Ukraine

[Ag3ma]

Kharkiv was very much a lucky break in Ukraines favor, though the liberation of Kherson was significantly more attritive. I've been hearing that this counter offensive is expected to last most if not all of the summer to make as much progress as possible before the fall rains start. Ukraine knows that assaulting a series of layered defenses is going to be difficult and Southern Ukraine has a lot of those.

Russia did have a lot of time to build defences.

The question is what might happen if defences crack - if Russian morale holds probably just minor successes, if morale is low it could end in routs.

 

[Dalisclock]

Russia did have a lot of time to build defences.

The question is what might happen if defences crack - if Russian morale holds probably just minor successes, if morale is low it could end in routs.

There was a report from British intelligence that mentioned Russians retreating into their own minefields.


Make of that what you will.

On the lighter side of the news, apparently a group of Russians caught a HIMARS strike while waiting 2 hours in formation waiting for an officer to give a speech. I wonder if the Speech was about the importance of not taking a HIMARS rocket to the face.

Russians Furious After Ukraine HIMARS Strike ‘Kills 100 Troops'

Ukraine has not officially confirmed the strike, but one official told Kyiv Post they ‘stood in the open air for two hours’, long enough to 'transport the HIMARS, enter the coordinates and hit them.'

www.kyivpost.com

 

[Ag3ma]

On the lighter side of the news, apparently a group of Russians caught a HIMARS strike while waiting 2 hours in formation waiting for an officer to give a speech. I wonder if the Speech was about the importance of not taking a HIMARS rocket to the face.

What moron leaves a large troop concentration out in the open for hours? I'd say that's too stupid to be believed... except that the last year and a half has taught us that the Russian army has form.

 

[Dalisclock]

What moron leaves a large troop concentration out in the open for hours? I'd say that's too stupid to be believed... except that the last year and a half has taught us that the Russian army has form.

Russia somehow lowering expectations for itself and video game bad guys everywhere.

Let's just hope they don't go full Belka. Never go full Belka

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

On the lighter side of the news, apparently a group of Russians caught a HIMARS strike while waiting 2 hours in formation waiting for an officer to give a speech. I wonder if the Speech was about the importance of not taking a HIMARS rocket to the face.

Russians Furious After Ukraine HIMARS Strike ‘Kills 100 Troops'

Ukraine has not officially confirmed the strike, but one official told Kyiv Post they ‘stood in the open air for two hours’, long enough to 'transport the HIMARS, enter the coordinates and hit them.'

www.kyivpost.com

I'll bet a dollar to a bent dime that the officer probably "earned" that rank through corruption and was more interested in prestige than practicality.

 

[Absent]

Alcohol Abuse Plagues Kremlin Elites as War Drags On – Reports - The Moscow Times

Members of Russia’s political elite have turned to alcohol as they cope with the growing pressures brought on by Moscow's war in Ukraine, independent media has reported, citing anonymous sources close to the Kremlin, parliament and regional administrations.

www.themoscowtimes.com

 

[Ag3ma]

Alcohol Abuse Plagues Kremlin Elites as War Drags On – Reports - The Moscow Times

Members of Russia’s political elite have turned to alcohol as they cope with the growing pressures brought on by Moscow's war in Ukraine, independent media has reported, citing anonymous sources close to the Kremlin, parliament and regional administrations.

www.themoscowtimes.com

I can't help but point out that alcohol abuse wasn't exactly rare in Russia before the invasion, either.

 

[Silvanus]

‘They enjoyed this’: Ukrainian woman recounts five-month nightmare of torture and imprisonment

Russian occupiers have unleashed a reign of terror in the city of Enerhodar, detailed here by one survivor of the secret police

www.theguardian.com

Interview with a civilian survivor who had been captured and held by Russian intelligence agents.

Attests to undergoing torture, including electrocution and strangulation; forced labour; imprisonment for five months.

And being forced at gunpoint to record videos denouncing the Ukrainians for shelling her hometown (Enerhodar), though she says the incident was actually carried out by the Russians and then falsely ascribed to their enemies. Two of the videos made under duress and carrying false-flag claims are still up on Russian state news outlets.

 

[Absent]

‘They enjoyed this’: Ukrainian woman recounts five-month nightmare of torture and imprisonment

Russian occupiers have unleashed a reign of terror in the city of Enerhodar, detailed here by one survivor of the secret police

www.theguardian.com

Interview with a civilian survivor who had been captured and held by Russian intelligence agents.

Attests to undergoing torture, including electrocution and strangulation; forced labour; imprisonment for five months.

And being forced at gunpoint to record videos denouncing the Ukrainians for shelling her hometown (Enerhodar), though she says the incident was actually carried out by the Russians and then falsely ascribed to their enemies. Two of the videos made under duress and carrying false-flag claims are still up on Russian state news outlets.

Maybe. But also, Putin and his regime hate homosexuals, therefore he is the good guy, therefore this is all western propaganda, you sheeple.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I can't help but point out that alcohol abuse wasn't exactly rare in Russia before the invasion, either.

The history of alcohol in Russia is massively, massively fucked up.

The Tsarist government had a monopoly on the production of vodka, and this monopoly accounted for a massive proportion of government revenue. It lead to a system of social engineering where the government would produce vodka at massive scale and sell it at insanely low prices. Basically, Russian peasants lived horrible lives under a brutally cruel social system, and the state responsible for that system then sold them a solution in the form of cheap and widely available alcohol. Epidemic alcoholism was a part of many historical societies, but in Russia it was deliberately manufactured by the state as a tool of social control and a way to bolster government revenues. As long as peasants were dealing with their problems by getting drunk, they weren't causing problems for the government.

The Russo-Japanese war was a bit of a wake up call for the Russian state regarding the social costs of this system. Alcohol rations were used as an incentive in the military, and the general perception was that a huge part of Russian military's underperformance was due to everyone involved being absolutely tanked. There was an attempt to institute prohibition during the first world war, which the Soviets briefly supported, but once Stalin took over everything basically returned to normal under a communist coat of paint.

Basically, the deliberate strategy of addiction the British used to weaken China by flooding the country with cheap opium is kind of what the Russian state has historically done to its own people using alcohol. Viewed through that lens, it and the culture it has created is incredibly horrifying.

I think some Russians like to promote the perception, and some westerners are willing to buy into the perception, that apparent social problems in Russia are the result of harmless cultural differences. Unlike us soft Westerners, Russians are just down to earth people who don't care about luxuries and enjoy manly shit like getting blitzed and dancing to hardbass in a piss-stained alley. This is bullshit. Russians are like everyone else, they want the best standard of living and the best opportunities available, it's just that what's available is shit and depressing because of a long history of shitty, authoritarian governments prioritizing buying tanks (and mansions) over improving the lives of their citizens or, in the case of alcohol, deliberately encouraging people to self-medicate as a way of keeping them docile.

 

[Seanchaidh]

[1]Any harm done to their defences is drastically outweighed by simply [2]making the Dnipro impassable. That alone [3]cuts off a potential line of attack, and [4]allows redeployment of troops who now no longer need to defend the left bank.

All four of those premises are very questionable, and indeed make no sense taken together as there is no body of water on earth, flowing or otherwise, that is impassable by a modern military force if it is not defended.

And of course, as I said before, drainage is a thing, both upstream of the dam immediately and later downstream as the flood recedes.

You've been more than happy to accept images of Nazi iconography and tattoos as evidence of an ideological bent--

They are evidence of a continuing ideological bent after Azov and other groups began as explicitly far-right neo-Nazi paramilitary groups involved in overthrowing Ukraine's elected government. Neo-nazi insurrection was quite literally the entire point of them and the new government welcomed them with open arms.

and Nazi iconography is rife in Wagner, from Wagner co-founder Dmitry Utkin's SS collar tattoos to the swastika variant in the logo of Rusich.

That pales in comparison to the avalanche of Nazi iconography (totenkopfs, black suns, red and black blood and soil flags) all over the Ukrainian armed forces-- not just Azov-- and amplified by AFU's social media accounts. AFU tweets with pictures of soldiers are like Where's Waldo for Nazi iconography-- or at least they were, back when I was paying attention to them some months ago.

If you'd like something a bit more direct, here's a quote (on video, no less) from the co-commander and co-founder of Rusich:

OK. I can't help but notice that there are many "co-" in all your statements about this. "The" co-commander ... of Wagner PMC Rusich-- oh, interesting. You've constructed a fine taken-at-face-value case against Wagner PMC Rusich. Bit short of the mark given your emphasis and whining about Rusich's Wagner's size, which we should expect would entail more evidence about them. Why is Wagner so large? Maybe because it is a loose collection of different mercenary groups with no clear ideological consistency between all of them? But if that were the case, Wagner would be more comparable to the AFU as a whole rather than the various neo-Nazi units within AFU. And then you wouldn't be so loud about it. Or maybe you would.

In any case, I don't think my government should send weapons to either group. You support sending weapons to one of them.

 

[Absent]

In any case, I don't think my government should send weapons to either group.

Yup but I doubt you'd say that if the actual nazis weren't in the goliath position.

 

[Seanchaidh]

prioritizing buying tanks (and mansions) over improving the lives of their citizens

Very unlike the United States, then.

Soviet investment in their armed forces-- indeed, their tanks including the (to Germans) surprisingly effective T-34-- are a vast portion of why the Allies were able to win World War 2. A capable military in the face of various predatory capitalist empires is not exactly frivolous expenditure. But you prefer socialist experiments that are able to be (and therefore in this environment are) precipitously crushed. The faintest possibility of success is evidence of deep moral failing.

 

[Silvanus]

All four of those premises are very questionable, and indeed make no sense taken together as there is no body of water on earth, flowing or otherwise, that is impassable by a modern military force if it is not defended.

Everybody knows that river crossings, particularly over a gulf as broad as the Dnipro, are extraordinarily risky-- this is why they tend to be avoided if at all possible, and why blowing up bridges is a very common tactic to halt an advance.

They are evidence of a continuing ideological bent after Azov and other groups began as explicitly far-right neo-Nazi paramilitary groups involved in overthrowing Ukraine's elected government. Neo-nazi insurrection was quite literally the entire point of them and the new government welcomed them with open arms.

Not quite: Azov was formed after Yanukovych had already been voted out unanimously by Ukraine's parliament (including his own party). It was formed in direct response to Russia's first invasion and the creation of the insurgency.

That pales in comparison to the avalanche of Nazi iconography (totenkopfs, black suns, red and black blood and soil flags) all over the Ukrainian armed forces-- not just Azov-- and amplified by AFU's social media accounts. AFU tweets with pictures of soldiers are like Where's Waldo for Nazi iconography-- or at least they were, back when I was paying attention to them some months ago.

Well, no, what's happening here is you're just exaggerating its media prominence for convenience, most likely because your awareness of this stuff seems to come from fringe twitter accounts retweeting stuff.

OK. I can't help but notice that there are many "co-" in all your statements about this. "The" co-commander ... of Wagner PMC Rusich-- oh, interesting. You've constructed a fine taken-at-face-value case against Wagner PMC Rusich. Bit short of the mark given your emphasis and whining about Rusich's Wagner's size, which we should expect would entail more evidence about them. Why is Wagner so large? Maybe because it is a loose collection of different mercenary groups with no clear ideological consistency between all of them? But if that were the case, Wagner would be more comparable to the AFU as a whole rather than the various neo-Nazi units within AFU. And then you wouldn't be so loud about it. Or maybe you would.

What an extremely muddled, confused mess of quasi-arguments this paragraph is.

Firstly there's the meaningless quibbling about these figures being "co" founders and commanders, as if that somehow means they're insignificant. I don't even know where that gripe is supposed to take you-- especially considering you're simultaneously moaning about tattoos and such on rank and file soldiers in Azov.

Then there's the complaint about using Rusich to characterise Wagner. Which is also a moronic quibble: Wagner (as you say) is a grouping of smaller outfits, so any evidence is unavoidably going to come from one of them. Rusich is merely one of the most prominent neo-Nazi outfits that Wagner and the Russian government happily encompasses.

Plus, of course, the fact that these were merely a few of many available examples. Much like you've thrown one or two pictures of rank and file Azov soldiers with Nazi tattoos and then insisted that we all accept the AFU as a whole is rife with Nazis. And you then have the hypocrisy to complain I haven't provided enough...? At least mine came from the founders and commanders. But if needs be, more examples abound with merely a little dig.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Yup but I doubt you'd say that if the actual nazis weren't in the goliath position.

Very credible given that you can't even admit that Ukraine has a Nazi problem. "The actual" lol

Not quite: Azov was formed after Yanukovych had already been voted out unanimously by Ukraine's parliament (including his own party).

Weird unanimity that occurs without quorum. In any case, the rebranding of "Social National Assembly" wasn't enough to trick western liberals at the time, so why is it enough to trick you?

 

[Silvanus]

Weird unanimity that occurs without quorum. In any case, the rebranding of "Social National Assembly" wasn't enough to trick western liberals at the time, so why is it enough to trick you?

Apparently 73% of its members were present and voted to remove him, which is more than enough by most country's standards. I assume you're referring to the fact they didn't reach the 75% required to impeach (even though he wasn't impeached).

What you're insisting is that parliamentary rule should've been dissolved and an executive dictatorship established, in favour of a man who wasn't even present.

Signs of Neo-Nazi Ideology Amongst Russian Mercenaries

This research is done by Lukas Andriukaitis exclusively for Res Publica – Civic Resilience Center. Lukas Andriukaitis is an open source researcher and trainer, focusing on Kremlin disinformation and military involvement in conflicts around the globe. For the past several years he has focused on...

en.respublica.lt

^ since you complained of too little evidence, there's a wealth of additional photos of Wagner personnel here, in Syria, Libya and CAR, proudly sporting Siegrunes, Valknot, Tyr, Othala (from an SS wartime flag), and desecrating houses and mosques with swastikas and the SS double lightning bolt.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Apparently 73% of its members were present, which is more than enough, both according to Ukrainian law and the standards of the vast majority of countries.

No, 73% is less than the 3/4 that are needed to remove a president under the constitution that was in use at the time. There were also other problems, for example that the constitution specifies a replacement in such a case: that too was ignored.

What you're insisting is that parliamentary rule should've been dissolved and an executive dictatorship established, in favour of a man who wasn't even present.

What I'm insisting is that the constitution should have been followed rather than ignored in order to facilitate the overthrow of the government by a far-right nationalist uprising.

Signs of Neo-Nazi Ideology Amongst Russian Mercenaries

This research is done by Lukas Andriukaitis exclusively for Res Publica – Civic Resilience Center. Lukas Andriukaitis is an open source researcher and trainer, focusing on Kremlin disinformation and military involvement in conflicts around the globe. For the past several years he has focused on...

en.respublica.lt

^ since you complained of too little evidence, there's a wealth of additional photos of Wagner personnel here, in Syria, Libya and CAR, proudly sporting Siegrunes, Valknot, Tyr, Othala (from an SS wartime flag), and desecrating houses and mosques with swastikas and the SS double lightning bolt.

...

That article was surprisingly short. That's it? That's "a wealth"?

 

[Silvanus]

No, 73% is less than the 3/4 that are needed to remove a president under the constitution that was in use at the time. There were also other problems, for example that the constitution specifies a replacement in such a case: that too was ignored.

3/4 is for impeachment. He wasn't impeached. He couldn't be reached, which is a situation the Constitution did not specify.

I'm sorry if you feel indignant that they didn't insist those extra 2% turn up in order to follow a different constitutional procedure. That's definitely more important than the facts he wasn't present to do his job and not a single party supported him.

What I'm insisting is that the constitution should have been followed rather than ignored in order to facilitate the overthrow of the government by a far-right nationalist uprising.

Well, good news then: it wasn't.

That article was surprisingly short. That's it? That's "a wealth"?

An additional 10 direct photos of Wagner personnel sporting Nazi symbols on uniforms and material, in addition to the quotes and tattoos of 2 commanders already provided, constitutes far, far, far more than the measley shite you've provided-- which you described as an "avalanche".

But very well, a few more to add to the growing pile,

Revealed: A Neo-Nazi Band Played a Private Gig for Russian Troops

And they recorded a music video at their base too.

www.vice.com

Russian neo-Nazis in the ranks of Wagner PMC

One of the main slogans of Russian propaganda in mobilizing mercenaries for the war in the Donbas was “to fight fascism". But Russian neo-fascists were among those who answered the call.

informnapalm.org

The Wagner Group Files

“Mercenaries,” he replied. “They commit crimes for money.” A tablet recovered from the battlefield in Libya offers detailed insights into the murky world of Russian mercenaries fighting abroad.

newlinesmag.com

 

[Absent]

Very credible given that you can't even admit that Ukraine has a Nazi problem. "The actual" lol

I'll put it differently.

At this point, one wouldn't be able to gobble up the kremlin propaganda and talking points if there wasn't a passionate bias in favor of Putin's dictatorship. This bias stems from the characteristics of Putin's ideology and mode of government, which embraces all the values of fascism (suppression of the press, militarism, glorification of might and power, oppression of minorities, virilism, sexism and homophobia), the illiberal counter-model to the West's explicit values. Not to the West's hypocrisy, mind you, not to the West failure at implementing these values between its own armwrestling progressive and conservative currents, but to the West very proclaimed goals. It not "oh noes, the west isn't sufficiently democratic and respectful of diversities actually", it's "bleh, the west values democracy and diversities, what a bunch of pussies". Putin is any western fascist's wet dream, he generates the same admiration as Hitler and Mussolini did among conservatives in 1930s Europe, for the same reasons. And with that admiration comes support and alignment to its justificative, apologetic narratives - even as he conquers his neighbours and commits the worst atrocities to that effect.

Now the funny thing with fascism, is that nationalism is a very strong element of it, which means that international solidarity is fragile and temporary. For all the love and admiration that Metaxas had for Adolf Hitler, his policies and ideology, when Greece's sovereignty got threatened (when Hitler favored Mussolini over him), Metaxas turned against Germany. In France, while a lot of pro-fascists were all too happy to serve Hitler through the Vichy regime, a number of them also fought "the Germans" at the side of democratic resistants. In Ukraine, extreme-right currents don't all embrace Putin's occupation, some fight against it.

Yet, using it to make ideological parallels between Ukraine (or Ukraine+Europe+USA) and Russia is just deliberate bad faith. Precisely because Putin's regime is the very incarnation of fascist values, at all levels, and gets a large support from the extreme-right abroad for that reason. Using the "nazi" word as a stigma for enemies is absolutely cynical from a regime politically and geopolitically so close to 1930 Germany - it's the same joke as racists going "no, you are the anti-white racist" or "no, you are the ones who don't like diversity because you don't like nazis". It's the standard procedure of emptying a loaded word of its content, and reversing its meaning. To achieve that, you are playing on scales. An extreme-right regime attacking a country (beam) and using magnifying lenses on its extreme-right militias (mote). If it wasn't for clashing nationalisms, Putin would have zero issue with "nazis" : he funds and supports them throughout the world as they praise him back. But zooming out would be inconvenient for your narrative.

I am calling you a hypocrite. And, as I'm telling you that your hypocritical "not giving weapons to any group" simply expresses the desire to see Putin's Russia squish Ukraine, I attribute your support of Russia to a fondness for its political and societal model and its actual fascistic values. If you truly cared about "nazism", you'd be more concerned about this regime conquering its neighbours. If Putin cared about "nazism", his government and his laws would be completely different, and his network of supporters would be the opposite. But sure, stay "credible" and go defend the values of democracy with Iran, North Korea and the European extreme-right.

 

[Dalisclock]

I can't help but point out that alcohol abuse wasn't exactly rare in Russia before the invasion, either.

Yeah, I mean, isn't chronic Alcoholism practically a national pastime in Russia?