.
Posted on 05/16/2022 2:23:27 PM PDT by marcusmaximus
Ukraine ping
Mr K: [As a president you should make sure forces are equipped and trained. Then you just say “DO THIS” and let them figure out how to do it. That’s their job]
That’s the kind of thing Putin is guarding against - the possibility of a coup. It’s what hobbled one kingdom after another. For instance, Valentinian III killed Aetius, the man who defeated Attila the Hun, because he feared Aetius might do as other Roman generals had - put himself (using his son as a proxy) on the throne.
Putin’s personal involvement is aimed at strangling in the cradle any intrigues against him. Unfortunately for the Russian military rank and file, this is a very inefficient way of fighting a war. This inefficiency translates into higher costs in men and equipment and fewer battlefield successes than could otherwise be achieved.
The biblical quote applies - “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” - just substitute throne for soul. The conqueror who unified Japan, Oda Nobunaga, trusted his subordinates a little too much. Akechi Mitsuhide, one of those men, killed Nobunaga and his son in an unguarded moment. Similarly, Stalin’s closest confederate, fellow Georgian Beria, had Stalin poisoned.
The war is just a sideshow. Putin wants to stay in power *and* win the war. If the war gets in the way of his continued rule, he will throttle it down and keep it low level the way he had done in the Donbass since 2014, until he erroneously got the idea that Ukraine was just an Anschluss away from reincorporation into the empire.
Hold on to power first; everything else is secondary.
As did Hitler and he lost his ass. He was an incredible politician. We are blessed he involved himself in tactics and military policy of war. HE LOST HIS ASS!
Guardian & “Western sources” mean it’s made up.
oh wow! so ol’ putin is doing to russian forces, what LBJ did to American forces in Vietnam!!
.
Hitler made only one completely correct major decision during the war. That was to reject the German General staff’s plan to reprise the failed Schlieffen plan from 1914 in favor of Erich Von Manstein’s audacious “sickle cut” maneuver at Sedan on the Meuse river from out of the Ardennes forest, which led to the fall of France in six weeks.
The other partially correct move he made was to not allow the German Army to retreat from in front of Moscow in the winter of 1941 during the Zhukov/Vasilevsky counter offensive. He may have prevented a rout of Army Group Center.
After that, Hitler dismissed the Army’s commander in chief, Walther von Brauchitsch, and personally assumed command of the Wehrmacht. It was completely downhill for the German war effort after that.
That’s some great historical detail.
Bravo. A virtuoso performance on that post.
Ausgezeichnet! (Otlichno!)
Which news sources are reliable?
War criminals LBJ/McNamara. These two were directly responsible for many US deaths.
With the level of new spectacular material coming into UKR from the West and USA and the ongoing training 24/7, and the high motivation of the troops fighting to reclaim their country from Russian Invasion (vs the low motivation and morale with substandard Russian troops using guys as cannon fodder and abandoning positions, fragging officers, coming over the line for cash rewards from UKR with tanks, etc), it is only a matter of time it attrits in the direction against Moscow, and they are driven from both Donetsk and Luhansk, and even perhaps from Crimea. No way Russia can go on to win this 3 day war which is now into its 81st day.
I think ethnically Russian citizens of Donbass deserve their independence from Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis that have persecuted and tried to murder them for eight years.
What you're not getting is that our government fomented the Maidan revolution that installed a government illegally that pandered radicals that wanted to exterminated the ethnically Russian population. We literally funded and trained neo-Nazis do all that.
What I don't get is why people like you defending the horrific policies of the Obama and Biden regimes, specifically of Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken. They are the ones behind all of this.
“What I don’t get is why people like you defending the horrific policies of the Obama and Biden regimes, specifically of Victoria Nuland and Anthony Blinken. They are the ones behind all of this.”
But, I’m not. I think Victoria Nuland should be brought up on charges.
Why do you pro-Russia FReepers always accuse anyone who opposes Russia’s invasion of being Bidenistas, or Neocons, or Nazis? There are a hell of a lot of us on FR who oppose the invasion because we recognize it for what it is: The aggressive action by a bully against a smaller and weaker neighbor who posed no real threat to Russia. It’s not so much that we support Ukraine, it’s more that we oppose Russia for its aggression. We just want Russia to get out of Ukraine, and leave Ukraine intact.
But you don’t want that. Hell, I bet you’d oppose a settlement whereby Russia got to keep Crimea, but that’s it.
Go on record now: Would you support a settlement that left Crimea in Russian hands, but it gave up any claim to any other Ukrainian areas or territory, and would not foment separatist movements; and it withdrew all its troops out of Ukraine?
I look forward to your answer.
As for the Russian citizens in Donbas, I assume you know that Russia started handing out Russian passports like candy to the Donbas prior to Maidan, as it was using the same playbook it had used in the Caucasus years before: Hand out Russian passports to people in neighboring countries that Russia desired, stir up separatist sentiments among those people, foment chaos, then ride in to rescue the “Russian citizens” and occupy and annex the new territory. Putin used that scenario in Ukraine because it had worked before.
And, guess what: China is going to use that exact same playbook vis-à-vis Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District.
Go on record now: Would you support a settlement that left Crimea in Russian hands,
***I support Ukraine, and I would not support such a settlement. The borders should be the ones that Russia has already signed up for in 1994, in exchange for nukes. If the Ukes had kept those nukes they never woulda been invaded twice. Russia invaded over oil/gas/ports/grain/resources.
His strategy is known as Operation Putin on the Blitz!
This means that even colonels and brigadiers in Putin’s army have no decision making ability.
That explains their paralysis in the field
Over the years, I have had discussion with many Muscovite elites, who regarded Moscow as the rightful 3rd Rome.
And these were not even the direct Politburo and “military
brass” derivative mega billionaire oligarchs of today, let alone Putin.
And children are both academically sheltered from the horrors their own Soviet elite literally subjected societies to, while promoting Moscow’s society as the necessary ruling elite over a continued socialist/Marxist Russian Federation and subordinate CIS apparatus.
To the majority on FR who have been brainwashed into Putin cyborg’s and cannon fodder, (and will never believe the truth as Yuri Bezmenov argued would happen) — this is largely the reality on the ground in Moscow.
Western penetration of the RCC and WCC, their “demoralization”, and total societal moral depravity were the KGB/FSB generational goal, and they have done it.
Men’s hearts didn’t need the extra debased moral alchemy, but here we are.
Hilarious!
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.