Just a continual string of whataboutism nonsense from you. Let's refresh your memory about the Gulf wars. Did you remember that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait? This is why a coalition of 40 countries took military action against Iraq. Trying to claim it was just the U.S. and U.K. is laughable. So tell us, where is Putin's coalition of democratic nations militarily joining him for the invasion of Ukraine? Oh, it's only Russia. Sounds like Putin is the new Saddam. And just like Putin, Saddam Hussein was a war criminal with an international arrest warrant. Not only did Saddam torture kill tens of thousands of his own people, he used chemical weapons against his own people and had a documented chemical weapons program. Of course when Saddam continually violated the agreements after the first war -- continuing to attack his own population in both the north and south -- despite no fly zones and other measures; the ground was laid for the coalition of nations to remove him from power in the second gulf war.
AGAIN, who do you see defending the Iraq war here? NOBODY But I see you on these threads defending Putin and his mass murder everyday and every time you are asked why you do it, all you say is WHATABOUT THE US!! WHATABOUT THIS THING OTHER THING! Except nobody here is defending US's bad policy or any of the things you keep bringing up, you use it as an excuse to cover up for Putin just like China and Russian foreign ministries do. Basically if the US did it 20 years ago, Putin should be allowed to murder a few hundred thousand. It would be whataboutism if you actually bought up how US treated its critics but you didn't knowing well that in the US, people are allowed to criticize the government. If I wanted to whatabout, I would point to all the thousands Putin murdered in Syria as his 'war on terror' but again I didn't because I can point to Putin's invasion of Ukraine as a dumb evil war, there is no need to bring up his history of murdering people.
Some thoughts on the upcoming Ukraine offense. What are realistic expectations for Ukraine's military offensive? NPR - https://tinyurl.com/ys2yrf84
You have to admit. In terms of ROI, the "Russian Volunteer Corps" raid on the Belgorod area was an overwhelming, unexpected, success. For just 50-70 people and a few armored vehicles to go 10-15 kilometers deep into Russia, hang out there for a few days, destroy a few military objectives, kill (AFAIU) about two dozen Russian military personnel, incur only (AFAIU, again) 2-3 own casualties, then waltz out again and give a couple of press conferences right outside the border is a stunning slap in the face for Russian military. The Russian propaganda channels are stunned. The last few days that is all they talked about. The blatant lies of the Russian Defense Ministry about wiping all the "insurgents" out are being openly laughed at - by the Russians themselves. Amazing what a small bunch of people can do.
Well -- let's remind everyone what a typical Roger Waters concert is like these days. Pink Floyd founder condemned for wearing SS officer uniform 'where Jews were deported by the Nazis' Israel's official Twitter account said he was 'desecrating the memory of Anne Frank and the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust' https://www.foxnews.com/media/pink-...earing-ss-officer-uniform-jews-deported-nazis Roger Waters, founder and former lyricist for the rock band Pink Floyd, came under fire for appearing in an SS uniform during a Berlin concert last week. Waters performed on May 17 at Germany's Mercedes-Benz Arena where, according to local journalists, a screen projected the words, "The show will start in 10 minutes and a court in Frankfurt has ruled that I am not an antisemite." It continued, "Just to be clear, I condemn antisemitism unreservedly." Despite this declaration, the night was filled with various amounts of offensive and antisemitic images. Most notably, after the concert’s intermission, Waters came onto the stage wearing an SS officer uniform complete with a red armband and a fake rifle. Behind him, an inflatable pig floated above the crowd with Third Reich-style banners with crossed hammers instead of swastikas. (More at above url)
Russian vessel got hit by UA water drone. Rus claiming that ,,all drones" were destroyed. UA using hand made drones to take out multi millions worth of vessels. Perfect ROI. Russia reminds of this surreal society from 20 y.o game HL2. Humans lost the war against highly advanced aliens. Now they're using remaining ppl as drones. Or worse. It's even build in a same environment.
Russia’s 'invincible' hypersonic missiles prove anything but, as Ukraine utilizes U.S. Patriot defenses Russia’s hypersonic Kinzhal has been shot down repeatedly by U.S.-supplied air defenses. https://news.yahoo.com/russias-invi...e-utilizes-us-patriot-defenses-213955937.html Michael Weiss and James Rushton Thu, May 25, 2023 at 5:40 PM EDT·5 min read Vladimir Putin Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Supreme Economic Eurasian Council at the Grand Kremlin Palace on Thursday in Moscow. (Contributor/Getty Images) It was meant to be the Russian “wonder weapon,” but it turned out to be just another example of Vladimir Putin’s military over-promising and under-delivering. The Kh-47M2 “Kinzhal” — which means “dagger” in Russian — was billed as a state-of-the-art hypersonic missile, “invincible,” in Putin’s words, to Western air defenses. For the early months of Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, it seemed to be just that. The missile had been used in the first year of the war to successfully strike several targets across Ukraine, no doubt causing significant damage. Turning point Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder addresses a news briefing at the Pentagon on Wednesday in Arlington, Va. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) That all changed when Ukraine received U.S.-manufactured Patriot PAC-2 and PAC-3 air defense systems in April. The PAC-3, the latest version of the venerable American system, was originally developed as part of America’s Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars” by its critics, first introduced in the early 1980s by President Ronald Reagan to counter ballistic missiles. Over a little more than two weeks, Ukrainian-manned Patriots shot down seven out of seven Kinzhals launched at targets throughout Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Air Force.Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed the first shoot-down at a press conference on May 9, and another administration official speaking to the New York Times on May 16 confirmed the other interceptions. During the May 16 attack, which directly targeted the Patriot system, part of the platform suffered “minor” damage, according to U.S. officials, that was repaired within a day. The Kremlin, of course, has maintained the fiction that all its missiles successfully hit their targets. “The fake report that a Kinzhal was allegedly intercepted is a wishful thinking attempt,” a Russian Ministry of Defense source told the state media outlet TASS. Even if the Ukrainian military is overstating its defensive capability, a Russian missile falling anywhere in Kyiv would have been detected by locals and recorded on social media. Since the arrival of the Patriot missile batteries, that has not happened. Assessing the hypersonic threat A 9K720 Iskander-M is displayed at a fair within the ARMY-2019 International Military and Technical Forum in Moscow on June 25, 2019. (Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) The Kinzhal entered service in December 2017. Two years later, Putin declared that it and other Russian hypersonic weapons proved that Russia was leading the world in hypersonic capability. The boast was reminiscent of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s bravado in the late 1950s, when he claimed that Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles were rolling off the factory floor “like sausages,” feeding the false perception in the United States that the U.S. was at a disadvantage and suffering from a missile gap with Moscow. “We have a situation that is unique in modern history when they are trying to catch up with us," Putin said. “Not a single country has hypersonic weapons, let alone hypersonic weapons of intercontinental range.” He was wrong. In reality, the Kinzhal is not that impressive. It is an upgraded version of Russia’s older, ground-launched 9K720 Iskander ballistic missile, modified so that it can be air-launched from Russian aircraft. As for Putin’s claim of the weapon’s hypersonic speed, this was true in the same way all ballistic missiles since the German V-2 rockets started pulverizing London in World War II have achieved hypersonic speeds at certain phases of flight. Despite Putin’s grand claims, air-launched ballistic missiles are not new technology. The GAM-87 “Skybolt” air-launched ballistic missile was developed by the United States in the late 1950s, and hit top speeds of Mach 12, well in excess of the speeds the Kinzhal can reach. However, the project was ultimately canceled in 1962, when U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara assessed that the system provided very little benefit over the United States’ existing arsenal of land- and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Russian scientists charged with treason The 9K720 Iskander (NATO reporting name SS-26 Stone), a mobile theater ballistic missile system, is rolled out during the Victory Day parade, on May 9, 2011, in Moscow's Red Square. (Konstantin Zavrazhin/Getty Images) Putin’s claims relied on confusion over the definition of “hypersonic” and also the conflation of the Kinzhal with the newer generations of hypersonic weapons. Hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles have the ability to maneuver — to evade air defenses, for example — at speeds in excess of Mach 5, something the Kinzhal cannot do. This makes new-generation hypersonic weapons much more difficult to intercept than traditional ballistic missiles traveling at hypersonic speeds. Regardless of the exaggerated Russian claims, the Kinzhal was still an impossible target for Ukraine’s Soviet-legacy air defense systems to shoot down. A Ukrainian government source told Yahoo News that the provision of such air defense systems, while primarily providing an invaluable shield for Ukrainian people, is a cheap way for Ukraine’s Western partners to gain real life combat data on their performance against the latest Russian weapons. Russian hubris that the system worked perfectly seemed even more incredible in light of the arrest of the third scientist responsible for the development of the Kinzhal on charges of “high treason.” On May 16, the same day Ukrainian Patriots shot down six incoming Kinzhals, Russian state media announced the arrest of Valery Zvegintsev. Zvegintsev joins Anatoly Maslov and Alexander Shiplyuk, two other high-profile Russian scientists who worked on the Kinzhal project and were arrested for alleged treason in the summer of 2022.
This is your regular reminder that Putin is Xi's biatch. China is flexing its new influence over Russia, keeping Putin waiting to see if he can have a new gas pipeline he desperately needs https://news.yahoo.com/china-flexing-influence-over-russia-115655565.html Russian Prime Minister Gets an Awkward Reception on Trip to China https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/russian-prime-minister-gets-awkward-185935895.html
Don't think this has been posted already??? Wagner boss Prigozhin says Putin's plan to 'demilitarize' Ukraine has been a bust as Ukraine now has one of the 'strongest' armies Jake Epstein May 24, 2023, 11:01 AM EDT Ukrainian soldiers fire a cannon near Bakhmut, an eastern city where fierce battles against Russian forces have been taking place, in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, Monday, May 15, 2023. AP Photo/Libkos Putin made denazification and demilitarization key objectives of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But these efforts have failed, the Wagner Group founder said. "The Ukrainians are one of the strongest armies today," Yevgeny Prigozhin said in an interview. Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said this week that Russia has failed to achieve one of its main goals, demilitarizing Ukraine, and has actually made Kyiv's army stronger through its invasion. "So how did we demilitarize? It turns out that on the contrary, we have militarized Ukraine," Prigozhin said in a video interview now circulating around social media. Prigozhin, who has in recent months taken repeated shots at the Russian defense ministry and Russian failures in Ukraine, said that Kyiv has gained more troops and more weapons since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year. He refers to "demilitarization" as a "sore" spot, according to a translation of the video published to Twitter on Wednesday by Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine's minister of internal affairs. The nod to demilitarization refers to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's key ambitions in the unprovoked assault on Ukraine in February 2022. At the time, Putin announced a "special military operation" with the goal of "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine, a democratic country that is led by a Jewish president. Prigozhin said his mercenaries have battled in "many places" and against "many people," including American, French, and United Nations troops in the various locations that Wagner tried to operate secretly in before its role in Ukraine quickly thrust the group into the public eye in a major way. —Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) May 24, 2023 In an arguably baseless claim, he said that Wagner is the "best army in the world," despite taking massive losses while fighting to capture eastern Ukraine's war-torn city of Bakhmut. The battle has severely weakened the paramilitary organization. Western intelligence suggested earlier this year that the mercenaries and the army of convicts they recruited to bolster their ranks — sometimes rushed into battle to absorb heavy Ukrainian fire — likely had a casualty rate of up to 50 percent. And between December and May, over 10,000 Wagner fighters were killed, according to a recent US assessment. Praising his adversary while calling attention to Russia's failures, Prigozhin said that "the Ukrainians are one of the strongest armies today." That observation stands in stark contrast with Russia's initial pre-war expectation that the Ukrainian army would crumble and it could capture Kyiv in a matter of days. "They have a high level of organization, a high level of training, a high level of intelligence," he said. "They have different weapons and moreover they work with any systems. Soviet, NATO, everything equally successful." Ukrainian soldiers ride atop an APC on the frontline in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sunday, March 26, 2023. AP Photo/Libkos Indeed, Ukraine has enjoyed widespread military aid and training from the US and other NATO partners, which have sent billions of dollars in lethal aid and military hardware and equipment to Ukraine, from small arms and ammunition to advanced munitions and armored vehicles. This mountain of security assistance from the West has complemented Ukraine's existing stockpile of Soviet-era weaponry, such as tanks and fighter jets, and boosted its overall combat capability. Kyiv's troops have used these systems to inflict devastating casualties on both Wagner and Russia's regular military. Since December, these forces have suffered over 100,000 casualties and made only limited territorial gains in the process. Now, Ukraine is gearing up for a much-anticipated counteroffensive, which may only worsen the situation for Russia. "We have been working very closely with our allies and partners to help Ukraine build up its combat power," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters at a Tuesday briefing. "So as they prepare to conduct counter-offensive operations, they have got a very strong hand and we're very confident that they have the combat capability that they'll need."