Posted on 03/02/2022 3:00:48 PM PST by FreedomForce
Sympathy for the outnumbered and outgunned defenders of Kyiv has led to the exaggeration of Russian setbacks, misunderstanding of Russian strategy, and even baseless claims from amateur psychoanalysts that Putin has lost his mind.
A more sober analysis shows that Russia may have sought a knockout blow, but always had well-laid plans for follow-on assaults if its initial moves proved insufficient.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
We sure do live in interesting times
Sometimes, that’s all that I can say
Or ‘strange times’
Another difference is that in a country like Ukraine, where literacy is near 100% (in multiple languages) and there is a large proportion of people with technical skills, rather than live in a war zone, people will simply leave, and they’ll be gladly given visas elsewhere in Europe.
It’s a different story in a poor, uneducated country like Afghanistan, where people climb on the wing of a cargo transport plane, thinking it will give them safe passage to a Western country.
I predict alot of people here will be embarrassed by what they fell for and commented in recent days.
You don’t need a great percentage of the population to be against you in a city of two million. VSU are fighting dirty, placing MRLS and SPGs in residential areas.
If you’d look at “protests” in other locations, they are laughable, like astroturfed crowds of 200 people.
80% east of Dnieper want the Russians there.
Very true.
There's been a lot of emotionalism. Dissidents and questioners have been denounced as traitors. There've even been requests to Jim for censorship.
We saw this with the Vaccine discussions, and I dare say we'll see it again with the next big story.
The end result is (hopefully) that FR gets better and tougher, because FReepers get better and tougher.
....Kherson has officially fallen. Kharkiv and Mariupol are expected
to fall by this weekend. Then Kiev will follow after.
I’ll welcome them back to sanity. I’m willing to forgive authentic conservatives who called me a “Putin lover” in a fit of pique while they thought they were defending the underdog.
except we are seeing this kind of resistance throughout the northern border area on up to Sumy and beyond in medium and small towns
from the attacks on troops and tanks and other vehicles looks very much like a grass roots resistance that was not at all expected by the Russian military based on their initial tactics
“Didn’t roll through in a rout”
They’ve still got about 15 days to go to match the American “lightning capture” of Baghdad.
I think you have that right.
“Putin is NOT crazy and the Russian invasion is NOT failing.”
The Kremlin propaganda ministry approves of this message.
[Here’’s another take on Ukraine and Russia advancement
....Kherson has officially fallen. Kharkiv and Mariupol are expected
to fall by this weekend. Then Kiev will follow after. ]
I’m sorry I’m so behind the technology, but what the heck is the flame coming out of the back of the launcher, when there’s nothing coming out of the missile? How does the launcher work?
Now, years ago it became evident that Hertling was turned and despite his military credentials he is demonstrative that ribbons and bars are no hindrance to servants caving into the insanity of the Left.
It is a strange thing to behold, yet it is manifest before us.
I wonder why you mentioned him here.
The videos of “Russian tanks” burned in Sumy are the early propaganda of this war.
There is an artillery academy in the city, and the stupid cadets decided that it is a new Alamo.
You can expect nationalism from young cadets, but they caused mayhem that resulted in their barracks being destroyed.
Some idiots drove two SPGs and several Army trucks downtown, whereas the Russians realized who they were dealing with and didn’t even kill the idiots, but kicked their asses and sent them home.
After attacking Republicans in 2016 Ted Cruz again felt the need to describe the January 6 protest as terrorism and attacked the Republican base again. The Cruz apology tour was epic and quite sad. Cruz was forced to appear on Tucker Carlson where he apologized and was flogged publicly.
There are still huge Cruz fans on this forum and they long for the day that they get a win.
The problem with all of these maps of who speaks different languages and who voted for Yanukyvich and so on is that everyone has a brain and can decide an opinion for themselves regardless of what language they speak and so on
You can try to force people into categories of your own preference but human nature is just not that simple
I hear Yanukyvich is in Minsk and speculation is that Putin wants to make him the puppet President of Ukraine
But Yanukyvich’s day is long over. That was before the bloody slog in LPR/DPR, the thousands of holy martyrs on both sides, the hardening of attitudes, the change of Lukashenko in nearby Belarus from elected president to dictator with rigged elections, young people in Belarus leaving in droves, Putin becoming ruler-for-life in Russia in rigged constitutional voting, and on and on.
Things change, opinions change. Poland in the EU is even more prosperous and strong now than it was in 2004.
Just look around here. At one time George W. Bush was pretty popular around here.
How popular is he now?
Thanks for those maps. I was just looking at a copy of the 2004 electoral map and wondering how to stick it on FR.
Whatever the post war settlement is, it will needs to be robust against artillary sniping and incursion. A political boundary along a natural barrier like the Dneiper would seem like part of the solution. Especially as Russia will want to control the waterway.
But the likely demographic/russophile split doesn’t quite follow the line of the Dneiper. Wonder how it will be solved.
Every country between Russia and the Adriatic, is divided by political forces and cultural civil wars.
The US Gov’t is observed to be obsessed with participating on the left-wing side of both foreign and domestic cultural civil wars. In addition to being giddy with its dream-state of vain superiority over
- what people think
- what the air temperature should be
- what sea levels should be
There are so many “experts” of the left-wing, who are so certain of their imperial cultural divinity, and their absolute authority.
Except that they cannot tell you, when they say “global warming” — that is, relative to what temperature?
IOW, “experts” in charge at, and within government, have no basis other than whom, or what, they accuse . . . of being “politically incorrect.”
But the Russians have experience with a basis for western freedom and stability in the form of President Reagan.
And the Russians had some sense of — at least some international basis for stability — when President Trump was able at certain moments un-molested by the left-wing.
Unfortunately, since the corruption of the 2020 US election, Russian leadership have become a bit un-glued by no longer finding a STRONG FRAME OF REFERENCE where at least some prior western leadership was, formerly, hinged.
Now un-hinged, whoever is actually running the superficial “Biden Administration,” is a 1960’s campus radical committee with “its finger on ‘the button.’”
That, is un-nerving, to say the least; thus, now Russia reacts, to a world of left-wing group-thinker who are infatuated with de-stabilzation as sport.
In other words, Putin significantly does not trust whoever are the nutcases on the other end of the phone line, when supposedly, Biden is.
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