The Ukraine war thread
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"Look! The Americans ADMIT that they're interfering with our 'special military operation.'" The Putin lovers will slurp this down like a bottle of (cheap, to be sure) Russian vodka. It feeds the narrative that he's trying to promote, and, IMO, is very unhelpful to the overall cause.
I too see what you are saying. I also agree it is not text book intelligence tradecraft to share and admit. But this is not a textbook war either where governments control all the messaging. Putin would like to think he does but it is not so, especially in the large urban areas.
Besides, the US not alone in sharing and admitting they are sharing intelligence. All NATO countries are part of this particular sting operation. Well, maybe not so much the goddamn Magyars.
However Putin’ s War not a special military operation. It is a war of Russian aggression upon its neighbour . Putin can play that narrative b.s. all he wants but as time goes on his narrative grows thinner and weaker in Mother Russia with each conscript phoning home and body bag or ash urn brought home to the village for burial.
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@Jolly said in The Ukraine war thread:
The M-777 155mm howitzer the U.S. is sending to Ukraine is notable for a few things...
- There is titanium used in certain parts, making the gun lighter than the Russian 152mm howitzer. The M-777 is air mobile.
- The M-777 out ranges the Russian gun.
- The U.S. is sending enough rounds, that the tubes will be shot out before the ammo is exhausted. What the U.S. is not doing, is supplying Copperhead rounds.
A good crew can emplace the gun in a little over ten minutes, then fire five rounds per minute using the M-777's GPS system.
90 in all + some other 155mm stuff from other countries...
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I think that President Putin would use the US "interference" as propaganda no matter what, whether it was in the paper or not.
I think that the average Russian he is trying to sell the propaganda pretty sure does not read the New York Times, or other US newspapers.
He is going to say what he is going to say. "The US is behind this, etc etc" Appearing in a US paper that has very limited reach in Russia.....
The people educated enough to access and read the US papers probably have a knowledge already of the situation.
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@Klaus said in The Ukraine war thread:
Who or what is RSOTM?
"Reverse Side Of The Medal."
It's the face of the Wagner group.
With a number of credible reports of foreign fighters engaged in the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh on behalf of Azerbaijan, a number of journalists and analysts have looked to one of the world’s most infamous private mercenary companies (PMC), Russia’s Wagner PMC, as a potential actor in the conflict. However, there has not been any firm evidence showing their arrival or involvement in the war which has rocked the South Caucasus since late September. In the search for potential evidence of Wagner’s involvement into the conflict, many have looked to Reverse Side of the Medal (RSOTM), one of the most public channels of communication used by fighters from Russia’s private military companies fighters, especially Wagner and those close to them.
This group operates a Telegram channel, along with pages on Instagram, YouTube, and VKontakte (VK). The group’s most prominent administrator is Maksim Fomin, writing under the pseudonym “Vladlen Tatarsky” (taken from a novel by popular Russian writer Viktor Pelevin). Fomin previously fought in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine for the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). Over the past week, this channel has shared a number of photographs alluding to the arrival of Russian mercenaries — with the Wagner group being the obvious candidate — to Nagorno-Karabakh to assist Armenian forces in their ongoing conflict with Azerbaijan.
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On a lighter note:
Putin dies and goes to hell. However, since he’s used to doing deals with devils, he manages to get a day off from torment and goes home to Moscow to enjoy Vodka and see how Russia is doing in his absence.
The streets are clean, the shops are open, and people look well and relatively happy (for Russians). At the bar, he orders 3 Vodkas and sips them slowly, watching all the people nattering about sports and boasting about business, like the KGB spy he always was.
Satisfied, Putin turns to the bartender and asks “how much for the drinks?”
The bartender swiftly pulls out the cashless pay-terminal and tells him: “Five Euros”.
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After the war, I'd certainly like Ukraine to reconstitute some of its navy, particularly submarines.. Germany builds a nice, stealthy boat...
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@Jolly said in The Ukraine war thread:
Germany builds a nice, stealthy boat...
So do we.
On Thursday I played golf with a guy who puts the stealth goop coating on the Virginia-class boats that they build just down the street from here.
These boats are not easy to find.
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Doubt they could afford one and I suspect we ain't letting anybody have a nuclear sub.
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A cast of thousands...
https://nypost.com/2022/05/05/russians-to-dress-ukrainians-in-uniforms-for-mariupol-parade/