Slavyangrad…
” They are trying to capture our positions, but they are not succeeding ,” says the commander of the platoon with the call sign “Hare”.
Together with his comrades in arms, “Hare” holds back the enemy in the Orekhovskoye direction.
“Foreign speech is heard all the time, that is, we intercept it. There are a lot of mercenaries on NATO equipment who speak English and Polish,” says Hare.
A total of 20 attempts at an offensive by the AFU were repulsed and about 815 Ukrainian servicemen were killed, the Defence Ministry’s bulletin said.
The offensive has collapsed, the situation has stabilised, 2 tanks were hit, infantry was abandoned, the tanks that were not hit went behind the woodland.
At the moment, foreign mercenaries and АFU are being brought to the woodlands, artillery is working on them tightly. ”
https://tgstat.com/channel/@Slavyangrad

Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jul 18 2023 12:30 utc | 204

https://t.me/CyberspecNews/36268

In case you are wondering why the west is having a collective shtfit about the grain deal. Without it, arms delivery route just became a whole lot more complicated, especially to the southern front.

https://t.me/CyberspecNews/36248

❗️Ukrainian unmanned kamikaze boats that attacked the Crimean bridge tonight are believed to have been caught on satellite imagery .
On July 16, at 23:59 , four high-speed objects hit the lens of the Sentinel-2 L1C satellite, located at a distance of 75 km southeast of Zmiinoye and going in the direction of the Crimean coast .
Coordinates: 44.787000, 30.905000

https://t.me/CyberspecNews/36224

Video of the first documented use of a 155mm cluster munition by Ukrainian in the Svatovo-Kremennaya direction.

https://t.me/CyberspecNews/36236

Russian Tulip being hit by GMLRS, apparently near Bakhmut

The last one is an object lesson in the economics of putting anything expensive on this increasingly lethal battlefield. I’m not saying I know what the solution is but it’s definitely not any variation of the depicted scenario, which is itself a technically unremarkable achievement.

Posted by: anon2020 | Jul 18 2023 13:10 utc | 206

sal@196…..Canadians in the majority have been mentally sterilized since birth. They are raised similar to chickens…..er, sorry, US citizens, know little of the genocides that take place outside their borders, supported by their ruling party of the day, and committed in their name. As you have noted, Canadians are blissful.
Cheers M
Where I live thousands and thousands of housing units are being built, similar across the country, for who in a country with a declining birth rate, except for First Nations. Canada one day may well resemble France today. At my age not sure if I’ll be around to see …..nah, hopefully I’m gone by then.

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Jul 18 2023 13:18 utc | 208

Posted by: bevin | Jul 18 2023 12:27 utc | 202
Scorpion@169
If you think about the Navalny affair it is fairly obvious that the “West” convinced itself that Putin was about to dissolve and a Fifth Column (Fifth Monarchy??) was ready to take power.
=============================================
I never followed that Navalny story – too much hyperbole on all sides. If Putin didn’t get the billion dollar mansion, who built it and why? No matter what the answer to that is, it all reeks of ill-gotten oligarchic gains from within a nation which still has lots of structural wrinkles to iron out.
As to the fifth column: isn’t it mainly that the western liberal establishment – via the bankster credit cartels – has extensive ties within Russia and wants to displace Putin with another Yeltsin?
I don’t keep up much with those stories either. Following the present is murky and turbulent, like river rafting in the dark, though I find b’s concise articles and some of the commentary here helpful in getting some idea of what’s happening – and of late the present has been fascinating to say the least – Trump, Brexit, Covid, World Skirmish with Tectonics…..
I suspect Putin is more canny than some of his Western fans are willing to imagine and also much less of a Saint than they project. Lavrov himself jokingly suggested last year that such projections are over the top. At the same time, I suspect he is well aware that he is Head of State, not the Prime Minister-Manager, but he is often imagined as the Chief Executive pulling all the levers all the time. I doubt that’s how things really work in the Kremlin but of course haven’t the slightest idea.
If I understand aright, along with building up his nation internally, which he seems to have done very well the past 20 years, billion dollar mansions and yachts notwithstanding, he has embarked on historic geopolitical voyage which is yielding extraordinary discoveries in the form of extensive win-win alliances. In this he is a world statesman of historic stature. It feels to me that even though Russia is far smaller in terms of economic and trade clout, Putin has been the lead and Xi has been following in his wake. Put another way: without Putin’s geopolitical initiative, Xi would not be where he is today since much of his success depends upon delivering in international infrastructure the geopolitical tectonics that Putin has pushed for since the mid-to-late 2000’s as he gradually accepted that the West would not join in creating a new world order based on mutual cooperation with Russia part of European civilization again, which until recently it always had been. With neocons in power in Washington, with their long-standing tribal hatred of all things Russian, this proved a bridge too far. Pity. (Maybe am not giving Xi enough credit, but he looks like a ‘stiff’ to me and I don’t trust him!)
I harbor this hope that Putin is waiting for a sea-change in the West. Clearly it’s falling apart. Maybe he will still be around to help pick up the pieces and get a chastened but now more realistic and honest Western European polity to gently cajole into doing the right thing and joining the Belt and Road Civilization which promises to have a nice multi-century run if given half a chance.
Again though: how much of the Funny Money crowd, the head of the West’s serpent of dysfunction, has their fangs in the Russian bloodstream? I wonder if anyone – even within Russia – has a clear picture.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 18 2023 13:47 utc | 210

Wouldn’t waiting until next year to launch such an offensive be a rather bad idea?
Posted by: Perimetr | Jul 17 2023 22:26 utc | 103
So far the real and claimed to be experts on war have not been able to predict Russian behavior. If we are to suppose there is some sound thinking behind the Russian strategic thinking, what most easily supports it is that the Russians frame the war as between Russia and Nato. If that is the thinking, so far the war has been a great Russian success.
In a war between Russia and NATO, gaming territory in Ukraine is of little real value. What is of value is killing off, wounding, or discouraging Nato’s most easily available troops. While that job isn’t done yet, that is underway, and at no great cost to the Russians because the other side uses its troops as canon fodder. The outcome in military equipment is even better. Nato has no surge capacity for the production of munitions, but Nato did have a large inventory of equipment left over from the cold war. A lot of that surplus has been chewed up even as Russia is easily able to replace its combat losses and appears to be producing its own surplus of modern combat equipment.
In thinking of an analogy to Russia’s situation, Sam Huston’s battle of San Jacinto comes to mind. Faced with an apparently superior army, he made retreat a repeated pattern of behavior. My take is that his impressive victory came from what had to be a greatly reduced readiness by the Mexicans owing to the long period with essentially no combat. Huston’s constant retreating simply wore down the Mexican’s alertness. The final attack had to be unexpected or it never would have produced such an overwhelming victory.

Posted by: Jmaas | Jul 18 2023 14:01 utc | 212

Posted by: Ciaran | Jul 18 2023 13:17 utc | 206
I am reminded of Melalueca’s earlier comment about drunks at the end of the bar upon reading the negative and unhistorical comments about Western Civilization. It seems that some of the barflies view Western Civilization only in its most negative aspects…..
—A reading of even the first few books of Augustine’s City of God, which was formerly required reading even in secular Western universities, will bring out the concept that the evils brought about by Western nations over the past few centuries should not be considered as those of Western civilization but rather as a rejection of that which is civilized in the West.
=========================================
Good point and post. Thank you. I think there is another angle to blend in there which is that a civilization ultimately is made of people, indeed every single person therein past and present. And the vast majority of people are basically good and aspire to lead good lives in good societies which foster the same. They need leadership – which is why they can also be led astray – so if a society provides the right outer and inner means with leadership then the civilization as a whole will improve steadily until it becomes a high culture of sorts, each one having its own unique characteristics.
The point being that people by nature want to lead meaningful, productive lives. The whole business is only hard because there are always a few rotten apples in the barrel working very hard to infect all the rest with their dis-ease which they nearly always effect by corrupting the organs of leadership within that overall society. So that corruption principle also has to be dealt with – always.
Seems to me that the Western Christian hierarchy became subverted from within and it took several centuries to find a way through and out of their clutches. This has little or nothing to do with the Christian faith per se, rather was a leadership class level political blight that infected all of Europe’s many different nations within the same overall Christian Civilization for far too long. These things happen if you don’t deal with those corrupting rotten apples.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 18 2023 14:08 utc | 214

Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 18 2023 8:36 utc | 183
@Arch Bungle | Jul 18 2023 2:37 utc | 155
Peel away the skin of modern Western civilisation and you will find Averroes, Avicenna, Al‑Ghazali, al‑Farabi, Ibn Tufail … Even the religion of the West is Middle Eastern in origin.
And the Middle Eastern civilization is a reboot of what existed thousands of years before (before the Younger Dryas), as evidenced by high-tech remains in Egypt (e.g. Serapeum of Saqqara) as well as in other parts of the world (Peru/Bolivia, Cambodia and more). We are today closer in time to the Egyptian Pharaos than the Egyptian Pharaos were to those who actually built the pyramids.
=============================
Great point! But I would add the Orient in there too. There have been deep dives into some of the original Christian texts finding they are transliterations of various Buddhist texts from the early Mahayana era. Jesus most likely went to Afghanistan-India not Egypt which was in a decay-phase during his lifetime. In any case, there was active back-and-forth between the Mediterranean and the East.
I think what happened in Europe was the Dark Ages which weren’t so much Dark as Fake-Newsed by a politicized Christian Church which strayed from their spiritual role and dominated the secular one in a highly corrupt fashion. They controlled information and education and made it opaque to all but a very few.
Obviously they didn’t entirely succeed – as some of the knowledge displayed by occasional authors like Chaucer – and educated man and diplomat – and Shakespeare – probably the Earl of Oxford who was also highly educated and well-traveled (including in Venice where he fought a duel). These people clearly had access to well-stocked private libraries and surely weren’t the only ones. But generally the overall culture was in informational black-out mode. To this day we don’t know how many plundered texts there are in the Vatican from Constantinople and Alexandria. A dirty business indeed.
In any case, you are right that we-they are all linked to antiquity. When this Belt & Road business finally happens, I pray that East and West will finally join together again, cast out all the cultural-religious-politicking-money-changing heretics from our collective temples and we can move forward together into a truly Brave New World.
It’s always darkest just before the dawn…

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 18 2023 14:29 utc | 216

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/13/asia/japan-population-decline-record-drop-intl-hnk/index.html
Keeping inflation down is a lot easier if your population is dying off. I’m not sure if other nations would care to fight inflation that way.

Posted by: Eighthman | Jul 18 2023 14:50 utc | 218

Eighthman @ 217

Keeping inflation down is a lot easier if your population is dying off. I’m not sure if other nations would care to fight inflation that way.

USA opiate epidemic?

Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Jul 18 2023 15:02 utc | 220

Posted by: Ghost of Zanon | Jul 18 2023 13:03 utc | 204
The bastards should be in the Hague for what they have done. They are systematically killing the Ukrainian lower classes.

Posted by: Echo Chamber | Jul 18 2023 15:15 utc | 222

The Kerch bridge attack perfectly fits the description of a terrorist attack – there’s, essentially no military significance to it. It’s a futile attempt by the west (read UK & US) to provoke Russia to do something stupid. The war isn’t going well for the US, nor the UK. And a revolutionary element will undoubtedly become more prominent – UAV’s. There’s an excellent video (w/English subtitles) given on Simplicius’s newest substack (https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/kerch-bridge-deja-vu-breakdown). The interview with Alexander Zakharov (Lancet’s inventor) is very interesting.

Posted by: zeke2u | Jul 18 2023 15:29 utc | 224

Cute summary of US-NATO’s Ukraine fake war over at Antiwar.
NATO Isn’t Defending Ukraine. It’s Stabbing It in the Back
The US and its allies are sustaining the very war they now cite as grounds for disqualifying Kyiv from NATO membership
by Jonathan Cook Posted on July 18, 2023

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Jul 18 2023 15:33 utc | 226

Another thing: the interview, at the bottom, with Sergey Lisitsin, is hilarious. Not as funny as his original rant, but still quite humorous…..

Posted by: zeke2u | Jul 18 2023 15:36 utc | 228

As for Putin owning some mansion, ask yourself “When would he have time to enjoy it ?” Putin has an apartment in the Kremlin where he spends many of his nights.
Posted by: JessDTruth | Jul 18 2023 15:34 utc | 226]
Well, each time there is an emergency at night, it is reported a motorcade is rushing him back to the Kremlin.
I guess most of the emergencies must take place on his few nights out then, right?

Posted by: Mushroom | Jul 18 2023 15:43 utc | 230

The Brits trying to show that they are still in the game, especially in running up the propaganda score.
Isn’t there some counter offensive going on?
Keep hiding them Challengers. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to them.

Posted by: Acco Hengst | Jul 18 2023 15:48 utc | 232

“… we in the modern West are not the heirs of a unique and elevated cultural tradition, stretching back through Atlantic modernity to Enlightenment and Renaissance Europe, and from there through the darkness of the medieval period and ultimately back to the glories of classical Greece and Rome.”
Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 18 2023 1:57 utc | 152
By the late Middle Ages, Europe was making progress in technology and social structure, feudalism was receding, things were getting better. Crusaders went to the Middle East believing that European culture was the most advanced in the world, only to be shocked at the more advanced state of Muslim cultures.
Posted by: Mike R | Jul 18 2023 14:08 utc | 212
Well, you all seem to conveniently forget about the Byzantine Empire
Anthony Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition, Cambridge UP, 2007, p. 189.
“At the turn of the first millennium the empire of New Rome was the oldest and most dynamic state in the world and comprised the most civilized portions of the Christian world. Its borders, long defended by native frontier troops, were being expanded by the most disciplined and technologically advanced army of its time. The unity of Byzantine society was grounded in the equality of Roman law and a deep sense of a common and ancient Roman identity; cemented by the efficiency of a complex bureaucracy; nourished and strengthened by the institutions and principles of the Christian Church; sublimated by Greek rhetoric; and confirmed by the passage of ten centuries. At the end of the reign of Basileios II (976-1025), the longest in Roman history, its territory included Asia Minor and Armenia, the Balkan peninsula south of the Danube, and the southern regions of both Italy and the Crimea. Serbia, Croatia, Georgia, and some Arab emirates in Syria and Mesopotamia had accepted a dependent status.”

Posted by: LP | Jul 18 2023 16:16 utc | 234

@Scorpion | Jul 18 2023 14:29 utc | 215

I think what happened in Europe was the Dark Ages which weren’t so much Dark as Fake-Newsed by a politicized Christian Church which strayed from their spiritual role and dominated the secular one in a highly corrupt fashion. They controlled information and education and made it opaque to all but a very few.

What you refer to as the Dark Ages was probably due anyway but possibly triggered by a major volcanic eruption in Asia in ~533, causing problems in agriculture the final downfall of the Roman empire followed by a few hundred years of relative wilderness.
The Christian control of information then was based on doomsday scenarios (pay here or you will be forever condemned). Now why is that somehow familiar?
But the dark ages then was a minor blip compared to what is sometimes referred to as the SIDA (Solar Induced Dark Ages), which began with the Younger Dryas with its extinction of the Megafauna in America and the downfall of world wide civilization(s) that existed prior to that, of which we still can see some remains (when we have the right glasses on). The SIDA lasted ~7000 years until civilization rebooted in Mesopotamia and such places, and conventional history began.

In any case, you are right that we-they are all linked to antiquity. When this Belt & Road business finally happens, I pray that East and West will finally join together again, cast out all the cultural-religious-politicking-money-changing heretics from our collective temples and we can move forward together into a truly Brave New World.
It’s always darkest just before the dawn…

I can certainly sign on to that goal.

Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 18 2023 16:33 utc | 236

@Immaculate deception | Jul 18 2023 15:13 utc | 220
Indeed, too many to mention.

Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 18 2023 16:36 utc | 238

@Echo Chamber | Jul 18 2023 15:15 utc | 221

The bastards should be in the Hague for what they have done. They are systematically killing the Ukrainian lower classes.

I agree, but the bastards control the Hague, so what do you do?

Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 18 2023 16:38 utc | 240

it is okay for ukraine to attack the bridge because the bridge is ukraine, lol… remind me to never read another one of these doofus’s take ever again.. of course this would explain why ukraine had every right to attack eastern ukraine for the past 9 years – it was ukraine… so much for the minsk agreement or any idea that a civil war is just that – a civil war… if the usa is going to so regularly and publicly announce which side of the civil war it is on, forget about any impartiality from the usa – or uk and nato for that matter..

Posted by: james | Jul 18 2023 16:44 utc | 242

Posted by: Jmaas | Jul 18 2023 14:01 utc | 211
You can predict Russia’s behaviour based on likely alternatives. They will either
1. Remain static, unlikely given the current Russian doctrine of seizing the tactical initiative where possible and launching immediate counter-attacks (a legacy from their painful experience in WW2)
2. Attack whilst the Ukrainian’s have not reached equilibrium, definitely a possibility given the losses the Ukrainians have suffered for relatively little gain, the ‘Operation Fredericus option’
3. Attack when the Ukrainians have reached, or are close to reaching, equilibrium, probably favoured by the more risk-averse commanders advising Putin, the ‘Operation Kutuzov’ option.
4. Attack after the Ukrainians have transitioned to the defence, unlikely as the Russians will then face what the Ukrainians have just endured, albeit with no equivalent force multipliers working against them, apart from superior Western ISR.
So, either 1-4, my informed guess would be a combination of 2 and 3, depending on force levels, ratios and available assets (i.e. rotary support is more effective in the South) and the frugality and risk-averse prosecution of the operation, especially regarding force deployment and conservation.

Posted by: Milites | Jul 18 2023 17:19 utc | 244

@ 241 Socrates a pre Christan-the Dane philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, certainly thought so:
WAS SOCRATES A CHRISTIAN BEFORE CHRIST?
KIERKEGAARD AND THE
PROBLEM OF CHRISTIAN UNIQUENESS
Michael A. Cantrell
Kierkegaard’s belief that Socrates embodied a prefigurement of Christian
neighbor love militates against the claim that Kierkegaard believed there was
absolutely no intimation of the obligation to love the neighbor in paganism.
Kierkegaard also accepted that any awareness of the obligation to love the
neighbor must be divinely originated. These beliefs and Kierkegaard’s other
claims regarding the daimonion and Socrates’s “becoming a Christian” support the view that Kierkegaard believed Socrates to have been a recipient
of special divine revelation. The plausibility of this conclusion and its consistency with Kierkegaard’s apostle/genius distinction is explored. Finally,
speculative reasons are given as to why God might have chosen to give
Socrates the daimonion.

Posted by: canuck | Jul 18 2023 17:21 utc | 246

Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 18 2023 16:33 utc | 236
«But the dark ages then was a minor blip compared to what is sometimes referred to as the SIDA (Solar Induced Dark Ages), which began with the Younger Dryas with its extinction of the Megafauna in America and the downfall of world wide civilization(s) that existed prior to that, of which we still can see some remains (when we have the right glasses on). The SIDA lasted ~7000 years until civilization rebooted in Mesopotamia and such places, and conventional history began.»
There is I think a very relevant passage in ancient literature related to that:
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=v1u7DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT75
“O fair Yima, upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, that shall bring the fierce, foul frost; upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall that shall make snowflakes fall thick, even on the highest tops of mountain”
“Therefore make thee a Vara [a hypogeum, or underground enclosure] long as a riding ground on every side of the square, and thither bring the seeds of sheep and oxen, of men, of dogs, of birds, and of red blazing fires… Thither thou shalt bring the seeds of men and women of the greatest, best and finest kinds on this earth; thither shalt thou bring the seeds of every kind of cattle, of the greatest, best and finest kinds on this earth. Thither shalt thou bring the seeds of every kind of tree, of the greatest, best and finest kinds on this earth; thither shalt thou bring the seeds of every kind of fruit, the fullest of food and sweetest of odour. All those seeds shalt thou bring, two of every kind, to be kept inexhaustible there, so long as those men shall stay in the Vara. There shall be no humpbacked, none bulged forward there; no impotent, no lunatic… no leprous.”
“Thereupon came Angra Mainyu, who is all death, and he counter-created by his witchcraft the serpent in the river, and winter, a work of the demons… [Now] there are ten winter months there, two summer months, and these are cold for the waters, cold for the earth, cold for the trees. Winter falls there, with the worst of its plagues.”
“In the largest part of the place he made nine streets, six in the middle part, three in the smallest. To the streets of the largest part he brought a thousand seeds of men and women; to the streets of the middle part, six hundred; to the streets of the smallest part, three hundred. That Vara he sealed up with the golden ring, and a he made a door and a window self-shining within.
O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! What lights are there to give light in the Vara which Yima made? Ahura Mazda answered: “there are uncreated lights and created lights. There the stars, the moon and the sun are only once (a year) seen to rise and set, and a year seems only as a day.”
Hopefully something like that (e.g. something more extensive than the Svalbard seed repository) will have already been built in case some crazies trigger WW3 e.g. starting from Ukraine (along the lines of “John Titor”‘s story of his timeline).

Posted by: Blissex | Jul 18 2023 17:52 utc | 248

Looks like the 2S4 had probably been previously abandoned as there is no secondary explosion of the ammo carried in the vehicle, after the fire. The cluster munition footage could be the result of an airburst HE, or a cluster munition. If the later it just shows how ineffective the scatter of the sub-munitions is, useless anyhow firing at targets in tree lines, as the manual cautions.
…
Posted by: Milites | Jul 18 2023 16:24 utc | 235
Maybe, I thought there was the intense and unmistakable flair of ammunition combusting but not detonating immediately after the strike. Debris cloud at least suggests GMLRS-AW (*) of which I’ve seen one previous recorded usage against a Grad launcher.

The 200-pound GMLRS-AW high-explosive warhead contains approximately 160,000 preformed tungsten fragments.
…
Commanders will use GMLRS-AW rockets to engage area- or imprecisely-located targets without the hazard of unexploded submunitions. The target set includes counterfire, air defense, command posts, assembly areas, light materiel, and other high payoff targets

Not armour piercing but might be capable of immobilising a heavily armoured target if detonated close enough. Perhaps the 2S4 was caught reloading or with hatches open, hence the fire. Granted it was sitting out in the open but I would expect that hit to knock it out of action regardless, even with some light cover, especially approaching from the most advantageous direction.
* https://www.dote.osd.mil/Portals/97/pub/reports/FY2014/army/2014gmlrs.pdf

Posted by: anon2020 | Jul 18 2023 18:09 utc | 250

@ Mushroom | Jul 18 2023 17:38 utc | 248
one comment from you is all i need to know i need not read you anymore.

Posted by: james | Jul 18 2023 18:21 utc | 252

Wrong. It’s one of the major reasons for the war.
Posted by: UWDude | Jul 18 2023 18:15 utc | 252
And in a year and a half they’ve done nothing about it.
They could easily say that if the targeting of the civilian population of Donetsk City does not stop, they will completely destroy the Ukraine electrical grid, level all government buildings in Kiev and other major cities, etc, but they haven’t even remotely done that, have they?
So, no they don’t give a shit about the civilians population of Donetsk City, one of the major reason of the war.

Posted by: Mushroom | Jul 18 2023 18:47 utc | 254

And in a year and a half they’ve done nothing about it.
They could easily say that if the targeting of the civilian population of Donetsk City does not stop, they will completely destroy the Ukraine electrical grid, level all government buildings in Kiev and other major cities, etc, but they haven’t even remotely done that, have they?
So, no they don’t give a shit about the civilians population of Donetsk City, one of the major reason of the war.
Posted by: Mushroom | Jul 18 2023 18:47 utc | 255
Nothing = massive AD cover shooting down dozens, if not hundreds of missiles and drones a month.
Caring about citizens of Donetsk = destroying all Ukrainian infrastructure, including irrelevant civilian government buildings.
Why don’t you just reveal your agenda, and tell us who the big bad secret world leaders are controlling everything.
And then, instead of your pitiful inferences of collusion, that fall flat every time, just post:
“The _______ (insert your “they” of choice here) control the world, and this is all just a false-flag psy-op fake war to ________ (insert your “they”‘s insidious plot for world domination here).
Copy this phrase to a text file, and paste it once per open Ukraine thread, have your say, and everybody will know what you actually think.
It would be more effective than making continuous, blatantly false statements, trying to inference your agenda. You’ll never get anywhere that way, so just be blunt and to the point.
Then you and Sean The Leprechaun can argue over which “they” actually controls the world,

Posted by: UWDude | Jul 18 2023 19:07 utc | 256

Posted by: anon2020 | Jul 18 2023 18:09 utc | 251
The 2S4 is destroyed, but I’m very sceptical about the timing. Too many times footage of Russian vehicles being knocked out sees previously abandoned vehicles being hit, I think the flash fire is the propellant charges igniting, certainly not the 200+kg rounds going off, of which it carries up to 40. Best guess is the weapon was previously disabled or damaged, the crew recovered the remaining rounds and beat a hasty retreat, otherwise where are any of its 11 crew. In the end, celebrating the destruction of a platform is a losers gambit, the German’s destroyed hundreds of IS-2’s but they still swarmed the streets of Berlin in ‘45.
Agree about evidence of airburst and not of sub-munitions due to the tightness and control of the dispersal pattern. Surprising poor CEP for a guided rocket, perhaps it was spoofed.

Posted by: Milites | Jul 18 2023 19:53 utc | 258

Posted by: William Gruff | Jul 18 2023 18:00 utc | 250
Thanks for the observation of RF moving crews between between static guns, ties in with what Milites@259 says about UA videos looking to be hits of uncrewed weapons / positions.
Yes, they must have the guns but they are not free, or even cheap. A fair point on not reading too much into a couple of videos, it’s difficult / impossible to get a fairly weighted view of events from the promo snippets we are allowed to see.
I’m still perfectly sure that that manufacturers of shiny new gun artillery systems will be careful not to share with prospective buyers images of their products after a 200lb MLRS warhead has gone off right next to them.
Rocket artillery has the cheapest launch platforms and can be taken right down to disposable single-launch tubes. I think this fact is going to become increasingly conspicuous and unavoidable.
Posted by: Milites | Jul 18 2023 19:53 utc | 259
GMLRS probably jammed over RF positions so had to fall back to INS and drifted off a bit. No EO or radar seeker, just scattershot.
I take your point about similar incidents possibly not amounting to a hill of beans in the scheme of things but there’s nothing technically surprising about being able to quickly put those GMLRS rounds near enough to RF fire positions to at least disable them. Popov claimed his forces were struggling, assuming there’s some truth to his claims we needn’t wonder at plausible mechanisms.

Posted by: anon2020 | Jul 18 2023 20:24 utc | 260

Putin is going to go down as one of the really transformational political leaders in History.
We all might just get out of this alive. With a new geopolitical and socio-economic reality.
Alex from the Duran and Ania from her channel are doing remotes from Moscow. It looks NOTHING like (name your urban shithole) in the USA. It’s clean. It’s vibrant. It seems safe. No feces, no piss, no puke, addicted homeless zombies and unfettered predators around every corner like in EVERY large American urban craphole in 2023.
Who would want this “Democracy” if not at the end of a sanction/gun barrel?

Posted by: NigelTufnel11 | Jul 18 2023 22:55 utc | 262

Posted by: NigelTufnel11 | Jul 18 2023 22:55 utc | 263
A couple of days ago Alex was in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. Its beauty was stagggering.

Posted by: horseguards | Jul 19 2023 1:08 utc | 264

scott ritters latest – part 2 zelensky.. apologies if it has already been posted.. worth watching..
A Scott Ritter Investigation: Agent Zelensky – Part 2

Posted by: james | Jul 19 2023 2:01 utc | 266

@ knighthawk | Jul 19 2023 2:37 utc | 268
thanks.. i am used to having that / mark in the url, but with html links it appears to mess it up..

Posted by: james | Jul 19 2023 3:12 utc | 268

Hi all,
I am trying to get a better feel for the rhythm of the war. I won’t use Twitter because I refuse to give my information to set up an account, so I am settling on Telegram (again without signing up).
Does anybody have a list of people that are worth following?
I don’t care whose “side” they are on–I am just looking for frequently updated events that are reasonably reliably reported. So far, I have found warmonitors, geromanat, and mylordbebo (all more or less pro-Russian). Any other suggestions?
Thanks!

Posted by: Comacho in Chief | Jul 19 2023 3:41 utc | 270

@ Nobody | Jul 19 2023 3:18 utc | 270
that is a good link. i read it.. thanks.. i have been following this shady character since back in 2014 time frame.. it would be good for ritter to do a deep dive into him, but regardless ritter is doing good work and those 2 videos attest to that..

Posted by: james | Jul 19 2023 4:19 utc | 272

German Normie Press Starts wondering about all those refugees from The Ukraine and how to convince them to return. (aka GTFO)
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/nach-dem-krieg-droht-der-ukraine-die-entvoelkerung-19041404.html
Note, the article begins with the wrong population figure of 42 million in 2021. WROND
Reality is population of The Ukraine ruled by Kiev in 2021 was under 20 million. (DPR/LPR/Crimea was 5-7 million, plus around 8 million economic emigres from 2014-2021.

Posted by: Exile | Jul 19 2023 6:46 utc | 274

…and gave enormous amounts gold to local merchants as he had tonnes of the stuff.
Posted by: canuck | Jul 18 2023 12:19 utc | 201
—
I assume there was no inflation back then.

Posted by: Nobody | Jul 19 2023 8:52 utc | 276

Mearsheimer´s long transcript for various of his talks. “The basis” as he puts it.
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukraine?r=iu56&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Posted by: AG | Jul 19 2023 11:15 utc | 278

19 JULY 2023 ANDREW KORYBKO: In any case, the point is that BRICS isn’t a collection of truly sovereign countries that have the shared messianic goal of changing the world like many of this group’s supporters wrongly assumed before Wednesday’s news, but just a platform for moderately accelerating financial multipolarity processes. As long as the group slowly pursues its goals without challenging or humiliating the West, then no punishment is likely, otherwise the weakest links will be shown whose boss like South Africa just was. AGREE?

Posted by: Geraint ap Iorwerth | Jul 19 2023 16:28 utc | 280

My take on Turkey, India, and South Africa making moves to appease the US:
They are the forefront nations in the battle to transfer power from the US to other nations, The US is obviously applying as much pressure as possible on all 3 nations. And others too of course.
So far, all 3 have provided symbolic victories to the US, and substantial victories to Russia / China. Expecting any of them to sacrifice their nations is not realistic.
Underestimate the US and mistakes will be made, which the US absolutely will take advantage of. On the other hand, slow steady progress by Putin / Xi is moving along at a clip that might leave the world mostly habitable when the dust settles.
And the world is changing RAPIDLY. South America and the Middle East are two areas where the US has lost a lot of influence. Best way to move forward? Rebuild Mariupol and loyal Central Asian countries to where their standard of living exceeds the US standard of living.

Posted by: Woke American | Jul 19 2023 18:34 utc | 282

Consider that Ukraine desperately needed a great victory in the south….
Posted by: Lex | Jul 17 2023 23:38 utc | 120
This is predicated on the notion of ‘Ukraine’ as a ‘State’ and that ‘State’ is wholly represented by a collection of individuals in Kiev.
Of course.
This is how the world looks at things.
But I don’t believe it is right. It is not the right way to look at things and it necessarily makes everything come out wrong.
IF we consider ‘Ukraine’ to be the Ukrainian people things change enormously. And why should we not consider Ukraine to be the people?
So then their need for ‘a victory’ becomes something different and such a victory becomes attainable.
For ‘Ukraine’ then, the Ukrainian people, both in the Kiev side and the Donbas side, need a victory of ‘All Ukrainian people living peacefully side by side.’
And they could say that with one voice in today’s world of internet and ubiquitous smartphones.
They could look at the reality which is that all the Kiev side have their land and property and all the Donbas side (minus what Kiev has invaded and taken, occupied) have their land and property. Despite all the madness everything in the main is just as was.
And each side could confess to being fairly happy with things as they are and not giving a damn about how the other side is living. And happy for them to live as they like.
And each side could confess to being disinclined to risk life and limb simply to try to tell the other side how to live.
Unrealistic as that might seem I reckon in the end it is the only way human beings can live. So it has to be the final result anyway.
To my mind this universal equating of ‘nation’ with a bunch of lunatics and/or incompetents rather than the people who supposedly make up that nation is the root cause of ALL our difficulties.

Posted by: arthur brogard | Jul 19 2023 22:48 utc | 284

Posted by: Milites | Jul 18 2023 16:24 utc | 235
No, the West was not a technological backwater during the Medieval period, if it had have been there is no way it would have risen to such pre-eminence later on. If you have not done so watch Jame’s Burke’s Connections to see just how interlaced human endeavour really is.
=============================
Good remarks in whole post. Thanks for the tip.
==============================================
Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 18 2023 16:33 utc | 236
Never heard of SIDA before. Thxs.

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 20 2023 1:03 utc | 286

First post on this kicked back, so just a heads up that a new article by Larry Johnson about Why Ukraine. Hint: oligarchs + rare earth minerals.
https://tinyurl.com/2rx922dl

Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 20 2023 1:07 utc | 288

my earlier post, a minute ago.. I meant do it again and again and again.. a ‘modus operandi’ per PR.

Posted by: arthur brogard | Jul 20 2023 1:20 utc | 290

They will not stop. The hatred is the only thing that these people have.
I am so sick of it all…
Posted by: Justpassinby | Jul 18 2023 11:06 utc | 193
Yep. Me too. Worth calling to mind it is NOT ‘Australia’ sending jets. It is the handful of lunatics in charge of Australia. In charge of the sleeping millions of Australians.
Those are the two problems of today:
. Seeing ‘nations’ as being the doings past, present, future of a handful of lunatics ‘in charge’ of the place.
. Sleeping electorates of millions who allow these lunatics this free rein.
My hope is that the internet and ubiquitous is allowing quietly behind the scenes a growth of alternative media, sources of truth, habits of accessing them, contributing to them, relying on them and that from this will come apparent ‘sudden’ mass movements, changes of opinion, universal understandings which will cause whole populations to suddenly start besieging their elected reps and demanding they do this or that to manifest the will (newly discovered) of the people.
In the past such happened slowly and clumsily via word of mouth or radio and manifested as riots in the streets.
In the future that I see as being here now it will happen overnight and manifest as quiet but insistent communications to those ‘tools’ of the people: the reps, dept. heads etc. that they perform.

Posted by: arthur brogard | Jul 20 2023 1:46 utc | 292

But the dark ages then was a minor blip compared to what is sometimes referred to as the SIDA (Solar Induced Dark Ages), which began with the Younger Dryas with its extinction of the Megafauna in America and the downfall of world wide civilization(s) that existed prior to that, of which we still can see some remains (when we have the right glasses on).
Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 18 2023 16:33 utc | 236
do you have any good references one could follow up on regarding those civilizations ?

Posted by: arthur brogard | Jul 20 2023 2:00 utc | 294

It is claimed that the west/US is pressuring Ukraine to press for greater gains at the front – saying that things would be going better if Ukraine would employ combined arms techniques rather that relying so heavily on artillery.
– I am surprised that the US feels it is necessary and constructive to promote this view in the media rather than in private conversation.
– Ukraine does not have ability to use airforce extensively, not clear on if that is because Russia has suressed their airforce of if is because they no longer have air force. Whatever, but I think air cover/assault would be important part of combined arms. Then the west asked then not to allow their new weapons to be damaged. It seems to me the reality is that the west is promoting meat hammer tactics.
– This leaves me wondering if the west is being serious about this – meaning does the west seriously believe that Ukraine has a chance with the resources they have? To look at it, it almost appears that the US/west is trying to drive Ukraine into the ground.
– Did the west ever believe that Ukraine had a chance?
– The US admin and military, truely look like idiots at this point. And it seems it will get worse.

Posted by: jared | Jul 20 2023 2:48 utc | 296

I enthusiastically agree with almost all your points- except this one. The Magna Carta was, ironically, a reactive document. Yes, it curbed the King’s power (Johnat this time-the only ‘John’) but it did not give that power to the peasants, the people, no it gave more power to the Nobles who then used that new power to repress the Serfs.
Magna Carter was not a progressive document in my humble opinion.
Posted by: canuck | Jul 18 2023 16:05 utc | 233
———————————————-
IMHO, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy created a first democratic parliament, in Bruges, me having been to the hall where the assembly convened when I was a sixteen year old, on a school trip from Haarlem (the original to Bruges).
The name States General dates back to the 15th century. In 1464, the States General were convened for the first time by Philip III, Duke of Burgundy (Philip the Good). The 17 Burgundy districts in the Low Countries were represented in the States-General. From 1588 until 1795, the States-General were the assembly of the Seven United Provinces constituting the Dutch Republic (Gelderland, Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Friesland, Overijssel and Groningen). During this period, the States-General acted as the de facto federal government of the Dutch Republic. The States General also ruled the so-called Generality Lands (territories that did not belong to any province) and they exercised supervision over the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the West India Company (WIC).[https://www.staten-generaal.nl/begrip/the_states_general%5D
Staten Island derives its name from them. I own the second edition of a bible (1711) ordered by the Staten Generaal to be translated into Dutch, known as a Staten Bijbel.

Posted by: Acco Hengst | Jul 20 2023 3:46 utc | 298

: jared | Jul 20 2023 2:48 utc | 296
I’ve wondered that myself. There is commentary from US officials expecting that Ukraine would lose quickly but they have since viewed what has occurred since as a sign of Russian ineptitude, totally misreading Russian actions and tactical movements, but have decided to push on nevertheless to see what happens.
My view is that the US leadership have NO interest in the well being of Ukrainians and are just using them up to fuck up Russia.
Many European politicians see it he same way. They never imagined that there would be consequences.
Suddenly there are as their machinations prove to be misguided and worse, counterproductive. They have fucked up hugely through their hubris but would prefer to destroy Europe than admit their ineptitude.
The US sees the success of other nations as a failure and won’t allow it. Fuck them, every country deserves a chance to build good lives for their citizens what ever the West thinks.

Posted by: ZimZum | Jul 20 2023 15:22 utc | 300