Here we go again-Ukraine once again

[Jimbuna]

[Reece]

^

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Vladimir Putin has vowed to continue attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure despite millions being left without electricity or water.

Putin is worse than Hitler in my opinion, what a miserable piece of crap, Slimy maggot!!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Risk of Russia using nuclear weapons has lessened, says Germany's Scholz

The risk of nuclear weapons being used in the Ukraine conflict has lessened "for the time being", says German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

"Russia has stopped threatening to use nuclear weapons in response to the international community marking a red line," Mr Scholz said.

On Wednesday, Russia's Vladimir Putin suggested that Moscow would only use nuclear weapons in retaliation.

But the US denounced the comments as "loose talk".

Russia's capacity to use nuclear weapons has come under increased scrutiny since it invaded Ukraine in February. In an address to the nation in September, Mr Putin said his country had "various weapons of destruction" and would "use all the means available to us", adding: "I'm not bluffing."

In an interview on Thursday, Mr Scholz said that his recent visit to China had contributed to "putting a stop" to the threat of nuclear escalation.

He said that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping were in agreement that "nuclear weapons must not be used" and that the G20 countries had reaffirmed this position shortly afterwards.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63900195

Hug - the little man has spoken! The world is taking notice! And even the great Xi has shaken his hand (with the other he loads the planes that fly to Russia without transponder identification).

[Skybird]

Looser.

Correction: drunk looser.



No matter the near and distant future: he is done, and he knows it.

This not necessarily is good news for Ukraine. He will be replaced with somebody from the very same gangster cartel that he stems from and has helped to establish further inside the Kremlin, and outside. His sucessor easily could be even worse than Putin was himself. So even if Putin is done", it does not mean the war is won for Ukraine - it can still get bombe dinto oblivionm, without Putin. There are wannabe-leaders standing behidnPutin who are much worse than Putin is. And Russia still has many bodies to donate to the "cause". And huge stockpiles of old, outdated but nevertheless boom-booming ammunition. That is no nice perspective for the civil population in Ukraine.

Macronman babbles of security guarantees for Russia. He parrots the Russian proganda narration there: Not Russia needs such guarantees, since nobody was threatening Russia with war and invasion, but the ukraine needs such guarantees.Question is: what would they be worth? They got guarantees when they gave up their nuclear weapons. They got guarantees again after the Russian invasion 2014. Now they wanz such guarantees again, especially and namely from Germany.

Germany...? With its hopelessly reduced numbers of soldiers and platforms, and plenty of ammo reserves that are capable to sustain a hot war for 48 hours, not longer...???

If there is one country whose security guarantees necessarily can only mean nothing, then Germany.

The ukraine, so I read, fires more ammo in 5-7 days than the whole forces of the UK have stored right now. The eimmense consummation rate of ammo means big troubles for NAOT countries and the US, for next year the rates at whioch it has been handed out hardly can be maintained any longer, not to speak of replacing the missiles and rounds given to ukraine: it will take many years to even replace what has been given away now. Thats is especially true for the US.

[mapuc]

You right he's done-The big question is:

Will he go peacefully or with a huge bang

Markus

[Rockstar]

Tuff call, I agree with Skybird that Putin most likely would be replaced by someone just like him, or worse. But how far would the new leaders power extend remains to be seen. Too many cracks in the Empires armor has been exposed for me to think it can stay together long enough to consolidate power.

[mapuc]

We all expect a replacement by someone just like him, or worse

What if Russia gets a second Gorbachev.

I don't know to be honest, which is the most likely outcome after Putin is no more. Will he be replaced with someone like him or worse or...

Markus

[Dargo]

Originally Posted by mapuc

We all expect a replacement by someone just like him, or worse

What if Russia gets a second Gorbachev.

I don't know to be honest, which is the most likely outcome after Putin is no more. Will he be replaced with someone like him or worse or...

Markus

I see no Andropov who was Gorbachev closest ally in the Politburo on his deathbed he indicated his desire that Gorbachev succeed him and there is no Gorbachev only a majority of hardliners that find that Putin is too soft.

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Dargo

I see no Andropov who was Gorbachev closest ally in the Politburo on his deathbed he indicated his desire that Gorbachev succeed him and there is no Gorbachev only a majority of hardliners that find that Putin is too soft.

I was thinking on a person unknown for the ordinary people in the West. Who will be the second Gorbachev

Markus

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

Kremlin critic Yashin jailed for 8 years for 'fake news' on Russia war

One of Russia's most prominent opposition figures, Ilya Yashin, has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years for spreading "fake news" about the country's military.

One of few Kremlin critics to stay in Russia after it invaded Ukraine, Yashin continued to speak out against the war.

He was arrested after he condemned suspected Russian war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

Soon after the invasion, Russia made reporting "false information" a crime.

Several Russians have since been given jail terms, but Yashin's sentence is the longest so far.

He denied the charge, but Judge Oksana Goryunova said he had knowingly disseminated fake information about the Russian armed forces.

Last April, he had spoken on his YouTube channel about the killing of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians by Russia's occupying forces in Bucha, outside the capital, Kyiv.

He told the court that he had given both the official Russian and Ukrainian versions of the story. During the video, he shared images and stories from the scene by the BBC and others. Russia's defence ministry has condemned the accusations as a fabricated "provocation" and images of dead civilians as "staged".

Prosecutors had called for a nine-year jail sentence. His lawyer Maria Eismont said they would appeal against the verdict.

In a post on the Telegram messaging app, Yashin told supporters there was no reason to be sad: "We told the truth about war crimes and called for an end to the bloodshed."

Russia's best-known opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, said the "shameless and lawless verdict by Putin's court will not silence Ilya", describing him as probably the first friend he had made in politics.

Interviewed by BBC Russian in July, Yashin said his arrest had not come as a surprise, as Russian authorities had made clear that there were only two alternatives for Kremlin opponents: emigration or jail.

Asked whether he could still challenge Russia's president from prison, he said it was important there were people in the opposition prepared to resist.

Speaking outside the court on Friday, Yashin's supporters condemned the jail sentence as unfair and a violation of the right to freedom of speech.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63915301

[Jimbuna]

Perhaps war should have started earlier - Putin

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is disappointed by the statement of former German chancellor Angela Merkel that the signed Minsk agreements gave Ukraine time to prepare for war with Russia.

This is reported by Censor.NET with reference to Interfax.

In November, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her stance on Ukraine at the Minsk peace talks gave Kyiv time to defend itself against the Russian military better.

Putin said Merkel's statement was "unexpected" for him and "disappointed" him.

"Frankly speaking, I did not expect to hear this from the former federal chancellor. I always assumed that the leadership of the Federal Republic behaved sincerely with us. Yes, of course, it was on the side of Ukraine, supported Ukraine. But it still seemed to me that the leadership of the Federal Republic has always sincerely sought to settle the principles we agreed upon and which were achieved, including within the framework of the Minsk process," said the Russian dictator.

According to Putin, Merkel's statement "speaks only of what we all did right in launching a 'special military operation.'

The President of the Russian Federation also stated that Ukraine allegedly did not intend to comply with the Minsk agreements.

"I hoped the other participants in this process were sincere with us. It turns out that they were also deceiving us. The point was only to pump Ukraine with weapons and prepare for hostilities. We found our way late, to be honest. Maybe even earlier all this (the war. - Ed.) had to be started," Putin added. Source: https://censor.net/en/n3386026

Erdogan will hold talks with Putin and Zelensky: They will discuss "grain corridor"

The war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine is associated with serious political, economic and humanitarian damage to the entire world.

As reported by Censor.NET with reference to Anadolu, this was stated by the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Turkish leader emphasized that his country strongly supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

At the same time, Erdogan said, Turkey opposes inciting contradictions in the region through "unthinkable policies towards the Russian Federation."

He announced that on Sunday, December 11, he will hold negotiations with Russian dictator Putin on the topic of the grain corridor.

A conversation with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is also planned. Source: https://censor.net/en/n3385951

[Dargo]

The recent successes of Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv and Kherson offensive operations has given rise to countless speculations about the future course of Ukrainian actions. It is becoming more obvious that Ukraine will do its best to exploit to the fullest extent possible this window of opportunity that has been opened by the combination of Ukraine’s skillful defense, Western aid and Russian miscalculations. The Ukrainian top brass hope to make significant progress before Russia completes the process of integrating recently mobilized recruits into the fighting force and creates defense-in-depth along the major operational directions.

In their grand strategy, the Ukrainian authorities have made clear that Kyiv will not agree to any temporary ceasefire or truce (Svoboda, November 15). Such a stance reflects bitter lessons from the Minsk-1 and Minsk-2 agreements, which not only did not guarantee the return of the occupied parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to Ukraine but also ended with the initiation of Russia’s large-scale aggression on February 24. Moreover, unlike 2014 and 2015, when the Minsk agreements were forced onto Ukraine due to Russian successes on the battlefield and were treated as a means to alleviate Russia’s preponderance in firepower, today, the battlefield dynamics do not favor Russia, as Ukraine possesses Western-supplied long-range precision firepower.

Any speculation on future Ukrainian actions should proceed from analysis of the present operating environment and existing constraints. But first, it is necessary to recall the recent developments that have led to the current state of play. Ukraine’s military leadership skillfully exploited the fact that, even after withdrawal from northern Ukraine, the Russian side tried to do too much with too little—not only in attempting to hold a lengthy frontline (approximately 1,100 kilometers) but also in hoping to advance in eastern Ukraine with a grouping of forces numbering only 330,000 troops (Lb.ua, June 12; Liga.net June 16). Thus, Russian forces reached the culmination point of its military strategy in August 2022 without any major accomplishments. Then, Ukrainian actions further destabilized the front by baiting Russian formations toward the western part of Kherson region. This opened a window for the Balakliya-Kupyansk offensive operation (see EDM, September 13). Next, Russians were forced to withdraw from the western part of Kherson region due to a successful combination of Western-supplied long-range firepower targeting command-and-control nodes and vulnerable logistics links over the Dnipro River, complemented with frontal advances. In sum, Ukraine was successful in its operations at the extreme fringes of the Russian frontline.

As a result of these successful Ukrainian actions, the length of the Russian frontline decreased from 1,100 to 880 kilometers (km), of which 380 km constitute solid river barriers (Zaborona.com, November 25). Furthermore, the front-line configuration resembles a curved semicircle with a depth from 70 to 130 km on dry land. This brings three key developments. First, the Russian grouping must now maintain almost half the frontage it did in the summer, with forces that include a withdrawn contingent from Dnipro’s right bank plus recently mobilized units to create the proper density of troops for proportioning along the front. Second, this smaller frontage makes it easier for Russia to anticipate the directions of future Ukrainian offensive operations while making it harder for Ukraine to execute successful strategic deception in the direction of the real advance. At the moment, there are two possible directions for such an advance—Melitipol-Berdyansk and Svatove-Kreminna. Third, the current configuration of the front makes it impossible to achieve strategic effects with just one major flanking strike, which was the case in the First Gulf War and Second Karabakh War. In other words, a sequence of operations is still necessary to liberate the remaining occupied territories. And these operations will need to be conducted under different conditions compared to those in the Kherson or Kharkiv offensives. The Kherson offensive was based on exploitation of a unique geographical feature—vulnerable to precision-guided missile links over the Dnipro. The Kharkiv offensive was made possible by successful strategic deception resulting in a weakened Russian frontline with no reserves and true defense-in-depth. Moving into 2023, Ukraine must be prepared for more taxing offensive operations, as the price for both penetrating Russia’s tactical depth and exploiting its weaknesses will be much higher than in the Kharkiv and Kherson offensives.

All this leads to a simple but still important conclusion: Ukraine must improve both its capabilities and capacity in preparation of major offensives in 2023 through increased aid from Western partners. On this, in an article published on September 7, Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhniy and former Air Assault Forces Chief Mykhailo Zabrodsky stated that, for successful offensives in 2023, Ukraine needs to create 10–20 new combined arms (presumably mechanized) brigades (Ukrinform, September 7). One such brigade by pre-2022 Ukrainian standards would consist of approximately 44 main battle tanks (MBTs), 132 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers (IFV/APC), 24 self-propelled artillery and 12 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS). Furthermore, recently, adviser to the Ukrainian Presidential Office, Mykhailo Podolyak, pointed out that Ukraine needs approximately 150–200 MBTs, 300 IFV/APC, 100 howitzers and 50–70 MLRSs (Pravda.com.ua, November 20).

In particular, Ukraine’s fire-power capabilities and capacity need to be strengthened. Despite the positive effect of Guided MLRS (GMLRS) shipments and utilization, Russia still fires four or five times more shells than Ukraine on a daily basis—approximately 20,000 on the Russian side compared to about 4,500 on the Ukrainian side (5.ua, November 6). While the rate of 20,000 shells a day is a massive decrease from the 40,000–60,000 rate of consumption by Russia, it is still a rather large amount, which could impede a possible large-scale Ukrainian offensive. To gain fire-power parity, Ukrainian forces need more howitzers and GMLRSs, along with the proper intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment.

Overall, this is the general environment Ukrainian forces will operate in during the 2023 campaign. Currently, large-scale Ukrainian offensive operations are highly unlikely due to two major factors: the strain on forces following the successful 2022 campaign coupled with an off-season coming before a major freezing of the ground along the frontlines in January and February of next year. But even such a pause will not prevent Ukraine from leveraging its GMLRS capabilities to target Russian logistics and to impact the resolve and morale of Russian forces. A minimalist Ukrainian goal during the coming winter is to ensure that Russian units move past the point of no return in terms of morale and resolve.

At any rate, it is obvious, at the moment, that the next stage of fighting in the Ukrainian-Russian all-out war will require more investments in terms of capability and capacity from Western partners to continue the streak of Ukrainian successes on the battlefield in the fall of 2022—a period when Ukraine exploited major Russian miscalculations at the operational level.

https://jamestown.org/program/future...he-frontlines/

[mapuc]

As Skybird wrote in his latest comment

He's finish and he knows it

Fits in this article

Gallyamov revealed the plan yesterday morning via Telegram, quoting an anonymous source who assured he had information on the matter. The escape project, according to Gallyamov, was planned last spring and dubbed “Noah’s Ark.”

https://news.italy24.press/world/256593.html

Markus