Posted on 12/18/2022 6:00:35 AM PST by Timber Rattler
Fumbling blindly through cratered farms, the troops from Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry Brigade had no maps, medical kits or working walkie-talkies, they said. Just a few weeks earlier, they had been factory workers and truck drivers, watching an endless showcase of supposed Russian military victories at home on state television before being drafted in September. One medic was a former barista who had never had any medical training.
Now, they were piled onto the tops of overcrowded armored vehicles, lumbering through fallow autumn fields with Kalashnikov rifles from half a century ago and virtually nothing to eat, they said. Russia had been at war most of the year, yet its army seemed less prepared than ever. In interviews, members of the brigade said some of them had barely fired a gun before and described having almost no bullets anyway, let alone air cover or artillery. But it didn’t frighten them too much, they said. They would never see combat, their commanders had promised.
Only when the shells began crashing around them, ripping their comrades to pieces, did they realize how badly they had been duped.
(snip)
In interviews, Putin associates said he spiraled into self-aggrandizement and anti-Western zeal, leading him to make the fateful decision to invade Ukraine in near total isolation, without consulting experts who saw the war as pure folly. Aides and hangers-on fueled his many grudges and suspicions, a feedback loop that one former confidant likened to the radicalizing effect of a social-media algorithm. Even some of the president’s closest advisers were left in the dark until the tanks began to move. As another longtime confidant put it, “Putin decided that his own thinking would be enough.”…
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
... lumbering through fallow autumn fields with Kalashnikov rifles from half a century ago
—
AK-47: Designed by Kalashnikov in 1947
You can switch bolts on a Vietnam M-16 and a current-issue M-4.
Same rifle, designed by Eugene Stoner not long after the Kalashnikov.
But... Why would I believe anything from the New York Times?
Europeans know who destroyed those gas pipelines and eventually they’re going to start saying it out loud.
Fake news works until it doesn’t.
Keep that money flowing, winning !
Do you really believe the NY times? If they aren’t honest with us then they sure are lying about Putin. Propaganda is propaganda. They are trying to demoralize him.It may not be as bad as they say.
It probably meant rifles warehoused since the Vietnam era, remember the rusty, badly stored old rifles that we have seen being issued.
Is this the same NYT that dismissed hunter’s laptop for over 2 years?
Well, would you believe russian propagandists on russian state tv who say things aren't going well in Ukraine?
https://youtu.be/TEiFX4tIlw4
More realistically, the U.S. war. If we had not been heavily involved since 2014 and even more so now, we wouldn’t all be in this position. And no one asks themselves why we care SO much about this, when we didn’t care this much when they invaded with greater force at any point over the last 75 years. Why is the Ukraine THE place we all risk everything for.
“Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”
All the goodwill from the Marshall Plan has been squandered.
the part about making the invasion decision alone is far too believable ... and disturbing
and it seems like the Kremlin’s “press releases from the President” are actually in 2 distinct, different camps ... those that tow the hard-core Putin line (NATO is a US-led dictatorship, Russia is about to use nukes, etc.), and then a second, more-sane group (Russia wants to work with the US, nukes would only be a last-resort thing, etc.)
we’ve seen both of these groups go back-and-forth several times in the last 4 months ... there would seem to be some sort of internal argument going on in Russia ...
💥💥💥OK Commander Yug Kovalchuk said the Armed Forces of Ukraine are experiencing a shortage of shells for artillery. On the eastern front the situation is even more difficult for the Ukrainian army, where the ratio is 1 to 6, in Artemovsk it is 1 to 10, and there is no way to even the situation. The saturation of the front does not allow the Armed Forces of Ukraine to use tactics with light mobile groups💥💥💥
Unfortunately the NYT link does not allow one to read this “massive article” unless one signs up in some manner. Can anyone post a URL that will bypass this procedure? I would love to read the article but my computer non-skills make it hard/impossible for me to do so with the link available above.
Just like the Russo-Japanese War.
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.
