Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[THE_WIZARD_]

Biden Family owns a vacuum company?

[Mike]

Haha.

[THE_WIZARD_]

...

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Dr. Strangelove]

As Russia leaves or is driven out of the Kyiv region, the first really widespread evidence of atrocities agaisnt civilians is emerging. Hundreds of civilians dead, with evidence of torture on some. I saw a picture of a burned out Russian truck that had been loaded with washing machines, apparently looted from neighborhood homes, but destroyed before it could be taken back to Russia and sold on the black market.

[AlabamAlum]

The withdrawal from Kyiv is just a feint. They will pull east and south and divide Ukrainian defense, before eventually circling back to Odesa and Kyiv.

[froot loops]

This dude has got the pulse of the common person that America forgot about.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The withdrawal from Kyiv is just a feint. They will pull east and south and divide Ukrainian defense, before eventually circling back to Odesa and Kyiv.

Reliable, vetted reports indicate that Russian Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) - somewhere upwards of 50 of them deployed on the Karkiv and Sumy Axis (NE to SW toward Kiev) suffered significant degradation of combat readiness. Ukrainian MOD indicates numbers as high as 34 of these BTGs have been rendered unusable due to combat and logistic failure related losses and are being withdrawn to Belarus.

Each BTG is comprised of 600–800 officers and soldiers, of whom roughly 200 are infantrymen, equipped with vehicles typically including roughly 10 tanks and 40 infantry fighting vehicles. We've seen roads leading in and out of Kiev's center littered with destroyed armor, APCs and dead Russian soldiers. Ukrainian MOD has clamed thousands of Russian tanks and APCs have been destroyed and upwards of 15,000 Russian Troops killed. The WSJ using AI models to predict losses have offered that 26,000 Russian soldiers and support personnel have been killed, wounded or otherwise injured.

The CTR Project reports I'm reading form AEI don't think that the Russian Army is going to be adding significant combat power to the Kharkiv and Isum axis of Russian advance to the SW into the Donbas region becasue of these losses. I don't call that a feint. It's a chaotic tactical withdrawal with the Ukrainians in pursuit.

The Russian army and Russian separatist forces control a large portion of both the Donbas and Luhansk Oblasts which abut the Sea of Azov and Black Sea. Key Ukrainian ports are within these regions - Mariupol is one of them. These regions stretch SW to the Kherson Oblast that includes the port of Odessa and abuts Crimea. Since the start of the war, a key Russian strategic objective has been to absorb all three of those Oblasts and the ports into mother Russia establishing administrative and military control of them as well as a land bridge to Crimea. If that happens, Ukraine will have been essentially economically isolated. It's a huge deal and that it is supports observations that intense fighting is being waged on key ground, control of which imparts control of much wider territory.

My take from today's news sources is that on the ground, the Ukrainian armed forces and civil defense units are going to make it very hard for Russia to completely achieve their military and political objectives in the SE portions of Ukraine. From a pure numbers standpoint, Russia should be able to outlast Ukraine. Countering that is Ukraine's willingness to fight and defend their homeland in the face of significant morale issues within Russian forces, demonstrably inept Russian fighting unit tactics and almost laughable C3 and logistics planning and accompanying failures.

The central problem is that Putin is not going to seek a negotiated settlement that does not include Russian control of the Donbas, Luhansk and Kherson Oblasts and recognition that Crimea is Russian territory. Zelenski will not cede that territory to Russia. That sets up the likelihood of a protracted - we're talking months to years - conflict between Russia and Ukraine with Ukrainian resistance met by unspeakable Russian brutality. The most important thing for the west to continue doing is to keep military supplies flowing into Ukraine to give the Ukrainian armed forces and civil defense units the means to inflict the most pain and losses on Russian forces they are opposing. Sanctions are helping but Zelenski wins this by defeating Russian forces on the ground.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Froot- The Former Guy knows Michigan better than anyone. The best. Pure Michigan

[Dr. Strangelove]

The withdrawal from Kyiv is just a feint. They will pull east and south and divide Ukrainian defense, before eventually circling back to Odesa and Kyiv.

Generally my suspicion as well but it will take time. I don’t think they just throw more raw conscripts at them again. Thinking summer at earliest

[Mike]

Froot- The Former Guy knows Michigan better than anyone. The best. Pure Michigan

Nobody gives a shit. His jackassery is baked into the cake now. None of this is new. Also: nobody gives a shit.

[froot loops]

Froot- The Former Guy knows Michigan better than anyone. The best. Pure Michigan

I'm about to go own the reactionaries by taking the returnables back to My-Ger.

[THE_WIZARD_]

I give a shit...in fact I'll give you all a bag of shits...

[froot loops]

I'm not interested in your version of chicken wings

[AlabamAlum]

The Outlaw Ribeye from Longhorns is better than Ruth’s Chris - by a wide margin - at half the price. The only chain premium steakhouse that has a better bone-in ribeye than the mid-tier Longhorns is Perry’s.