Mungler

It’s reported on MSM (and to save a few the trouble, yes, it must be a pack of lies) but word is the Chinese don’t want to back a loser….

Blimey, paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs about what? It's so pedantic and so wearing and once again whatever point is attempted to be made is lost in reams and reams of..... The key point from today's Russian TV clip is that being locked up (and that is locked up for 15 days, 15 weeks or 15 years) for disagreeing with the government is an appalling state of affairs, but hey, that's living free in Russia right? This isn't even about "protesting" - just "disagreeing" can get you locked up. Indeed, a quick Google lands on this chap who got a 7 stretch https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-08/russia-sends-official-to-prison-for-7-years-for-anti-war-comment?leadSource=uverify wall The very fact that the first recorded broadcast criticism of the Russian government's approach to the war (weak criticism that it was) came only last week on state TV and after a particularly bad week in Ukraine for the Russian government (or highly strategized tactical withdrawal as some would have us believe), and was remarked on because it was the first time. We now wander into how it's just as bad in the UK and with people being locked up and disappeared. Utter nonsense and an attempt to distract.

On the subject of the machine translation, it doesn't matter. In an earlier episode a liberal suggested that there should be peace talks (and lightly suggested that the invasion wasn't a great thing to keep going at) and the response to that "subversion" / "act of treason" was the sincere threat of being locked up. Indeed, it is simple dissent that can get you locked up, nothing more heinous than that - that is the takeaway from this democracy and free speech paradise that is Russia. As for source bias - that's a clip of a Russian TV show on state TV. The show was introduced to this thread as marking the first time there had been open dissent on TV about the war and as perhaps signalling winds of change. Some disagreed and suggested that in the wholly free democratic society that is Russia and where people who upset Putin aren't routinely murdered or thrown out of windows, there had in fact already been well documented open dissent about the war in free speaking Russia. Others disagreed. You're wandering off topic with numbers of men deaths and so on, and I am not sure where you get your facts and figures on the progress of the war, but you should take them with a pinch of salt.

It’s machine translated. 15 days or 15 years, it’s locking people up for questioning the government. I was merely pointing out that the reality of the situation in Russia is at odds with some of the claims already made in this thread. If you wish to start a new discussion about what does or does not happen in Ukraine then feel free. It’s a shame there’s a draft on in Ukraine, but that is because that country has been invaded. I can’t see though that the Ukrainian military is particularly in the doldrums or lacking in morale as might be the case with pressed conscription - as is the case for the Russian troops who appear to be more keen on aborting and going home than fighting in another country for someone unknown reason put forward by Putin.

Let’s see if they ask for help first eh? What your missing in that post though is any commentary on how the invasion of Ukraine has been a massive boomerang for Putin, or do you believe that all events are still part of a grand plan he has? 😆 In other news we will recall the debate about free speech and democracy in Russia and the Russian media watch link to the panel TV show where there was the first open criticism of the invasion / war (albeit no direct mention of Putin or criticism of Putin because no one is that daft or prepared to avoid all windows forever more). Well here’s the follow up where another panelist reminds that any criticism gets you 15 days in jail and how chummy who spoke out last time will get his in due course. Now, nothing says free wheelin democracy and media like 15 days inside for expressing disagreement with your government 😆 https://twitter.com/nickTheWink/status/1570232251723677697?s=20&t=M4poMNVuNbUjpq00Q2emqA

Nothing says compliant vassal state quite like widespread protests (and the rape and torture of pro-democracy campaigners). I'll take it as read that it was NATO, the CIA and the Lizard people fueling the opposition. Anyways, I lay £10 to a pro Ukrainian refugee charity of your choice that there's trouble on the streets in Belarus by the time the year's out. Cut and paste from Wiki. The 2020–2021 Belarusian protests were[8] a series of mass political demonstrations and protests against the Belarusian government and President Alexander Lukashenko.[69][70] The largest anti-government protests in the history of Belarus, the demonstrations began in the lead-up to and during the 2020 presidential election, in which Lukashenko sought his sixth term in office.[71][70] In response to the demonstrations, a number of relatively small pro-government rallies were held.[46] The protests intensified nationwide after the official election results were announced on the night of 9 August, in which Lukashenko was declared the winner. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opponent of Lukashenko, rejected the results as falsified and claimed instead to have received 60–70% of the votes. On 14 August, she announced the creation of the Coordination Council, with membership applications open to all Belarusians who agreed that the official election had been falsified.[6][72] On 23 September, Belarusian state media announced that Lukashenko had been inaugurated for another five-year term in a brief ceremony which was held privately.[73] The following day, the EU published a statement that rejected the legitimacy of the election, called for new elections, and condemned the repression and violence against the protesters.[74] The protesters faced violent persecution by the authorities. A statement by the United Nations Human Rights Office on 1 September cited more than 450 documented cases of torture and ill-treatment of detainees, as well as reports of sexual abuse and rape.[75] At the end of 2020, the Viasna Human Rights center documented 1,000 testimonies of torture victims.[76]

Or maybe the majority of Belorussians not wanting to be part of the evil empire any more. Hey, where have we heard that recently? Oh no, it's another NATO, CIA, Lizard plot. Damn those NATO, CIA, Lizard busybodies.

We've got Baltic fleet sailors with 1 week's training being pulled out of burning tanks, so yes, I think those 2000 low grade troops were slightly higher grade than the other cannon fodder being used by Russia. All we can do it sit back and watch. Belarus has got to be due a shake up about now as the ripples cross the pond.

Today’s fun fact. Azerbaijan is carrying out incursions all along the border of Nagorao Karabakh. Looks like they’re going to invade again and Armenia is screaming for help. This means that the Russian peacekeeping troops must’ve been pulled out and sent to Ukraine. So, it looks like Putin can no longer support his allies and the knock ons for that are going to be very interesting.

Russia is currently in the process of calling a UN Security Council meeting to complain about arms supply to Ukraine. Since Friday Russia has very kindly donated around 400 tanks, 1,500 infantry fighting vehicles and 1,000 trucks to Ukraine. Russia is currently Ukraine's largest arms supplier. In other news I see the Russians have lost another of their super expensive modern fighter bombers. Add up the ships, planes, helicopters, tanks, trucks etc and then factor in long term sanction damage (and we are now seeing the effect of the earlier tech sanctions) and this will go down in history as this biggest self inflicted disaster. I still don’t see how Ukraine can win in this, but at the same time I can’t see how Russia can either and it’s their pantomime which they started. There we go.

You are bonkers. That first link, if you read it goes on to confirm that the host of the show immediately closed down the dissenting voice. I initially thought the link was to the TV anchorwoman who dissented and got arrested. The other links follow a similar pattern - dissent, closing down and taken off air / off line. Again, and for the third time I still have absolutely no idea what point you think you are making or who you think are arguing with or what about. You’re losing your grip - must be the loss of that Dacha 😆 Oh and this made me chuckle

Those links / clips you posted don’t stand up to scrutiny. Again, find me some broadcast clips of open criticism of the war / Putin, before last week. If you think there is any objectivity in Russian media about the invasion (and it is an invasion and not a special military operation 😉) then post them and let’s have another look. Alternatively I suggest you spend a few minutes on the Russian media watch Twitter feed (above). That’s got some cracking stuff on it. For all your moaning about putting words in your mouth, I still have no idea what point you think you are making or who you think you are arguing with or what about? Bizarre. Indeed contrary and bizarre.

None of those links stand up to any scrutiny. The first, the reporter was arrested, the second was only 2 days ago (sic where I started that the only sniff of open criticism has come now with a massive series of defeats in Ukraine [or tactical withdrawals as you will have us believe]), the third if you read the article you will get to the bit ‘CNN reviewed the articles, which were taken down almost immediately after they were published on a pro-Kremlin news site’ and the you tube ones are external to Russia and clips from US network TV talking about Kremlin issued state propaganda. You are entirely contrary in your views and I have no idea what you are trying to say. Indeed what are you saying? Until about 2 days ago there has been no critique or dissent in Russia that lasted more than but hours until taken down / the broadcasters arrested. I post the first clip of open dissent and you claim what? That there’s been open dissent throughout? That the Russian people have had free access to balanced reporting and information? That RT today isn’t the state mouthpiece? That the Russian state until last week were tolerant of dissent and open protest against the war?

You are talking out the back of your hat. There are far too many murder suicides, people falling out of windows and being locked up for opposing Putin to suggest that it's some sort of modern liberal free thinking and free speaking regime. You love a trawl of the internet. I found one single clip posted by the Russian media monitor group that for the first time has a whiff of disagreement with the Kremlin's current strategy being verbalized out loud by two panelists on the show, but of course no one dares to mention the name "Putin" out loud in any of that or say anything directly contentious. If it's all so liberal and free out there, you will no doubt be able to find a similar number of broadcast clips. There's a prize for finding a TV clip where someone directly says something like "Putin has got this wrong" ney "Putin may have got this wrong". Report back and let us know how you get on.

What did you get paid out out of interest? If you don't want to put it on here but don't mind spilling the beans then drop me a PM

In a word ‘Yes’. This is the first and only time anyone has dared to utter any public criticism of Putin / those in control and which is why it is so interesting. If you watch the studio clip, one of the old guard actually tells one of the liberals to watch and take care in what they say in criticising those in charge. There’s also a mood change about Putin in Chinese media, but that’s for another time.

For the first time there is open dissent (albeit with a small ‘d’) on Russian TV. It appears that those under 50 who have been exposed to the norms of the West, are questioning the whole war invasion empire building thing. However, those over 50 are insistent that Putin’s ‘as long as it takes view’ is hunky dorey because it’s all about drug addled Nazis and these lot want mobilisation, everyone else’s children sent to Ukraine to fight and for the nukes to come out. There is a machine translated TV show in the feed below - it’s worth a watch and to see where the divisions are.

Sauron = Putin Orcs = Russian soldiers Come on, you must have seen one of the Lord of the Rings films 😀 Edit Sauron’s unpopularity in Mordor (that’s Russia to you) has even made it onto the MSM 10 pm news. Where are the resident Russian shills - there’s at least 2 big Putin fans on here who have been on the missing list for the last week.

Not too sure why they used a Mercedes estate hearse. And the last car in the convoy was an X5 BMW. The world is watching.

That was published in 2014 and yet the whole of Ukraine has mobilised to fight Russian invaders. Go figure.

Borrowed from elsewhere: Why is Mordor losing? Because it is a Potempkin stake. It has become, under Sauron, a delusional kleptocracy. His first action was to steal the TV stations off the oligarchs because, ironically, they were criticising Yeltsin's trivial Johnson level corruption. Sauron is a KGB trained propaganda expert, so it seemed natural to him to convert the by now Westernised and vibrant TV channels into a propaganda tool. His propaganda is very good, nothing like the boring, worthy Soviet crud. They've retained Western production standards, just changed the message. His next step was to take the Orc economy away from the greedy and flaky but money-making and smart oligarchs and give it to his KGB cronies, who just milk it for yachts and Italian villas while 20% of the population have no plumbing. He can get away with this because vast gas and oil reserves stop the whole thing collapsing. The whole edifice is absolutely mired in corruption and theft from top to bottom, propped up by oil, the genuine opposition murdered or jailed, a fake opposion of extremist psychos bought and paid for, and the truth hidden by a solid wall of well made and lively propaganda. So how does all this economic dim-wittery cause them to lose? Everything not nailed down is stolen, the whole war is based on a lie, the budget is tiny, the high tech kit is vapour ware, nobody will ever tell anyone any hard truths, and everything is shoddy and broken. The orcs are being beaten by an enemy who ran away or had already been killed using weapons that had already been destroyed, led by a handful of pedophile Nazis off their faces on drugs, apparently. Amazing really. Now reality has popped round and smacked the orcs in the face, as reality has a nasty habit of doing. Guardian exclusive today saying "“[It] was a big special disinformation operation,” said Taras Berezovets, a former national security adviser turned press officer for the Bohun brigade of Ukraine’s special forces." Unfortunately this is directly contradicted by the UKR General Staff, who say the counter offences are concurrent. I think it actually goes as follows. In Kherson the plan was to get as many Orc forces in as possible, blow the bridges to starve them of supplies, and slowly artrite them and blow up their logistics with HIMARS. This has always been obvious, so obvious that when the Orcs fell for it I was concerned it was an Orc trap in some way. They couldn't be THAT stupid, surely? Fortunately, yes, they could, for the reasons given above. As I feared they attacked towards Mykolaiv, but they got nowhere. However that set off the Ukranian counter attack early. As a result the orcs aren't really short of supplies yet, so UKR aren't really winning. But they're not losing either, and as the orcs start running out of hard to replace supplies UKR should begin to grind them down and out. It was always likely that UKR had another army that it would use to attack Zaporizhzhia or Kharkiv. This again was widely commented on and it was no surprise to anyone when they had a go at Kharkiv. No surprise to anyone except the Orc high command it seems, who had stripped the place bare. The front collapsed far faster and far more catastrophically that anyone imagined it could. The orcs were so shocked they actually exagarated the loss, bs-ing they were pulling out of Kharkiv region to reinforce Donbas. In fact the orcs have not left the region, and are fighting hard in Izium and Lyman, both of which they claimed to have pulled out of, presumably anticipating they'd have to. This is the kind of fixed battle UKR don't like, so let's hope they don't get bogged down. Although UKR territorial gains are nice, the point of the exercise was to take Kupiansk and Izium, which will make Orc logistics much more complicated. This is how wars are won, you cut off the enemy supply lines. It took the orcs three months to take Izium and four days to lose most of it. Kupiansk is long gone. UKR needs to tidy up now, take the rest of Izium, and make the rest of the border the Oskil River. The critical offensive remains Kherson, but having seen what happened in Kharkiv you'd be brave to bet against UKR there. UKR are not the underdog any more. Because they have mobilised, they have a bigger army - the orcs are persistently short of manpower. What UKR cannot do is stand toe to toe with the orcs and punch, because the orcs have way more old fashioned innacurate artillery. So long as everything in front of them is hostile, the orcs can flatten it. But UKR is far better equipped to make vast numbers of accurate strikes, so it can dance around the orcs and destroy them, and it is no longer stretched for manpower. The hard part, for UKR, is fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk. The orcs just blast them endlessly with artillery, slowly grinding their way through, leaving a smoking ruin behind. However once UKR have cleared Kharkiv and tied up the Orcs in Kherson, they are then free to attack the orcs in Donetsk and Luhansk from multiple directions at once. The game will then be a different one, and one that suits UKR far better. UKR haven't won, not by a long shot. But they've made it obvious they CAN win. That leaves Mordor with some difficult choices to make, politically and militarily. There are a lot of intersting things that have enabled UKR to do better. One is the fitting of AGM-88s to their Soviet era planes. These have forced the orcs to pull their AA missiles right back, out of HARM's way, which in turn means UKR drones like Bayraktars can fly undetected and unmolested under a 1,000 meter ceiling. The orcs seem to have used up their HARMs in the first days of the war in a failed attempt to totally destroy UKR's AA once and for all. Not only that, but although the Orc planes have the ability to carry high tech guided munitions, orcs don't seem to have any stocks, again, for the reasons I gave in the beginning. The orcs lost another 50 million buck SU34 the other day, because the planes have to come down low to drop unguided munitions. Because of all this the orcs have been using very expensive guided ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles. These are accurate and devastating, but they can't make these as fast as they are using them. Also, they are persistently wasting them through poor intelligence, the most egregious example being hitting a concert hall in Vinnytsia with five very expensive missiles when they meant to hit the airforce headquarters across town, all because of a similarity in names. In an effort to preserve stocks the orcs tried firing massive 1960s shipping missiles, but these just miss and bring bad publicity, partly because they are giant overkill. You fire something designed to sink an aircraft carrier and with no GPS guidance at a small factory making tank parts and you blow the absolute stuffing out of a shopping centre half a kilometre away. Then Zelensky goes on TV and accuses you of genocide. The honest truth, "Our weapons are rubbish, so we missed" isn't much better. Meantime for relatively short range accurate missiling they are using S300 anti aircraft missiles. These are more accurate, but still not good enough, being designed to hit aircraft, and they cost a million bucks each. In the same role UKR are using HIMARS, which are pin point accurate and cost 150k a go. The UKR approach is to dash about the place with ATVs and drones, call in a HIMARS strike on anything heavy they find, the HIMARS being safely miles away, and then take over with troops. Their weakness is nowhere near enough armoured personnel carriers and trucks, and we need to send them a boatload, now. Germans have them... Neither side is using airpower much, UKR because it doesn't have any, orcs because lack of guided munitions gets it shot down. When it comes to close air support, both sides are firing rockets from their own sides of the lines and running home. Girkin had a go about "excessive caution", someone got a kick up the backside I assume, because the next day the orcs lost two ground attack aircraft and a helicopter and have wisely returned to excessive caution.

Pretty sure things were better, much better for Ukraine before being invaded by a lunatic lead neighbour. Yeah, great plan that whole invasion thing has transpired to be; cracking plan, something well thought out and a plan to be proud of. Mind you, the country appears to have allied and United behind Zelensky as leader and done rather well against a superior aggressing force. Conversely, it’s heading towards being more up in the air in Russia right now. Great plan. That Putin, he’s a shrewd one… so we were told at length.

‘When it didn’t have to be’ Not really. The choice was binary either let Russia role in and take over day 1, or fight. Russia had all the choices, including the choice not to invade and the choice to withdraw. I’d guess that if Ukraine make it through this there will be deals and NATO support / stationing going forward - if only to ensure that Russia doesn’t regroup and do this all over again. As for the super oil nuclear power that is Russia, that would be the same Russia with the economic output of Italy. And yes, where we are now, all the matters is what comes next after Putin…

Indeed, and there lies the madness of all of this.

The whole ‘should have just let them in’ thing doesn’t wash and is easy to say tucked up in a comfy bed a thousand miles away. Indeed they will know better than us the consequences of Russian rule and they made their choice as they were entitled to do. Reuters and others now reporting widespread Russian collapse in Ukraine. Funny, no mention of a tactical withdrawal and tactically leaving all their kit behind. Moscow has sealed off public places to stop rioting and theres silence from Putin & Co. But increased criticism of the regime - we’ll see if that goes anywhere or if it’s just more people that need to stay away from windows. Incidentally, the ‘get flattened’ bit didn’t do Germany any harm and those Russian sanctions will drag on and on. This could well be the end of Russia as we know and the end of Putin, which makes this is a very dangerous time as all bets are now going to be off. .