle for Kiev and Russia withdraws), and stories about normal people being affected by the war. Once they've run out of angles to cover on that, they don't know what to do any more. because they don't know how to report on the actual military situation where there are developments worth reporting.

Any dramatic or noteworthy developments will get covered still, but anything else is going to be fighting for air time with coverage of the upcoming local government elections in May.

[chrisl]

34 minutes ago, kraze said:

Clearly US biolabs in Ukraine are a real deal.

Otherwise how would you explain this terror attack by a flock of mutant nazi birds dropping modified covid on a column of peaceful russian liberators?

I’ve had pet ducks.  That’s normal behavior for migratory waterfowl.

[LongLeftFlank]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

The war in Ukraine has been the only thing on the BBC news page for more than a month now, but this morning, I noticed it's been pushed below the fold and replaced by coverage of the French elections.

I guess that means that the war is pretty much over now. Apart from a few places like Mariupol.

Putin wants to portray the withdrawal as a redeployment to focus on the east, but I think this basically just means he wants to hold on to the occupied areas. I don't see any massive new offensive happening - seems we're back to the situation before the war.

I'm assuming [/sarc] here.

...As I warned a couple of pages ago, our dear Ukrainian brothers must assume they are on their own, ultimately, to determine their fate, and their children's, with the expenditure of their own precious blood.  And the time to shape it is *now*, not later.

However some of us may wish it were otherwise.

I give @kraze a hard time (tbh I'd be more comfortable if he admitted just once that ethnic Russians who speak Russian are also good, loyal Ukrainians, because knowing that is the only way out of the hell the various neighbouring empires have built for them in their rich land).

But he and @Aragorn2002 are quite right in this: we Westerners have grown soft and out of touch in the nest our sterner, harder forefathers have feathered since Vasco da Gama broke the Islamic monopoly on Oriental trade, giving 'the West' first call on the resources of an entire planet.

So today, we are, indeed, not Agreement Capable -- or at least, not agreement reliable --- as a civilization.

But it is not within the control of anyone here to change that reality. That burden now falls on our brothers who shield our right flank, but their own homes and families first of all.

[/florid prose]

Edited April 11, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[TheVulture]

 

 

[LongLeftFlank]

18 minutes ago, chrisl said:

I’ve had pet ducks.  That’s normal behavior for migratory waterfowl.

African or European?

[Ts4EVER]

15 minutes ago, LongLeftFlank said:

But he and @Aragorn2002 are quite right in this: we Westerners have grown soft and out of touch in the nest our sterner, harder forefathers have feathered since Vasco da Gama broke the Islamic monopoly on Oriental trade.

 

I don't like this "decadence" narrative, partly because it reminds me of all the pre-WW1 talk of "the cleansing bath of steel" and stuff like that, considering how that turned out. We shouldn't dismiss advances of western civilisation as making us "weaker". If anything, actually embodying these ideals would be a great advantage when it comes to checking the influence of autocracies in the developing world. I mean, how can we expect them to see the light of democracy and freedom if our actions are so often obviously guided by economic self-interest?

Also, it is easy to talk the big talk if you are not the one who will be sent into the meatgrinder if push comes to shove. Sometimes I wish the boomers would find the same sudden steely resolve in response to inequality and injustice within their own societies, but sadly it seems reserved for external enemies...

[LongLeftFlank]

13 minutes ago, TheVulture said:

 

 

From the Twitter comments:

I don’t believe for a second that he can even read a map. It could be Narnia on there just to give him something to look at. 

[chuckdyke]

42 minutes ago, kraze said:

Clearly your teacher never tried programming

It was 1956 and programming was something they did in science fiction books. 

[domfluff]

15 minutes ago, Ts4EVER said:

I don't like this "decadence" narrative, partly because it reminds me of all the pre-WW1 talk of "the cleansing bath of steel" and stuff like that, considering how that turned out. We shouldn't dismiss advances of western civilisation as making us "weaker". If anything, actually embodying these ideals would be a great advantage when it comes to checking the influence of autocracies in the developing world.

I actually suspect that the situation in Ukraine might be proving that the Western way of doing things offers a significant advantage. People have been claiming that stuff as low-level as air conditioning in an armoured vehicle is "soft" or "weak" forever, and that the "rugged" approach that Russia takes is superior in some sense, be that morally or otherwise.

I suspect one of the lessons that will (or perhaps should) be learned from this war is that paying attention to your troops and keeping them happy, warm, dry and fed (or as much as possible) is actually crucial to effective operations, and pays dividends over the longer term. That it's not just something one "should" do, but actually makes objective, logical and economic sense.

I was thinking this recently when there was a comparison made between a recent US recruitment ad and a Russian one. The former (which I imagine you've seen, there was a lot of media attention around it) was a personal story of a US army officer, raised by two mothers, and full of references to her history of socially-aware protest and activism. The latter was hyper-masculine, emphasising the hardships and torment the VDV go through. Both are propaganda, obviously. They're recruitment ads, and are both trying to sell something.

...but I wonder if the Russian lies died at Hostomel.

Edited April 11, 2022 by domfluff

[LongLeftFlank]

2 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

I don't like this "decadence" narrative, partly because it reminds me of all the pre-WW1 talk of "the cleansing bath of steel" and stuff like that, considering how that turned out. We shouldn't dismiss advances of western civilisation as making us "weaker". If anything, actually embodying these ideals would be a great advantage when it comes to checking the influence of autocracies in the developing world. I mean, how can we expect them to see the light of democracy and freedom if our actions are so often obviously guided by economic self-interest?

Also, it is easy to talk the big talk if you are not the one who will be sent into the meatgrinder if push comes to shove. Sometimes I wish the boomers would find the same sudden steely resolve in response to inequality and injustice within their own societies, but sadly it seems reserved for external enemies...

Yes, fully accepted, but what comfort or guidance does that adjustment really give the Ukrainians?

...A higher, more strident class of pearl clutching? Angrier letters to the Times?

Look, I absolutely hope the entire Western SpecOps beehive has left the Syrians and Malians and @whoeverthehellelsewasstupidenoughtobelieveourattentionspanwaslongerthan5minutes

and is now busy on the ground in Poland, Romania and West Ukraine, preparing the Mother of All Tech Technology Sea-Air-Land Embargo Mindf**cks for the RuAF whenever they finally get around to their next wave.

That would be like ULTRA (with exploding typewriters): icing on the cake of victory.  It helped, but frankly the Allies would have won without it, and as we know from memoirs, generally prosecuted the war accordingly.

But you can't bet the farm and the overworked tractor on that....

 

To quote Air Marshal Dowding, from the Greatest Memo Ever Written:

I hope and believe that our armies may yet be victorious in France and Belgium, but we have to face the possibility that they may be defeated.....

[Still gives me chills, when Olivier recites it. Yeah, I'm an odd bird]

Edited April 11, 2022 by LongLeftFlank

[The Steppenwulf]

3 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

.... Disembowel those Russian forces sitting idle outside Kharkiv lobbing heavy shells into it. Menace the Belgorod oblast, the Rodina. Threaten to cut the rail line.

I was also thinking about this recently. On the face of it, it seems to have a lot of merits:

• UA units seem to be in better shape there than the RA than anywhere else on the front;
• There's a big open flank on that northern side;
• It would be problematic for RA to reinforce from the South due to the Severskyi-Donets River enclosing that entire OA off. 
• An attack here before RA launches something elsewhere would snatch the initiative away from them and possibly put a dent in any offensive plans Dvornikov is developing (Izyum -Slovyansk) during the current operational pause.

The problem I guess with this idea is the all too apparent lack of mobility with most UA units; no ready to go armor units (1st Tank Bde remains in Kyiv undergoing refit);  and pulling off an offensive operation (even a limited one like this) without air cover goes against the military handbook and would be decidedly risky for this reason. 

Maybe the Russians don't even think it's possible for these reasons? 

Edited April 11, 2022 by The Steppenwulf