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As fatigue grows and morale wanes in Ukraine, defeat is a real possibility
The hill ^ | 3/29/23 | Mack

Posted on 04/04/2023 1:22:55 PM PDT by wardaddy

The Russian invasion of Ukraine recently passed the one-year mark and I fear the country is on the verge of losing to Russia.

As someone who has visited Ukraine multiple times on humanitarian missions, my last trip convinced me that the country is at a pivotal moment. Morale is slipping. I could see it in the eyes of the children. More importantly, I could hear it in the voices of their leaders, who continue to say all the right things but lack the same conviction as before.

……

While the Russian invasion of Ukraine is just a year old, the nation has been in almost continual conflict since 2014, when Russian-backed separatist movements in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine declared independence, and the Russian government annexed the Crimean Peninsula. As the Ukrainians approach a decade of death and chaos, President Putin knows that the Russians will win a war of attrition.

(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Extended News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: aholesandoligarchs; artillerymatters; blackrock; denazify; earlemack; loosethegorilla; loseyourgorilla
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To: norsky

Sounds about right!


61 posted on 04/04/2023 4:58:22 PM PDT by aMorePerfectUnion (Fraud vitiates everything)
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To: BobL

A Biden Troll back at ya


62 posted on 04/04/2023 4:58:33 PM PDT by norsky ( <P> <a href= > <hi/a> <P><img src=" "width=500"></img>)
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To: ought-six

When the Red Army liberated the Donbass, Kharkov, Kherson, Odessa, etc. from the Nazis, they received cheers and gifts from those who were in hiding. When the Red Army liberated Bukovina, Galicia and Volhynia, the people stayed in hiding. Thereafter, CIA funding flowed into Bukovina, Galicia and Volhynia to keep the hatred going. So if you are analyzing how to conduct ongoing destabilization operations after the end of the SMO your first error is assuming Ukraine as it was constituted as of the 2014 coup enjoyed a homogenious nationality where all parts will offer up recruits with enough hatred to be radicalized. The other factor you seem to underappreciate is how the social media surveillance state has the ability to identify radicalized influences. This capability will only increase as ai becomes more a part of civilian communication networks. I disagree if you think that guerilla war or asymmetric war will be effective, especially after the Bukovina, Galicia and Volhynia elements are “demilitarized.”


63 posted on 04/04/2023 5:03:30 PM PDT by frithguild (The warmth and goodness of Gaia is a nuclear reactor in the Earth's core that burns Thorium)
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To: norsky
“give globalism a chance, ok.”

Actually, I did. I grew up in a POWERFUL union-run culture, and desperately wanted to break them.

The Chinese did just that, so, like Rush, I initially supported them.

Then, in 1991, it became clear that China meant business, and not just for cheap labor.

I wanted them CRUSHED...but the SAME BUNCH that have given us the Ukraine War, figured they could cash-in on China for another 30 years.

Well, China is now twice our size economically (sure, we can make up numbers and claim they're in the Stone Age...but go visit some time, many of my friends have visited and tell me the numbers against us are FAR WORSE), and ONLY NOW they, the Neocons, want to step on China.

Fat chance. Too late.

64 posted on 04/04/2023 5:07:52 PM PDT by BobL
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To: wardaddy

Ukraine is a European problem not Americas.


65 posted on 04/04/2023 5:26:06 PM PDT by maddog55 (The only thing systemic in America is the left's hatred of it!)
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To: StAnDeliver

Party on.
Tell ‘em how you really feel.
Those next day wake ups can be a bitch.
I always liked my coffee black and bitter on those special mornings.
A Nice cheap cigar can be a godsend.


66 posted on 04/04/2023 5:27:24 PM PDT by Right Brigade (It was better before they voted for whats his name,this must be the New World)
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To: ought-six

“Russia has always faced such wars after “liberating” some country that didn’t want to be liberated. Most”

General Georgy Zhukov once remaked about the Germans “”We have liberated them, and they will never forgive us for that”.


67 posted on 04/04/2023 5:54:11 PM PDT by Right Brigade (It was better before they voted for whats his name,this must be the New World)
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To: hcmama

I despise the Russian government. I grew up as a military dependent in the Cold War and served through that period as well, so I fully recognize that my feelings on this matter are predictable to many. But it isn’t as if I didn’t pay attention to that region until this situation. I have read Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” at least five times, and I fully believe that what he described in his book fully reflected the jackbooted footprint on the Soviet Union’s populace at the time.

The brutal, bureaucratic, mundane, impersonal yet oddly personal tyranny of that ideology, and many like it. But the Soviet Union was at the apex. East Germany was far more focused, and almost seemed to take a perverse teutonic pride in their tyrannical efficieny which put the Soviets to shame. In comparison, the Soviet Union was just a giant, gaping maw, sucking in vast numbers of innocent and guilty, and it honestly, the simple fact that they did not really care who was innocent and who was guilty seemed to have been the whole point.

It was too much work to tell the difference. And they didn’t want to anyway, right? They just needed bodies to march through the snow with axes and saws to fell timber. It didn’t make any difference if those “bodies” were innocent or guilty of anything. But everyday Soviets, seeing those around them get sucked into that yawning black hole of nighttime prisons, interrogation rooms, bitter privation and brutality, well that was enough to scare most normal people so badly and fatalistically, that it made the government’s job easier.

When I served in the Navy, I would look off the fantail, and see Soviet trawlers, their upper decks swarming with men peering at us through binoculars, distant and implacable. I have no doubt at all there were Ukrainians on those trawlers, too.

Anyway, even with their differences (and I know those ‘differences’ were counted in the starved bodies of millions of Kulaks-I understand that) they are still two people tied at the hip. I wish they wouldn’t war with each other. I wish Putin would leave.

But if anyone wanted to see what happens in a world with a weak America...this is what happens.

When you see an American President holding a book in his hand whose subject matter is the masturbatory Leftist fantasy of an America that is no different from any other country...this is what you get.

I don’t dislike the Russians I have met. I have liked them. But I detest their government and I really dislike Putin, as I see him as no more than a KGB thug. That is my opinion on Russia.

But I don’t harbor any love for Ukraine. I am not painting them with propagandistic rose colored glasses, and I take zero joy at seeing what they are going through, and the lives they are losing.

I view Ukraine as being in a region which puts them both at odds with Russia and in league with Russia. After all, there were plenty of Ukrainians who had their hands of the various levers of power in the Soviet Union and seemed to relish it quite vigorously.

They are as corrupt as the Russians. And there is zero strategic interest for our country. We have nothing in common with them. They don’t hold the same values we do (or did). And the instant they feel safe is the instant they will freely kick us in the face if it serves their interests.

As long as there has been a Ukraine, there have been Russians next to them. And those Russians haven’t always treated them well, as the Kulaks will attest.

But it isn’t our business. If the Europeans are concerned with the situation, they should band together, pool their equipment and manpower, and do what is right for their national interests. But those interests are not ours.

We cannot afford to bankroll this. We are approaching $40 trillion in debt.

$40 trillion.

And if we DO try to do the “right thing”, not only won’t it be enough and will never be enough, but we will get kicked in the national teeth for doing so. And kicked by the people we “helped”.

I applaud Ukraine for serving in the Middle East.

Sure, they were something like 1,700 men at any given time in a standing force of 165,000, it was something, but they didn’t do it to be nice to us. They did it because it served their national interests in some fashion. And I fully understand we encouraged them to surrender their nuclear weapons, but that was what, 30 some odd years ago?

We do not serve those interests forever...unless it it in OUR national interests to do so.


68 posted on 04/04/2023 6:12:26 PM PDT by rlmorel ("If you think tough men are dangerous, just wait until you see what weak men are capable of." J)
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To: Right Brigade
Cigars

In my case la Gloria cubana soberano always or a monte Cristo or sancho panza habanos in a pinch

Third place

One and two my favorite things

Women and our spawn

Dogs

F8576-DB9-01-EC-4-CF6-A939-100-F4-A204-FBF

69 posted on 04/04/2023 6:37:37 PM PDT by wardaddy (Truth is treason in the Empire of lies)
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To: wardaddy
"As fatigue grows and morale wanes in Ukraine, defeat is a real possibility"

(Give me a sentence with the words 'defence', 'defeat' and 'Bakhmut' in it...)

How about, de hohos jumped over defence wif defeat to get de hell outta Bakhmut....

Recent witnesses describe hoho HMFIC Zelenski

LOOKING LIKE A BEATEN DOG

WHEN TALKING ABOUT BAKHMUT...
70 posted on 04/04/2023 7:02:19 PM PDT by ganeemead (Ukraine/Zelensky: Adding an element of chutzpah to ordinary Nazism...)
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To: frithguild

“When the Red Army liberated the Donbass, Kharkov, Kherson, Odessa, etc. from the Nazis, they received cheers and gifts from those who were in hiding.”

You forget that when the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941 Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis as liberators.

“When the Red Army liberated Bukovina, Galicia and Volhynia, the people stayed in hiding.”

Yeah, because that was Polish territory, and the people remembered that the Russians had invaded Poland in 1939 along with the Nazis. Did you even know that those areas were in Poland when Russia invaded in September, 1939? Bukovina was part of Romania.

“So if you are analyzing how to conduct ongoing destabilization operations after the end of the SMO your first error is assuming Ukraine as it was constituted as of the 2014 coup enjoyed a homogenious nationality where all parts will offer up recruits with enough hatred to be radicalized.”

Not at all. You are assuming that only pro-Russia people live in eastern Ukraine. That is far from the reality.

“The other factor you seem to underappreciate is how the social media surveillance state has the ability to identify radicalized influences.”

Nonsense. Even hardcore totalitarian states face underground opposition that conduct sabotage, assassinations, disruptions, attacks, etc. That is the very nature of such conflicts.

I don’t think you fully realize just how much hatred Ukrainians — of various ethnicities — have for Russia.

“This capability will only increase as ai becomes more a part of civilian communication networks. I disagree if you think that guerilla war or asymmetric war will be effective, especially after the Bukovina, Galicia and Volhynia elements are demilitarized.’”

You just proved my point: Guerilla or asymmetric warfare will be the RESULT of any “demilitarization” of western Ukraine (which you are really saying is the demilitarization of ALL of Ukraine: The elimination of the organized Ukrainian national armed forces). That would be fertile ground for the rise of asymmetrical fighters.

You seem not to know the bedrock of a successful guerilla campaign: The support of LOCAL people. There are enough and will be enough people in Ukraine with a white-hot hatred of Russia who will provide asymmetrical forces with intel, supplies, etc. But the most important of all is the intel; they can get arms and supplies from countries sympathetic to their cause. All they need is the commitment to persevere.


71 posted on 04/04/2023 7:06:38 PM PDT by ought-six (Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule. )
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To: Jan_Sobieski

don’t forget that the Afghanis had loose gorillas helping them.


72 posted on 04/04/2023 7:12:25 PM PDT by Palio di Siena
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To: Right Brigade

I actually have respect for Zhukov. He was by far the best general the Soviets had, and it was really a fluke he wasn’t purged by Stalin along with so many others. Still, Stalin did not like or trust Zhukov, but he was left with little choice but to elevate Zhukov. Did you know that Stalin knew Zhukov wanted very much to find Hitler’s body, but Stalin never told Zhukov that it had been identified and removed? Zhukov didn’t find out about the fate of the body until many years after the war, and after Stalin was dead.


73 posted on 04/04/2023 7:14:15 PM PDT by ought-six (Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule. )
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To: BobL

yup, you got that right


74 posted on 04/04/2023 8:36:08 PM PDT by norsky ( <P> <a href= > <hi/a> <P><img src=" "width=500"></img>)
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To: wardaddy

The writer is mentally ill. Let me translate his language.

As fatigue grows and morale wanes in Ukraine, defeat is a real possibility

He calls a foregone conclusion a real possibility.


75 posted on 04/04/2023 9:04:42 PM PDT by TTFX
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To: ought-six
"De-dollarization is what the US government gets for decades of bullying, wars based on lies and abusing the privilege of world currency to selfishly enrich American elites on the backs of other nations. The victims join together and say "No more!". Game over." -- Donald J. Trump, 4/4/23.

He's exactly right. And, if you and yours want to oppose Trump, get the tracks so the Trump train can run your sorry, corrupt asses over.

Trump or communism in 2024. It's one or the other. And, there are no other options since many as aren't voting for corrupt neocon foreign policies and politicans that allow rampant illegal immigration, the two holy grails of the swamp.

76 posted on 04/05/2023 8:56:22 AM PDT by Kazan
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To: Kazan

“And, if you and yours want to oppose Trump, get the tracks so the Trump train can run your sorry, corrupt asses over.”

Sod off, Ivan. I voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and will vote for him in the 2024 primaries, and in the general election if he is the nominee. Unlike you.


77 posted on 04/05/2023 9:55:31 AM PDT by ought-six (Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule. )
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To: ought-six

Halych has been a part of Poland since the 11th century, except for times after Poland has been partitioned. So, I know my basic history. We differ apparently on the genesis of a guerilla campaign. I agree there is more than enough hatred to secure recruits. My proposition is that such hatred remains nascient and dies a slow death without exterior funding and agitation. Your points are well made, save for the condesention, and I thank you for your thoughts.


78 posted on 04/05/2023 10:07:34 AM PDT by frithguild (The warmth and goodness of Gaia is a nuclear reactor in the Earth's core that burns Thorium)
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To: frithguild

Thank you for your reply.

But my condescension was in response to YOUR condescension. No more, no less.


79 posted on 04/05/2023 11:57:31 AM PDT by ought-six (Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule. )
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To: ought-six

I’ll have to look at that and be more conscious of my tone. Thanks


80 posted on 04/05/2023 4:47:17 PM PDT by frithguild (The warmth and goodness of Gaia is a nuclear reactor in the Earth's core that burns Thorium)
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