Caitlin Johnstone Media Ukraine Caitlin Johnstone: WaPo’s Glimpse of the Battlefield May 30, 2022 Contrary to widespread triumphant Western narratives, this reporting describes Ukrainian troops surviving on one potato per day and deserting their posts. https://scheerpost.com/2022/05/30/caitlin-johnstone-wapos-glimpse-of-the-battlefield/
Uh oh... I was holding off on posting a lot of Caitlin Johnstone (though I did post this article already) because the usualnamed suspects would immediately claim I was a "Kremlin lover" but you've opened Pandora's box now.
The bottom line is that being a front-line soldier in a war is tough. The troops in both the Ukrainian and Russian armies are short of supplies. Especially the lightly armed militia -- you probably are last in line for supplies in this war. The situation at the front in eastern Ukraine is not going to be all rosy as videos of drones blowing up Russian tanks & vehicles. As mentioned by the Ukraine government it is not going to be a success and currently it is a grind with Russian forces making slow advances in some areas of the front after massive artillery bombardments -- which leaves the cities/towns wrecked. This is the Russians updated strategy and the Ukrainians don't really have the forces & equipment to fully stop this Russian slow grinding advance at this point. The current Russian strategy seems to be to take some more territory in eastern Ukraine and then dig in defensively with the intent of allowing Putin to claim victory in eastern Ukraine while being hard to dislodge. This does bring up an additional point -- you regularly see the Russians committing war crimes, stealing food and personal belongings from civilians and generally being undisciplined. The Russians are not acting like a professional army -- more like a group of thugs. You don't see regular reports of Ukrainians raping women, executing civilians, and stealing food & possessions from civilians. There are still stark differences between the two armies.
Ah. So you "see" reports of Russians doing all these bad things in the Ukraine, but you don't see Ukrainian soldiers doing this to their own country. Is that your argument? What a shock! Flip the coin and the Ukrainian soldiers would be the exact same way. These soldiers were all trained the exact same way, and yes - are all thugs (which is also what I've said since the beginning - referring to the Grozny campaign, or earlier in Afghanistan where Ukrainians soldiers partook). The point that Johnstone continues to put forth is that propaganda coming from the west is just as much horseshit as that coming from Russia (which I've been saying since this began) and the US is fighting a proxy war with Russia with cannon fodder in the form of the Ukrainian people. And the only way out is to negotiate a peace. But the US doesn't want that, so we'll continue saying how noble and loving the Ukrainians are as we send them into the meat grinder. But hey, they've got shiny new anti-tank missiles. So there's that!
Nothing but looters... Ukraine war: Refugee from Popasna spots looted possessions on Russian tank https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61643533 A Ukrainian refugee in the UK says she recognises items apparently looted from her house sitting on top of a Russian tank in a recent photo. Alina Koreniuk says the box in the photo contains a new boiler she planned to install before the war started. She and her children left Ukraine on 8 April and are staying with a British couple in Nottinghamshire. The picture, taken in late May, shows the tank moving past bombed residential buildings in the town of Popasna. Russian forces have been in control of the town, in the Luhansk region, since 8 May. Ms Koreniuk says the photo was taken on a street just five minutes away from her house. It was originally spotted by her husband. "He said: 'Do you notice anything strange about this photo,' and asked me if I saw what he saw in it," she told the BBC. Apart from the boiler, other items on the tank include a tablecloth from the family's summer house, new Disney bedsheets for her children and a red blanket, she says. The bed linen was used to cover something, Ms Koreniuk added, probably a TV or other electronic equipment, all of which had been left at the house when they were forced to leave. But she wasn't surprised by what had happened. "Our reaction was that whatever they hadn't destroyed they would steal," she said. "We expected houses in Popasna to be looted, we'd been told many times about this." Ms Koreniuk has been staying in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, with her daughters Kristina, 12, and Olha, eight, under the UK government's Homes for Ukraine scheme since leaving Ukraine. Their hosts are thought to be among the first in the country to register for the scheme. A policewoman and former child psychologist, Ms Koreniuk and her family left Popasna on 24 February when the invasion began. Shelling had already started in the area. The family took very few of their possessions when they left. Her mother was forced to leave behind a pet dog, which was killed either by shrapnel or by the occupying forces. Ms Koreniuk described the difficult journey she and her two daughters made out of Ukraine to local media in the UK. Her mother, grandmother and husband are still in Ukraine but in relative safety. Many residents of occupied areas of Ukraine have complained of looting by Russian troops. Last week the independent Russian news site Mediazona published a report suggesting that Russian troops had sent home 58 tonnes of looted goods from areas close to the Ukrainian borders with Russia and Belarus since the start of the invasion. The packages are said to contain items such as sneakers, canned food, TVs, car tyres and tents. Russia has not responded to allegations of looting, but officials have accused Ukraine of filming fake videos to accuse Russia of looting. They have also accused Ukraine of overseeing bands of looters in areas under its control.
The fortunes of war wax and wain. Western commanders have no experience of being on the receiving end of heavy bombardment because it has not happened to US troops in decades other than friendly fire. (The European Allies have had a lot of that from the US over the the years). Supply chains get fucked, everyone's mind and morale gets fucked. Then time passes and things get worked out. Leadership say they are doing great both sides no matter what is happening. The early concerns of Ukraine were the US doing what they do so well, turning easy wins into profitable meat grinders. It's a reflex action. That is not yet proven to be the case though if long range munitions don't show, its another military industrial complex victory.
There's an art to it, if you turn up the heat too fast, the frog will jump out of the pot, then there will be no frog to consume. The heat needs stay on low and steady, that way the frog gets well and truly cooked until it's proper dead. A quick defeat of Russia is no good, the meatgrinder will not have done its job. While we're at it, gotta try and cook China simultaneously. Problem the west has though, western moneyed corporations trying to free the frog.
"Javelins Would Have a Field Day" "Long in the Tooth and Put Out to Pasture" Proof Putin Is Desperate In Ukraine: He Is Sending Old T-62 Tanks To Fight https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-deploys-50-year-old-t-62-tanks-to-ukraine-front
2022 brings new definitions in the dictionary. Rashist - The Telegram account Ukraine Now has been using a term I have not seen before: Rashist. It appears to combine Russian with Fascist. I have seen it many times in this feed. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=54306