No, but they care a lot about not losing online arguments, and there is a difference between spinning/denying something that depends on second order analysis vs outright lying in a way that can be debunked with straightforward first hand photos and video.
Told you. If you follow this war and especially the domestic Ukrainian media for long enough you start to understand how the Banderites and the Kiev regime think. They are obsessed with symbolic actions and PR. They need to be. They perpetually depend on optics for their next money and weapons shipment.
And Alipay added an option to use foreign credit cards
Only credit cards or also debit cards? That would be very useful to know.
PR operation. They were looking to get a photo and a headline showing to their Western sponsors that they are “still in the fight”. It’s how they keep the money tap flowing.
Yeah i don’t buy that theory either.
There are many out there saying that the two efforts in Pokrovsk was some heroic rescue mission to rescue some high ranking general or indeed two very important CIA operatives and indeed because the real reason may be utterly unfathomable to normal human beings, this may well be a narrative that Ukraine ultimately, put out to justify these two hairbrained missions.
The truth is far more chilling and far more disturbing than most people can possibly fathom, it is also one that no one in the west ultimately wants to admit to or have you realise, indeed, you may still not be able to accept the uncomfortable truth and may opt for a wild conspiracy theory as a comfort blanket. So the facts of the two failures are very straight forward.
Ukrainian sources claim the operation was to disrupt enemy positions, clear strongpoints, and restore supply lines, this is nonsense and shows that the reason for the operations is even something they wish to conceal.
The first mission, which was launched the night of 28 October, dropped 11 GUR commandos in an open field northwest of Pokrovsk’s industrial zone. The video showed troops disembarking and fanning out rapidly. Insertion was at night/low visibility to minimize detection, but Russian reconnaissance drones spotted the low-flying helicopter and destroyed the 11 commandos.
The subsequent mission, which was launched on the night of 30 October using two Blackhawk helicopters, inserted two groups (total ~20–24 troops) in the same general area and they suffered the same fate as the first group.
That is the bare bones of the mission. Now lets deal with the nonsense of high ranking generals.
Not a chance. When front line hardened troops and mercenaries were being pulled out of Pokrovosk a week before and raw recruits on suicidal drives were being thrown in to the cauldron, if you think for one moment, some general was left behind, think again.
Even the Ukrainian radio chatter confirmed this.
Likewise the very silly idea that two high ranking CIA operatives were inside and had not made it out, while some mercenary soldiers from France were pulled out weeks earlier. It is simply not the case and covers the real reason for the botched missions and that was to plant a flag.
I will say that again it was to plant a Ukrainian flag on the steelworks.
Bullshit right ?
Ok, there have been attempts at flying helicopters in before, remember the suicide mission to the Azovstal steel works?
Everyone, including yours truly, thinking some high ranking officer must be in there, turned out there was no one of any real importance in there, the men who died trying to get in were carrying a large Ukraine flag found among the wreckage.
The Ukrainians have form on this before, sending a suicidal dinghy crew to plant a flag in areas already secured by the Russians. In fact, there have been at least three instances of this before.
There is also the fact that they were dropped in the area of the steel works. Remember the PR battle is vitally important to Ukraine and those in the west.
Look at how we are holding out bravely against the Russian hordes.
It is not just a flag, it’s a $10 billion dollar flag, look at this, if only we had more money, more weapons, look our guys will not quit, when 99% have headed for the hills already. In a vastly unpopular war you have to sell, sell, sell when your narrative does not fit the facts, you have to convince your backers it is worth it. But it is not just money the flag represents, it’s an article of faith, of the overwhelming belief in the cause.
Unless you are a fanatic or have seen them in action your mind cannot fathom the simplicity or the madness of these people.
https://xcancel.com/ThorntonWa47373/status/1985489790092095703
an encirclement that involves tens of thousands on both sides
That’s probably an overstatement. I doubt there are more than a couple thousand soldiers from each side in the actual cities there, maybe less, with perhaps another couple thousand in the outskirts. The troop density on any given front in this conflict tends to be fairly low, even if the overall numbers are high.
And remember that the Sudzha pipeline operation that completely threw the final Ukrainian lines in Kursk into disarray and triggered a panicked retreat also didn’t involve more than a few dozen Russian soldiers popping up behind enemy lines initially.
It’s nothing like the tomahawk. For one thing it is vastly more powerful and way faster. It is essentially a non-nuclear nuke, a mid range hypersonic ballistic MIRV. Unstoppable and borderline undetectable until it is too late. The Russians only used it once in Ukraine and they did so without a warhead, and just the kinetic energy was enough to devastate an entire factory complex.
There is a near zero chance that Russia would give it to Venezuela. It’s too modern of a weapon. They gave it to Belarus but really it’s still Russian specialists who are in control of it, and also Belarus is in a Union State with Russia and an attack on Belarus would be treated as an attack on Russia itself.
It would be of questionable utility to Venezuela anyway given the nature of the threat it faces which is naval and aerial, not a land army. The Russians have plenty of other much more useful and practical things that they can give and are giving to Venezuela.
They’ve been saying for years that the West secretly despises all Russians and wants to see Russia broken up and erased as a culture.
Certainly helps the Kremlin’s messaging land with Russians that EU politicians are openly holding conferences explicitly discussing how they want to balkanize Russia and steal its resources.
Putin doesn’t need to rig elections (though his party very likely does do it against the communists in local and regional elections), the West’s idiotic anti-Russian crusade has been the best electoral campaign he could have ever asked for. It is absolutely unsurprising to me that he has a solid 80% support now.
It also helps that things are going much better in Russia than they are in Europe at the moment. Much as i’d prefer the communists to be in charge instead, it doesn’t help to delude onesself about the current mood in Russia which is overall quite optimistic.
The US has dropped the KMT like last year’s toy. The DPP is their new favorite toy to play with in Taiwan. Turns out once the US stops funding a party they suddenly become much more rational about geopolitical issues.
Until i see proof i will continue to maintain that the Russian government will never do anything as cool as giving Iran a nuke. They are too lib-brained for that. They will give them a bunch of other semi-cool shit though, which is nice.
Yeah population size isn’t the determinant factor here. The US needs local proxies to do the bulk of the fighting and dying for them. They would have that in Nigeria. They wouldn’t have that in Venezuela.
Why should Russia abide by a treaty they are no longer a part of? It wasn’t Russia that started to pull out of arms control treaties first, it was the US who did so unilaterally to begin with.
If you ask me Russia and China should do nuclear tests. Full scale, no “subcritical” or low yield pussyfooting. It’s the only way to put the fear of god back into the imperialist lunatics when you have an increasing number of these idiotic Westerners starting to tell each other that’s it’s totally ok to attack Russia directly because their nukes don’t work anymore.
This honestly reads like they are taking a page straight out of China’s poverty alleviation methods. Good on them! Bravo Kerala!
What is the point of this?
The point of it is morale boosting for the pro-Ukraine infospace. Most of that graphic is fake news. They didn’t launch anywhere near the number claimed. And the “Flamingo” missile is pure fiction.
The situation in the Pokrovsk direction has reached a catastrophic point for Ukraine. Ukrainian formations in Myrnohrad, eastern Pokrovsk, and the surrounding villages are now operationally encircled.
Russian troops broke through to the northern outskirts of Pokrovsk, leaving only a 2km-wide corridor of open fields to escape encirclement. The coming days will be decisive.
Syrsky promised Zelensky today to unblock the Ukrainian units in Myrnohrad and regain control over the Pokrovska pocket.
The commander-in-chief has gone to the Eastern front and will personally lead the Ukrainian Armed Forces counterattacks.
The thing about this is not just that the remaining troops and equipment inside the pocket are lost, but that the Ukrainians are inevitably going to increase their burn by counterattacking to try and pry the mouth back open. Full fledged operational catastrophe.
China has no intention or desire to try to equalize that score. All they want is an apology and recognition of the crimes.
You are using the term “revanchism” incorrectly.
Revanchism refers to seeking a revision or reversal of the outcome of a defeat in a war, such as through regaining lost territories or undoing a humiliation. Japan was the defeated power in the war with China. Japan is the revanchist power in this situation. China has no reason for revanchism, they were the winners of WWII and, at least formally, got all their territories back.
If i were them i would actually try to make Trump keep the tariffs on or even escalate them, because the harm they do to the US itself is much much higher than any negative effect they have on China. After all it’s the US consumer who pays for them.
Many I’ve seen don’t engage or outright rebuke theory because of low literacy, mental illness, poor quality of life making reading hard, etc. etc. Not to say those don’t inhibit the ability to read and consume theory however most of those things apply to every person I’ve known who has read theory!
Before the Russian revolution illiterate Russian factory workers would meet and have pamphlets and news paper articles from Lenin and other revolutionaries read to them by someone who could read, they would have passages from Marx and other writers read to them and they would discuss them.
If even those people who lacked almost any sort of formal education and couldn’t even read could still engage with theory, then a modern Western leftist has no excuse, especially with how many technological aids there are nowadays. If you can browse the Internet you can read/listen to theory.
It doesn’t mean you’ll understand it, but that’s why study groups are and always will be essential, and again this has become easier than ever to organize with the technology we have to connect people across distances and even language barriers.
They absolutely do. The EU is a deeply and fundamentally neoliberal institution that has written rules against anything that strays too close to socialism. Subsidies are highly restricted, free market is non-negotiable, privatization is constantly pushed for, nationalization is strongly suppressed, and economic planning is absolutely forbidden. This is baked into the foundation of the whole thing…imo it’s unreformable.