(June 3, 2025 at 5:12 pm)Leonardo17 Wrote: All of this is still like a light weight boxer fighting a heavy weight champion.
 
Yes, Ukraine is also hitting its opponent. Yes, it does at least some amount of damage. But is this going to stop Vladimir Putin?
 
- Putin needs this war. Dictators need wars in order to hold on to power. Thanatocracy is the term. The more this war goes on, the easier it is for Putin to hold on to power.
 
The only positive outcome of the situation is Europe becoming more united and realizing its need to become a better organized military and economic superpower on its own.
 
But US participation could also have a lot of impact. A different US government might have been focused on ending this war sooner rather than later (By giving Ukrainians the means to defeat Russia sooner rather than later)

Disagree. The longer the war drags on, the less secure Putin’s position becomes - it’s becoming increasingly likely that he’ll be deposed in a coup.

Boru

(June 3, 2025 at 7:25 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Disagree. The longer the war drags on, the less secure Putin’s position becomes - it’s becoming increasingly likely that he’ll be deposed in a coup.

Boru

Directly to the point, this attack has shown that Putin's regime cannot protect even the Russian hinterlands thousands of miles away from Ukraine. That loss of face can only undermine his standing amongst the apparatchiki.

One more failure in a war filled with them. I've no doubt that there's a cabal or three working as we write.

It's a shame, but still understandable, that instead of attacking cruise-missile bombers, these drones did not instead attack refineries or electrical grids. They went after the planes attacking their citizens, and that's fully laudable.

And, for the record, a talented lightweight would stand a fair chance against a heavyweight champ. Lightweights tend to be faster, have more endurance, and better footwork. Champion boxers - particularly heavyweights - tend to be overconfident, which leads to mistakes. If the champ doesn't knock out the lightweight by the second round, the latter's odds improve dramatically.

Not a bad analogy for the war, really.

Boru

Ali vs foreman

Yes dictators need wars to keep their regimes up. They need SUCCESSFUL wars tho. Ukraine turns out to be a sunken cost problem for Russia with every day it drags on.

What I’m trying to say is that the perception of his supporters is the only thing that matters. Think of MAGA supporters. Does Ukraine matter to them? Or Gaza? Or Iran? Or even China?
 
No. Trump is telling them that he is going to reindustrialize America by putting higher taxes on foreign goods. Everybody is telling that it is not going to happen (not like this at least). But his supporters keep supporting him (did he end the war within 24 hour? – He didn’t right? )
 
The same works for Putin. He is the reincarnation of Stalin and Catherine the Great at the same time and is fighting a holy war against Nazis in Ukraine (Where his successes are close to zero apart from some small settlements etc. with huge casualties – 5000 soldiers every week if I am correct - )
 
We don’t understand that kind of logic as real people feeding on real media sources. You can easily compare the average Russian to the average German at the end of WWII. Many of them were even ignorant of concentration camps. As I said: It’s a parallel universe / a different reality. So the more they die, the stronger the myth and the stronger the one-man rule. That’s Thanatocracy

(June 4, 2025 at 3:18 pm)Leonardo17 Wrote: What I’m trying to say is that the perception of his supporters is the only thing that matters. Think of MAGA supporters. Does Ukraine matter to them? Or Gaza? Or Iran? Or even China?
 
No. Trump is telling them that he is going to reindustrialize America by putting higher taxes on foreign goods. Everybody is telling that it is not going to happen (not like this at least). But his supporters keep supporting him (did he end the war within 24 hour? – He didn’t right? )
 
The same works for Putin. He is the reincarnation of Stalin and Catherine the Great at the same time and is fighting a holy war against Nazis in Ukraine (Where his successes are close to zero apart from some small settlements etc. with huge casualties – 5000 soldiers every week if I am correct - )
 
We don’t understand that kind of logic as real people feeding on real media sources. You can easily compare the average Russian to the average German at the end of WWII. Many of them were even ignorant of concentration camps. As I said: It’s a parallel universe / a different reality. So the more they die, the stronger the myth and the stronger the one-man rule. That’s Thanatocracy

But it’s not the average Russians who will decide Putin’s fate. It’s the oligarchs and the military commanders. They’re much, MUCH more interested in money and survival than any myth Putin generates. These two groups (and there’s significant overlap between them) are the ones keeping Putin in power, and they’re the ones that can remove him.

Boru

(June 2, 2025 at 8:14 am)Deesse23 Wrote: Those 40 Bombers would amount to abut 30% of Russia's strategic bomber fleet, although it seems "only" 7 are visually confirmed to be totally written off. Still, its a huge blow to russias military, its reputation, and probably morale. It shows that Ukraine is still well capable of defending itself, particularly by making use of asymptotic warfare. It also shows how incredibly efficient and effective (cost/effect) new tools like drones can be. A strategic bomber is not exactly cheap to produce.

To your point:

TWZ Wrote:Initially, Ukrainian authorities claimed to have hit 41 aircraft, in total, including Tu-95MS Bear-H and Tu-22M3 Backfire-C bombers, as well as A-50 Mainstay airborne early warning and control aircraft. However, these were clearly not all destroyed or even damaged.

Subsequently, Andriy Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said that “at least 13 Russian aircraft were destroyed.”

Among those aircraft, the new video confirms that several of the Tu-95MS bombers were already loaded with Kh-101 conventionally armed cruise missiles, ready for launch against Ukraine, as seen in the image below. This fact underlines how big a threat these aircraft are to Ukraine and reinforces the fact that they are legitimate targets.

https://www.twz.com/air/firm-evidence-of...ne-strikes

We may see that count rise further, but you are correct, 41 destroyed is overclaiming. I do still think that damage not readily apparent to BDA methods or satellite imagery may see more write-offs, but that can't be a large number.

I think it's also significant that at least some of those bombers were uploaded for a mission scheduled later that evening. It implies a possible breach of Russian opsec that, if true, is going to generate yet another follow-on effect: the purging of officers and personnel in the loop on that mission.

Putin couldn't have asked for a better puppet.

Quote:Donald Trump blames Ukraine's airfield attacks for triggering Putin's massive attack

When asked about how the SBU's Spiderweb special operation against Russian strategic aviation affected the nature of the war, the White House chief noted that he had warned Kyiv about a revenge strike.

"They gave Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night. That’s the thing I didn’t like about it. When I saw it, I said, ‘Here we go, now it’s going to be a strike," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

During the night of June 6, Russian forces launched a large-scale strike on most regions and cities across Ukraine.

Russia fired over 400 drones and more than 40 missiles of various types at the country. The attacks damaged apartment buildings, private homes, and industrial infrastructure. The hardest-hit areas were Kyiv, Ternopil, and Lutsk.

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/donakd-t...58812.html

Russia hired African farmers to make shampoo, then sent them to war

The advert for a job in a Russian shampoo factory looked like just what Jean Onana needed.

Out of work in the Cameroonian capital of Yaounde and struggling to support a wife and three young children, he leapt at the chance to earn a solid pay packet, he later told Ukrainian interrogators.

The 36-year-old saved up for his ticket and flew to Moscow in March, joining many young Africans who end up in Russia to study or seek work.

However, far from offering the answer to his financial predicament, his trip instead pitched him into the crucible of Ukraine’s eastern front, an ordeal he only narrowly survived.

Mr Onana had barely arrived when he was detained along with 10 others from Bangladesh, Cameroon, Zimbabwe and Ghana.

The men were told they would not be working and instead would sign a one-year contract to join the Russian military and serve on the front lines of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Onana is only one of what are estimated to be hundreds, or even thousands, of Africans who have found themselves fighting on the front lines.

Africans and others from developing countries elsewhere are being pressed into service as Russia looks for huge numbers of recruits to sustain horrific casualty rates in its grinding three-year offensive.

Nearly one million Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the assault began, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a US-based think tank, said last week.

Many African recruits have not returned, becoming victims of suicidal infantry tactics which are currently seeing Russian forces take an average of more than 1,100 casualties each day for only small territorial gains.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2...ront-line/

(June 11, 2025 at 5:18 pm)Fake Messiah Wrote: Russia hired African farmers to make shampoo, then sent them to war

The advert for a job in a Russian shampoo factory looked like just what Jean Onana needed.

Out of work in the Cameroonian capital of Yaounde and struggling to support a wife and three young children, he leapt at the chance to earn a solid pay packet, he later told Ukrainian interrogators.

The 36-year-old saved up for his ticket and flew to Moscow in March, joining many young Africans who end up in Russia to study or seek work.

However, far from offering the answer to his financial predicament, his trip instead pitched him into the crucible of Ukraine’s eastern front, an ordeal he only narrowly survived.

Mr Onana had barely arrived when he was detained along with 10 others from Bangladesh, Cameroon, Zimbabwe and Ghana.

The men were told they would not be working and instead would sign a one-year contract to join the Russian military and serve on the front lines of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Onana is only one of what are estimated to be hundreds, or even thousands, of Africans who have found themselves fighting on the front lines.

Africans and others from developing countries elsewhere are being pressed into service as Russia looks for huge numbers of recruits to sustain horrific casualty rates in its grinding three-year offensive.

Nearly one million Russian troops have been killed or wounded since the assault began, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a US-based think tank, said last week.

Many African recruits have not returned, becoming victims of suicidal infantry tactics which are currently seeing Russian forces take an average of more than 1,100 casualties each day for only small territorial gains.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2...ront-line/

It was me and a hundred more to Americay sailed o’er,
Our fortunes to be made we were thinkin’.
When we got to Yankee-land, they shoved a gun into our hands,
And said, ‘Paddy, you must go and fight for Lincoln.’ - from Paddy’s Lament

The more things change…

Boru