Only for news & views directly related to the Ukraine conflict.
The current open thread for other issues here.
Please stick to the topic. Contribute facts. Do not attack other commentators.
Back to Main
June 26, 2023
Ukraine Open Thread 2023-151
Comments
@ zinjanthropus 234
Given the limited amount of resources it is putting into the war, it’s difficult to believe that Russia views the conflict as existential …”
You didn’t ask yourself the important question, which is, “Why is Russia holding back those forces, which are about 80-85% of Russia’s military ?” Well, the answer is right there in your statement. Because it is an existential conflict – euphemism for all-or-nothing – Russia is holding the bulk of its forces in reserve, against a wider war with NATO. In other words, Russia is maintaining “escalatory dominance” all the way up the scale, even to nuclear war. If Russia didn’t obviously have that dominance, NATO itself would escalate.
Posted by: JessDTruth | Jun 27 2023 17:15 utc | 301
What remains open is who if anyone will be held accountable for those losses.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 27 2023 16:41 utc | 298
Maybe later. Not right now.
Recriminations lead to calls for retribution…. And that will only fracture the now ex-Wagners from the rest of the Russian military.
Putin as a lawyer knows if he starts a prosecution against Prigozhin over the insurrection… at trial, or even before, all sorts of inconvenient and ugly truths will emerge from Wagner and the military.
He doesn’t need,/ can’t afford that to take focus away from defeating USNATO.
I did pick up on something you posted of Putin’s speeches….. he mentioned the money that went to Wagner for provisioning the military.
Now Prigozhin is IMO very likely to have been fiddling the books……
Much better to prosecute Prigozhin for embezzlement than for insurrection.
Embezzlement can be focused on Prigozhin and maybe a few accomplices.
Russians will be incandescent with raging if Prigozhin has been stealing from their boys by cheating on the accounts for supplies…..
Prosecuting the insurrection is dangerous for Putin, because the imbroglio had so many caught up in it.
The Patrick Lancaster vid…. The last image of some young soldier Wagner in the back of a troop truck.
They were “involved” in the insurrection. Nothing good will come of prosecuting these young lads for treason or armed insurgency or whatever.
If Putin attempts to prosecute Prigozhin… where is the “line” drawn between those like Prigozhin who instigated it, and the young unwitting lads who ended up in the back of a troop truck in downtown Rostov on a Saturday night?
Putin is smart to move on from the insurgency.
But he might get Prigozhin for tax evasion…. or some civilian crime.
Posted by: Melaleuca | Jun 27 2023 17:20 utc | 302
At exactly 1:00:07, Phillip Karber quotes Ukrainian General talking in 2014 about “meeting at the gates of Valhalla”. So the fact of Nazi and anti-Christian ideology being embedded into the Ukie army
Posted by: JessDTruth | Jun 27 2023 17:00 utc | 303
It was by design and it still is.
Surrendered AFU servicemen about training in France – psychologists actively worked with the mobilised Ukrainian soldiers to inculcate them with Russophobia and openly called for killing Russians. ‘The more Russians we kill, the freer Ukraine will become’
And even Israel is ok with it, just look at what Israeli ambassador in Ukr said (the thing that Bandera is a hero and Israel will support Ukr forever and ever)
Posted by: rk | Jun 27 2023 17:24 utc | 303
Im not sure what the CIA does besides run for congress, appear on talk shows and write op eds. oh and bribe people to overthrow governments. maybe somebody private runs the troll farms, or Brit Intelligence. all very murky.
Posted by: pretzelattack | Jun 27 2023 12:01 utc | 243
they do keep busy, dont they?
From what I have seen, up until the frogs had simmered long enough, and a few changes to the law were enacted (Thanks, Obombem!), foreign contractors or military actors were responsible for US domestic propaganda efforts on isolated message boards, in what would seem rather unlikely efforts against small fry. The bigger picture probably clarifies in retrospect, but people still use soft expressions like The fog of War!” when in these parts it is an iron wall curtailing information. Bolstered by technological means and the phony representation of sentiment which draws into question and amplifies interpersonal antipathies. A difficult problem to overcome, but when the blame is applied to victimized voters in a falsified system, those accusers become the perpetrators. Authentically hateful or simply artificially directed. Mostly that.
Posted by: Not Ewe | Jun 27 2023 17:25 utc | 304
I prefer to take Putin’s word until it’s disproven, but that doesn’t negate Johnson’s hypothesis.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jun 27 2023 15:28 utc | 279
————-
I’d take Putin’s word any day, whatever any US American ‘analysts’ say, including Larry Johnson, MacGregor or anyone, especially Martyanov.
Posted by: ostro | Jun 27 2023 18:21 utc | 305
Thanks, Melaleuca | Jun 27 2023 17:04 utc | 305, also for your previous similar description. I am reminded of the analysis of the Odessa rioting situation – this is how it is done, and it explains the careful manner in which events proceeded — a tightrope indeed. I’m also reminded that the farcical novel “The Idiot” by Dostoievski begins with the two antithetical main characters departing Rostov for Moscow seated opposite one another on a train. The ensuing dramatic events seem not divorced from that literary antecedent with its strange ending. It’s a motif also used by Pasternak at the beginning of his “Dr. Zhivago”. b’s use of the term ‘farce’ is not misplaced. The scrutiny such as you employ here is appropriate, I think.
Posted by: juliania | Jun 27 2023 19:02 utc | 306
James @304
If things go hot, as the country lying under the shortest ICBM flight paths between the US & RF, here in Canada we may finally find relief for overheating real estate markets in major cities…
Always a bright–sometimes blindingly bright–side. 😉
Posted by: Paul Damascene | Jun 27 2023 20:31 utc | 307
Eighthman | Jun 27 2023 15:03 utc | 275
Thanks for the link – to a mainstream article in “The Hill”. It does not show much movement, though. The author (Robert A. Manning) seems to believe that Ukraine is doing well with its counter-offensive. At one point, he mentions, as a possible variation of a negotiated settlement, Russia being granted control over Crimea.
I cannot imagine Putin agreeing to anything that returns Donezk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia or Kherson oblasts to Ukraine – after all, he promised the population of these areas protection from Ukrainian Nazis. So, assuming that the article represents “emerging Western thought about how the war ends”, we are still lightyears away from anything better than a frozen armistice.
Posted by: grunzt | Jun 27 2023 20:40 utc | 308
Paul Damascene | Jun 27 2023 16:46 utc | 301–
Thanks for your very well considered reply. I just finished watching the Judge’s talks with Crooke and Johnson, and only feel more sure of my thinking: Prigozhin’s antics were all bait, NATO swallowed the bait whole and is now in the process of being filleted. There was word that some civil servants bolted out-of-country, but they all seem to be of much lower rank, meaning any top-rank 5-6th columnists didn’t fall for the trick because they’re far more aware of Russia’s reality than the Neoliberalcons in the West. Another effect is that on military suppliers–don’t try to get away with something on the side. Also, the messages given to Putin by the War Correspondents regarding small but very important items of consequence for those on the FEBA will be acted upon with alacrity, like trench periscopes that allow soldiers to see over the berm without their head being perforated by a sniper’s bullet.
My main question is how much longer until Russia begins its own major offensive, not just the increasing push along the FEBA.
Noirette | Jun 27 2023 15:30 utc | 280
***They were a ‘Foreign Legion’ like the French one***
Thought they were more like the Spanish Overseas Legion?
Posted by: Cynic | Jun 27 2023 22:40 utc | 310
@Alek 124
@quote ”
Also, the RF security services didnt react before the coup. This is the worst aspect of it all, they either knew but didnt have time to make a plan or were somehow played by Wagner. Interesting how the Americans pointed out that they of course knew in advance and briefed congress.”
Russian secret services were unknown about English and American plots of Feb 2014 in Ukraine while Mr Putin was self congratulating himself on Sochi Olympics despite knowing that British media had run crusade against Sochi on ground of LGBT agenda as an excuse . Putin allowed from jail even the Jewish oligarchs Khorodosky just before Olympics in order to please Anglos who had been running propaganda against Sochi winter Olympics. Putin had shown utter lack of judgement at every crisis moment he is dangerous to Russia and not fit to govern he should have kicked out traitor sergie Lavrov an Anglophile and also demetri pesko his spokesman and a British agent
Posted by: alek_a | Jun 26 2023 22:04 utc | 124
Posted by: Sam | Jun 28 2023 1:18 utc | 311
Melaleuca | Jun 27 2023 17:04 utc | 305
your comments are saying what I was thinking. Putin is a statesman, having Prigozhin executed would show him in the totally bad light. No such ‘benfit’ for the West to crow how evil, autocratic, Hitler-like (who had the Stauffenberg and his companions executed after the failed assassination) Putin is.
Besides, having Prigozhin alive will allow to follow him carefully for any possible contacts with his companions, and possibly with the westerners, if the suspicion/thesis of Larry Johnson should be true. If Prigozhin was ‘turned’ by Russians and became double agent, he should not be killed by Russians. If anything, he may be now the target of the westerners. He may be the target of the westerners regardless, just to blame Putin for it. (as several commenters already suggested).
Posted by: fanto | Jun 28 2023 4:17 utc | 312
I hace to ask every commentor to l Putin’s video again and try to figure out why he changes support leg, when talking.
Also, some people think that the mutiny, was a strategy to mover Wagner troops 100km near kiev.
Posted by: Carmen L | Jun 28 2023 15:52 utc | 313