How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[danfrodo]

1 hour ago, Huba said:

How dare you! It is NAFO Shiba Inu dressed as Captain Blackadder (from the 4th season of the show)  There's a gal on Twitter who makes these avatars based on your idea for a donation to Georgian Legion fighting in Ukraine.

well, what can I say.  I'm just another stupid american thinking everything if about stupid america .  You'd be shocked at how every dang thing in the world we somehow make all about us, at least in the media.  If I had just looked more closely I would've seen that any patton would have a fancier costume.

So how much stock are knowledgeable folks putting into the stories about RU soldiers not being properly paid?  As we talk about mutinies & such, that is often a huge driver.  Wouldn't it be amusing if Putin fell because he couldn't pay?  Then the oil/gas deal would in hindsight have been a strategic win, where Putin basically wrecked himself.  He thinks the west is dependent on him, but maybe his gun ends up backfiring.  That was the thought, that no one was stupid enough to shoot themselves, economically.  That doesn't get folks who believed Putin would be restrained off the hook (me included), it just makes those folks lucky.  But only in hindsight.

Which makes one wonder just how stupid China wants to be?  I think their leadership is smarter than Putin, but ya never know.

[Taranis]

Historical sum up of the 5th month of war (for History)

[Huba]

55 minutes ago, danfrodo said:

well, what can I say.  I'm just another stupid american thinking everything if about stupid america .  You'd be shocked at how every dang thing in the world we somehow make all about us, at least in the media.  If I had just looked more closely I would've seen that any patton would have a fancier costume.

British sitcoms/ comedy shows used to be a big thing in Poland a few decades ago, nothing universal about it though, no worries  

In other news, guess what time is it?  AA missile site in Crimea is on fire:

More info:

 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Huba

[Harmon Rabb]

3 minutes ago, Huba said:

British sitcoms/ comedy shows used to be a big thing in Poland a few decades ago, nothing universal about it though, no worries  

 

Never watched any of those sitcoms myself but I did recognize the actor from your avatar from those funny Johnny English movies.

Great fun to watch if you are a fan of the James Bond series.

Thanks for explaining how your new avatar got created, I did not really get it myself.

[dan/california]

22 minutes ago, Huba said:

British sitcoms/ comedy shows used to be a big thing in Poland a few decades ago, nothing universal about it though, no worries  

In other news, guess what time is it?  AA missile site in Crimea is on fire:

More info:

 

Black Adder, and Yes Minister are the two most educational shows ever filmed, and absolutely hilarious. Can't recommend both of them highly enough.

Edited August 28, 2022 by dan/california

[Huba]

Well, Blackadder was getting better with each season, with 4th being a masterpiece of both comedy and sober anti-war commentary, culminating with what I consider a finest scene in history of TV:

End of offtopic, promise!

[Grigb]

2 hours ago, Kinophile said:

Ref an "assault on. Moscow"... 

It feels we're going off the imaginary deep end a bit...

Let me state first that you are right in principle. But there are some facts that cast a different light on RU Nats.  

 

2 hours ago, Kinophile said:

The Romanovs had to be completely and utterly discredited, suffer catastrophic battlefield losses and economic destruction, and have an insane sociopath core out their government from top down before a coup was possible. 

First, RU is heading right toward this scenario. It is not just my opinion. Putin is already completely and utterly discredited. He already suffered catastrophic battlefield losses and on the way to suffer even more losses. The economy is slow motion train wreck and the government that mostly consists of politically impotent drug abusing imbeciles.

BTW, Bolsheviks did not have any serious military power initially. What they did have was control over a few paramilitary units at the Capital. It was these paramilitaries that guarded Tauride Palace when the initial coup against Constituent Assembly happened. 

Quote

Soviet Russia needed decades of internal rot and cancer before the collapse began. 

That is debatable. I would say around 10 years. And subjectively it was just 5 years from approximately 1985. That's why it was so unexpected for the West - significant changes in so short a span did not registered with the general public before collapse happened.

 

Quote

Putler possibly faces all those things- possibly - but nothing happening now is even approaching the equivalent of the preconditions for a military coup, let alone revolution.

It would be if Putin did not clean military leadership a long time ago. One charismatic and competent general would already amass enough political influence to get loyalty of the army and majority of country. It is just that all such generals are dead or thrown out of the army (see general Lebed example in the period of 1 Chechen war. Not very well known general quickly became a major political star capable of challenging Yeltsin. He died under suspicious circumstances in 2002).  

 

Quote

So talk of RU Nats taking control of military  units and attacking Mosow is, to me, fantabulist in the extreme. 

Except it is exactly what happened in August 1991 when bunch of USSR Nats took control of a few military units and rushed Moscow. For around three days they had control over the whole Moscow except for a small patch of land around White house. 

Soviet RU Nats literally got control over Moscow military. But they had no support from Moscovites and no repressive apparatus in place. So, in three days they failed.

 

Quote

RU Nats are not organised, have no clearand charismatic leader (utterly critical in Russia), no structure, no coherent and focusing ideology, no overt political buy-in from existing elites, are completely vulnerable to the FSB and are geographically dispersed.

Except: 

• They are organized. They literally have several battle-hardened experienced battalion sized formations with tanks and artillery. Who do you think fight now in Donbass offensive?  Add here various smaller sized units like SpezNaz type units operating in L-DPR. And numerous volunteers support organizations that rival RU regular support. It is actually significantly better with soft capabilities. + Wagnerites and all other PMCs, military and FSB units that will defect to them. 
• They learned to operate without any central leader. RU needs a leader. They don't. 
• They have both military and political structures, but they are extremely flexible to accommodate people of any beliefs and decentralized to avoid vulnerability to FSB assassination strikes
•  They have extremely flexible ideology that have laser like focus on building RU Empire at all costs
• They have support from Nat oligarchs, Nat military officers and Nat FSB officers. In reality they are the only RU political force that has that level of support from Elites. Compare to them Liberals have weak support from oligarch and that's it
• They are not vulnerable to FSB assassination strikes. FSB can take out Girkin any time. It changes nothing except RU Nats will start killing FSB in L-DPR
•  What do you mean dispersed? They have operatives all over RU. But their fighting power is pretty much concentrated in L-DPR.

Quote

They are a cloud of whining gnats

That fight better than RU regulars. Let me remind you about achievements of RU military and RU Nats during the current offensive.

On top you can see three minor settlements with only one taken by RU regulars. At the bottom you can see a significantly stronger UKR strongpoint that was fortified for 8 years and taken by RU Nats.

 

Quote

nothing some standard "FSB Anti-Gnat Spray 3000 (also use for Shoe Shine, Salad Dressing and Ladies Make-Up)" can't easily squash.  

The same FSB that for years was unable/unwilling even to threaten Girkin or Murz credibly enough to shut their mouths. The truth is FSB is actually RU Nat organization. It is just the top leadership that is loyal to Putin.

It is already becoming a big post and I have maps to do. So enough for now.

[Kinophile]

3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

 

This is all true, but it is also true for most coups.  Hitler and his National Socialists were dismissed as "rabble rousers" for a long time, but observers didn't realize how deeply their reach penetrated into the military, industrial, and political elites until it was too late. 

Like the Nazis, the RU Nats have an ideology that appeals to people in power.  Especially the military.  This is why the Western definition of "liberal" or "democrat" (note the lower case "d"!) have no chance in Russia at all.  When the ruling elite senses things are spiraling out of control they have something to easily swap out for the status quo.  The inherent comparability of their ideology with traditional notions of power and order is the real power of the RU Nats, not the individuals who type blogs.  This is exactly how the Nazis went from a minority fringe party to full control over German society seemingly overnight.

Steve

Godwins Rule is never far away

 But yes, the Nazis echoed and amplified existing tropes and then,after grabbing power,  created the perfect echo chamber to scream their nonsense to a crescendo. 

A crucial difference here,  and I know we're not comparing like with like exactly, but it's important to note that they operated in a free-is society with a strong press/media that was free and willing to spout the Nazi garbage and enabling the corruption from within of a key democratic pillar. That media ability was their initial power, the one they spent to gain more,

Russia under Putler does not have a free press,  very deliberately as you note above, so the RU Nat's will never have a proper voice until Putlers grip starts to slip. 

I think what you mean when say that the collapse is hidden until its not is that there is a threshold in every society, but it's not Visible until almost the last minute. And it's not a line as such, more a zone that can compress or expand as a result of events,until it compresses in negative value  and the fun really begins. 

We don't know exactly which events will squash or release that zone, but we can guess at the types, with the primaries being related to the major social stressors of the time. 

As you rightly note above,  a major battlefield loss would be one, but it in itself needs to be a certain type -  a defeat that cannot be hidden, it's very possibility has been previously denied, and the losses (people  and/or territory) involved easily understood and described. 

 

 

[Grigb]

1 minute ago, Kinophile said:

Russia under Putler does not have a free press,  very deliberately as you note above, so the RU Nat's will never have a proper voice until Putlers grip starts to slip. 

Unfortunately, they do have it - all politically active RU citizens are in Telegram now reading and watching various channels. Whole life is happening there.  Telegram is the one of the main RU political and military news platform now (and on the way to become the only platform) and I would say RU Nats have one of the strongest presences there (if not the strongest).

This is the issue why RU Nats are being underestimated. Their activities are mostly off the radars of most observers. Everybody treats them like whining gnats until Pisky happens. 

[Huba]

Great infographic showing the status of Kherson road bridge:

[Grigb]

instead of map today I decided to translate Mashkovets post about 3 AK.

Part 1

Quote

The last argument of the f*ckhead or "Ivan went for glory"

So, judging by the subject of the questions that I was asked today when turning on television, everyone is very interested in the 3rd AK. So today about it in more detail.

Good evening, we are from Ukraine!

1. First, a little background
The formation of the 3rd Army Corps of the Western Military District of the Russian Federation, of course, was not accidental. There is nothing accidental in the army at all. In this sense, the Russian army is no exception.
There was a Directive of the Chief of General Staff of the AFoRU (I don't remember the numbers now), its main content was that each of the 4 military districts (MD) of the AFoRU , must start from a certain moment, to begin forming the so-called "reserve" corps inside. The scheme of was simple and obvious, 4 districts — 4 new "reserve" corps.

This Directive appeared when the most intelligent Russian officers from the General Staff of AFoRU [that young and competent colonels I talked previously] realized what happened in Ukraine in February-March 2022 and came to the conclusion that the war would drag on, and the reserve resource base of the RF, which they had at that time, cannot handle such a scenario, to put it mildly. Moreover, for many reasons. Including lack of more or less combat-ready reserves of operational and strategic scale that could be used in the war immediately.

Therefore, in accordance with this Directive, the subordinate to GS military administration bodies of the RF in the districts started forming these corps as soon as possible. Around the end of April.
However, very quickly, the highest military, and after him, the military-political leadership of Russia realized one simple pattern — it is simply not able to form all four corps smoothly at once and at the same time according to the plans. The resources and efforts that they directed to this cause are simply smeared all over the 4 corps at once, without any quick and effective return. The level of staffing and, accordingly, combat capability of units and formations was growing very slowly.

Therefore, in mid-May, it was decided to concentrate on one of them. Yes, it was the 3rd AK of the Western Military District. At the same time, it should be emphasized that the formation of 3 other "reserve" corps of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the districts has not stopped at all and continues for real.
So, the 3rd AK was granted the status of a "strategic reserve of the Russian General Staff," and the main efforts of the Russian military leadership, as well as the military-political [leadership], focused on "putting this formation in order".

We are not going to dwell on the very process of forming the 3rd AK and bringing its combat capability to operational readiness (we will focus on some of the nuances of this below) but look at what happened.

 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Grigb

[Grigb]

Part 2

Quote

2. So, the main formations, subdivisions and units that the Russian command managed to form as part of the 3rd AK were:

- 6th Motorized Rifle Division (mrd) with (10th Tank Regiment, 54th, 55th and 57th Moto Rifle Regiments - all [have] 3-battalion composition)
- 72nd separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (omsbr)
- 17th heavy artillery brigade (2 SADN [Self Propelled Artillery Division - 21 unit 203-mm SG 2S7 "Peony" and 14 units 204-mm CM 2S4 "Tulip")
- 27th Artillery Regiment (AR) - (2 units - 18 units of 152-mm guns 2A65 "Msta-B" and 152-mm guns 2A36 "Hyacinth-B" respectively)
- 44th Air Defense Command Post
- 52nd separate Anti-aircraft missile Division (osrdn)
- 148th Command and Reconnaissance Center (KRC)
- 38th separate Engineer and Sapper battalion (oisbn)
- 8th separate control battalion (obu)
- 154th separate repair and restoration battalion (orvbn)
- 9th a separate special purpose company (or SpN)
is the 8th separate company of radiation, chemical and biological protection (or RCBZ).

As you can see, although a little unusual, but quite expected corps set of troops (forces and weapons). Although, of course, it would be more logical to expect at least 2 divisions in this corps, and not "one and a half". But, as our "political classic" once said, they have what they have...

Now, as for the main types and kinds of weapons and military equipment of this "last argument of the f*ckhead".

"At the moment", the corps is in a state of relocation by combined means (by rail - main and partially by road transport). According to our (IS group) [OSINT group] information, a total of 3,954 units of weapons, military and special equipment (OVST) from the 3rd AK are planned to be moved.
- of these, 697 units of armored weapons [AFVs]
– 1780 units of automotive equipment
– 537 units of equipment of the RAO [Rocket/Missile and Artillery weapons]  service
- 309 units of communication equipment and automated control systems
- 10 units of equipment of the RCBZ [CBRN] service
– 309 units of engineering equipment
- 434 units of equipment of the rear service

The main types of equipment are:
- T-80BMV type tank
- T-90M type tank
- BMPT "Terminator"
- BMP-2
- BMP-1A "Basurmanin"
- BTR-82A
- BTR-80A(M)
- BTR-70\60
- 122-mm self-propelled gun 2S1 "Carnation"
- 152-mm self-propelled gun 2S3 "Acacia"
- 120-mm mortars of the type "Sani", "Vasilek", "Nona-K"

The TOE number of personnel is up to 15,678 people (in reality, somewhere up to about 11.5 - 12 thousand bodies are taken to the front).

This gathering is commanded by Major General V.A. Belyavsky, who previously "proved himself well" as the first deputy chief of Staff of the 68th AK of the Eastern Military District.

 

[dan/california]

34 minutes ago, Grigb said:

Let me state first that you are right in principle. But there are some facts that cast a different light on RU Nats.  

 

First, RU is heading right toward this scenario. It is not just my opinion. Putin is already completely and utterly discredited. He already suffered catastrophic battlefield losses and on the way to suffer even more losses. The economy is slow motion train wreck and the government that mostly consists of politically impotent drug abusing imbeciles.

BTW, Bolsheviks did not have any serious military power initially. What they did have was control over a few paramilitary units at the Capital. It was these paramilitaries that guarded Tauride Palace when the initial coup against Constituent Assembly happened. 

That is debatable. I would say around 10 years. And subjectively it was just 5 years from approximately 1985. That's why it was so unexpected for the West - significant changes in so short a span did not registered with the general public before collapse happened.

 

It would be if Putin did not clean military leadership a long time ago. One charismatic and competent general would already amass enough political influence to get loyalty of the army and majority of country. It is just that all such generals are dead or thrown out of the army (see general Lebed example in the period of 1 Chechen war. Not very well known general quickly became a major political star capable of challenging Yeltsin. He died under suspicious circumstances in 2002).  

 

Except it is exactly what happened in August 1991 when bunch of USSR Nats took control of a few military units and rushed Moscow. For around three days they had control over the whole Moscow except for a small patch of land around White house. 

Soviet RU Nats literally got control over Moscow military. But they had no support from Moscovites and no repressive apparatus in place. So, in three days they failed.

 

Except: 

• They are organized. They literally have several battle-hardened experienced battalion sized formations with tanks and artillery. Who do you think fight now in Donbass offensive?  Add here various smaller sized units like SpezNaz type units operating in L-DPR. And numerous volunteers support organizations that rival RU regular support. It is actually significantly better with soft capabilities. + Wagnerites and all other PMCs, military and FSB units that will defect to them. 
• They learned to operate without any central leader. RU needs a leader. They don't. 
• They have both military and political structures, but they are extremely flexible to accommodate people of any beliefs and decentralized to avoid vulnerability to FSB assassination strikes
•  They have extremely flexible ideology that have laser like focus on building RU Empire at all costs
• They have support from Nat oligarchs, Nat military officers and Nat FSB officers. In reality they are the only RU political force that has that level of support from Elites. Compare to them Liberals have weak support from oligarch and that's it
• They are not vulnerable to FSB assassination strikes. FSB can take out Girkin any time. It changes nothing except RU Nats will start killing FSB in L-DPR
•  What do you mean dispersed? They have operatives all over RU. But their fighting power is pretty much concentrated in L-DPR.

That fight better than RU regulars. Let me remind you about achievements of RU military and RU Nats during the current offensive.

On top you can see three minor settlements with only one taken by RU regulars. At the bottom you can see a significantly stronger UKR strongpoint that was fortified for 8 years and taken by RU Nats.

 

The same FSB that for years was unable/unwilling even to threaten Girkin or Murz credibly enough to shut their mouths. The truth is FSB is actually RU Nat organization. It is just the top leadership that is loyal to Putin.

It is already becoming a big post and I have maps to do. So enough for now.

 

32 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Godwins Rule is never far away

 But yes, the Nazis echoed and amplified existing tropes and then,after grabbing power,  created the perfect echo chamber to scream their nonsense to a crescendo. 

A crucial difference here,  and I know we're not comparing like with like exactly, but it's important to note that they operated in a free-is society with a strong press/media that was free and willing to spout the Nazi garbage and enabling the corruption from within of a key democratic pillar. That media ability was their initial power, the one they spent to gain more,

Russia under Putler does not have a free press,  very deliberately as you note above, so the RU Nat's will never have a proper voice until Putlers grip starts to slip. 

I think what you mean when say that the collapse is hidden until its not is that there is a threshold in every society, but it's not Visible until almost the last minute. And it's not a line as such, more a zone that can compress or expand as a result of events,until it compresses in negative value  and the fun really begins. 

We don't know exactly which events will squash or release that zone, but we can guess at the types, with the primaries being related to the major social stressors of the time. 

As you rightly note above,  a major battlefield loss would be one, but it in itself needs to be a certain type -  a defeat that cannot be hidden, it's very possibility has been previously denied, and the losses (people  and/or territory) involved easily understood and described. 

 

 

It is also worth pointing out that the main Russian propaganda TV channels, and those are the ONLY TV channels at this point, basically spout the Nats line. There is a continuous diet of Great RU will grind the Baltics flat and salt the earth. Great Ru will invade Poland, and nuke London. So Moscow may not be buying, but the rest of the country is being brought along quite nicely. They TV also continuously licks the current Czar's boots of course. But the Czar is dead, long live the Czar, is not exactly a new concept in Russia. It comes back to the question of how the coup goes. A clean win for the Nats and the war might get worse,  at least for a while, or the Nats do something so bat %*&^ crazy that NATO gets involved. An inconclusive partial success and the SMO in Ukraine collapses completely as Russia descends into civil war or something close to it. If the Nats fizzle, Putin can go back to losing at his own pace, except he will have lost his most effective forces.

My two cents on the historical moment is that it might not be 1917, but it is at least as bad for Putin as 1905 was for the Czar. Furthermore it a lot harder to hide a real disaster now, if say the Kherson pocket collapses and there is a temporary dam of Russian bodies at the mouth of the Dnipro. In 1905-7 the Czars regime survived, but it had to make real concessions that haunted the rest of its miserable, utterly incompetent, never to be sufficiently *%%#$# existence. And then of course it led to something even worse, how is that for the cheery thought of the day.

[Grigb]

Part 3

Quote

3. And finally, about how it was "trained" and what we should do with this herd...

The recruitment of formations, units and divisions of the corps took place in several ways:
— BARS (yes, the same one — the "combat army reserve of the country", a weak semblance of our operational reserve of the first stage)
— "territorial volunteers" (these are those who agreed in the regions and national-ethnic formations of Mordor to "take a risk for 200 thousand")
— cadre Russians military personnel, including freshly baked graduates of universities, agreed [agreed to sign contract] conscripts, or who were "persuaded" to sign a contract with the Russian Federation, including short—term, as well as "line reservists"
- "transferred from PMCs" (yes, these are those who were "voluntarily-forcibly" transferred from private military companies for one reason or another in the ranks of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation).

According to our (IS group) information, the average "shortage" in the corps units is 15-20% of the full-time strength (recognized as combat–ready), but there are cases where it reaches 30% and even 40% (recognized as limited combat-ready).

According to the reporting documents of the corps' management bodies, the main formations, units and subunits that make up the "combat core" of the corps have passed a full cycle of combat training and combat coordination, so they are "ready for use, according to the combat [schedule]... The corps' management bodies have passed the necessary operational training course and are capable of effectively managing subordinate formations, units and subunits in all types of combat and operations."

We will talk in detail about how the command of the enemy troops is going to use all this stuff tomorrow.

 

[Grigb]

3 minutes ago, dan/california said:

My two cents on the historical moment is that it might not be 1917, but it is at least as bad for Putin as 1905 was for the Czar. Furthermore it a lot harder to hide a real disaster now, if say the Kherson pocket collapses and there is a temporary dam of Russian bodies at the mouth of the Dnipro. In 1905-7 the Czars regime survived, but it had to make real concessions that haunted the rest of its miserable, utterly incompetent, never to be sufficiently *%%#$# existence. And then of course it led to something even worse, how is that for the cheery thought of the day.

Agreed.

[Letter from Prague]

I mean, RU Nat rolling the dice on taking power doesn't sound like such a bad thing. It would put RUAF in Ukraine into total disarray and the Nats themselves would fight Moscow, giving Ukraine time to push everyone out.

Of course, if the Nats then do take the power, their desire for forever war for the empire would be a problem - but by they would be confronted with all the problems Putin has now, except even more since they would lose a lot in collapse in Ukraine and civil war. Unless they start nuking the world or something.

[Huba]

Quit smoking already!

 

[Letter from Prague]

2 minutes ago, Huba said:

Quit smoking already!

 

The ridiculousness or Russia saying "it was not Ukraine, it was our incompetence" makes me wonder how far they will go. "It was not Ukrainian HIMARS, it was our own HIMARS which we captured and then destroyed our own camp with it!" or something.

[Harmon Rabb]

2 minutes ago, Letter from Prague said:

The ridiculousness or Russia saying "it was not Ukraine, it was our incompetence" makes me wonder how far they will go. "It was not Ukrainian HIMARS, it was our own HIMARS which we captured and then destroyed our own camp with it!" or something.

Goes well with the rest of the Russian fantasies of being completely in control in this war. My personal "favorite" is this war would have been over a long time ago, if Russia was not so worried about civilian casualties and did not feel so bad for the Ukrainian people.

[Letter from Prague]

Just now, Harmon Rabb said:

Goes well with the rest of the Russian fantasies of being completely in control in this war. My personal "favorite" is this war would have been over a long time ago, if Russia was not so worried about civilian casualties and did not feel so bad for the Ukrainian people.

Yes, then they would totally use the real army they are keeping in reserve - after all they haven't sent their good units yet!

I would find it more funny if I didn't read some "serious analysts" repeat it even now, including the retired army general, who is now running for president.

[Huba]

18 cargo flights from South Korea to Rzeszów happened this week. Quite suspicious, what could they be delivering so urgently? Looks like Ukraine will get some more ammunition soon

 

 

[kraze]

5 hours ago, danfrodo said:

I think I agree with this but would say it differently.  In times of chaos and upheaval, it is often the most ruthless that succeed, at least in the short term.  Folks that balk at murdering innocents (like families of enemies) are less effective at gaining control.  When you say "respect or support" of population I would say "instill fear and terror" in the population. 

It's culture POV-dependent.

What seems like a funny cargo cult to you from outside - is a serious and respected thing inside. And current generations of cargo cultists weren't even born when demigods Tom Navy and John Frum walked the heaven and the earth, they got to believe via parents who weren't born then either.

To some hammer and sickle sculpted out of cow crap gives hope and not fear.

Edited August 28, 2022 by kraze

[Calamine Waffles]

That you can have spineless surrender monkeys like this in relatively prominent academic positions is remarkable to me. You can either help Ukraine fight this war to a conclusion today or let your children and grandchildren fight Russia in 20 years' time.

[danfrodo]

3 minutes ago, Calamine Waffles said:

That you can have spineless surrender monkeys like this in relatively prominent academic positions is remarkable to me. You can either help Ukraine fight this war to a conclusion today or let your children and grandchildren fight Russia in 20 years' time.

Yes, that totally makes sense.  Reward the aggressor.  I am sure Putin will no longer want to take more territory if we do that.  What planet does this idiot live on?  If we stop supporting Ukraine and it ends in stalemate, then Putin will simply build up his forces and in a couple years again attack long-abandoned and weakened Ukraine.  Who is this imbecile?  Why on earth would Putin leave Kherson and the landbridge if not forced out?  It's absurd.  They tried negotiations, Putin refuses to budge and doesn't negotiate in good faith.  All Putin wants to do is to convince imbeciles in the west that it's Ukraine's fault for the continuing war -- and at least for some of the imbeciles, it's working. 

And yes, it's factually true that it's Ukraine's fault that the war continues.  In the same way that a rape target fighting back is making the world more violent.

[Harmon Rabb]

.

Edited August 28, 2022 by Harmon Rabb