Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[08Dawg]

Rational me says the whole Ghost of Kyiv thing is implausible…but damn does it make for a good story!  
 

Just saw another story that the Ukrainian MoD is claiming to have shot down another Il-76. They’re giving the Ruskis all they can handle. 

[Prozac]

56 minutes ago, FLEA said:

I'll tell you hwat though, I've got mad respects for this President Zelensky. This dude has been fighting like hell on every front to keep his country free. I mean, every diplomatic, economic, information and now military fronts. Dude stays in Kyiv, makes phone calls to world leaders all night, puts out statements, condemns Russia at every turn, then drives a truck into the center of Kyiv and hands out rifles to every man and woman that can hold one. It's the middle of the fucking night right now and he's on Twitter live streaming known Russian advancing positions to his people. Dude doesn't fucking sleep. I know propaganda is real and I'm not certain how much fighting he is actually doing from a combat standpoint, but from a simple being there and making sure shit happens standpoint this dude is leaps and bounds ahead of the fucko that fled Kabul last year. 

Its amazing how much one charismatic leader can motivate people to stand their ground for their values when they are willing to do the same. Wonder how many of our politicians in Washington could attest to that. 

& the dude was a comedian playing the Ukrainian president on TV until he actually got elected to do the job for real. The guy is the epitome of real leadership. I really, really hope he and his country survive this. 

[Majestik Møøse]

Watched the entire Putin speech. He essentially feels disrespected by bigger nations, gets visibly  emotional, and repeats the classic “we have no other choice” line about invading Ukraine. Said that if he didn’t, then Russia will cease to exist. Shades of Napoleon, Tojo, and Hitler.

Small penis confirmed. 

Edited February 26, 2022 by Majestik Møøse

[Day Man]

I really want this to be true because this is some gangster-ass shit from a president

[Prozac]

Senator Rubio suggesting that Putin may not be all there which is…ominous. 
 

Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) Tweeted:
I wish I could share more,but for now I can say it’s pretty obvious to many that something is off with #Putin

He has always been a killer,but his problem now is different & significant

It would be a mistake to assume this Putin would react the same way he would have 5 years ago

[FLEA]

1 hour ago, Majestik Møøse said:

Watched the entire Putin speech. He essentially feels disrespected by bigger nations, gets visibly  emotional, and repeats the classic “we have no other choice” line about invading Ukraine. Said that if he didn’t, then Russia will cease to exist. Shades of Napoleon, Tojo, and Hitler.

Small penis confirmed. 

Thing is we know this and it's not a secret. He was enormously offended in 2014 when the Barrack Obama refered go Russia as a "regional power" and not a super power. As I mentioned earlier, Russia doesn't think they lost the Cold War. They believe it ended mutually and they are still on the same platform as the US. They become offended when Americans regard Gorbachev's approach as folding or surrender. Russians believe they made a great sacrifice to their own interests to end the Cold War for the benefit of others and they are unfairly labeled losers for it. 

[Sua Sponte]

1 hour ago, 08Dawg said:

Rational me says the whole Ghost of Kyiv thing is implausible…but damn does it make for a good story!  
 

Just saw another story that the Ukrainian MoD is claiming to have shot down another Il-76. They’re giving the Ruskis all they can handle. 

After watching this invasion, filtering out the trolls that are on Reddit/Twitter misinformation, I’m convinced that absent help from China and not lobbing nukes, Russia would severely get their asses beat by the U.S. in a conventional war. Their training is obviously shit and it sends a message that Russian commanders have such little faith in their conscript troops that they follow them around with mobile crematoriums once they’re killed.

[Pooter]

15 hours ago, dream big said:

Are you trolling bro? If we had Trump, Russia would not be invading Ukraine right now.  We’re you not around when ISIS went running for the hills immediately after 2017? Guess that doesn’t matter because mean tweets are triggering. 

Playing an aggressive and ultimately pointless game of mud hut whack a mole in the Middle East is a far cry from having a coherent strategy to prevent aggression from a near peer superpower. 
 

He bumbled his way through foreign policy just like Biden is right now with his only advantage being more erratic and unpredictable. But don't let that stop you from retconning trump into a tactical genius. 
 

It so fun to watch political hacks co opt humanitarian disaster to shit on either the current or past administration. Whichever aligns with the beliefs they already had.
 

9/11 happens a year into bush's term.. all because of Clinton policies. Ukraine happens a year into Biden's term.. absolutely nothing to do with anything trump did. 

[Pooter]

41 minutes ago, Sua Sponte said:

After watching this invasion, filtering out the trolls that are on Reddit/Twitter misinformation, I’m convinced that absent help from China and not lobbing nukes, Russia would severely get their asses beat by the U.S. in a conventional war. Their training is obviously shit and it sends a message that Russian commanders have such little faith in their conscript troops that they follow them around with mobile crematoriums once they’re killed.

Yeah it's telling when official casualty numbers have yet to be released by Russia for their side. That probably means: this is not going the way they wanted it to be going.
 

 

[Tank]

[tac airlifter]

4 hours ago, Pooter said:

9/11 happens a year into bush's term.. all because of Clinton policies. Ukraine happens a year into Biden's term.. absolutely nothing to do with anything trump did. 

9/11 happened because AQ were assholes who wanted violence.

Ukraine invasion happening because Russia are assholes who want violence.

Brainstorming ways current & past policies could have slowed or prevented things has value to future policy decisions.  But Russians are responsible for Russian behavior.  I get your point and it’s fair, but you also have TDS.  Recommend pointing your anger at Putin; Trump is not relevant in this moment… and likely not ever again.

[Lord Ratner]

14 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Hellfire the President of a sovereign nation that has more nuclear weapons than we do?

If you could get the probability of success up to 99%, I'd say go for it 

Megalomaniacs who are also competent, strategic, disciplined, and eloquent are not a dime a dozen, and part of they mojo is getting level-headed and otherwise conciliatory people to join in their domination crusades. 

 

The reason cutting the head off the snake works is because there are not many heads out there to replace them.

 

But if you miss...

[ClearedHot]

8 hours ago, Day Man said:

I really want this to be true because this is some gangster-ass shit from a president

Serious freaking stones.

Can you imagine if we had a leader like this who wasn't a narcissist or a duncewagon, just patriot fighting for his country.

[Smokin]

With the Ukrainians doing this well on their own, imagine what they could be doing with a little help.  Putin clearly miscalculated.  Think he intended to show that Russia was back and the USSR resurrection is inevitable.  Instead, he is showing that Russia is having a hard time conquering more than 100 miles of a country less than 10% of their size. 

Rather than scaring the west with Putin's military juggernaut, this should embolden us to action.

[FLEA]

6 hours ago, Pooter said:

Playing an aggressive and ultimately pointless game of mud hut whack a mole in the Middle East is a far cry from having a coherent strategy to prevent aggression from a near peer superpower. 
 

He bumbled his way through foreign policy just like Biden is right now with his only advantage being more erratic and unpredictable. But don't let that stop you from retconning trump into a tactical genius. 
 

It so fun to watch political hacks co opt humanitarian disaster to shit on either the current or past administration. Whichever aligns with the beliefs they already had.
 

9/11 happens a year into bush's term.. all because of Clinton policies. Ukraine happens a year into Biden's term.. absolutely nothing to do with anything trump did. 

I dunno. 9/11 happened because Al Queda reasonably believed the US would permenantly remove troops from the Holy land. This was actually our policy up to that point and they were really surprised when we actually turned it around into a war. 

Relations with Russia have been declining for a while. They temporarily boomed under Bush after 9/11 because Russia also had a strong stance against terrorism. Russia was the first country to call the US and offer aid after 9/11 and they were an important partner for early airspace and aeroporting access. However, Russia saw strong hypocrisy in how the US framed Russia's own counter terror campaigns in Chechnya. Prior to 9/11 though Russia was deeply offended by entry denial into NATO (yes look it up) and NATO intervention into Kosovo. 

One thing I find remarkable is how similar the pretense for this invasion is to the South Osettia conflict of 2008. This is taken directly from the Wikipedia page. 

"Following the election of Vladimir Putin in Russia in 2000 and a pro-Western change of power in Georgia in 2003, relations between Russia and Georgia began to deteriorate, reaching a full diplomatic crisis by April 2008..... Russia accused Georgia of 'aggression against South Ossetia',^[46] and launched a full-scale land, air and sea invasion of Georgia on 8 August which Russia called a "peace enforcement" operation."

Just replace Georgia with Ukraine and Ossetia with Donbas and you can see Putin's run this playbook before. Georgia ended after a few days also when Putin's forces began facing more resistance than anticipated but it took France to negotiate a peace fire. 

The sins that really tanked western/Russian relations following 9/11 were 1.) The US support for the colored revolutions, including a sitting US Presidents open and public support for Russia's colored revolution which was seen by Putin as open advocacy for his violent overthrow. As mentioned Putin had a history in the KGB and he is well aware of CIA operations to promote "regime change." Putin legitimately thought the Russian colored revolution was an attempt by the Obama presidency to institute new regime in Russia. 2.) President Obama referring to Russia as a "regional power." Russia has continuously lamented that the west does not take it seriously enough as a country despite it's position that the Cold War was a draw and Russia still sits on the world's largest arsenal of over 3000 nuclear weapons. 

Trump likely improved relations because he took Putin seriously, which is what Putin wanted. Trump treated him as am equal which many in the US saw as appeasement, especially following strong anti Russian sentiment in fallout of the Russian election tampering. In retrospect it's clear Russia probably did want to influence the election against Hilary, as it was under her direction as Sec of State that Obama's Russian policy fell apart. Furthermore, Russia probably saw election tampering as justified in light that he believed the US was seeking regime change through what he believed was CIA backed colored revolutions. 

[Lord Ratner]

17 minutes ago, FLEA said:

President Obama referring to Russia as a "regional power." Russia has continuously lamented that the west does not take it seriously enough as a country despite it's position that the Cold War was a draw and Russia still sits on the world's largest arsenal of over 3000 nuclear weapons. 

I'm going to call this "Ratners razor" from now on:

 

Never attribute to strategy that which can be adequately explained by ego.

[Sua Sponte]

[FLEA]

58 minutes ago, FLEA said:

One thing I find remarkable is how similar the pretense for this invasion is to the South Osettia conflict of 2008. This is taken directly from the Wikipedia page. 

"Following the election of Vladimir Putin in Russia in 2000 and a pro-Western change of power in Georgia in 2003, relations between Russia and Georgia began to deteriorate, reaching a full diplomatic crisis by April 2008..... Russia accused Georgia of 'aggression against South Ossetia',^[46] and launched a full-scale land, air and sea invasion of Georgia on 8 August which Russia called a "peace enforcement" operation."

Just replace Georgia with Ukraine and Ossetia with Donbas and you can see Putin's run this playbook before. Georgia ended after a few days also when Putin's forces began facing more resistance than anticipated but it took France to negotiate a peace fire.  

I forgot to mention but I also think 8 Aug 2008 was also during the summer Olympic games. Just another eerie parallel. 

[Danger41]

I was discussing this at work the other day and one of our intel guys who is super sharp was blown away at the feasibility of the “Ghost of Kyiv” based on capes of a Ukrainian Fulcrum vs Russian jets (radars, weapons, etc). All valid points but it truly goes to show that weapons and all of that are important, but the people using them are what truly matter. Kind of like John Boyd using the E-M theory and stating that an F-4 could never beat a MiG in a dogfight because the charts showed it performed worse. I doubt that story (Ghost) is true, but I know for certain that the Ukrainian military/people have shown one hell of a fighting spirit. It makes the Afghan military really look like shit bags with all of that tech and training they got over 2 decades just fold.

[Waingro]

39 minutes ago, Danger41 said:

I was discussing this at work the other day and one of our intel guys who is super sharp was blown away at the feasibility of the “Ghost of Kyiv” based on capes of a Ukrainian Fulcrum vs Russian jets (radars, weapons, etc). All valid points but it truly goes to show that weapons and all of that are important, but the people using them are what truly matter. Kind of like John Boyd using the E-M theory and stating that an F-4 could never beat a MiG in a dogfight because the charts showed it performed worse. I doubt that story (Ghost) is true, but I know for certain that the Ukrainian military/people have shown one hell of a fighting spirit. It makes the Afghan military really look like shit bags with all of that tech and training they got over 2 decades just fold.

That's a lot to extrapolate from what started as a reddit post using video game graphics. I like the propaganda value, but engaging in intel analysis with it is a little over the top. 

[Majestik Møøse]

2 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Serious freaking stones.

Can you imagine if we had a leader like this who wasn't a narcissist or a duncewagon, just patriot fighting for his country.

America so desperately needs someone that can unite us. Political infighting is fucking us over.

2 hours ago, Smokin said:

Rather than scaring the west with Putin's military juggernaut, this should embolden us to action.

The Russians are absolute paper tigers, especially in a conventional offensive. The dangerous part is they would resort to nukes when backed into a corner. Like a homeless guy with a hand grenade.

30 minutes ago, Danger41 said:

I was discussing this at work the other day and one of our intel guys who is super sharp was blown away at the feasibility of the “Ghost of Kyiv” based on capes of a Ukrainian Fulcrum vs Russian jets (radars, weapons, etc). All valid points but it truly goes to show that weapons and all of that are important, but the people using them are what truly matter. Kind of like John Boyd using the E-M theory and stating that an F-4 could never beat a MiG in a dogfight because the charts showed it performed worse. I doubt that story (Ghost) is true, but I know for certain that the Ukrainian military/people have shown one hell of a fighting spirit.

I love our Intel guys, but lately too many bros have bought into scary intel baseball cards with long range threats. A sniper rifle out ranges a platoon of Marines, but that’s not going to keep them from advancing. 

[dream big]

2 hours ago, ClearedHot said:

Serious freaking stones.

Can you imagine if we had a leader like this who wasn't a narcissist or a duncewagon, just patriot fighting for his country.

Dan Crenshaw maybe?

[Pooter]

5 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

9/11 happened because AQ were assholes who wanted violence.

Ukraine invasion happening because Russia are assholes who want violence.

Brainstorming ways current & past policies could have slowed or prevented things has value to future policy decisions.  But Russians are responsible for Russian behavior.  I get your point and it’s fair, but you also have TDS.  Recommend pointing your anger at Putin; Trump is not relevant in this moment… and likely not ever again.

Correct. Which is why the insinuations on here that trump would have somehow prevented this or that Biden is bungling it way worse than trump would have are complete nonsense. 
 

FWIW this is going about as well as we could have hoped. No American troops in harms way, Ukraine putting up one hell of a fight, and Russia shining their ass in a massive way on the world stage. All while we collect reams of intel on it all. 

[Buddy Spike]

2 hours ago, Danger41 said:

I was discussing this at work the other day and one of our intel guys who is super sharp was blown away at the feasibility of the “Ghost of Kyiv” based on capes of a Ukrainian Fulcrum vs Russian jets (radars, weapons, etc). All valid points but it truly goes to show that weapons and all of that are important, but the people using them are what truly matter. Kind of like John Boyd using the E-M theory and stating that an F-4 could never beat a MiG in a dogfight because the charts showed it performed worse. I doubt that story (Ghost) is true, but I know for certain that the Ukrainian military/people have shown one hell of a fighting spirit. It makes the Afghan military really look like shit bags with all of that tech and training they got over 2 decades just fold.

Or, it goes to show how easy it is to create mythology in 2022 and people will really believe anything no matter how outlandish.

The reality is likely that most of the Ukrainian kills have been through SAMs/Manpads and most of their air force was destroyed on the ground with very few if any air to air kills.

[afaf]

3 hours ago, FLEA said:

 

One thing I find remarkable is how similar the pretense for this invasion is to the South Osettia conflict of 2008. This is taken directly from the Wikipedia page. 

"Following the election of Vladimir Putin in Russia in 2000 and a pro-Western change of power in Georgia in 2003, relations between Russia and Georgia began to deteriorate, reaching a full diplomatic crisis by April 2008..... Russia accused Georgia of 'aggression against South Ossetia',^[46] and launched a full-scale land, air and sea invasion of Georgia on 8 August which Russia called a "peace enforcement" operation."

Just replace Georgia with Ukraine and Ossetia with Donbas and you can see Putin's run this playbook before. Georgia ended after a few days also when Putin's forces began facing more resistance than anticipated but it took France to negotiate a peace fire. 

 

I had similar thoughts as well.  Then expanding on those thoughts:

 

1. How long are Georgia and Ukraine going to hold onto the hope that they get to join NATO? They've both fought wars against Russia, propped up by Western support.  How long before they come to the conclusion we're using them for cannon fodder against are adversary?  I mean our support vs an actual Russian invasion, I still think we come out ahead as the system of beliefs they'd rather align with.  But if you've got any fence sitters, how long before they become disenfranchised and say screw America?  I mean Georgia had one of the biggest contingents in Afghanistan, in an attempt to show NATO they were serious.  Hell they were in Iraq with us too and had to be flown out of Iraq to go defend their own country against Russia.  After a decade of that, and we still haven't let them in NATO, because we don't want to piss off the Russians primarily.    Vice actually did a short video about similar thoughts.  Say what you want about their lean or bias, they into places most news companies will not send people.  

 

 

2.  And then the second thought, maybe now is the time Georgia attempt to take back South Ossetia and Abkhazia?  Russia's probably never been more distracted?