Posted on 10/05/2022 6:11:34 PM PDT by Timber Rattler
After Russia’s chaotic retreats in Kherson – less than a week after Vladimir Putin illegally annexed the Ukrainian province alongside three others – the region’s Moscow-appointed governor, Kirill Stremousov, sought to calm the mood.
Far from a rout, the withdrawal was a tactical “regrouping” to “deliver a retaliatory blow”, Stremousov said on Wednesday.
His comments – among the first public admissions of Russia’s retreats in Kherson – attempted to mask what even many vocal supporters of the war now say: the situation is the most dire the Russian army has found itself in since the start of the invasion seven months ago.
“Friends, I know you’re waiting for me to comment on the situation. But I really don’t know what to say to you. The retreat … is catastrophic,” Roman Saponkov, a prominent war correspondent, wrote on his Telegram channel, describing his despair over the pullback in Kherson.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Quit spamming the board with your “Yay Ukraine” threads. You’re in the minority here, and we’re tired of your paid shill posts.
There’s no hiding it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2uFRwlnvk4
You’ll get over it.
Back in the day posters like this got banned. FR is very lightly moderated these days. In some regards that is better, in others, like this scenario, it’s worse
Meanwhile Ukraine has husbanded and trained its reserves, received more training by NATO, have been equipped with more and better artillery as well as now capturing large stocks of Russian materiel.
The Ukrainians seem to be actually fighting battalion level combined arms with good coordination between artillery and mounted and dismounted infantry and armor. They are proceeding slowly and methodically to pin and envelop the Russian army chunk by chunk.
I”m no fan of Putin, but he still has some cards to play. His most dangerous ones at that.
Strategic retreat to save men and armor.
Ukraine charges forward. Russians are building tremendous reinforced battle forces.
Wait a little longer. Giving up territory to prepare for strategic counterattack is one of history’s repeated maneuvers used by WINNING strategists.
Ukraine is losing men and material it cannot replace.
Even Napoleon understood ground can be retaken and did so often enroute to victory.
Mao was chased across China but later won a lasting victory.
Guess the Putinistas on FR are like pigeons who have been crapping all over the place since the war started but are now having their feathers ruffled by reality.
Putin has already had to send some of the 300K mobilized home because they had no where to put them, no way to equip them, no way to train them.
Meanwhile Ukraine cancelled its autumn draft because they have enough volunteers.
Wake up and smell reality.
⚡️BREAKING NEWS⚡️
EU is ready for a diplomatic solution on Ukraine if circumstances permit - EU Foreign Policy Chief Borrell.
They also know this isn't it.
I don’t know what to call it - Putinoid droppings, perhaps?
The Majority on FR want a Russia victory in Ukraine?
sure.
Very good post from Kazan on another thread just now.
To: Cathi
From Big Serge:
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/politics-by-other-means
Putin and those around him conceived of the Russo-Ukrainian War in existential terms from the very beginning. It is unlikely, however, that most Russians understood this. Instead, they likely viewed the war the same way Americans viewed the war in Iraq and Ukraine - as a justified military enterprise that was nevertheless merely a technocratic task for the professional military; hardly a matter of life and death for the nation. I highly doubt that any American ever believed that the fate of the nation hinged on the war in Afghanistan (Americans have not fought an existential war since 1865), and judging by the recruitment crisis plaguing the American military, it does not seem like anyone perceives a genuine foreign existential threat.
What has happened in the months since February 24 is rather remarkable. The existential war for the Russian nation has been incarnated and made real for Russian citizens. Sanctions and anti-Russian propaganda - demonizing the entire nation as “orcs” - has rallied even initially skeptical Russians behind the war, and Putin’s approval rating has soared. A core western assumption, that Russians would turn on the government, has reversed. Videos showing the torture of Russian POWs by frothing Ukrainians, of Ukrainian soldiers calling Russian mothers to mockingly tell them their sons are dead, of Russian children killed by shelling in Donetsk, have served to validate Putin’s implicit claim that Ukraine is a demon possessed state that must be exorcised with high explosives. Amidst all of this - helpfully, from the perspective of Alexander Dugin and his neophytes - American pseudo-intellectual “Blue Checks” have publicly drooled over the prospect of “decolonizing and demilitarizing” Russia, which plainly entails the dismemberment of the Russian state and the partitioning of its territory. The government of Ukraine (in now deleted tweets) publicly claimed that Russians are prone to barbarism because they are a mongrel race with Asiatic blood mixing.
Simultaneously, Putin has moved towards - and ultimately achieved - his project of formal annexation of Ukraine’s old eastern rim. This has also legally transformed the war into an existential struggle. Further Ukrainian advances in the east are now, in the eyes of the Russian state, an assault on sovereign Russian territory and an attempt to destroy the integrity of the Russian state. Recent polling shows that a supermajority of Russians support defending these new territories at any cost.
###
A political consensus for higher mobilization and greater intensity has been achieved. Now all that remains is the implementation of this consensus in the material world of fist and boot, bullet and shell, blood and iron.
###
Putin, very simply, could not have conducted a large scale mobilization at the onset of the war. He possessed neither a coercive mechanism nor the manifest threat to generate mass political support. Few Russians would have believed that there was some existential threat lurking in the shadow - they needed to be shown, and the west has not disappointed. Likewise, few Russians would likely have supported the obliteration of Ukrainian infrastructure and urban utilities in the opening days of the war. But now, the only vocal criticism of Putin within Russia is on the side of further escalation. The problem with Putin, from the Russian perspective, is that he has not gone far enough. In other words - mass politics have already moved ahead of the government, making mobilization and escalation politically trivial. Above all, we must remember that Clausewitz’s maxim remains true. The military situation is merely a subset of the political situation, and military mobilization is also political mobilization - a manifestation of society’s political participation in the state.
###
The other is the interpretation that I have advocated, that Russia is massing for a winter escalation and offensive, and is currently engaged in a calculated trade wherein they give up space in exchange for time and Ukrainian casualties. Russia continues to retreat where positions are either operationally compromised or faced with overwhelming Ukrainian numbers, but they are very careful to extract forces out of operational danger. In Lyman, where Ukraine threatened to encircle the garrison, Russia committed mobile reserves to unblock the village and secure the withdrawal of the garrison. Ukraine’s “encirclement” evaporated, and the Ukrainian interior ministry was bizarrely compelled to tweet (and then delete) video of destroyed civilian vehicles as “proof” that the Russian forces had been annihilated.
Russia will likely continue to pull back over the coming weeks, withdrawing units intact under their artillery and air umbrella, grinding down Ukrainian heavy equipment stocks and wearing away their manpower. Meanwhile, new equipment continues to congregate in Belgorod, Zaporizhia, and Crimea. My expectation remains the same: episodic Russian withdrawal until the front stabilizes roughly at the end of October, followed by an operational pause until the ground freezes, followed by escalation and a winter offensive by Russia once they have finished amassing sufficient units.
25 posted on 10/5/2022, 4:40:48 PM by Kazan
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First, they're not driving anything out of Russia. They invaded mother country that had been leaving them completely alone. Second, if you are right, Russia should have been flooded with volunteers, shouldn't have had to do a mandatory mobilization, and wouldn't have anti-mobilization protests and dudes fleeing the country.
The Russian people aren't stupid. They knew they were going about their wives and complete peace until Putin sprang upon them the invasion of a peaceful neighbor with whom they'd never previously considered going to war. It's basically if we woke up one morning to the news that we had just invaded Canada and, and telling us it was a Great Patriotic war to eliminate Trudeau's leftism.
And “mother” = “another”
LOL, I mean, what does that photo mean to you? It's like some kind of bad post-post-modern art thing.
Funny, though. Just like you.
LOL, I mean, what does that photo mean to you? It's like some kind of bad post-post-modern art thing.
Funny, though. Just like you.
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