Posted on 07/01/2025 3:06:15 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
Russia has had and used the ability to shoot down HIMARS and Storm Shadow missiles for at least 2 years now. I know I posted about attempts to make it seem like HIMARS were a new game changing armament only to discover the Russians had been shooting them down for some time.
Usually the HIMARS were reported to have an impressive range, and then when I checked on a map they were fired short range. Then I discovered the US was sometimes buying SOviet era launchers so the HIMARS were not going to get those long range targets.
I am just saying this article is a) based on no known sources, just 'reports say' and b) once again in this war, weapons in use for some time are trotted out as game changers. Russia knew how to shoot down Storm Shadow missiles 2 years ago.
Footage Shows First Documented U.K. Storm Shadow Taken Down by Russia
By
Jun 30, 2023Russia may have shot down its first recorded Storm Shadow missile today, according to a weapons tracker in Ukraine.
The United Kingdom-supplied missiles were introduced into Ukraine's war arsenal in May at the urging of British Defence Minister Ben Wallace, who had said their capabilities—such as fire-and-forget technology and fully autonomous guidance—gave Ukraine its "best chance to defend themselves against Russia's continued brutality." A particular number of provided missiles was not declared.
Within days of Wallace's announcement, Moscow's Defense Ministry claimed it had "intercepted seven Storm Shadow long-range cruise missiles, three HARM anti-radar missiles, and seven HIMARS multiple rocket launchers" in the span of one day. Neither the UK nor Ukraine ever confirmed Russia's claim regarding the Storm Shadows.
One word: Hypersonics.
Score one for England.
Petrosius #4: "Which never happened."
Red6: "It didn't happen except according to Swiss and UN observers that reported on it and Congressional hearings in the US that discussed this topic and wanted to have the units involved banned from receiving any US financial and hardware assistance (long before this war ever happened), which was passed but then never really enforced."
All that Red6 language is pure Russian propaganda nonsense.
In fact, there was no civil war in Ukraine, ever.
There were only multiple Russian invasions of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, beginning in 2014.
Russian forces = mad-Vlad's Little Green Men -- using Ukrainian conscripts & civilian human shields.
Here are the facts:
War crimes charged to Russian forces:
Abuses charged to Ukrainians:
Red6: "It doesn't matter - even if presented by actual accounts of people that were on the ground (and not Russians) you'll just claim it's Russian propaganda, but when you read garbage like this article, you'll believe it whole heartedly.
You lost all objectivity a long time ago."
There is nothing ever objective about Russian propaganda, even when it's presented "innocently" here by our pro-Russian useful idiots.
Russian propaganda is always in service to two goals: 1) to advise its Nomenklatura, cadre, intelligentsia & other such elites, how to think about a subject and, 2) to befuddle the minds of Russia's enemies.
If, on occasion, Russian propaganda coincides with facts, it's just that, coincidence, never intentional.
So why would any reasonable person want to deal in such nonsense?
The Joek’s typical Wall O’ Text, all sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Yes,
What’s your point?
Both sides have done bad things before and during the war.
—
But the reporting is slanted entirely one way:
Wagner was reported one massively, but not Ukraines massive use of mercenaries (even before the war) nor their losses, or how they are recruiting in western nations and who is ultimately paying this (we are).
In fact we talk about about huge numbers of Russian casualties, but none for Ukraine.
We mention how Putin is mentally ill, sick and might die, that while Biden was our President - ironic.
We don’t talk about Ukrainian’s that are ethnically Russian. Nope, those don’t exist.
Bandera? Who is that? Azov got a little bit of attention early on, but the fairly large scale fascist influence in Ukraine is mostly unnoticed by our media. In fact, our social media will allow fascists posting in the cause of this war: https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-facebook-azov-battalion-russia/ (and just like that, Nazis weren’t so bad anymore).
Who was behind the 2014 coups that booted an actually democratically elected government, not a story.
Cancelled elections, no big deal.
American journalists thrown in prison and beaten to death, they probably deserved it. You would think if you throw journalists in prison or beat them, that would get the medias attention!
Using the civilian population as a human shield early on, hiding tanks and artillery in residential areas, not worthy to report on.
The daily loss of more ground, not reported on.
The failure of the 2023 counter offensive, not reported on once deemed a failure. Up until then, headlines every day and how Ukraine will surely win.
Every Ukrainian is eager to die for his country. They all love this war so much.
The demographics of Ukraine, no story.
Weapons and equipment sent to Ukraine found in Gaza and in the hands of Mexican Cartel, no story. The Ukrainians don’t even bother scraping the serial numbers off!
The economy of Ukraine, no story. But the Russian economy is imploding tomorrow, for sure, because of our vastly successful sanctions.
What ever happened to the Ghost of Kiev?
What really happened on Snake Island?
Tell me, where are the stories about where Mr. Z came from, his true rise to political power and who backed him, who financed him? How did a young, inexperienced, political no name, with no real money, seize control of an entire country?
—
What gets picked as a story and report on, how things are spun, matters.
The combination of censorship and propaganda on ((our side))) has defined the narrative and how people see this war. The information operations have been vastly successful.
However, the tower of BS we have built and pretend is true keeps falling over because shit isn’t a good foundation nor building material.
In the end, it’s Russia that is sitting on 20% of Ukraine, and Ukraine isn’t in NATO nor will be in the foreseeable future no matter how much were screaming that we’re winning the war because we killed 100 trillion Russians.
No, it is much better to just make up numbers from whole cloth that support your political views. So much easier, no? As I said, the numbers in the UN reports are based on those given by the two Donbas "republics" themselves. These republics never disputed the numbers published by the UN. If you dispute them then you need to say that these two so-called republics themselves are unreliable.
We are talking about raw numbers here. You may take issue with the UN analysis or commentary surrounding the numbers, but not with the numbers themselves, unless you have an alternative source. What is your source? Do you have an objective source with reliable numbers that challenges the numbers given by the UN?
And if you are so skeptical about the UN reports, why do you so easily accept what Moscow claims without that same skepticism? This pro-Russian narrative, that the whole world is part of a vast globalist conspiracy and that Moscow's claims should be taken as the gospel truth and never be questioned, is really getting old.
I'm not surprised the source for Bro's point #2 in his post is an article posted on a biased website. They dress up their agitprop in neutral trappings but just reading their website exposes their leftist agenda.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, the head of 'Responsible Statecraft' is also senior advisor to the Quincy Institute. The Quincy Institute's solution for peace in the Ukraine includes mandating that Russia pay to reconstruct Ukraine (taken from frozen Russian assets), and that Russia accept a Western–armed, trained, and maintained Ukrainian military force capable of deterring and defending against any new invasion (ransomnote: which Europe can't provide, looking at You, America). This, of course, is what provoked Russia to war in the first place - the overthrow of the Ukraine by Western forces who then constructed military fortifications while arming and training a 600K Ukrainian army to take on Putin.
Ben Armbruster is the Managing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He previously held senior editorial and management positions at Media Matters, ThinkProgress, ReThink Media, and Win Without War.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/think-progress/
Even left leaning Mediabiasfactcheck puts ThinkProgress on the Extreme left bias.
* Overall, we rate ThinkProgress Left biased based on story selection that always favors the left and Mixed for factual reporting based on a few failed fact checks.
He also worked at Mediaite.
Even Mediabiasfactceck says Mediaite is left biased.
Founded in 2009, Mediaite is a liberal news and opinion blog covering politics and entertainment in the media industry. It is the flagship blog of Abrams Media, a ring of blogs run by ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams.
For the record, here's how Mediabiasfact check rates Free REpublic.
I notice those on FR for the purpose of agitating for Ukraine are more likely to present alternate reality as facts; I feel like they used to try to hide it a little but now simply restate reality to suit their needs.
Forgetting about Russia's interference in Ukraine when they pressured Yanukovych to betray his electoral mandate and renege on the EU economic agreement, are we? You know, what started this whole thing in the first place. Oh, I forgot, Ukraine belongs to Russia and they can do whatever they want, right?
This caused a war, and it really was our decision: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-president-zelenskiy-holding-talks-with-biden-adviser-says-2021-12-09/
Trump would have NEVER led us down that road.
This was entirely needless: no pressing national security need for NATO expansion into Ukraine.
It was foreseeable that this war would happen: the Russians blocked NATO expansion in the Republic of Georgia 2008 and made it very clear that NATO expanding into Ukraine would end in armed conflict.
It was predictable how this would end: Ukraine will by all measure lose.
Why did the Biden admin do this? Pure speculation, but IMHO, we gambled and bet on the fact that the Russians would not want to pay the price of blocking Ukrainian NATO accession through force. We had been building up Ukraine for 7 years, and they were/are a formidable force.
Biden knew this was an issue the Russians would freak out about: https://www.facebook.com/rishibagree/videos/1997-the-only-thing-that-could-provoke-a-vigorous-and-hostile-russian-response-w/1131428724346357/
Realize this was 1997 and Biden was on the wrong side of the issue; the Baltic states did join in 2004 and there was no war. Again speculation, Biden learned the wrong lesson. He figured the Russians would yell and make threats but ultimately acquiesce.
Biden gambled with 41,000,000 lives and cost the US taxpayer $200,000,000,000 so far.
This is a war where you have all the pro-Democrat MSM and social media on board.
Biden was a Democrat.
And he was doing the big corporations and oligarchs bidding (again, MSM will follow suit).
They and the bureaucracy, NATO as well as DC insiders that don't want to see EU expansion without a corresponding NATO expansion (that would lead to us diminishing in influence), wanted this as well.
—So, you have people that support this Ukraine war that call themselves “conservative” endlessly quoting pro-Democrat media today.
—Talking about Russian “talking points” which are mostly censored, while they quote Democrat talking points.
—They talk about Russian propaganda, which is mostly censored, while they literally quote propaganda (government information operations intended to change perceptions in order to influence behaviors) from Ukraine and our own government.
That's what feeds them what they want to hear.
People like that are not interested in the pursuit of truth and when you shake their world you usually get a personal attack as a response.
They're not necessarily bad people and we all are like that at times. They just “wish” things were a certain way and look for those “facts” which tell them what they want to hear and mute out everything which is contrary.
False analysis. You are buying into the Russian lie that this was about the imminent expansion of NATO into Ukraine. In fact, that was not going to happen. France and Germany both objected and a formal invitation to join has never been offered to Ukraine. Additionally, the NATO Membership Action Plan requires applicants to first settle ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes. Thus Russia holds a veto over Ukrainian membership as long as it controls the Crimea and Donbas. NATO expansion is a great talking point but does not hold up under scrutiny.
You are also ignoring statements by Putin and other Russian nationalists that deny Ukraine being a real country or Ukrainians being distinct from Russians. It has been their long term goal to bring Ukraine back under Russian control. Nor are they hesitant to say so in their own literature. It was perceived NATO weakness, not the threat of expansion, that caused Putin to attempt to correct what he has stated was the tragedy of the 20th century.
peeuuutin humiliated!
We attempted to do this in the Republic of Georgia 2008 where we were moving fast.
Example: If we want someone in NATO, we'll get them in NATO, even if it's a Muslim, non-Euro nation (not Atlantic), not a real democracy (run by a military junta at the time) had waged war with its Greek neighbor and there was tension. Even if there were HUGE issues in Cyprus at the time where both the Turks and Greeks were involved, we were getting the Turks in. We wanted Turkey in NATO because in the Cold War we wanted to station nukes along the Soviets, what was referred to as, their “soft underbelly.” So, Feb 18, 1952, the Greeks and Turks came in.
NATO is our club and all requests to join are brought to us (not the other members). We are the kingpin in all of this. We pay the most. We bring the heavy and big assets into the game. We provide the big numbers in people and equipment. We created it. When we want someone to join, they get in because the other member states ultimately fall in line behind us. Being the one that pays also has its privileges.
—
It was NATO expansion into Ukraine, that is what Biden himself said and offered: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukrainian-president-zelenskiy-holding-talks-with-biden-adviser-says-2021-12-09/
That was the topic which the Russian mentioned as their point of contention.
That is what proceeded the force build up by the Russians along the Ukrainian border.
That is what the Russians wanted to negotiate about and where we basically stonewalled them for three months (Nov - Jan).
—
Saying it wasn't NATO East expansion is not a realistic argument.
It's you that is falling for the Russian aggressor, unprovoked, Putin madman, Cold War Soviet imagery that is peddled off by (((OUR))) propaganda.
I do not believe the Russians really wanted this war.
I think we drove them in a corner and thought we could get our way.
I think this is a case where our political and economic interests took precedence, we simply ignored, and hand waived off Russian security concerns (which are apparent even to a layperson) and thought we could steam roll our way. We gambled with something where there was no true need to gamble, and we gambled with extremely high stakes. It was just plain and simple HORRIBLE policy by the Biden administration for which the MSM and social media practices apologetics because he's a Democrat.
Getting us out of this mess is going to be difficult and maybe even painful.
Think about how biased the MSM really is.
When Biden gets us tangled up in a proxy war with a nuclear power, a nation that can engage in proxy conflicts against us around the world (Africa / Middle East), that is a major economic influencer, and oil/gas producer our media talks about how great that is.
LITERALLY, our MSM cheerleads for war.
Then a Republican, Trump gets elected. The same MSM which said nothing negative about getting into the conflict in Ukraine, doesn’t question its continuation even though there was an opportunity early on to end it, which won’t MENTION any derogatory topic on this war in Ukraine, suddenly within one week talks about how Trump failed to end the war. The MSM went negative regards Trump almost immediately!
This is the reporting you get now: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/25/politics/trump-russia-ukraine-peace-efforts-language
Where was CNN talking about “strange wording” when Biden couldn’t speak a coherent sentence?
This should be really simple for you to understand: CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NYTs, Washington Post, LA Times, Dallas Morning News... all of Meta.
Democrat = good
Republican = bad
Biden = Democrat. So, Ukraine war is good.
When you get pulled over by the police for speeding, you might just get a warning, or likely a ticket.
But if you act erratically, don’t follow instructions, and the cop has to pull you from the vehicle, tase and cuff you, whatever deal you had when he initially pulled you over, is off the table.
Once Russia seriously bled, whatever deal Ukraine could have had (and they would have gotten off easy) was off the table.
—
Ukraine was a gamble. I don’t think the Biden administration expected Russia to physically stop us. The cost for Russia physically stopping us would be high and I believe Biden simply thought they would accept us forcing the issue with NATO.
Based on more reliable sources, Russia by mid-June 2025 had about ~390,000 casualties in total (mostly WIA, but also some accidents and POW), ~45,000 of those ~390,000 were KIA. Russia has ramped up their war spending from ~4% GDP to about 7.1% GDP. Russia is indeed paying a high price.
But then we committed another gamblers error, where when you lose, you bet higher stakes and/or keep playing in the hopes of winning back the losses.
There is no “winning back the losses.”
Russia having paid a “high price” will at this point not give back what they paid for. Like Crimea, that’s just lost ground and Ukraine making demands for pre-war borders in any sort of negotiations is a “non-starter” and they know that too. That’s how you pretend to negotiate but don’t really want peace, set demands that are knowingly out of scope. It is Ukraine that is the obstacle to peace.
If Ukraine had even the slightest chance of winning back the losses, that faded away in 2023 with the failed counter offensive. Reported as highly successful of course, until it wasn’t, and then it just disappeared from all reporting.
Ukraine is shrinking every month, little by little as Russia is keeping the pressure on, that is a fact.
Why do you think stories about territorial gains and losses have disappeared from our media? No propaganda there! (sarc)
Russia also needs to keep the pressure on so that Ukraine cannot build up a reserve and mount a counter offensive as in 2023 (the last of its kind). But at this point, Ukraine is only losing more the longer this war rages on. They have been losing for about 18 months straight now.
Now it’s just a question of how much Ukraine will lose, and if they don’t end it, it will be more next month, more the following month, and more the month after that.
—
The Euros will NOT go it alone no matter what they say. That’s just more of them fluffing their feathers and wanting to be important, but like EU membership they said would happen anyhow, it isn’t happening. That would be sticking their neck out beyond what their risk tolerance allows for.
The public in the West is growing war tired, there is a realization that things have NOT gone how it was sold in the MSM, and there is a very high economic cost for the West also.
Why do you think all these stories early on in the war, where politicians brag and we list all the equipment going to Ukraine, have disappeared from the media? I bet now it’s even “classified.” These stories have become a political liability, so you won’t see US politicians standing before hardware bound for Ukraine today. The US public support (majority opinion regards war spending) went against the war about 2 years ago.
Ukraine needs to accept help in finding a way to end this.
Those politicians like Biden (gone) which probably caused this war, the German Scholz (gone), UK’s Johnson (gone), Trudeau (gone), Macron (still in office), Duda (gone), who all were part of the calculus for this war are moving on. Opposition parties that are war critical like Germany’s AfD are gaining momentum.
Again IMHO, events like this are not what they appear: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/06/dominant-trump-has-meeting-suited-up-zelensky-sidelines/ When Trump shot Mr. Z at the last visit about his suit publicly, that was a way of asserting dominance, telling Mr. Z who the boss is. For now, the US is still on board with helping Ukraine, but we want this war to end, and you need to look at it like a count-down timer.
It’s not just Trump, politicians and political parties in other nations are assuming or gaining in power that are far more skeptical of this war. The handwriting is on the wall - the unwavering support for Ukraine will begin to waiver. If I were Mr. Z, I would look for a way out now because once a noose gets put around his neck, his negotiating position gets even weaker.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
