The story of how this (very gradually) flipped to Germanic-speaking is well known.
But what is the story of how this flipped to Slavic-speaking overnight (from presumably Germanic) in the first place?
Prigozhin's appeal to Botox has always been the promise that he could deliver results without the need for further mobilization, but simply through better management of resources already committed, namely through their transfer from RUMOD's to Wagner's control.
Talking about Novorossiya and denazification is the easy part. The actually substantial part is how much GDP and manpower is being allocated to war.
Tell me your mobilization level and I will tell you your war aims.
The very pro-Ukrainian
@KofmanMichael
explains (12:25) the question of firing long-range US missiles into Russia is nowhere as simple as "giving Ukraine permission".
It necessitates a joint US-Ukrainian operation with US personnel involved in the strike campaign.
Ukraine and
6th-7th Slavic expansion is some wild shit. You start out with a small swamp in Belarus, the next thing you know you've suddenly got trillions of Slavs expanding out in ALL directions
they're flooding everything without a state or king, and despite low culture they're somehow extremely good at assimilation in even ex-Roman territories.
Supposedly it's the Russian liberals who have an inferiority complex toward the West, yet it is the Putinistas who will give the royalty treatment to grifting 8th-tier Westerners
The panic and paralysis that the Kremlins manage to demonstrate in the face of this mutiny is impressive. It reaches the levels of loserdom and cringe not previously thought possible.
We've reached a point where the Americans are doing everything in the Russo-Ukrainian war that they want to do. Russian deterrence has become irrelevant. There is nothing you can point to and say "Americas want to do this, but they fear provoking Russia".
@bobWaltzer
Agreed, Gaza is only a conc camp in the most technical sense, in being alike to British camps for Boers, but that's not what most people mean using the term
When the next war breaks out I'm starting 2 websites. On one I'm cheerleading for the one side, and on the second one for the other one. Hyper-cheerleading is where the money is, not this realism, complexity, empathy, facts, critique BS.
Moscow's biggest mistake in CZ relations wasn't 1968 or 1948, but the 1945 permission to expel the Germans.
The moment that was done the Russians had outlived their usefulness to the Czechs.
Yea Putin has such a history-focused mind he ignored Ukraine for 15 years as it was continuously drifting away, while prioritizing his USA relations. Talk about full of shit.
Putin the coward bought into Wagner lies knowing they can't possibly be true because it was easier for the time being than doing what the war he launched of his own accord rationally demands, ...
RU servicemen, possibly teenage conscripts serving out their mandatory national service, wiped out on Russian soil with American rockets as they drove to answer an invasion of Russia. What will be Botox' next move against the Yanks in reply, or is under him this okay?
Reported as the aftermath of yesterday's strike on a Russian column near Oktyabr'skoe, east of Rylsk. Lots of destroyed vehicles and also dead Russian soldiers can be seen. These were reportedly reserves called up to be sent to the Kursk region.
The truth is that at the end of the day Botox and Wagner are two sides of a coin and together represent the worst aspects of the Russian regime (I can't say government because being extra-constitutional Wagner is at most shadow government).
That said I don't know why the US couldn't hit much higher numbers than that with relative ease.
As the home of Fordism knows very well as you scale larger numbers get progressively easier.
You didn't see these scenes in Kharkov counter-offensive. Those guys were pros, when they saw their flanks were shot they would self-evacuate whether they got the command or not.
Now you've got the dazed and the confused.
"I want to live" project reports that, in total, the SBU special forces captured 102 servicemen of the 488th Guards Motorized Rifle Regiment and Kadyrov's "Akhmat" unit. This is the largest one-time “catch” since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian MoD acknowledges that two ships that were undergoing repairs were damaged in the attack by cruise missiles. They claim Ukraine launched 10 cruise missiles and three naval drones. 6/
Putin claims Prigozhin’s plane crashed because the Wagner leadership got drunk and/or high, then set off hand grenades during the flight.
Seems legit, definitely no further questions about that incident, we can all move on
On its own a plant that can repair 500 APCs yearly isn't relevant in the big picture.
But that in the midst of an 'existential' war a campaign to save a defense plant by a governor, 3 MPs, and the patriotic public still can't save it from a sale to a scrap metal specialist is.
The war mobilization, what do Kremlin-owned state enterprises do?
They are selling factories targeted for the repair of machines to be scrapped and destroyed.
In these circumstances for Putin to be spending even one second thinking about some crappy ammonia pipeline is a crime.
Even Medvedev visited an arms factory
"Russia will work with the UN on the issue of resuming the work of the Tolyatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline, supplies through it would be beneficial to all parties" — Putin.
For weeks we've been served stories on how Ukraine's new coerced recruits suffer from poor morale and are essentially cowards (seems ground is being prepared to scapegoat them for the current and future setbacks) — but now a text that while repeating this formula also adds a very
Options:
1. Botox reconciling with mutineer Prigozhin gave out a signal that everyone may do as they please without consequences, so somebody who isn't Botox offed Prigozhin. Banana republic scale moves from 9 to 9.5 and we're starting to enter "a thousand emperors" territory.
Since people treat geopolitics as sports fandoms I'm going to explain something to anyone interested in joining the Russia fandom. You're welcome to join, but please beware that if you do, you will be rooting for a side with a beyond awful coach.
No, the other fans criticizing
People keep repeating Ze is a US puppet, that "real decision makers" are outside UA, and that Ze doesn't have best UA interests in mind. Let's say that is true. But what decisions of his can you point to that wouldn't also be made by every generic moderate UA nationalist?
Time to throw out all you know about WW2 and start studying conflicts like the Eritrean-Ethiopian, Iran-Iraq and even the Ethiopian-Tigray wars, they're far more applicable to what's going on. Think of Russia as an African country then your expectations will be much more spot on.
The truth is that in the "speaking truth to power" category Wagners are the biggest shits. Strelkov tells Botox exactly how it is. RUMODs tell him how it is to an extent (recall Surovikin and Kherson). Prigozhin tried to sell him on a magic pill
Prigozhin meanwhile absolves Botox of all blame, heaps all kind of praise on him, and reassures him he did perfectly fine but was merely failed by his underlings.
But the pathetic response to Wagner's march conceals just how hollow Prigozhin's challenge itself was. There were no grand demands issued, and there was no political content to the mutiny.
Putin is really an anarcho-libertarian legend, doing a study on "how to fight a major land war in Europe, with fewest inconveniences on own people" — which long-term of course just ends up inconveniencing them even more than if he had asked them for participation from the start.
UA killing Stremousov but Moscow making up the car accident story to hide the embarrassment and thus accidentally creating the even more damaging theory of FSB assassination would be Peak Kremlinism
Twitter's temporary indulgence of a vision of Prigozhin as the new dictator-reformer aside who would take power in Moscow and set Russia's war back on track, the stakes were never this high.
2. Regression to the mean. Botox though he could live with the deal, but Prigo kept pushing the lines (there was no BLR exile) and he changed his mind. Banana republic scale moves from 9 to 8. (Which is still super high in the absolute and higher than it was before the mutiny.)
Where Strelkov detests the top of RUMOD (and was mercilessly bashing Shoigu long before Prigozhin got in on the game) he nonetheless places the bigger portion of the blame on Botox for not giving it the resources necessary.
...(ignoring that Botox overstretched them and left them with their pants down), but soon he gets bogged down himself, his gains shrinking from tiny to microscopic. By the end of it he takes Bakhmut in an endless, nearly year-long slong for a cost that would make RUMODs blush.
This gives RUMOD the space to start turning the screws on him, and Botox reluctantly goes along with it, but being the king of half-measures that he is, he does it in such a lukewarm fashion that it leaves his chef with the impression that he might still get him to turn.
What botox-injected boomer who has been clinging to seat of power for a quarter of century despite having no political vision of what he wants to accomplish doesn't like to hear that?
How is Ukraine a loss for Biden? NATO never more relevant since 1991, 120K dead Russians, pushed through sanctions. EU scrambling for US gas, Patriots, and leadership. Rump Ukraine forever a rabid anti-Russian state akin to Estonia but cutting deep into RU all the way to Kharkov.
In a way, Biden’s presidency is extraordinary. In four years, he managed to get four Loser badges - as many as Hero of the Soviet Union medals Brezhnev awarded to himself. Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza and now his own presidency. A debacle with disastrous consequences on every major
At the same time as he is gaining strength via the cannibalization of the Russian military, he wages a ruthless self-promotion campaign to the widest public, appropriating all success where Wagner was present exclusively for himself, regardless of how involved RUMOD was.
A lot of fingers being pointed at new UA mobiks as useless, unreliable, cowardly, flight risk, etc without giving the context in which they're supposed to assimilate to their units.
He also uses his access to Putin to start interfering in RUMOD affairs, scapegoating individual RUMOD generals (for the time being not the highest-ranking ones) and campaigning for their sacking. Worryingly he is successful and his sights move upward the RUMOD chain.
3 insane things about 24 Feb:
1. It is insane that in the satellite age RU was able to achieve a surprise
2. It is insane how much RU had to sacrifice to achieve it
3. Having sacrificed so much to achieve it, it's insane how little RU did with it due to lack all-in / follow up
The Ukrainian grouping was composed of only 1 500 men.
175 were part of 137th separate Marine Bataillon from 36th Marine Brigade. They were tasked at 3 points, Chonhar, Chaplinka and Kalanchak border crossing.
The authorization of withdrawals from Kherson and Kiev show that privately this was also eventually RUMOD's message to Botox: with the present commitment of resources the desired goals are impossible to attain.
In November 2013 Yanukovich asks the West for a $18bn loan to sign the EU association agreement he has negotiated for Ukraine.
Had he gotten the money he signs the agreement, Maidan peters out, Yanukovich serves out his term, after which the pro-EU fundamentalists come in.
The
Botox having been flattered and desperately averse to making the necessary tough call starts to transfer more and more RUMOD resources to Prigozhin. Wagner becomes the most well-supported Russian formation, expands by leaps and bounds, gets an air force...
In rides Prigozhin offering miracles; significantly better results through better management of what has already been given to the military but allegedly foolishly squandered by RUMOD.
Prigozhin launches a "March for Justice" – an outfit that until now operated outside the law (PMCs are illegal in Russian law) with the permission of the regime enters into open disobedience of the regime.
Yet after all of the backing that sweells his force into the tens of thousands, what does Prigozhin have to show for it? Nothing. First he is contrasting his gains in the Bakhmut direction to RUMOD's flight from Izyum and Kupyansk...
@mrgubkin
@AZmilitary1
There was a sniper on him from the start. Zero risk. They were trying to capture him but he figured them out and abort was called.
There is no use in blaming failed PUA guru Lira for anything here. There is a market out there for this type of moronism-fraud that he works hard to fill
The official spokesman of the wishfully idiotic
Today is Day 90 of the conflict.
►Russian forces have captured +100,000 square kilometers, are destroying the AFU in the Donbas.
►The AFU has little-to-no airforce, tanks, APC's. They're down to reservists.
Does anyone really think Ukraine can stand another 90 days of this?
...meanwhile, the professional code of the RUMODs demands that they stay inside the chain of command and – aside from the Konashenkov idiot show -- keep perfectly quiet, making them defenseless against Prigozhin's media persecution.
Ukrainians are criticized for being clients of the West but you have to realize there are only 35M of them. If there were 135M, they'd be running a North Korea there and would have long annexed 'Little Ukraine' and 'White Ukraine' and would now be invading Poland and Romania.
His promise of a more rational, modern, corporate management is exposed as more of the fradulent new-age start-up guru bullshit and even his escalating attacks on top RUMODs can no longer conceal this.
Kremlins protecting you from fag parades with one hand, subjecting you to a Jamahiriya with the other.
Islamist blasphemy laws with power over Christians for the Muzzies, the Ukraine forever meatgrinder for the Slavs.
Botoxdarstvo
To dispel any doubts about whether his 15-year-old son really beat up a Russian man arrested for burning a Koran, Ramzan Kadyrov has *posted a video of his son apparently actually doing it*
"Artillery shells sold by Indian arms makers have been diverted by European customers to Ukraine and New Delhi has not intervened to stop the trade despite protests from Moscow, according to eleven Indian and European government and defence industry officials...
Among the
@akarlin0
There's nothing casualty-averse about going it slow. You lose more in the end, doubly so in a situation where the US is gearing up to become Ukraine's military-industrial complex and dump $50bn per annum on it.
It's interesting to think, that if Zelensky had done as little to prepare for the war, as to call up 15,000 men and plug the Crimea-mainland chokepoint with them, Putin would have had just about nothing to show for the war (the rubble of Mariupol and Rubezhnoye)
The Ukrainian grouping was composed of only 1 500 men.
175 were part of 137th separate Marine Bataillon from 36th Marine Brigade. They were tasked at 3 points, Chonhar, Chaplinka and Kalanchak border crossing.
Strelkov wishes that men like him were in charge at RUMOD but that is only secondary for him. His first demand is that RUMOD, even while it is still being led by people he detests and are his political rivals, be allocated more resources for Russia's sake.
Literally all that Wagner was asking for is that the cannibalization of RUMOD might continue and that subsequently the Wagnerite rise along the societal and fiduciary ladder under Botox may go on.
The pre-war pros could have been a skeleton to a much larger force, instead they were set up to be consumed in 9 months by fighting 30M nation on their own, while the entire rest of the country including serving conscripts and potential mobiks idled.
I'm East European, trust me when I say this. We're not that productive or fantastic at making stuff. There's no Swedes trying to get hired for Bulgarian factories. It's not racist when I say it.
Despite Botox not wasting time in proclaiming that Wagnerites must be "neutralized" as insurrectionists (and seeking assurances of support of Turkey and Kazakhstan) and Medvedev imploring the West not to let Russia's nukes fall into wrong hands, ....