No, he was not. He was using Russian troops without badges to hold the territory.
How the Ukraine situation should end.
- Thread starter Stone
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No, he was not. He was using Russian troops without badges to hold the territory.
The first thing I'd like to know is, how many shells does it have right now, and how many shells do the Russians have right now? Perhaps more importantly, how fast are both sides going through their current supplies? Perhaps even more importantly, when you say shells, do you mean artillery? I have heard that this is really the deciding factor right now.
The USA and Europe are gearing up production, so sometime in 2025 Ukraine should have plenty of shells... Assuming trump is not elected. I've heard from various people that Ukraine is not going to be getting a sufficient amount of artillery any time soon.
I imagine that's the official story in the western media. But tell me, why do you think they are so reluctant to have an international investigation? There's an RT article on this here:
Kiev’s reluctance to probe dam collapse ‘unsurprising’ – Moscow | RT
If you have evidence that Putin did say this, I'd like to see it. It wouldn't surprise me, but it also doesn't change the fact that the decision to withdraw wasn't made by Putin, but rather his military guy in charge at the time. I think we can agree at this point in time that it was a wise decision, at least if Ukraine was indeed behind the sabotaging of the dam that later flooded Kherson.
What Russia has always said it wanted was a secure border. Putin also stressed in the speech he gave on the day he started his military intervention in Ukraine that what was happening to the eastern Ukrainians for the past 8 years prior to 2022 was no longer acceptable as well. From his speech:
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This brings me to the situation in Donbass. We can see that the forces that staged the coup in Ukraine in 2014 have seized power, are keeping it with the help of ornamental election procedures and have abandoned the path of a peaceful conflict settlement. For eight years, for eight endless years we have been doing everything possible to settle the situation by peaceful political means. Everything was in vain.
As I said in my previous address, you cannot look without compassion at what is happening there. It became impossible to tolerate it. We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us. It is their aspirations, the feelings and pain of these people that were the main motivating force behind our decision to recognise the independence of the Donbass people’s republics.
**
Source:
Transcript: Vladimir Putin’s Televised Address on Ukraine | BNN Bloomberg
If only Ukraine had been prosperious and free prior to Russia's military intervention- had it been, I doubt Russia would have any reason to intervene to begin with. Instead, it had been a country with an 8 year long civil war where thousands of eastern Ukrainians had already died as a result. Did you take a look at the documentary on this time period that I linked to previously? Just in case you missed it last time, it's here:
What Ukraine and the world could no longer do once Russia intervened was the atrocities that Ukraine had perpetrated on eastern Ukrainians between 2014 and 2022. Again, I urge you to take a look at the documentary that I posted above on that time frame so that you can get an idea of what was happening in Ukraine prior to Russia's military intervention.
It was pushed back in Luhansk back in 2022 if memory serves. They had underestimated what it'd take to hold the region. As far as I know, they never made a mistake like that again. Ukraine's 2023 "spring counteroffensive" was a dismal failure.
Do you have any evidence for your assertion?
The medium sized howitzer has proven to be the important type of artillery. So we are talking about 155mm shells from NATO, and the equivalent from Russia. It is hard to equate the two numbers fired, because NATO guns can be exactly targeted, and Russian guns tend to be more area fired. It takes two to five Russian shells to achieve what a NATO shell does.
The Russians are firing about 10,000 shells a day. To do this, they have had to buy North Korea's entire backup stockpile, but not the immediate use stockpile that they would need to start a war with South Korea. On the bright side, that means that North Korea can still start a war with South Korea, but they would then run out of shells. North Korean shells are often defective, with less propellant than marked.
The Russians are hoping that the shells will tide them over until they can increase production to handle 10,000 shells a day. And they are hoping that Ukraine will be cutoff by trump, so those 10,000 shells a day will be dominant.
The Ukrainians fire 2,000 shells a day, which more or less keeps them in steady state. Recently, some days, they have fallen to 1,000 shells a day, at which point they begin losing ground. The shells from the Czechs, Estonians, and Americans should keep them firing 2,000 shells a day until some point in 2025 when higher shell production will come online. At that point, assuming trump does not win, they will be firing 5,000 shells a day, and start devastating the Russians.
The major hope that the Russians have is that trump wins. trump will cutoff the Ukrainians, and allow Russia to produce 10,000 shells against the 1,000 the rest of the world can provide Ukraine. Even if they could produce more than 10,000 shells a day, they cannot produce enough artillery pieces to fire them. These artillery pieces wear out quickly. They are pretty much maxing out at 10,000 shells averaged over time. That means they could fire 100,000 shells in one day, but then would be stuck firing 5,000 shells for the next 20 or so days.
Why would I care what RT has to say? That is a serious question. I guess they can provide what Putin wants to communicate as Russia's position, but beyond that there are no facts in their "reporting."
Could you provide some source articles for your information? I did a quick internet search and found some articles from some mainstream sources, such as CNN and Reuters, but neither of them mentioned North Korea supplying Russia with anything. The CNN article from March 10/11 says that Russia is indeed firing around 10,000 shells per day, so that part appears to be accurate. As to Ukraine's position, the CNN article says that Ukraine is firing 2,000 per day as you said, but no mention of sometimes just firing 1,000 shells a day as you mention, so again I'd like to know your source on that one.
I found a Reuters article from March 21 where Russia states:
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Russia's defence minister said on Thursday that artillery shell production had risen by nearly 2.5 times in the past year, while artillery component production had soared by a factor of 22 as Moscow races to rearm faster than the West can supply Ukraine.
[snip]
Given the sensitivity of weapons production, Reuters was unable to verify the production of Russian munitions.
**
Finally, I found a New York Times article from April 5 that says this:
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The crew at an artillery position in eastern Ukraine had 33 shells in its ammunition bunker, stacked neatly like firewood against a wall.
Then came an order to fire. Twenty minutes later, smoke wafted around a howitzer and 17 shells were gone — more than half the crew’s ammunition. The rapidly depleted stack was emblematic of Ukraine’s dwindling supply of artillery munitions, even as Russian attacks persist.
[snip]
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told CBS News in an interview last month that his country was not prepared for a summer offensive by Russia and that the Russian military might reopen a northern front in the war with a ground attack into the Sumy region, which shares a border with Russia.
If the aid package clears Congress, however, the Ukrainian military can count on a fresh infusion of shells. Otherwise, its best hope for artillery ammunition is an initiative by the Czech government to buy shells on the global weapons market and donate them to Ukraine. European countries have little left to offer from their depleted stocks.
About 20 countries are contributing to a common fund for the purchases, the Czech president, Petr Pavel, said, adding that his government had found half a million 155-millimeter shells and 300,000 122-millimeter shells available for purchase outside of Europe.
The first deliveries are expected in June, but the program has already paid dividends, Czech officials say: Knowing that more ammunition is on the way, Ukrainian artillery forces are able to dip deeper into reserves, they said, adding that the same would be true if U.S. aid resumed.
**
Some things left unknown is how many of the 800,000 shells the Czechs have found will actually be purchased and when and how many shells the U.S. would send assuming the funding package the Biden Administration is pushing goes through.
Do you have any evidence that "there are no facts" in their reporting? Personally, I strongly suspect that there are as many facts if not more in their reporting then there is in western media.
Anyway, RT is certainly not the only one pointing out that Ukraine's narrative on this is suspicious. Here's an excerpt from an article from Max Blumenthal a few weeks after the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed that shows that Ukraine was already publicly damaging it prior to its collapse:
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It would only take two months from receiving HIMARs systems from the US for the Ukrainian military to begin targeting critical infrastructure, using them to strike the Antonovsky Bridge over the Dnipro river, and again, two months later in a test strike on the Kakhovka Dam “to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings,” as the Washington Post reported.
Three weeks ago, the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed, triggering a major environmental catastrophe that caused mass flooding and contamination of the local water supply. Ukraine, of course, blames Russia for the attack, but has produced no evidence.
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Here's another excerpt, this time from an article by Kit Klarenberg that touches on the Dam's collapse from Kit Klarenberg:
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The credulity of mainstream journalists during the Ukraine proxy war has somehow exceeded their woeful record during the Syrian crisis. Nonsensical claims of Russian responsibility for events like the sabotage of the Nord Stream II pipeline and the destruction of the Kakhovka dam have received uncritical amplification. And when the official story collapses, the attacks conveniently tumble down the memory hole.
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I also found an article confirming RT's statement that Turkey's President did indeed call for an international investigation into the destruction of the dam:
Erdogan calls for joint international investigation of Ukraine dam breach | The National
And perhaps the most telling article of all:
Exclusive: Ukrainian troops witnessed Russian soldiers swept away in dam breach floodwaters | CNN
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Fair enough. You think Putin's propaganda source is a good source of information, and I do not. I do not see any way to settle this.
Do you live in Russia? Given that RT claims Russia is the greatest place to live, and you believe RT, you probably should.
That was before the Estonians, so add the Estonians into it, but it is about the shape of things. If the Czech and Estonian shells come through, and Congress authorizes the American shells, then Ukraine can survive until 2025. In 2025, if trump is not president, then Western shell production will be high enough, that along with the more targeted nature of Western artillery, Ukraine will be winning in terms of artillery. There are a lot of ifs in that, so Putin has a lot of hope.
There are literally thousands of sources. You really did not know that Russia is depending on North Korean shells, and Iranian drones? A superpower is not forced to go to North Korea and Iran for weapons.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Russia+North+Korea+shells
A few points here- while the Russian government certainly exerts strong pressure on Russian media to conform to certain narratives, I don't see this as much different from the way western governments pressure their own media to do the same. As to your question, no, I don't. I've never even set foot in Russia. Nor would I want to. But I think it's telling that Edward Snowden, despite clearly wanting to go back to living in the U.S., has decided that his best bet at being treated fairly is to remain in Russia. Do you believe that the U.S. has treated Snowden fairly? How about Julian Assange?
NiftyNiblick
1960s Chick Magnet
The Ukraine situation should probably be resolved by World War III.
We haven't had a world war for almost eighty years.
To paraphrase the immortal cinematic character, Peter Clemenza,
These things gotta happen every few decades.
At least once a century.
Helps to get rid of the bad blood.
We haven't had a world war for almost eighty years.
To paraphrase the immortal cinematic character, Peter Clemenza,
These things gotta happen every few decades.
At least once a century.
Helps to get rid of the bad blood.
Geeko Sportivo
Verified User
You can shove that right back up your TRAITOROUS ASS- WHERE YOU FOUND IT- YOU TRUMPTARDED FOOL!
Next stupid and dangerous TRUMP SUCKING PUTIN'S DICK RECOMMENDATION please!
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I certainly agree there are a lot of ifs in that, but I also think you are severely underestimating Russia's resolve. Put simply, I think of the situation as fairly similar to the situation that the U.S. was in during the Cuban missile crisis. Now, to be fair, NATO has not yet given Ukraine nukes, but if Ukraine were to become a NATO country, that would certainly be an option. Given Russia's experience with NATO's encroachment next to its country despite U.S.'s assurances that NATO would not go one inch to the east of Germany, I strongly suspect that nothing short of turning Russia's control of formerly Ukrainian territory into a nuclear wasteland would get them to leave. And that in turn could trigger a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Which is why I think it's in -everyone's- best interests to trying to come up with a peace deal now before more lives are pointlessly lost.
First off, RT is owned by the Russian Government. Its funding comes from broadcasting the government's propaganda. Its purpose is to broadcast government propaganda to the world. If anyone at RT goes against that purpose, they will at least be fired, and more likely also be arrested for the crime of not supporting government propaganda.
Now let's compare that to FoxNews. I do not like FoxNews, but no one can deny they are independent from Biden. Biden cannot arrest them for attacking him, and FoxNews does not support him. Or we can compare that to Carlson, who was able to put out Russian propaganda without fear of being arrested.
When Snowden realized he would be arrested in the USA, he immediately fled to Hong Kong. When he realized the Chinese would not take him, and could find no other countries willing to take him, he went to Russia. Snowden definitely prefers Russia to an American prison.
But we are talking about freedom of the press. Snowden has had no problem speaking freely in the American press, and even had an entire movie made about his cause. Meanwhile, exiled dissidents from Russia have their stories blocked from the Russian press.
Snowden worked for the government, and betrayed his oath. That is a crime. Assange was not even a citizen of the USA, so had no obvious duty to keep our intelligence agents a secret. It is not as obvious to me that he committed a crime, though that is based on a technicality.
Chelsea Manning had her sentence commuted, which shows some mercy. Obviously, Putin cannot commute Navalny's sentence, because Putin has already murdered him. What was his crime? Opposing Putin.
Manning was treated very harshly and abused in prison. She thought she was doing the right thing, She was not making gain or profit. Trump did it on a far larger scale and was acting for his own benefit. Trump saw something in law-breaking that was a positive for him. Trump kept it up for a long, long time while he was lying to the FBI and hiding top-secret documents.
Putin refuses to call it a war, because he does not think the Russians have the resolve to fight a war. There are people in prison for years for just holding up the book War and Peace, because it mentions war.
Putin is trying to figure out how to mobilize without officially mobilizing. That is because of a lack of resolve.
The Cuban missile crisis did not require more soldiers, but the American people supported a massive increase in conscription that pulled many young fathers from their families over it.
The USA is banned from putting nuclear weapons in NATO countries that are beyond the Iron Curtain, so they cannot even put nuclear weapons in the former Eastern Germany. Ukraine could not become a NATO country until its borders are secured, which was impossible under previous ceasefire agreements.
I didn't know about the North Korean shells, but I certainly knew about the Iranian drones. Anyway, thanks for the google. I found a recent article on the subject that I think covers things:
North Korea Has Supplied 7,000 Containers of Munitions to Russia, Seoul Says | Time
What I'm wondering is why CNN and Reuters' recent articles on Russian shells didn't mention them.
Reminds me of Thomas Jefferson's line:
The main problem is that World War III has the potential of annihilating everyone.
I agree that it's funded by the Russian government, but it's not owned by them. Wikipedia explains:
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RT is a brand of TV-Novosti - self-named an "autonomous non-profit organization" (ANO) - founded by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005.[8][18]
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Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)
Russia is hardly the only country that funds news agencies. The BBC is funded by the UK and NPR is funded by the U.S. government. Perhaps more importantly, I strongly suspect that government funding when it comes to news is frequently preferable to what amounts to corporate funding, particularly when said corporations refuse to cover certain stories and even slant some in order to protect their donors, such as the military industrial complex and pharmaceutical companies.
I can certainly agree that there are limits beyond which RT journalists can't go. But then, I'd say the same is true of western journalists and publications as well. The story of Julian Assange is a good example.
Agreed, but they are certainly not independent of the Murdoch family, and I think we could agree that there are limits to how far they will go against certain narratives, as evidenced by them dropping Tucker Carlson despite his popularity.
Oh, I certainly agree that Fox News can criticize Biden, but they seem to draw a line when it comes to criticizing the military industrial complex and covid vaccines. Tucker Carlson was doing both, which I suspect is why he was given the boot.
First, I'd say Carlson was actually lifting the veil from western propaganda on Russia rather than what you suggest. Secondly, there were certainly calls for his arrest following his interview with Putin. Jason Walsh wrote an article with some details. Quoting the introduction:
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Far-left extremists are calling for former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to be arrested and charged with treason for interviewing Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The attacks against Carlson gained momentum after he released a video confirming he had interviewed Putin and explained why he did so.
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The thing to notice is that RT is more likely to tell the truth than is WP or NYT's.
No, he flew to Hong Kong knowing that once he blew the whistle on what the U.S. was doing, he'd be arrested if he stayed in the U.S. Wikipedia explains how things went down:
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In 2013, Snowden was hired by an NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, after previous employment with Dell and the CIA.[4] Snowden says he gradually became disillusioned with the programs with which he was involved, and that he tried to raise his ethical concerns through internal channels but was ignored. On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong after taking a medical leave from his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii, and in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman, and Ewen MacAskill. Snowden came to international attention after stories based on the material appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other publications.
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Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden
I personally recommend taking a look at Oliver Stone's Snowden film, as well as the Citizenfour documentary. Both explain what got Snowden to decide that blowing the whistle on what the U.S. government was doing was the right thing to do.
I imagine most would. What's tragic is that while what the U.S. government intelligence agencies were illegally wiretapping people, Showden was the one who was punished for blowing the whistle on their crimes.
Snowden may never be able to go to the U.S. again, at least if he values his freedom. As to the American press, there's an article that addresses something I think you're missing. Quoting from an article on the subject, bolding the part I'm referring to:
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The commercial mass media are in their element now with the Edward Snowden revelations.A highly controversial issue framed as national security vs. individual liberty, a dramatic figure to focus personal scrutiny on (Snowden), the public as stakeholder, and government officials falling in line to reassure the public –trust us, they declare. What is, and will be, missing from the mass media debate, however, is the connection between government surveillance and the larger imperative of maintaining a system both at home and abroad designed to maximize corporate profits.Those who argue for a vastly more democratic system –notably the left— continue to be excluded from the mass media’s “legitimate” debate.
**
Full article:
Edward Snowden and the Media: the Big Picture | truthout.org
Russia certainly has its flaws, but as can be seen from what I've written above, so does the U.S.
I'm not sure what oath you're referring to, but I'm reminded of a line in a film on a U.K. whistleblower, Katherine Gun:
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I gather intelligence so that the government can protect the British people. I do not gather intelligence so that the government can lie to the British people.
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Source:
OFFICIAL SECRETS (2019) - FULL TRANSCRIPT | subslikescript.com
Julian Assange, like Edward Snowden, facilitated blowing the whistle on U.S. government crimes. For this reason, I consider them to both be heories. Perhaps Assange's most well known publication on Wikileaks was the footage of a certain U.S. airstrike in Baghdad. Quoting from Wikipedia's entry on said airstrake:
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On July 12, 2007, a series of air-to-ground attacks were conducted by a team of two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters in Al-Amin al-Thaniyah, New Baghdad, during the Iraqi insurgency which followed the invasion of Iraq. On April 5, 2010, the attacks received worldwide coverage and controversy following the release of 39 minutes of classified gunsight footage by WikiLeaks.[6] The video, which WikiLeaks titled Collateral Murder,[7][8] showed the crew firing on a group of people and killing several of them, including two Reuters journalists, and then laughing at some of the casualties, all of whom were civilians.[15] An anonymous U.S. military official confirmed the authenticity of the footage,[16] which provoked global discussion on the legality and morality of the attacks.
**
Manning should have been declared a hero for what she revealed, not jailed.
I know that Navalny died while in prison, but I've seen no evidence that Putin murdered him. Here's an article you might find interesting:
The First Question One Must Ask Is Who Benefits From Navalny’s Death? Certainly Not Putin | Scheerpost
Furthermore, there's evidence that Navalny wasn't better than Putin, but rather more amenable to what western powers wanted:
For Russian leftists, Western favorite Navalny represents same corrupt elitism | The Grayzone
Another article focuses on how western media is very selective in the political prisoners that it covers:
Worthy vs. unworthy victims: study reveals selective coverage of Navalny and Lira | Mint Press News
Quoting from this last article:
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It is perhaps understandable that Navalny’s death was covered in much greater detail than Lira’s. Navalny was a political leader known across Russia and the world who died just weeks before the country’s presidential elections.
Yet Lira was far from unknown. News anchor Tucker Carlson, for example, devoted an entire show to his imprisonment, while high-profile figures like Twitter owner Elon Musk took up his cause. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller has been repeatedly asked about Lira’s case and has failed to offer concrete answers. As an American living in Ukraine who took a pro-Russian line on the invasion, Lira built up a following of hundreds of thousands of people across his social media platforms.
As an American citizen who died while in the custody of a government that the U.S. has provided with tens of billions of dollars in aid, it could be argued that Lira’s case is particularly noteworthy for an American audience and should be given special attention. Moreover, Lira died more than one month before Navalny, meaning that the study compares more than 40 days of Lira coverage to just six days of coverage of Navalny’s death, making the disparity all the more glaring.
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I think she -was- doing the right thing. How about you?
Not sure what you're referring to here, Trump's done a lot of things.
I certainly think that the Russian government has done some dumb things- if Russia is truly jailing people for holding up War and Peace, I'd certainly qualify that as one such instance. I do know that Russia had essentially banned calling its incursion into Ukraine a war, which I definitely felt was dumb. That being said, instituting that dumb rule doesn't mean that Russians don't have resolve. Now, the general conditions of soldiers at war the world over isn't great, and I certainly don't think that Russia is an exception. So I can understand why most Russians aren't lining up to sign up for the military. I've also never been a fan of conscription. Speaking of which, I hope you're aware that the day after Russia's military incursion into Ukraine, Zelensky banned most able bodied men from leaving the country so that he could conscript them into the war when he felt like doing so.
But all of this aside, I think that many Russians are supportive of the war, especially when it's framed as protecting ethnic Russian and Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.
I think we may able to agree that the fact that Cuba -had- nukes, as opposed to only having the possibility of getting them eventually, may have been what got so many Americans to support a potential war effort.
The U.S. has done a lot of things it's said it wouldn't do. Furthermore, Zelensky was talking about possibly reacquiring nuclear weapons just before Russia's incursion into Ukraine. Putin was certainly paying attention as well:
President Zelensky Suggests Ukraine May Pursue Nuclear Weapons To Counter Russia, Putin Responds | The Daily Wire
Several NATO countries were already arming Ukraine prior to Russia's military intervention anyway. There's actually a fair amount of evidence that it was this, plus Ukraine's renewed attack on the Donbass region that was the final straw for Putin. Jacques Baud, a former Swiss Intelligence officer, wrote a good essay on the subject. I even made a thread with his article referenced in the opening post in JPP. It can be seen here:
Former Swiss Intelligence Officer blows the whistle on West's Ukraine War Narrative | justplainpolitics.com