"Satan" (NATO designation, in russian is "Sarmat") is the vector/missile.
That's just for the show, the real problem are the Bulava - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSM-56_Bulava - on nuclear submarines. And it's why Putin needs so bad the Crimea and the free Crimea access: he needs the Sevastopol base for the fleet. Pardon "Donbass liberation from nazis"......
Last edited by lowenz; 26th Oct 2022 at 15:51.
I don't think that's the reason. Russia continued operating the naval base after the USSR dissolved. At the time they invaded in 2014, they already had a long term lease until 2042, and Ukraine wasn't charging them much because they were getting a deal on Russian gas.
They held the naval base, not free access with no control
In an amazing feat of open-source reporting (and a completely unsurpising failure of operational security in the Russian military), Bellingcat has uncovered quite a lot of the people responsible for raining down death on Ukrainian cities:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-a...es-on-ukraine/
In the early hours of Monday, 10 October 2022, Russia pummelled Ukraine’s largest cities with missiles killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 100, according to Ukraine’s national emergency service. Russia has boasted about the surgical precision of its cruise missiles and claimed the attacks on 10 October targeted Ukraine’s military, security command centres and the national energy grid. However, open-source evidence shows that multiple missiles struck non-military targets, damaging residential buildings and hitting kindergartens and playgrounds.
The 10 October attacks marked Russia’s largest coordinated missile strikes since the beginning of the war. Yet the destruction didn’t end there. Missile strikes continued the next day with at least 28 launched on 11 October. The strikes left large numbers of civilians in Kyiv, Lviv, Vinnytsia, and Dnipro with no or sporadic access to electricity.
[...]
In one single day in July, cruise missile attacks on the city of Vinnytsia are reported to have killed 27 civilians. These strikes, that hit non-military targets, suggest either that the missiles failed to follow their pre-programmed flight path, that targeting was based on defective intelligence information, or that civilian harm was intentional.
[...]
Following a six-month-long investigation, Bellingcat and its investigative partners The Insider and Der Spiegel were able to discover a hitherto secretive group of dozens of military engineers with an educational and professional background in missile programming. Phone metadata shows contacts between these individuals and their superiors spiked shortly before many of the high-precision Russian cruise missile strikes that have killed hundreds and deprived millions in Ukraine of access to electricity and heating. The group, which works from two locations – one at the Ministry of Defence headquarters in Moscow and another at the Admiralty headquarters in St. Petersburg – is buried deep within the Russian Armed Forces’ vast “Main Computation Centre of the General Staff”, often abbreviated as ГВЦ (GVC).
Most members identified by Bellingcat and partners are young men and women, including one husband-and-wife couple, many with IT and even computer-gaming backgrounds. Some also worked at Russia’s military command centre in Damascus in the period between 2016 and 2021, a timeframe during which Russia deployed cruise missiles in Syria. Others are recipients of various military awards, including from Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
[...]
The military engineers from the missile flight-planning unit of GVC are young people mostly in their late twenties, with the four youngest members only 24 years old. While many of them had prior civilian mathematics or IT education, all of them underwent military engineering training at the Military Academy of Strategic Missile Forces or the Military-Naval Engineering Institute.
Unlike their military peers, most of whom are exposed to at least some personal risk near the front-line, these young people work from secure command centres in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and appear to go about their lives with little interference from a war in which they play a crucial role.
[...]
Well, it's no real "secret" :|
Another thing would be to have the names, no military high-grade personnel = no protection
Gaming? Escape from Tarkov team?
In Russia, business is still booming in some sectors:
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/s...17761493487618
The irony of this commercial, 4 years later
.....A three-minute campaign ad encouraging Russians to vote in the presidential elections next month plays to deep-seated homophobia among the Russian populace by offering a vision of a dystopian future where a law has been passed forcing Russians to host a “gay homestay” for a week, reports The Guardian.
The video shows a 52-year-old man mocking his wife for wanting to vote in the presidential election, saying: “As if they won’t elect someone without you.” He then falls asleep, where he dreams that a multicultural group of soldiers is trying to conscript him into the army, because the conscription age has been increased to 60.
He’s then accosted by his Communist-affiliated son for donations, and finds that there is a gay man in his kitchen. The gay man tells him: “I’m a gay on a homestay.” The dreamer’s wife then reminds him that under a new law, Russian families are required to take in gay people abandoned by their partners.
“If he doesn’t find himself a pair, then you’ll have to be with him,” she tells the man.
The man retreats into the toilet, only to find that “toilet time is restricted,” according to an intercom and flashing red lights. He wakes up screaming, and turns to his right, finding the gay man in bed with him. He then wakes up in real life, before pushing his wife out of bed and saying they need to vote “before it’s too late!”
Opposition journalists believe the video was produced by either President Vladimir Putin’s campaign team or the government-controlled election committee. The Guardian notes that Russian officials are eager to see a large turnout in order to give Putin — who is guaranteed to win — an air of legitimacy, even though he has consolidated enough power to ensure he is president for life. In contrast, opposition leaders have been urging Russians to boycott the election, saying it is rigged.
It all started when he decided not to learn English so he couldn't see/hear the kind of mind poison the younger generation were being exposed to.
Last edited by denkmal; 7th Nov 2022 at 18:01.
Russia's top minister of truth addressed the country's youth the other day:
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/s...91642653786112
Key takeaways...
* people hate Russia, for some reason
* Ukrainians hate Russia because the people who hate Russia convinced them to hate Russia, for basically no reason at all other than that they are brothers
* hordes of these frothing bloodthirsty Ukrainians were poised to invade Russia in February, lay waste to its cities, and massacre hundreds of thousands of civilians -- the only reason they didn't was that Russia beat them to it
* Ukraine and Ukrainian military-industrial complex were destroyed long ago, at the beginning of the war, and now it's just a fight against NATO
* thanks to NATO, Ukraine has more weapons than any Western country, save, perhaps, for the US
* so, if you really think about it, Russia invading Ukraine is actually David fighting the Goliath, not the other way around
* but if you really, really think about it, Russia doesn't need might to win, only the Truth, because that's how biblical stories work
* Russia needs to stop coddling their children and giving them lollipops, because the world is a scary place and apparently you don't need lollipops in a scary place because reasons
* young people have to fight in the war to buy time for Russia to build up its military to win against NATO
* Russia is not just fighting the West, but the entire Western way of life where the biggest problem is whether transgender children can choose their own gender
* a world without Russia has no need to exist, so it's either Russia wins or...
* therefore, the children in the audience need to shape up and take their place in line as soon as their age allows
* Noah still survived, even though everybody was convinced he was wrong
* everybody else is fighting out of hatred, it's only Russia who is just doing what's necessary
* after they have cured the Ukrainians, they will cure the rest of the world... y'know, as you do
* a just cause... such as curing the world... will ensure victory
You can just say "SATAN!!!111", that's the level of Putin fascist Russia.
Simple as that, tons of excuses for out-of-time imperialism and search for national identity: it's 1800, folks, let's obey the tzar.....the regent.....the president.....the husband to the motherland and our savior&protector versus the very bad albionic capitalism (ahahahaah) ! It's really just like here in Italy 100 years ago, the exact same dynamics.
If only Lenin was alive.....
Last edited by lowenz; 8th Nov 2022 at 05:08.
It's not just Russia though. Grievance culture is everywhere now. Now that the "greatest generation" is gone, people are dusting off the old fascist propaganda from a century ago and it's working again. They are dividing and conquering. So far, the dividing part is going way too easy here in the US. In Europe, I was impressed by the solidarity shown after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but there are cracks: Brexit, Orban, Meloni, Le Pen, worries about China. Hungary and Turkey have become thorns in NATO's side. Both will be gradually cut off from NATO and find their way into Russia's sphere of influence. And I don't know if the EU can hold up to the coming rifts over energy policy.
The surprising thing about this trend is that it's been happening during a period of job growth and wage growth and more flexible working arrangements and all that. Aside from inflation, most of us are doing good, but we're constantly told we're being screwed. What's going to happen when inflation is beaten and we're in a recession? If people are losing their shit because a transgender person might be taking a dump in the next stall over, imagine how they will be led to feel when they start suffering some real economic hardship. On top of that, the wider world is already taking sides over Ukraine and the UN is basically finished. The risk of another world war is real.
?Originally Posted by heywood
Internet conspiracy theories for people damned by how "meritocracy" works when it works (1 over 100 -> success / 99 with plenty of social resentments) AND when not (nepotism / clientelism -> social resentments)
Just like in Russia, France, Germany and the jews 100 years ago (well, way back than 100 years)
That's just a platonic-oriented excuse, like the jews. They don't care about these things in ANY way, they're just cultural elements feeding the ideological social hate furnace "DAMN CULTURAL MARXISM!!1111 AGAINST NATURE!!1111 AND I'M POOR!!111 WE NEED A NEW WAY, WE NEED A STRONG LEADER, WE NEED....." fascism.if people are losing their shit because a transgender person
It's just that.....it's the cycle of the so called "liberal demo(N)cracy"
Last edited by lowenz; 8th Nov 2022 at 17:06.
Yes, I understand that the villains are interchangeable in this playbook. The headline writers will go with whatever sticks. Ukronazis didn't. That was a pretty dumb start considering Zelenskyy is Jewish. It took a few months for the dumb bastards to pick up on that. They tried the Zelenskyy is not really a Jew argument over the summer, which was embarrassingly lame.
But it doesn't matter. You can tell your followers the sky is blue today, and then tomorrow say the sky is green and deny you ever said it was blue. There could be video proof of you saying both things, but that's no big deal. You deny it. If pressed, you just claim the evidence was manufactured by the other party, something was shown out of context, it's all a deep state conspiracy to prevent you from being elected - they're against you because you're going to hold them accountable, etc. Right now, in US politics, you could say that blue and green are the same color and you wouldn't lose one supporter over it. I doubt Russia is much different right now.
It doesn't matter what you say in Russia, because the power of the state is absolute and most of its people are in a state of long-cultivated helplessness and nihilism. There is no point in what a candidate is saying, because it's all shamelessly rigged. Because it's really a mafia syndicate and the opposition gets jailed or killed or disqualified in some other way.
The US still has democratic systems, however flawed and hollowed out they are. US courts may be stuffed with ideologues hand-picked by the Heritage Foundation and groomed by the Federalist Society, but by and large they still work to uphold the law. There are still independent judges who go against people who appointed them and they aren't killed if they do.
The US media is sensationalist and there are a lot of partisan outlets, but there are still independent ones too and, as a rule, journalists aren't murdered for going against the state.
If you take part in an anti-government protest, you might get shot with less lethal ammunition, tear gassed and beaten with batons, but the police isn't coming to visit your home afterwards to torture and rape you.
The police in the US might be corrupt, constantly lie with impunity, and break the law knowing they have a degree of immunity from it and a union to protect them, but they aren't openly walking around demanding bribes and they might get fired or occasionally even go to jail if there's overwhelming indisputable evidence they did something wrong.
Meanwhile, in Russia, this is what justice looks like:
But most of all, the US still has a political system -- a barely functioning one, but it is there. The US has been moving in the direction of Russia, but it's not there yet. Of the two parties, one may be full of people eager to unfollow democracy and follow the path of Russia, but the other still cares for governing and preserving the US as a democratic state where there is a rule of law, free and fair elections, peaceful transfer of power, and the people get to enjoy at least some degree of fundamental freedoms.
I guess we'll see today whether the US will follow the path of cheering for political violence, election denial, and following a strong leader to rule over them. But, as of yet, it's still a choice.
The city of Kherson is liberated.
Yet another goodwill gesture by Russia... let's hope the trend continues until they fuck all the way off to Russia.
Remember that Russia will never accept this being the Putin's Russia, so future "wars to liberate Kherson" are sure.
Or something more terrible.
That's why Ukraine needs to join a mutual defense treaty. Maybe there's one handy.
Victorious Russian forces successfully retreat from Kherson, panicked Ukrainian soldiers running after them as fast as their legs can carry them... is what I expected to be the reaction on the Russian side, but instead there's been lots of doomposting mixed in with unbelievable amounts of copium across Russian media, from the official propaganda TV to "ordinary" milbloggers. Just to mention one of the more quirky things, apparently, Russia is going to name a street in Kherson after the late deputy governor of Kherson who died in a car crash shortly before the retreat. I mean... sure... why not at this point. After Putin dies, maybe the Eiffel Tower will be renamed the Putin Tower by Russia or something.
Some people, however, are taking a more neutral stance: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/st...51151679074306
From the Ukrainian side, lots of hugging, singing, and generally people celebrating on the streets, a completely different picture from what I read from Russian soldiers' experiences there in March.
Meanwhile, in Russia, mothers and wives of the mobilised seem to have a difficult time grasping the concept of cannon fodder, endlessly vexing Russian officials who have to deal with them: https://twitter.com/wartranslated/st...50412762824704
Also, this is just a rumor, and even I, full well knowing the scale Russian incompetence can take, have a very hard time believing it, but apparently there are still thousands of Russian soldiers who have been abandoned on the right bank (west side) of the Dnipro river, some sources claiming even up to 20k. One Russian soldier said that the last order he received was to get civilian clothes and blend in with the local civilians.
Before all that, though, Russian media was taking the US midterm elections really hard. Apparently, they really bought into the Republican promise of cutting off Ukraine aid and, based on historical trends, were banking on Republicans completely sweeping both the House and the Senate. When that failed to materialise, there was lot of consternation and blame to go around, with some blaming the ex-president for his terrible candidate picks/endorsements and others refusing to accept the elections as legitimate. Here's one funny example (I failed to find an English translated version of it, but there's automatically translated version that's surprisingly good): https://mobile.twitter.com/vidtransl...99927466606592
So, people in the US, just FYI, shame on you. You'll never be able to satisfy the "Putin squad" at this rate.
Auto translation is really coming along. One pie in the sky wishlist item would be an AI you can give songs in a foreign language and it turns them into any other language. Obviously translating voice would be the prerequisite.
Last edited by Cipheron; 12th Nov 2022 at 04:27.
See? Russians are not totally mad
Not as the GOP, GOP is in another alien dimension if Russia is in another time (1800).
Yeah, reading Girkin telegram account, the translation can translates even the jokes and the nuances :|
Impressive.
Our AI overlords will solve everything (wiping us from the Earth) :O
Apparently, Banksy is in Ukraine doing his thing:
I hope y'all are still watching Timothy Snyder's class on YouTube. The war makes a lot more sense, but not only that. It's a whole new perspective on European history generally looking at it from the East (for someone growing up with the Western view of it).
We're up to the part where Brezhnev's eyebrows make a run for world domination now.
Russia is going to the cartoon dogs, according to Polish commentator, Jonasz Rewiński.
What do you think, Fellas?
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