Everyone at the bar, please pour one out for the trolls who have to work on Christmas.
How sad for them

Posted by: Here We Go | Dec 25 2023 15:12 utc | 104

Everyone at the bar, please pour one out for the trolls who have to work on Christmas.
How sad for them
Posted by: Here We Go | Dec 25 2023 15:12 utc | 104

Which thread is this and when is Christmas celebrated by the relevant areas, if at all?

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Dec 25 2023 15:16 utc | 106

From Nov 2022
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/14/politics/cia-director-bill-burns-russian-counterpart/index.html
“CIA Director Bill Burns met with his Russian intelligence counterpart, Sergey Naryshkin, in Ankara Monday as part of an ongoing effort by the US to “communicate with Russia on managing risk” and to discuss the cases of “unjustly detained US citizens,” a National Security Council spokesperson tells CNN.”
That there is veryt little information on the Russian plane to Washington, plus the fact that Naryshkin was absent from the Russian security council meeting most likely means there was anpther meeting between Burns and Naryshkin.
The Kremlin readout of the purpose of the security council meeting from which Naryshkin was absent.

Vladimir Putin: Dear colleagues, good afternoon!
Today we will talk about ensuring collective security in the CIS and collective biological security.
Given the problems encountered in covid, and even now, the situation is not the same, of course, thank God, but nevertheless difficult from the point of view of the epidemiological situation.
But biosecurity concerns all of us, our closest neighbors. We will have meetings with our colleagues, with the leaders of the CIS countries on 25-26. This is one of the questions that everyone is generally interested in, of course. That’s why we have a speaker today, Anna Yuryevna Popova. Let’s ask her and get started.

It is likely the the plane trip and meeting concerned US plans for bio warfare.
Burns also flew to Moscow in Nov 2021.
After the first Ukraine proxy army was destroyed, there was much talk of training in foriegn/Nato countries. That army was destroyed and again talk of training – the vaunted great offensive to the south and now that army has been destroyed.
Now there is talk of vaunted F16’s flying from Poland and/or the Baltics. That puts European Nato in direct conflict with Russia. The Americans will of course lead from behind as most likely will the Brits. I haven’t checked for any updates lately but Darpa/Moderna planned to have its five-eyes wide production facilities up and running by mid 24.
2025 seems to come up often as the start date for the hot war against China. Looking at the global situation, 2025 may well involve a coalition of Anglo proxies engaging in war against Russia and the same on the China front combined with bio warfare attacks against both.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Dec 25 2023 15:55 utc | 108

By the way, the results speak for themselves. The U.S. and E.U. can’t agree on new aid, and Ukraine is running out of money, ammo, and time. Russia doesn’t have to lift a finger. It doesn’t have to take responsibility for the widening gyre in western Ukraine, either — that’s the west’s problem.

Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 16:37 utc | 110

Russian Troops Liberate Strategic DPR Settlement of Maryinka, by Ilya Tsukanov for Sputnikglobe 12.25.2023.
The heavily-fortified settlement, situated on the outskirts of the city of Donetsk, was used by Ukrainian forces to indiscriminately shell the Donetsk People’s Republic’s capital for nearly ten years before finally being liberated by Russian forces.
The Russian Army has completed the liberation of Maryinka, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has announced.
“In the course of offensive operations, assault detachments from the Southern Group of Forces completely liberated the settlement of Maryinka southwest of Donetsk,” Shoigu told Russian President Vladimir Putin in a briefing on Monday..
“I would like to congratulate you. This is a success. Pass on the words of gratitude to all the staff and fighters who took part at different times and at different stages [in the settlement’s liberation, ed.],” Putin replied.
The president expressed confidence that control of the settlement will allow Russian forces to push Ukrainian positions further back from Donetsk.
Shoigu concurred, saying Maryinka’s liberation will also make it possible to more effectively protect the city of Donetsk from Ukrainian fire.
The defense minister said that troops from the 150th Motorized Rifle Division distinguished themselves in the settlement’s capture. During WWII, it was the 150th Division which famously captured the Reichstag building in Berlin.
“The liberation of this settlement naturally reduces the defense capabilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and gives us additional opportunities for further actions,” he said.
Maryinka had been turned into a fortress over the past nine years, connected by a network of underground passages, with fortifications on almost every one of its streets, Shoigu said.
Putin asked the defense minister to distribute medals to soldiers who distinguished themselves in the strategic settlement’s liberation, and instructed him to promote the commander overseeing its capture to the rank of major.
“By breaking into this fortification, which the enemy has factually been building up since 2014…our troops have the opportunity to enter a wider operational area. But, of course, this is a matter for local commanders and specialists from the General Staff and the Defense Ministry. This is a separate issue, but in any case, this opportunity arises in this area,” Putin said.
Maryinka was first captured by Donbass militias seeking to break off from Kiev’s control in April 2014, after the Ukrainian government installed in the February 2014 coup launched an ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ against them meant to crush the rebellion by force. Ukrainian forces, including paramilitaries from the infamous Azov Regiment, recaptured Maryinka in August 2014. From that time on, the strategic town, situated directly on the western outskirts of Donetsk City, was turned into a seemingly impenetrable fortress, and used by Ukrainian forces to launch regular, indiscriminate attacks against the militia-controlled city. Battles for the settlement by Donetsk People’s Republic militias, now backed by the regular Russian military, began immediately after the start of Russia’s special military operation in February 2022. Images of the settlement today show that it has been turned into a pile of ruins, with most civilians living in the town leaving after 2014, and the rest evacuated after 2022.

Posted by: rpst | Dec 25 2023 16:44 utc | 112

As a westerner, even one who “critically” or wholly supports Russia, it can be easy, I think, to underestimate the cruelty of Russia’s zero-sum game. Now, it’s always left an out: negotiations. But, barring that, Russia’s deflected the sanctions into western inflation, destabilizing the western political economy, sending the far right galloping into power across the E.U., and renewing the political fortunes of Trump, who may dissolve Nato. At the frontlines, Ukraine is drowning, and the west, exhausted, won’t even throw it a lifevest. This is not, I think, a bid for piecemeal advance or partial victory. It is a Russian strategy for total victory.
No 4D chess requires. Just chess. Checkmate.

Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 16:49 utc | 114

Besides reported deals with the SBU and American foreknowledge of his march on Moscow, there’s another piece of evidence Prigozhin was CIA — a pawn they tried to “queen.” When he announced his treason and began the march, he said the war in Ukraine should’ve never been started. With all the false concern of a traitor, he said Putin had been misled by his generals and needed to know the truth. Ultra-nationalists either don’t know this, or don’t talk about it, probably because they don’t want to admit they were used. Prigozhin used them.
It’s a good thing he’s gone. Wagner was and, to some extent, remains a blot on Russia, his live-streamed conniption fits were an embarrassment, and the neo-Nazism in his ranks made a mockery of “denazification.” He has been denazified, and returned to the soil.

Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 17:14 utc | 116

“The UKR Summer/Fall/Winter offensive PR operation
would IMHO only have worked with Wagner turning on Russia in the right moment and doing most of the real work.”
Exactly, and Prigozhin’s Mussolini-style march on Moscow would only have worked with a decisive Ukrainian strike at the front — which, for whatever reason, wasn’t forthcoming.

Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 17:23 utc | 118

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Dec 25 2023 15:15 utc | 105
I don’t think they even had the ability to sustain any sort of deep interdiction campaign that you are talking about. There were previous concerns that the Syrian expeditionary force had consumed large numbers of PGM’s,and orders were issued to raise production; however, those planned procurements always were in competition with all the other high-tech weapons on order. In comparison, to illustrate the problem with keeping inventories of PGM’s that are sustainable, in 2021 the US Congress published a report detailing the shortages of such weapons, in a military that had larger stockpiles built up for longer than their Russian counterparts. All the evidence suggests that PGM’s can be exhausted very quickly, even for moderate campaigns which bisecting Ukraine would not have been, and such an operation would also have risked escalation from NATO and possibly damage Russia’s international standing (an oft overlooked success of the Russian prosecution of the war).

Posted by: Milites | Dec 25 2023 18:24 utc | 120

So sorry for posting so much, this’ll be my last, but I wanted to game out some scenarios. The $100 billion+ question: can the U.S. and E.U. deliver the aid? Even assuming they resolve their internal disagreements, one probably won’t move without the other.
Without anymore aid, how long can Ukraine last? It may have a lot of dry powder but nothing lasts. How does Zelensky cope if and when his western partners cut him off? His position’s weakening.
If Ukraine’s front sags, does Russia lunge for Kiev? I have doubts, even about capturing Odessa. A Russian counteroffensive could be just the thing to spur the west to deliver on that aid and reaffirm Zelensky’s leadership. But it could also be the thing to bring down his government and dress down the west. Even so, would Russia want to inherit Russophobic western Ukraine and its sinking economy of enormous debts? Better maybe to tip that mess into the west’s lap. Tough call.
Regardless, the real action moves to Washington and Berlin.
If Trump is re-elected, he could abrogate U.S. obligations to Nato, regardless of Congress’s trying to prevent withdrawal. That’d mean the end of the transatlantic alliance and postwar order. Weakening, at least, of the transatlantic alliance is almost assured.
In Berlin, the far right Alternative for Germany party looks set to be kingmaker. If the conservatives were to join with say the social democrats to govern in order to avoid a coalition with the AfD, the conservative party would seem likely to split between its center-right and right, the latter scattering to the AfD in a centrifugal process familiar to the dying bourgeois parties of the 1920s. Down the road, a Nazifying and rearming Berlin could pose the usual threat to Russia and splinter the E.U., which was built on Franco-German comity — provided, that is, Marine le Pen’s Vichyists don’t succeed the term-limited Macron in 2027, reversing the outcome of WWII.
And there’s the alternative of a cease-fire. The world’s seen the horrors of war in Gaza, and a Russian humanitarian instinct may dictate wrapping things up. Russia also, frankly, faces the classic problem of an overheating war economy. Without drawing a moral equivalence, I see a potential technical parallel with the Nazi war economy heading into 1939: civilian sector strapped, military sector booming with rising prices and wages, and growing labor shortages. War economies, past a certain point, face a dilemma: painful demobilization or outward expansion.
If the war continues, heightening all the contradictions, Russia may be tempted by a total victory that, however, comes with its own set of problems: a sucker punch to Ukraine that humiliates Biden and enables Trump to end NATO, isolate the United States, and maybe even impose martial law, while the E.U. dissolves in fascist chaos.
Revenge for the destruction of the Soviet Union, served at zero kelvin.

Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 18:35 utc | 122

By the way, the results speak for themselves. The U.S. and E.U. can’t agree on new aid, and Ukraine is running out of money, ammo, and time. Russia doesn’t have to lift a finger. It doesn’t have to take responsibility for the widening gyre in western Ukraine, either — that’s the west’s problem.
Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 16:37 utc | 110

Yes, indeed, they have totally given up:

Telegram channel “Militarist”: 12 F-16 fighters were sent to Ukraine by rail and road in early November. Ukraine now probably has 24 F-16s.
They are scattered and dismantled in warehouses in residential areas around air bases. The airfields of Starokonstantinov, Dolgintsevo and the bases of the Kyiv hub could not be used, since they were often attacked. There is information that some of them have already been destroyed here.
Airborne early warning and control aircraft flying in Romania, Poland and the northern Black Sea are planned to identify targets and set up radar locks.
Once this happens, the F-16s will attempt to evade the Russian fighters by launching AIM-120 air-to-air missiles and low altitudes. Through the Link 16 data exchange system, the early warning and control aircraft will direct the missile to defeat Russian aircraft.
It is planned that some of the aircraft will remain in Ukraine, and at least 36 aircraft will remain in NATO countries and will be used for attack and rapid return to the NATO border.
At the first stage, attacks through Ukraine will be tested, but if this does not work, the attack tactics will be completely worked out through NATO bases.
Russia has said that if that happens, it will strike the bases, risking triggering NATO’s Article 5. The alliance wants to move to the last but most dangerous tactic to undermine Russia’s air superiority.
They will push Russia to the breaking point, and their desire for a major conflict triggering Article 5 is Hillary and Nuland’s last trump card.
For Russia, the risk of conflict with NATO will increase enormously.
The place where Ukraine would benefit most from NATO intelligence elements is the Black Sea coast. The APU can perform both ground and airborne radar correction from the Danube Delta and northern Turkey. Attacks from northern Ukraine could be launched using aircraft in Poland.
The Ukrainian Air Force could attempt a direct strike in eastern Ukraine and conduct a decisive dogfight with more F-16s and less NATO support.
On attack lines that provide more effective support to the north and south, the US is planning some success with the help of retired F-16 pilots it has gathered from around the world and current NATO pilots.
Insufficiently trained Ukrainian pilots will be sent to dangerous zones.
Russia has adapted and overcome all the miracle weapons sent by NATO. Now it’s the turn of the latest wunderwaffe – the F-16 fighters.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Dec 25 2023 18:36 utc | 124

Russian Troops Liberate Strategic DPR Settlement of Maryinka, by Ilya Tsukanov for Sputnikglobe 12.25.2023.
Posted by: rpst | Dec 25 2023 16:44 utc | 112

This is just ridiculous.
Marinka is announced for the third time this month, and each subsequent announcement involves taking an additional single-digit number of single-family houses. And it takes two weeks for that to happen.
How is it even possible that supply to a place like this cannot be cut for two years?
And how is it possible that people are celebrating this “remarkable success” with a straight face?

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Dec 25 2023 18:41 utc | 126

There were real attempts to get to the center of Kiev too. But again, insufficient forces were dedicated to the task.
Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Dec 25 2023 18:35 utc | 123

P.S. Remember that infamous convoy west of Kiev? It was largely left untouched despite the mythology that it was all destroyed. By that point the Bairaktars had been shot down and AFU had no real means to threaten it.
So RU just parked hundreds of items of armor right next to Kiev and sat there.
Compare to the current situation where if you bunch up a dozen soldiers in the same place they will highly likely get hit within minutes, and no unit of equipment can stay in the same place for very long, or it will get destroyed. And FPV drones are wreaking havoc on anything that doesn’t have powerful portable EW attached to it (which is still most armor). Forget about convoys of even dozens, let alone hundreds and thousands of vehicles. This is the difference between winning early and decisively and allowing a technological stalemate to develop. They had a year to win, but Putin didn’t want to upset the pro-Western elites with a mobilization in March 2022, and he didn’t want to burn bridges with the West by enforcing red lines and kinetically putting an end to weapon transfers to the AFU, so he delayed mobilization until after the situation became catastrophic (and still only did the bare minimum needed to stabilize the front), and weapon flows still continue completely unimpeded to this day.

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Dec 25 2023 18:52 utc | 128

shadowbanned@1836
“Wunderwaffen”” F-16’s flying out of Poland/Romania would NOT cause the U$$A, even those total Talmudist idiots in the $tate Department, to engage Article Five…and everyone knows it. The deployment of the F-16’s is a Hail Mary last ditch effort by the Empire to counter the slow but steady dismemberment of the Maidan state in Kiev.
The RU has already made it perfectly clear that they would not hesitate to take out airfields in those two Frontal-Lobotomy countries if they should base aggressive F-16’s in their territories. Do you think for a moment that the handful of remaining clear-heads in the Pentagon would chance nuclear war over the latest, most desperate gambit?
Let’s face it. Imperial overreach on behalf of the Talmudist Agenda, actualized via City of London and Wall $treet is simply going one bridge too far with their ongoing attempt to take down the RU. The Irresistible Force HAS met the immovable object…and that force is getting kicked in the shins.
Their “Rules-Based-Order” scheme is failing right across the board…case in point is that “Coalition of the Failing” effort in the Red Sea. Those hard-assed Ansar-Allah Houtis are calling their bluff and most sensible nations refuse to join the clown-act.

Posted by: aristodemos | Dec 25 2023 19:00 utc | 130

“They fully went for Nikolaev and Odessa, and even Krivoy Rog. […] There were real attempts to get to the center of Kiev too. But again, insufficient forces were dedicated to the task.”
You’re not considering whether these “big arrow” offensives at the beginning of war were intended to tie down the Ukrainian rear, paralyze the Ukrainian front, and simplify the grinding Russian advance from east to west — while rolling the dice on a Zelensky collapse at little cost. You’re also not considering whether it worked. It would appear it did.
Kherson is old news, maybe literally a bridge too far. It happens in wars and it’s over.

This is delusional idiocy.
Why annex Kherson if there was never any intention to hold it? Are you even listening to yourself?
Odessa is historically the third most important Russian city. Of course they wanted and want to take it.
I have explained the psychology at work here many times. There are several groups in the West who are so dissatisfied with their current situation that they look up to Putin as their savior (instead of working towards fixing their own local mess). Over time it has evolved into nearly religious devotion. So when you try to explain to them that for much of his career Putin has not been all that different from Sana Martin in the way he governed and was only forced into a different course of action by the circumstances, not his personal motivations and devotions, and that to this day Russia is governed by an elite that has a very different agenda than Russia’s (or the world’s) long-term well being, then their whole newly developed identity and hopes for the future would collapse if they accepted that explanation. So they don’t accept it and launch into denial and various rationalizations about how the omnibenevolent and omniscient 5D chess master is playing the West like the fools that they are. Instead of facing the truth, which is that indecisiveness, incompetence and numerous acts of outright treason have resulted in the war starting only a decade after it should have started, then doomed its opening to failure, and are still hampering it to this day. In the process the lives of hundreds of thousands ethnic Russians have been callously sacrificed and the world has been brought to the brink of annihilation.

You say Russia has given up when the west is giving up. Not to belittle the blind and deaf, but do you have eyesight and hearing?
Then you offer up the latest wonder weapon, some aging F-16s. Shiver me timbers.
Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 18:51 utc | 127

Irony grasp and reading comprehension at zero.
Have you asked yourself why the West is sending the F-16s given that the expectation is that the S-400s and R-37Ms should shoot them all down almost immediately? Is the USAF that incompetent or perhaps they do have a plan here? Which one is morel likely?

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Dec 25 2023 19:08 utc | 132

@120
“All the evidence suggests that PGM’s can be exhausted very quickly, even for moderate campaigns which bisecting Ukraine would not have been, and such an operation would also have risked escalation from NATO and possibly damage Russia’s international standing (an oft overlooked success of the Russian prosecution of the war).”
This is so true and worth unpacking. Bisecting Ukraine is the kind of risky encirclement or blitzkrieg that, as far as I know, Soviet and Russian military doctrine have always eschewed. I think It would’ve been a brutal occupation with existential risks to the Russian state. And I think it would’ve repulsed the so-called global south and scared off China. For sure, it would’ve been an exhausting and dangerous undertaking when the Russian economy was on a very limited war footing and off-balance from the harshest sanctions, the kind imposed on North Korea.
Instead, Russia’s gathered much, if not most, of the world to its side. It’s secured the eastern republics against the encroaching Ukrainian Nazi militia. Russia has built a sustainable (I won’t say impregnable, because nothing is) front with a war economy and a classic, Stalinist, heavily mined “defense in depth” — echelons upon echelons.
Russia’s limited war lured Ukraine and the west into a trap, partly of their own making. It made them overconfident and overcommitted. There’s an element of rope-a-dope. Now Uoraine’s exhausted and being hung out to dry. The west has depleted its arms stocks, concussed its own economy with boomeranging sanctions, and hastened the potential end of NATO as Europe and America drift apart.
How is this not good for Russia?

Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 19:14 utc | 134

This is so true and worth unpacking. Bisecting Ukraine is the kind of risky encirclement or blitzkrieg that, as far as I know, Soviet and Russian military doctrine have always eschewed. I think It would’ve been a brutal occupation with existential risks to the Russian state. And I think it would’ve repulsed the so-called global south and scared off China. For sure, it would’ve been an exhausting and dangerous undertaking when the Russian economy was on a very limited war footing and off-balance from the harshest sanctions, the kind imposed on North Korea.
Instead, Russia’s gathered much, if not most, of the world to its side. It’s secured the eastern republics against the encroaching Ukrainian Nazi militia. Russia has built a sustainable (I won’t say impregnable, because nothing is) front with a war economy and a classic, Stalinist, heavily mined “defense in depth” — echelons upon echelons.
Russia’s limited war lured Ukraine and the west into a trap, partly of their own making. It made them overconfident and overcommitted. There’s an element of rope-a-dope. Now Uoraine’s exhausted and being hung out to dry. The west has depleted its arms stocks, concussed its own economy with boomeranging sanctions, and hastened the potential end of NATO as Europe and America drift apart.
How is this not good for Russia?
Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 19:14 utc | 134

More delusional post-hoc rationalization.
What the “bissection” would have been doesn’t change the empirical fact that this is exactly what was attempted.
We know it from Lukashenko’s map from that time and from the facts on the ground, where RU was pushing north towards Krivoy Rog and south towards Poltava. Problem is Nikolaev, Chernigov, Sumy and Kharkov resisted so those even more ambitious plans fell apart completely. And now we are rationalizing it as a genius master plan…

Posted by: shаdοwbanned | Dec 25 2023 19:19 utc | 136

Posted by: Honzo | Dec 25 2023 18:38 utc | 125
Now look who’s underestimating the opposition. The Germans and Japanese were both surprised at how well the Americans adapted and fought, and still could not accept their defeat had been as much about being being out fought as out produced. The US submarine force would do to the PLAN what it did to the IJN, and the PLAF would be simply overwhelmed. China is way behind the U.S. in naval and aviation capabilities, again don’t get seduced by on the paper capabilities, so it’s all about bluff and double bluff and making statements for the home crowd. None of the major players want to go to the mat for real, for a variety of reasons, but all can be summarised by not wanting to risk the ‘civilisational’ progress they have made, China especially.
For a simple thought experiment, replace any Russian brigade with a comparable NATO one, giving it comparable support elements (artillery ISR and Air) and let it attack any Ukrainian held sector on the front, to see how far Russia has to go before it comes to matching current Western capabilities. Trying to evaluate the combat potential of NATO, using the SMO as a reference point, is repeating the same mistake Western analysts committed by using the Arab Israeli wars as a similar bench mark for determining Soviet conventional effectiveness.

Posted by: Milites | Dec 25 2023 19:35 utc | 138

aristodemos | Dec 25 2023 19:10 utc | 133
*** The Russians offered magnanimous terms: Russia would withdraw their forces even from the Donetsk states if Kiev would no longer attack them. Z. was willing to accept those terms and the ink was on the documents.***
The description “magnanimous” is not quite adequate. There are better words for willingness to stab the populations of Donetsk and Lugansk in the back — deliberately handing them over for liquidation, despite them being Russian, is somehow ok?
Of course Zelensky was inclined to sign — since it would have meant that he and his nazi regime in Kiev had won….
“The west” and its Zionist coke-head puppet in Kiev can always be trusted, can’t they?
But the rulers of NATO wanted to inflict even more damage on Russia.
So they sent Boris to veto Zelensky signing.
Now it looks bad for the Kiev regime … but is there to be a future betrayal, whereby Ukraine does indeed become a sort of second Israel after all, with a particular Jewish cult — who couldn’t care less about the environment, so no problems for Soros toxic dumping, or Monsanto — lording it over a largely depopulated land (plus imported slave labour) that’s been sold off by the present Kiev regime to US corporate/financial interests?
By the way he bows to Zionist interests Putin might not be inclined to prevent that.

Posted by: Cynic | Dec 25 2023 19:39 utc | 140

Since 2014, we have been able to read many stories about why Minsk I (after all the promises to Janukowitsch..) and Minsk II ( after MH17, Krim/Lugansk waterblockad …) were signed.
* because Russia needed new friends
* because Russia had to prepare
* new weapons
* judo techniques
* chess games
* etc etc..
2 Weeks ago on this Q&A show, the 71 year old president tells us he was only naive ..
no plan B or plan C and no plan A too. only naive
till this moment we all know, the sweet 150cm assistent is not the best shomaster there in the Kremel
… no no the sometime, but not always, naive Mr.President is the most best one.

Posted by: theo | Dec 25 2023 20:02 utc | 142

“ Since 2014, we have been able to read many stories about why Minsk I (after all the promises to Janukowitsch..) and Minsk II ( after MH17, Krim/Lugansk waterblockad …) were signed.
* because Russia needed new friends
* because Russia had to prepare
* new weapons
* judo techniques
* chess games
* etc etc..”
All correct. In a similar way as the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact in 1939, the Minsk agreements sapped western-Ukrainian momentum and gave time for Russia to sanctions-proof its economy and develop a plan. It also gave peace a chance, no laughing matter.
Likewise, Molotov-Ribbentrop bought the Stalinists two years to get ready for the Nazi attack (by the largest and most experienced land army assembled on earth at the time), which Stalin knew was coming.

Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 20:17 utc | 144

“I don’t think the US will sacrifice DC for Rzeszow. But when Rzeszow gets nuked, there will be endless shrill cries from Warsaw to nuke Moscow. And things can get very easily out of control. Why did it have to get to this point?”
Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 19:36 utc | 139

That is why Warsaw has to be nuked first.
That is how USA would do that.

Posted by: zorge | Dec 25 2023 20:43 utc | 146

When you are on the right side of attrition, like the right side of compound interest, you are certain to win (certain to lose if on the wrong side). Both are exponential processes, so most of the effect occurs towards the end.
If Ukraine starts with 500K men and loses 500/day, it takes 1000 days to lose them all. But loss rate is negligible until near the end: .1% the first day, .11% on day 100, .14% on day 300, .2% on day 500, .33% on day 700, 1% on day 900, 10% on day 990, 100% on day 1000. If we assume anything under 1% “feels” small, it takes 900 days out of 1000 total before losses feel big. As we approach the end, pain level rapidly accelerates.
Or, as the saying goes, “how do you go bankrupt? first little by little, then all at once”.

Posted by: anonposter | Dec 25 2023 20:56 utc | 148

Posted by: line islands | Dec 25 2023 18:35 utc | 122
#################
If you’re among family today, it may be wise to stop drinking now.
Trump will never end NATO. Trump is an empty vessel when it comes to ideas, morality, and knowledge. He listens to all sides, and then often takes the worst course for the long term so he can get a very short-term bump with his base. Everything Trump says is about leverage. Many politicians figured that out about him in his first year. He will take any position that gives him a perceived advantage and never sacrifice himself for a righteous cause.
Trump is the consummate American huckster. I say that as someone very pleased he was elected in 2016 over Clinton. I soon realized that he was great at talking, and useless at doing. Even his “positive” approaches were more for PR than efficacy. What did he accomplish during his reign? The economy boomed but a lot of it was funded by government debt. Classic American ponzi scheme for a nation of well-meaning suckers always looking for a quick buck.
A used car salesman, like the most successful American leaders (Obama, Clinton, Reagan). Hope and Change. Make America Great Again (a Reagan/Clinton slogan recycled).
I maintain that there is no relief coming for the US. Relief will come after a near-total collapse, when the people AND the government are brought low and find out that the Empire’s vassals have been kept too weak to help Americans get back on their feet. Only when America is broke and friendless will it chance to reform. Right now, we know America’s obvious problems but Zionism is a tenacious parasite, and racial supremacy is a difficult mental illness to recover from.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Dec 25 2023 21:36 utc | 150

aristodemos | Dec 25 2023 19:10 utc | 133
Posted by: Cynic | Dec 25 2023 19:39 utc | 140
Can either of you prove what conditions Russia has offered?
Source, Link….

Posted by: 600w | Dec 25 2023 21:58 utc | 152

Re: shadowbanned debate with line islands
I think there is room for different interpretations on the initial Russian plan – had they committed more forces and maybe gotten lucky with a decapitation strike sending Zelesnky to Kingdom Come, I suspect that the Brits and US wouldn’t have given up.
They probably would have installed a new puppet regime, maybe relocated the capital to Lviv and then the counteroffensive would have had a better shot with supply lines closer to Poland.
I think Russia did a reasonably decent job of adjusting to the situation after the Kherson retreat. You have to fight the war you get, not the one you want.
The counter-muh-fail-offensive definitely is a huge failure for the West but I doubt they give up now. There is probably a year left for the West to turn this around and then the whole Ukraine project will need to be abandoned as a failure.
The history of the US in wars is the longer they last the worse the outcome. See Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea.

Posted by: Ghost of Zanon | Dec 25 2023 22:07 utc | 154

Honzo | Dec 25 2023 21:39 utc | 151

Apparently the concept of maskirovka is foreign to you. Now that’s naive.

maskirovka? hey had ammunition for half a year !! no plan A and no other small plan. The have hope since 2014 all is ok.
Since this summer, the Russian producing more ammunition, and the Russians are buying from Kim. Thx God Trump have not been sweet to the Rocketman and Kim change not the site ( or stay neutral same others )
Again Russia had ammunition for half a year!!
When I was younger, the Russians could start a war for years. With 5 million soldiers. 10 thousands of tanks
Now
* the ammunition has disappeared
* the tanks has disappeared
* the equipment disappeared
* even uniforms just disappeared
* the soldiers disappeared
* the talkmaster with no plans stay and not disappeared
Iran, Korea, China everywhere had to help this naive talkmasters.
I know this different

Posted by: theo | Dec 25 2023 22:35 utc | 156

The Germans and Japanese were both surprised at how well the Americans adapted and fought, and still could not accept their defeat had been as much about being being out fought as out produced.
…
Posted by: Milites | Dec 25 2023 19:35 utc | 138
That must be US history lessons. The US army fought against about 20% of the Wehrmacht, the remnants so to speak.
The rest of the Wehrmacht tried to slow down the Red Army.
The US Army lives from its logistics and the economic potential of the USA.
German veterans do not have a high opinion of the US Army.
My grandfather always said: “You starved with the Russians because they didn’t have any more themselves. With the Americans, you starved, even though they had more than enough.”
The former Wehrmacht has similarities with the French Foreign Legion, level of training, discipline, etc.
If you speak German:
https://youtu.be/pEQj2xMO1CE?feature=shared
Apparently not much has changed in the US Army.
How could it?
The US Army accompanies the crimes of the US Army.
It’s not about national defence, but about the largest mercenary army in the world. The personal risk must remain manageable.
The Germans could not train their soldiers in other countries, provide them with medical care, send them to recuperate, etc.
They were not allowed to receive and use equipment from third countries and were not supported financially.
Because these countries would automatically have been a party to the war. Today, we rely on Russia to rationally avoid a nuclear world war and look the other way.
Every single government of many EU/Nato/”US friend” states is playing poker for the USA with the lives of their voters and their relatives as a stake.
Ukraine is a hijacked (failed shithole state) whose citizens have to do for NATO what its population would not do. Namely catching bullets for Baerbock and co.
Let’s see if there will be a Ukrainian Schörner.
A coup is not possible, the government is in the USA.

Posted by: 600w | Dec 25 2023 22:54 utc | 158

But they had the industrial capacity to multiply artillery production by a factor of 17. Hmmm…

SUPER !!
but this production started 16 months later, summer 2023 and not 2014 or 2015 or Feb 2022.
16 month !! and have only 6 month ammunition!
The Russian need send evry morning 3 thx to the rocketman, to china and to the iran.

Posted by: theo | Dec 25 2023 23:36 utc | 160

Re: Posted by: HB_Norica | Dec 25 2023 12:50 utc | 94

McGregor and Ritter’s big mistake is not leading with the disclaimer “all other things being equal” in their predictions.
You can’t very well make predictions about the Ukrainian army if they are constantly being raised from the dead by the USA and EU. We are now on the third re-built / NATO trained Ukrainian army … neither of those gentlemen could have predicted the decisions of western politicians that allowed for the defeated Ukrainian corpse to be reanimated at the expense of their own taxpayers.
Without massive western aid Ukraine wouldn’t have run out of fuel and ammo and couldn’t meet payroll of their civil servants by the summer of 2022.

Au contraire.
Western aid for Ukraine was VERY VERY VERY PREDICTABLE.
Have you (& McGregor & Ritter perhaps) been asleep for the last 10 years?
I could have told you The West would go all out to back Ukraine in this fight – In fact, I probably did tell you exactly that 18+ months ago.
As for this.

You can’t very well make predictions about the Ukrainian army if they are constantly being raised from the dead by the USA and EU. We are now on the third re-built / NATO trained Ukrainian army … neither of those gentlemen could have predicted the decisions of western politicians that allowed for the defeated Ukrainian corpse to be reanimated at the expense of their own taxpayers.

So what?
That’s a poor excuse. Anyone who doubted The West’s commitment to Ukraine may have missed it, but anyone paying attention knew The West would step up.
If the Kremlin didn’t understand this in early 2022 – that is frankly a disgraceful reflection on their ability to listen and read about what is publicly said by those in The Western security apparatus.
It should have been no surprise at all that The West would support Ukraine to the hilt.

Posted by: Julian | Dec 26 2023 1:25 utc | 162

Re: Posted by: Milites | Dec 25 2023 14:28 utc | 100
One of your better posts Milites – and I generally agree with most of the points you make.
The thing is, the political winds will be shifting mightily over the next 12 months – more than half the world’s population is voting in one election or another.
The timeline for Russia to achieve it’s war aims in Ukraine could well (and in my opinion is likely) be shifted by these political winds that makes continuing this conflict into 2025 untenable or not ideal.
So Russia better get a hurry up and at least reach minimal goals – such as liberating the entirety of the four new oblasts it now claims in Ukraine! (Hasn’t even got 100% of one of these oblasts yet – nearly two years in).
I also disagree with your last point – that sounds like hopium to me.
Despite all the words, my impression is that Putin still naturally leans to The West rather than to a China-centric world. My impression is that Putin is wary of fully supporting a Chinese-led world, but he wants Russia to be accommodated and properly respected in the current set-up, but throwing in with China/BRICS is something of a reluctant contingency plan he is pursuing because The West really gives him no choice on the matter.

Posted by: Julian | Dec 26 2023 1:35 utc | 164

I think f16s are going to complicate things for the black sea fleet. A f16c can fly 546km without drop tanks and a 2000kg payload, do stuff and then fly home. The harpoon missiles has a much longer range(220km vs124-139km for ship or ground launched variants ) when air launched and it’s only around 300km from Odessa to Sebastopol. A f16c could fly at low level most of the way and then pop up and fire missiles and fly back home at low altitude to avoid AD. and there’s other air to ground munitions available for other types of targets on the Crimean peninsula.
I doubt the radar detection range for a f16 at low level is farther than the range of a harpoon missiles

Posted by: Boring Record | Dec 26 2023 1:45 utc | 166

@ Posted by: Julian | Dec 26 2023 1:29 utc | 163
What would you say Russia should have done in differently in the case of Armenia?

Posted by: jared | Dec 26 2023 2:00 utc | 168

Posted by: Honzo | Dec 25 2023 21:34 utc | 149
The Pentagons own wargames are much publicised exercises in rattling the tin for more funds. They massively over-state the effectiveness of the PLAF, who are piloting fighter platforms whose engine lives are half that of the Russians they copied and claimed Russia had capabilities in 2015 they struggle to demonstrate today. It was the same in the Cold-War, scary headlines and predictions leading to increased funding and new systems, only for the precursor threat to turn out to be less capable than ‘advertised’. T-80, Alpha submarine, Mig-25, BMP-1, Sagger missile, Mi-24 etc, etc, etc. The list is endless from that period, especially, and continues today, for example the Armata tank being used to justify the MOD spending huge amounts of money on new AT systems.
Far from belittling their opponents, Western countries tend to over-exaggerate their actual abilities, we saw this in the Falklands, Gulf War and in fictional scenarios. The whole premise of the NTC was to practice fighting against Soviet regiments, whose doctrine whose equipment and training was far superior than in reality, same with the Red Flag exercises. The problem with the SMO is that the Nuland clan believed the opposite, that the Russians would fold economically and militarily, a position of their unwarranted supremacy that they extend to their domestic opponents and foreign countries. I am of the belief that the majority of the planning has been carried out by the B team, comprised of political opportunists who cover up incompetence with unctuousness and people more at home firing up simulators than actually firing anything. Seems that when the brief for this tar baby came down it was rapidly passed down the line to the expendables.

Posted by: Milites | Dec 26 2023 2:05 utc | 170