• @Julianus
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    22 years ago

    So NATO powers said something and Putin starts waving nukes? He should be more concerned about having failed to achieve air superiority over Ukraine. Turkish drones are wrecking his armor columns there, stalling their advance upon Kiev.

    • @a_Ha
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      22 years ago

      Best case scenario : Drones and such prove to be quite effective, + … no this is too good, i cannot say. I’ll wait for Putssin to have the surprise. Well, he may know already since the tanks are not moving.

    • @gun
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      -42 years ago

      What failure? It seems like they can strike targets with impudence. I think a lot of folks who think Ukraine is holding Russia back are about to be sorely disappointed. In only a week Kiev is being encircled. How long will it hold out without supplies? In the end it’s obvious Russia will get what they want, no matter how long it takes. Ukrainian government is on a suicide mission not negotiating at this point, but the civilians are the ones who pay for it. Shame.

      • @Julianus
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        22 years ago

        That isn’t exactly clear, yet. Russian losses are much higher than the last time they invaded in 2014. Russia mastered information war, but conventional war has evolved and Russian doctrine hasn’t kept up. Economical Turkish-made drones ignored the Buk SAM’s fake news and have been lighting them up instead. This could easily turn into Russia’s next Afghanistan.

        • @gun
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          2 years ago

          That isn’t exactly clear, yet.

          Is it not clear from all of the communications infrastructure that was hit yesterday? Ukraine seemed pretty helpless to stop that. I keep hearing Ukraine is holding Russia back, but it’s always holding them back further and further away. They are losing ground. Everyone admits this.

          Russian losses are much higher than the last time they invaded in 2014.

          Of course they are higher. In Crimea, they were met with no resistance. And the scale of intervention in Donbas is still debated. But now, there are boots on the ground around major cities. Of course losses are higher than 2014, because Russia didn’t invade all of Ukraine in 2014.

          Russia mastered information war, but conventional war has evolved

          It’s literally the opposite. Russia lacks soft power capabilities like exporting propaganda. This is why you see all of Reddit and twitter screeing “Putin bad!” and Ukrainian fake news getting published by major news orgs.

          This could easily turn into Russia’s next Afghanistan.

          Except there’s a reason Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. The country is one giant desert and mountain range. Resistance fighters, even a few, can hide in caves and use explosives and land mines to deter even a massive and well equipped army.
          But Ukraine is part of a region called the Eurasian steppe that is flat for thousands of miles and has no significant geographical boundaries. It has changed hands hundreds of times. It is the reason the Mongol empire and Russian empire were two of the biggest empires in history.
          Russia’s only challenge is trying to complete their operation without hurting too many civilians.

          • @Julianus
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            12 years ago

            Every day is Opposite Day at the Kermlin. You can know the truth because it’s always the opposite of what they say. How many times have they been caught in a lie? FSB got caught red handed planting bombs on Russian buildings in order to justify the Chechnyan invasion. They denied their separatists shot down MH17 and opps got caught. Those little green men aren’t Russian soldiers, they are just private citizens just roaming around armed as they please, really. So many examples!

            No soft power? How is the Black Widow sitting in an American prison for funneling Russian money through the NRA? What is RT, but a propaganda exporter? Why did Wikileaks stop criticizing Russia, exclusively? It’s becoming clear that soft power is all they have.

            • @gun
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              -32 years ago

              You act like RT is such a big deal in the west. It was just banned in the EU. So much for free press. On the contrary, lots of people use facebook, twitter, and google, watch BBC and CNN. And they are publishing made up stories about a “Ghost of Kiev” which was actually from a video game. Also publishing pictures of a bandaged woman next to an exploded building which was actually from a gas accident in 2018. There are 25 such cases of disinformation corrected here: https://maldita.es/malditobulo/20220224/hoaxes-misinformation-russia-ukraine/ This is just on day one.

              A lot of this disinformation comes straight from Ukrainian officials, who claimed things like Turkey was closing off their straits to Russian warships, which they had to later deny. They also claim absurd casualties on the Russian side, which the US only accepts a fraction of. Again, there are dozens of examples.

              Remember that even Washington Post admitted the idea that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russian government a conspiracy theory after it was discredited. Julian Assange is a whistleblower like Snowden or Chelsea Manning who the US is desperately trying to silence. If you mindlessly believe whatever the US propaganda says, then you see him as a state enemy, when he is actually reporting what the government is doing that they are trying to keep a secret from us.

              Michael Flynn’s guilty plea and the Mueller report were seen as a smoking gun that something really was going on. But Flynn’s plea was retracted and the result of the Mueller report was a big embarrassment for Rachel Maddow and her friends. But I bet you still think Russia gate is real.