The Russian invasion of Ukraine (5 Viewers)

What's the current state of play lads?

RT app (website is blocked by my service provider, the app works fine, go figure) is sending me notifications of Russian victory and massacres of Ukranian soldiers by the Wagner group in Soledar. Here's a screenshot of the headline, horrific stuff if you're not a fan of war:

Screenshot_20230112-213553~2.png

Guardian says the fighting is still ongoing and Russia not in charge of the town, but I've noticed the war has dropped down in the headlines the past week or two regardless


Al Jazeera painting a grim picture as well


Anyone got any insight into this current Russian push?
 
Was just reading about Soledar.
Wagner is looking for a victory, anything it can plant a flag on. And it's choosing Bakhmut and Soledar, and throwing everything at it. All those lads it squeezed out of prison, and anything it can get from Russian airforce etc.
Prigozhin can then lobby for more influence/control/whatever.
The human costs are of course massive, but Russia has never ever cared about that.

No reliable news source is really claiming anything, just quoting Ukrainian officials. So who really knows?
But in these situations where it's not the feckless Russian army - who are seemingly only adept at killing civilians and not other soldiers - but actual trained and motivated mercenaries, Russia's numeric and materiel advantages are likely gonna have a significant battlefield edge.
Overall it looks bad for Ukraine here.

The towns - if military experts are to be believed, I dunno - are supposedly not strategically significant. The victories the Russians are looking for are specifically for putting on RT and the other propaganda outlets.
The edge gained is by Prigozhin in the Kremlin, more than Russia in the war.

Maybe this has something to do with the new lad put in charge of the war in Russia - again, who knows?


Or that's my reading of it all.
 
Was just reading about Soledar.
Wagner is looking for a victory, anything it can plant a flag on. And it's choosing Bakhmut and Soledar, and throwing everything at it. All those lads it squeezed out of prison, and anything it can get from Russian airforce etc.
Prigozhin can then lobby for more influence/control/whatever.
The human costs are of course massive, but Russia has never ever cared about that.

No reliable news source is really claiming anything, just quoting Ukrainian officials. So who really knows?
But in these situations where it's not the feckless Russian army - who are seemingly only adept at killing civilians and not other soldiers - but actual trained and motivated mercenaries, Russia's numeric and materiel advantages are likely gonna have a significant battlefield edge.
Overall it looks bad for Ukraine here.

The towns - if military experts are to be believed, I dunno - are supposedly not strategically significant. The victories the Russians are looking for are specifically for putting on RT and the other propaganda outlets.
The edge gained is by Prigozhin in the Kremlin, more than Russia in the war.

Maybe this has something to do with the new lad put in charge of the war in Russia - again, who knows?


Or that's my reading of it all.

seems to suggest the Russians are in control here now - at a huge cost in terms of casualties.

Not sure how much better trained Wagner troops are at this stage as they’ve had to replace losses quickly. Probably better equipped and have more flexibility operationally as they’re not fully tied in with the army structures.

Otherwise 100% agree with what you’ve put in above. Worth pointing out that Bakhmut is the main objective here, and they’ve been hammering away at that for months
 
Not sure how much better trained Wagner troops are at this stage as they’ve had to replace losses quickly.
Right, they have been getting walloped

Most of what I've read says they don't drop their weapons and run away when it gets rough.
This might be something to do with the fact that their fellow Wagnerians will bludgeon you to death with a sledgehammer if you do a runner

I should have said maybe not so much better trained, as more committed?
 
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Just for anyone that cares about the reference here - probably not many people

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Seemingly these Challenger yokes the Brits sent to Ukraine are capable of acting the bollix if you know how to drive them. The Finns and Poles seem to be sending German tanks. It might be a sort of once the precedent is set others will follow sort of deal.
The Challengers have already been dispatched though.
 
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I remember reading about how there are often billboards in the washington DC suburbs advertising fairly obscure military toys. they are essentially advertising to an audience of three or four decision-makers that happen to live in the area, but they have to maintain a polite fiction that they are actually advertising to the general public at large.
 
I remember reading about how there are often billboards in the washington DC suburbs advertising fairly obscure military toys. they are essentially advertising to an audience of three or four decision-makers that happen to live in the area, but they have to maintain a polite fiction that they are actually advertising to the general public at large.
This is true.
There'd be adverts on the DC Metro for all kinds of bizarre stuff. I remember seeing military HAZMAT stuff at one point, reading the specs as the train was going through some claustrophobic tunnel. As well as armaments and defense stuff there'd also run of the mill but extremely specific military pension funds and stuff.
 
I remember reading about how there are often billboards in the washington DC suburbs advertising fairly obscure military toys. they are essentially advertising to an audience of three or four decision-makers that happen to live in the area, but they have to maintain a polite fiction that they are actually advertising to the general public at large.

I think John Oliver did something pisstakey like this when Trump was in office. Buying ad time on the Fox News DC feed because they thought there was a good chance Trump would be watching.
 
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Emmanuel Todd was the guy who accurately predicted the specifics of the fall of the soviet union back in the mid-80s... he says we’re already in world war 3. worth a read.

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Emmanuel Todd was the guy who accurately predicted the specifics of the fall of the soviet union back in the mid-80s... he says we’re already in world war 3. worth a read.

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He says he agrees with Mearsheimer's analysis of the conflict: "Mearsheimer tells us that Ukraine, whose army had been overtaken by NATO soldiers (American, British and Polish) since at least 2014, was therefore a de facto member of the NATO, and that the Russians had..... announced that they would never tolerate Ukraine in NATO. From their point of view, the Russians are therefore in a war that is defensive and preventive. Mearsheimer added that we would have no reason to rejoice in the eventual difficulties of the Russians because......since this is an existential question for them, the harder it would be, the harder they would strike. The analysis seems to hold true."

Trying to remember what happened in 2014 that led to the Ukrainian army being "overtaken" by NATO.
Oh yeah, they were fucking invaded by Russia and had their own fucking existential threat, but actually a real one.
This guy's a waffler.
He's trying to establish a narrative where Russia are on the military defensive, when it's their fucking around and their invasion of Ukraine that got them here.
He's treating Russia like it's a rational actor, when it's a criminal organisation run by a thug.
I got about halfway through that but I think I got it
 

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