The Ukraine war thread
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The most common word in the Kremlin-speak this past year or so has become провокация (provokatsiya). It needs no translation. A was common Soviet term used throughout the Cold War against the West as well. It is supposed to help to reinforce the blameless innocence of the Russian state in its peace loving aggressive foreign policy and militarism.
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Not sure about any these outcomes in 2023:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63987113
Still, I would wager any one of them is more plausible than a single one of Medvedev’s predictions George posted in the other thread.
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Why am I not surprised?
"We fight with our brains. They fight with numbers. Because their resources --we're not revealing some secret here -- are much greater than ours," he said.
In some locations, including in Bakhmut, photographs and videos posted by military bloggers and even the soldiers themselves point to outdated battlefield tactics that are reminiscent of World War-I trench warfare, in which waves of infantrymen advance across open fields and try to storm enemy trenches, only to be mowed down by gunfire.
"They just push and shove their way through. And a lot of them die. Because they have no tactics, nothing of the sort," another soldier said. "They just go like meat. There were some cases when the infantry said that they went in without any [armed vehicles], or without machine guns."
Full story:
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-kreminna-battle-recapture-russia-supply-lines/32197165.html
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See in particular the embedded video from the BBC’s Moscow correspondent:
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George Friedman: The State of Play in Ukraine