Posted on 05/15/2022 9:10:55 AM PDT by Widget Jr
Ed Arnold, former British Army Officer and Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute has more on the situation in Ukraine. He said the battle is "effectively over" in Kharkiv and that Ukraine has won the fight in the city.
The UK Ministry of Defence has said that Russia has "lost a third of their forces deployed in Ukraine" and is "unlikely to accelerate their rate of advance in the next 30 days."
Their latest statement came as Russia's offensive in Donbas "lost momentum" and has "fallen significantly behind schedule."
While Russia is the world’s largest country in area its population is decisively lower than Nigeria’s. And Ukraine is much larger in area than Russia’s previous victims like Chechnya and the Republic of Georgia.
The February blitz tried to subdue a country that is larger in area than Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi COMBINED. So, while Russia was able to flatten large swaths of urban terrain it could not simply overpower Ukraine.
Ukraine’s decisive advantage is the higher morale among its troops. The Ukrainians believe in their cause while the Russians soldiers are resentful for being sent to a meat grinder over false pretenses.
“The First Casualty of War is Truth.”
(attributed to Dr Samuel Johnson in 1758, or even the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus around 550 BC)
And, of Course: “Propaganda is the First Weapon Used in Times of War”
We get to a point where we don’t need to hear Pol Pot’s side of the story anymore. We get to the point where we just need to squash Pol Pot.
“Lira’s video speculates on the why, which I think is wrong.”
As if Lira is the only one who would speculate for that being the reason. I would think that anyone with commonsense would ask the same question, why all of a sudden out of the blue would Austin be begging for a ceasefire, when just days previously he was encouraging them to continue and and admiring their success? That alone would beg the question.
Interesting and many of the globalist RINOs on this site would totally support that.
We will know the whole ugly truth in about twenty years if not forty. But, as of Now, all we can see is what’s happening on the ground. Russia appears to be stumbling and losing ground. If your not advancing, your losing. They need to re-think their goals and put more troops on the ground and seek more allies. They need to open a second front. If Putin dies, it might change things but, if we are seen as the real aggressors it will unify the Russian People and stimulate a renewed war that will not end well for anyone.
Name something we haven’t stuck our hands in since 1942? We’ve largely stayed out of the genocidal ‘wars’ between the savages on the dark African continent, mostly… but other than that we are always involved. We could never walk away from this. Too much $$$.
“I’ve noticed in your many posts you have a propensity for name calling and personal attacks,”
Young Putineers have called me a neocon warmonger, Biden bootlicker, retard, motherf*cker and a fag so you might stop throwing stones before the whole glass house comes down.
Exactly.🙄
The objective among us would rather decide for ourselves which reports are valid. This requires that we get BOTH SIDES OF THE STORY, not just the side being promoted by the Ukraine military cheerleading squad and its Democrat backets.
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Unfortunately, I have never seen any of you actually engage in “getting both sides of the story.” It’s cute rhetoric and subterfuge though.
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Do you really expect Freepers to go to Ukraine to get the other side of the story, or to get it from our government? That’s the job of the objective journalist. Problem is, though, that anyone in the Ukraine challenging the view of the Ukraine military cheerleading squad wouldn’t be alive for long.
All the western sources have a pro-Ukraine bias. All the Russian sources have a pro-Russian bias, and to my eye, are much worse than the Western Press. Very few report facts evenhandedly.
Russia’s population is similar to that of Java (part of Indonesia) - 140 million.
Though this is deceptive, quite a bit of that population number and certainly territory is not Slavic Russian. It’s Central Asian, Turkic & Siberian Asian. I doubt many of them are keen on dying for pan-Slavia.
I will offer up some facts:
1) No one outside the Russian hierarchy has any idea what schedule was projected, and any sources who claim to know likely do not.
2) This is the first war in history where excellent satellite recon was available to both sides. Troop movements are known instantly.
3) Given 2), any massing of forces for either side can be targeted by long range weapons.
4) Ukraine has about 1500 locomotives, only 300 are diesel. The electric substations in the west are being targeted by the Russians. Trains haul heavy weapons, when they can move.
5) Western weaponry is downgraded before shipment. Ukraine does not get state of the art versions. There are explicit photos of howitzers with the digital targeting devices removed.
6) Russian Donbas aircraft sorties with long range weapons can remain in Russian territory. It speeds re-arming.
That’s it. Those are facts. No casualty estimates. No telepathy of who is thinking what. No imagination about Putin illness or health.
You are going to claim it, you get to back it up. Sources, please? Other than taking your own hyperbole seriously into what others have reported.
By the way, Johnson visit Ukraine on April 10, not last week. That was after talks in March between Ukraine and Russia broke down. Johnson encouraged Zelensky to keep fighting because negotiating with Putin was pointless. The U.S. and U.K. did not tell Zelensky not to negotiate and did not stop Ukraine from trying to reach a settlement.
I posted this before but found it amazing!
1. More Russian Soldiers Refuse To Fight In Ukraine: ‘They Couldn’t Force Me’
https://www.ibtimes.com/more-russian-soldiers-refuse-fight-ukraine-they-couldnt-force-me-3505656
Excerpt: Dmitri’s unit pulled out but was later told they would again be deployed to Ukraine in early April. At the time, he said many soldiers in his brigade said they did not want to return. Along with eight other soldiers, Dmitri told his commanders that they did not want to rejoin the war. He was soon transferred to Belgorod, where he expects to be stationed until the end of his contract.
“I have served for five years in the army. My contract ends in June. I will serve my remaining time and then I am out of here,” he told The Guardian. “I have nothing to be ashamed of. We aren’t officially in a state of war, so they could not force me to go.”
Dmitri’s refusal to fight in the war is the latest in a series of reports of Russian soldiers disobeying orders from Russian leaders to go to the battlefield as the Kremlin continuously refuses to call the invasion a war, preferring instead to call it a “special military operation.”
Ukraine’s Security Service in early May released a recording of an intercepted phone call where one Russian soldier was heard saying their unit blew up their own tanks as part of an attempt to avoid fighting in the war.”
2. A Russian soldier said he will quit the army because there is no point in fighting in Ukraine: report
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-soldier-refuses-to-go-ukraine-wants-quit-army-report-2022-5?op=1
3. Russian Soldier Looking Into Self-Harm To Escape Ukraine War, Intercepted Call Reveals
https://www.ibtimes.com/russian-soldier-looking-self-harm-escape-ukraine-war-intercepted-call-reveals-3491096
4. 5,000 Russian Soldiers Riot, Refuse to Go to Ukraine
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/27/2082677/-5-000-Russian-Soldiers-Riot-Refuse-to-Go-to-Ukraine
“OBOZREVATEL is reporting that 5,000 contract servicemen -not conscripts, professional soldiers- rioted in the Belgorod region of Russia, which is right across the border from the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
About 5,000 contract soldiers, who were hastily collected to be sent to Ukraine, refused to go to fight for Putin on the territory of our state.
Formally, the rebellious contractors argue their refusal to participate in hostilities in Ukraine by the fact that this is not provided for in their contracts.”
“you clearly know who he is”
Uh anyone who has been following the Ukraine war closely would know who he is. Actually I’ve always been a bit suspicious of him since he’s obviously pro-Russian and he has been reporting from areas totally under Ukrainian control and it would not surprise me if the Ukrainian forces were to take him out.
He did go missing for awhile, apparently he was abducted by the Ukrainian forces, but then reappeared unscathed. That seemed odd since he been so vociferously critical of Ukraine and apologetic towards the Russian perspective. Unlike you I question the narrative no matter which side it comes from.
#75. Thanks for stopping by.
Well I’m not the one calling people juvenile names, the poster I was referring to does so in almost every post he makes.
Hard to argue with that.
Oh wait. It’s impossible to argue with that. It hasn’t any substance.
I’m sure there are a ton of ways to evade the Russian draft. A family story about my great-grandfather who lived in a shtetl near Mogilev in what is now Belarus is illustrative. The czar was drafting Jews into the army and they would never be seen again, so he paid the army doctor 10 rubles and got exempted for medical reasons. I’m sure similar stuff goes on today under the current kleptocracy
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