War starts on command, but doesn't end when you please

The United States said it believed Russia would target civilian and government infrastructure in the next few days. U.S. citizens should leave Ukraine "now" by their own means if it was safe to do so, the U.S. Embassy said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...es-capital-bans-independence-day-2022-08-23/?
Even before Darya Dugina's sacrificial killing there were plausible preparations for possible enlarged rocket barrage in honor of Ukraine's independence day. That event lends additional excuses, and may even have been intended for that. Ukrainian air defense had been improving, but the most prominent additions are yet to be delivered.
 
Even before Darya Dugina's sacrificial killing there were plausible preparations for possible enlarged rocket barrage in honor of Ukraine's independence day. That event lends additional excuses, and may even have been intended for that. Ukrainian air defense had been improving, but the most prominent additions are yet to be delivered.
i don't know if i buy the sacrificial bit, though not saying it has no merit whatsoever... given human nature, isn't it more probable that this is down to people either within his inner circle or those under the thumb who are so concerned about the nuclear reactor blowing and polluting russia with terrible radioactive fallout? prevailing weather systems would suggest a lot of the shit would blow towards russia
 
i don't know if i buy the sacrificial bit, though not saying it has no merit whatsoever... given human nature, isn't it more probable that this is down to people either within his inner circle or those under the thumb who are so concerned about the nuclear reactor blowing and polluting russia with terrible radioactive fallout? prevailing weather systems would suggest a lot of the shit would blow towards russia
Kremlin at least currently doesn't seem interested in investigating that seriously and spew raw nonsense instead, incriminating themselves. Even the resistance organization that ostensibly claimed responsibility is smelling like a SFB honey trap type operation intended to reveal dissent.

At this point, in that girl's death hypothetical value can be constructed for just about anyone, even Ukrainians -- as it reveals and highlights anew the pure insanity of Russian current ruling class. That threat to send Salisbury tourists to Tallinn was gold, they aren't even denying the poison attacks anymore (as if anyone had doubts, but that's a major shift in rhetoric).

Nobody can trust anyone, the default status in Moscow, but now with cars starting to explode once again. And the war will continue until total collapse just for too lucrative opportunities to steal death money.
 
More blank posts ... or just links with no details.


What the fuck is wrong with people?

Either post words or don't post.
 
More blank posts ... or just links with no details.


What the fuck is wrong with people?

Either post words or don't post.
both of the posts above this by lupus open directly on my pc after a few seconds. if this is what you're referring to... if they're not opening for you, check your options/settings. The twitter links all automatically open for me. If you don't want them doing that, then maybe ignore the post rather than blowing a fuse? Sometimes i'll just post the links because i don't have the time to paraphrase but i do try to bear in mind some don't want to use resources checking unexplained links.
 
I've got all that blue bird turd crap blocked as the MAJOR security risk it is. No one with a brain allows it to infest their machines.
 
Meanwhile, the empire is crumbling... The former Russian colonies in central Asia are getting away, finally. Indicative read:


The unabashedly imperialist zeitgeist of Russia’s war against #Ukraine has been deeply unsettling and has spurred much reflection about my own identity and my family’s history. This long🧵 is an attempt to begin to make sense of my relationship to the Kazakh language and culture.

It was inspired in large part by the thought-provoking ideas put forth by @BotakozKassymb1 and @EricaMarat in their excellent piece for @ponarseurasia

https://www.ponarseurasia.org/time-to-question-russias-imperial-innocence/

I’m a middle-aged Kazakh man born and raised in Kazakhstan, yet my command of the Kazakh language is tenuous at best and I have but a passing familiarity with Kazakh traditions and culture.

Yet, for much of my youth this severed connection did not bother me. In fact, I was somewhat smug about it. I used to joke about being an “asphalt Kazakh” or, more darkly, a “mankurt” as described by the great Chingiz Aitmatov.

Whenever someone would try to question my inability to sustain even the most rudimentary conversation in Kazakh I would be dismissive and often irritated. Lately, I have been trying to understand why.

I was almost 16 when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) ceased to exist, and Kazakhstan became a sovereign country. My family is Kazakh but my first language was Russian.

Russian was also the first language of my mother and her three siblings, all born in the 1940s. Their bilingual mother wrote and published poetry in Kazakh until her death, but raised her four children to speak Russian, insisting that it was essential for their futures.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s ethnic Kazakhs made up just under 50% of Kazakh SSR’s population. Most were concentrated in rural areas. Almaty, the picturesque and cosmopolitan capital of the Kazakh SSR was less than 20% Kazakh.

As a Kazakh kid at an elementary school in central Almaty in the early 1980s, I was one of just a handful of ethnic Kazakhs in my grade. Kazakh language class was taught twice a week and it was the one subject that no one took seriously.

Russian language and Russian literature were far more prominent in our curriculum. Tellingly, in the entire city of Almaty, with over a million inhabitants and hundreds of schools, there was a grand total of two (2) schools where Kazakh was the language of instruction.

This story is undoubtedly familiar to many urban Kazakhs who came of age during Moscow’s rule in Central Asia. This is the story I have shared countless times over the years in various social encounters in the US.
It is also not the whole story.

Lately, I have been increasingly circling back to the uncomfortable memory of contempt for most things Kazakh that I had felt growing up. I associated Kazakh language and culture with being rural and uncultured. Low status.

I was quick to label Kazakhs who spoke accented Russian as “mambety” - an insult that makes me wince today. It was a derogatory term reserved for those whose connection to the Kazakh language and culture has not been severed as my own.

It seems that Moscow’s long rule in Central Asia extended far beyond political and economic control or even erasure of language and culture. I didn’t just lose Kazakh language and culture. I learned to feel contempt for them, to be embarrassed by them.

I suppose this is precisely what a thorough colonization is supposed to accomplish. Internalized racism is a term that comes to mind. Another is colonized conscience.

I am still trying to process this as I write but it is clear that Ukraine’s heroic struggle against Russian aggression and the clear and present danger of Kremlin’s neo-imperial ambitions toward Kazakhstan have rejuvenated my own sense of Kazakh identity as nothing ever has.

Maybe this is what the beginning of decolonization of consciousness feels like. THE END
 

I would advise against too heightened expectations.

I would like to be pleasantly surprised too, but Ukrainians won't be in Kherson by next Friday. It's already rather surprising they announced a, supposedly major, ground move already. I didn't expect that for two more weeks or so, but let's hope Russians didn't either.

Ukrainians do have to, really, like must, for a number of reasons take that region back by force in the next two months or so (or they risk that some wrong conclusions may set in, in all kinds of places) even if by pure attrition warfare logic they have benefits to keep it exactly as it is... A bit like, milking a game exploit for all its worth, but at some point you have to move on.

And I do think this still could be a bit early to go for that close, although, if they do believe they can do it, or alternatively, if Bahmut in the east is less stable than we are led to think, or there's something else, a whole lot can be what they know or believe and we don't, it could be great... anytime. The risk is to project a strategic loss hyping an offensive that doesn't really happen beyond tactical intensification, once again.

Russian propaganda is, and will be hard at work to project exactly that, Ukrainian deep raids as repelled major attacks, every disabled Ukrainian tank as catastrophic loss, and so on.

Ukrainian ideal play is to trigger collapse of the Russian front on the right bank of Dnipro.

There's believed to be roughly ~20k Russian soldiers there now, and they are rather heavy equipment rich still, but may lack in training and motivation, and their logistics had been severely degraded for couple of weeks by now (beyond the less than ideal it had always been in that sector).

Ukraine may have engaged slightly more, but not by many times more troops in manpower, and they are the opposite, highly motivated but relatively lightly armed.

The crazy thing: ideally, Ukrainians need this campaign to be equipment positive, capture more than they lose or damage, because they need that Russian equipment to arm up for the winter drive in the east. The conditions for that are set, but that's another point why Ukrainians may be more risk averse than might be expected, and the whole campaign slower and seemingly less efficient.
 
I would advise against too heightened expectations.

I would like to be pleasantly surprised too, but Ukrainians won't be in Kherson by next Friday. It's already rather surprising they announced a, supposedly major, ground move already. I didn't expect that for two more weeks or so, but let's hope Russians didn't either.

Ukrainians do have to, really, like must, for a number of reasons take that region back by force in the next two months or so (or they risk that some wrong conclusions may set in, in all kinds of places) even if by pure attrition warfare logic they have benefits to keep it exactly as it is... A bit like, milking a game exploit for all its worth, but at some point you have to move on.

And I do think this still could be a bit early to go for that close, although, if they do believe they can do it, or alternatively, if Bahmut in the east is less stable than we are led to think, or there's something else, a whole lot can be what they know or believe and we don't, it could be great... anytime. The risk is to project a strategic loss hyping an offensive that doesn't really happen beyond tactical intensification, once again.

Russian propaganda is, and will be hard at work to project exactly that, Ukrainian deep raids as repelled major attacks, every disabled Ukrainian tank as catastrophic loss, and so on.

Ukrainian ideal play is to trigger collapse of the Russian front on the right bank of Dnipro.

There's believed to be roughly ~20k Russian soldiers there now, and they are rather heavy equipment rich still, but may lack in training and motivation, and their logistics had been severely degraded for couple of weeks by now (beyond the less than ideal it had always been in that sector).

Ukraine may have engaged slightly more, but not by many times more troops in manpower, and they are the opposite, highly motivated but relatively lightly armed.

The crazy thing: ideally, Ukrainians need this campaign to be equipment positive, capture more than they lose or damage, because they need that Russian equipment to arm up for the winter drive in the east. The conditions for that are set, but that's another point why Ukrainians may be more risk averse than might be expected, and the whole campaign slower and seemingly less efficient.
Yah, I'm not holding onto hopes as much as thinking positive thoughts. As winter approaches here, the support in Europe is waning....staying power with recede.
 
A Russian-installed official in the Kharkiv region said Ukrainian forces outnumbered Russian troops by 8-to-1 and had broken through to the Russian border. Vitaly Ganchev told the state-owned Rossiya-24 television channel on Monday “the situation is becoming more difficult by the hour.”

I think they're still rehashing the initial breakthrough north of Balakliia, and locally it might even been true. The exact sector of the frontier was very lightly defended by units possibly in the process of being rotated

However, the whole Izyum grouping alone was up to 20k soldiers (including such "elite" units as 4th Guard Tank that ended up abandoning almost all it's T80 tanks again (they did that once already fleeing Sumi region after failed long march to Kyiv from northeast)), and that's not counting the force north of Kharkiv and in Belgorod, while Ukrainian actual assault group might have been as small as about 9k.

Russian DoD map showing no Russian army in Kharkiv region west of Oskil river come out Saturday I think (although those been such crazy days I may be wrong) and during last two days it's been slowly confined, with Ternova north east of Kharkiv being the latest town confirmed liberated. It's been reported Russians left Vovchansk a day before Ukrainian armed forces got there today, and similarly Russians tried to outrun advancing Ukrainians in the rest of north east Kharkiv Oblast, but reportedly some units had been left behind and robbed civilians for means of transportation and civilian clothes to get away.

Where is the eastern line of contact right now is unclear however. While it could be expected Russians to try to make a stand along Oskil river, there's some reports Ukrainians might have crossed it already, and panicky Russian rumors from places as far as Starobilsk. There's also incredibly contradictory reports from Ļyman, with images of both Russian Luhansk levy preparing for defense and Ukrainian soldiers in the city that seemingly cannot be true simultaneously. Ukrainians have taken Svatogirsk west of it, and crossed the Donets river further east. There's no reports Ukrainians had pursued Russians over Oskil river at Oskil, but the whole northern bank of Donets river between Oskil and Kremnia is probably contested. What happens in the northern Luhansk Oblast behind it, only Ukrainian army probably knows, but how much presence they might have there right now is unclear, default assumption being none.
 
Meanwhile Ukraine announced it officially that talks with Russian units blocked on western bank of Dnipro in Kherson about their surrender are underway.
 
Lupus,

Your attitude is totally understandable.
To Eastern Europe, Ukraine-Polland-Baltic countries in particular,
Russia's imperialism is like Nazi Germany was to Jews.
So when I'm saying that the war is being used by outside interests too, I'm not trying to whitewash history.


But in lieu of Queen Elizabeth's death & Charles's secession and all the fascinating discussions these ignited re British Colonialism & Commonwealth
-- it'd be equally fascinating to hear similar discussions from you guys, re the Russia-Ukraine-EU-America conflict.

What maps or spheres of influence are Russia versus America-EU trying to redraw or maintain?
Are parallels to this appropriate?
 
If Sweden goes full asshole, what happens to their NATO entry?
 
Putin's meeting with Xi on the heels of Russia's stunning defeats in Ukraine did not go well for Russia. Putin acceded to virtually all of Xi's demands with no corresponding commitment on China's part. To one major point, China isn't going to provide Russia with any material military support.

While it's been broadly recognized that Russia became a junior regional partner to China after the fall of the Soviet Union, the current agreements have reduced Russia to a virtual vassal state to China.
 
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