(Yesterday at 5:12 am)Belacqua Wrote: Ukraine's ambassador to the US said in an interview that Putin is only pretending to negotiate, while really he's stalling for time because he knows that militarily he's winning.

I agree with this in a sense. Russian forces are making tiny incremental advances with horrible casualties, and dishonesty comes with anything Putin says. He's stalling for time, but the real question is, will he get to victory before he runs entirely through his human capital? A misjudgment here will probably be fatal to his regime.

(Yesterday at 5:12 am)Belacqua Wrote: She said that the Russians can continue the war a lot longer, while Ukraine can't. (This is what I pointed out a while back: in a war of attrition, Russia wins.)

This reveals a very shallow understanding of military principles. There's a lot more that goes into an attritional battle than sheer size or numbers. Things like combat efficiency, positional warfare, logistical support, and so on matter a lot in attritional warfare.

(Yesterday at 5:12 am)Belacqua Wrote: I don't know how much of this kind of news gets through to English-speaking people. Any positive news for the Ukrainian side gets played up in the media, but I suspect that what they report is intentionally unbalanced.

I know what Russian media reports is unbalanced. And which bias you read depends on which sources you use. Assuming that all Western sources are equally biased in the same direction is itself evidence of your own bias, because anyone who reads from varied sources knows that they differ in reportage.

(Yesterday at 5:12 am)Belacqua Wrote: For example, yesterday Ukraine hit a building in Grozny. It appears to have had no military significance, and an empty police station was damaged.

Russia, on the other hand, is sending wave after wave of drones and missiles that target the Ukrainian energy grid. Currently the oil refinery and power plant at Kremenchuk are burning. A week ago about 600,000 people in and around Kiev had no electricity.

You write "It appears". Weasel-words like that raise my antennae, so why don't you present your source for this statement ... or is this just you pulling an opinion out of your ass (again)?

(Yesterday at 5:12 am)Belacqua Wrote: One thing that's changed: The New York Times (and other papers that tell us what the powerful people want us to know) is starting to warn us that things are not going well for Ukraine. This is no surprise, obviously, but some people have been in denial.

https://archive.md/F4HkP

Anyone with half-a-brain has known that Ukraine has been in deep shit for the last four years. What you continually elide is that Russia too -- or, rather, Putin's regime -- finds itself in a very dangerous spot with not only no clear avenue to victory, but no clear victory conditions or exit strategy ... while all Ukraine has to do for victory is not lose.

@Belacqua

Quote:For example, yesterday Ukraine hit a building in Grozny. It appears to have had no military significance, and an empty police station was damaged.

It doesn’t matter if the strike on the building had strictly military significance. It had psychological significance (read: ‘tangential military significance) because Ukraine demonstrated that they can hit a target that is more than twice as far from Kyiv as Moscow is.

And if it wasn’t significant in any sense, why did the Russians bother saying that it wasn’t hit at all, photographic evidence to the contrary?

Boru

The strike was a hit on FSB regional at ramzan kadyrovs administrative complex. Carried out against the backdrop of ukraines vast campaign of strikes..all the way out to the pacific...on russian infrastructure.

There are going to be military textbooks written about this conflict no matter how it ends, with russian exploits as a cautionary tale and the ukranian defense a new paradigm.

(Yesterday at 5:12 am)Belacqua Wrote: One thing that's changed: The New York Times (and other papers that tell us what the powerful people want us to know) is starting to warn us that things are not going well for Ukraine. This is no surprise, obviously, but some people have been in denial.

https://archive.md/F4HkP

But you, you arent in denial. The poweful people wont manage to tell you what you know, ever. Its because you, you are way much smartier than those, and all the forum denizens. You cant be fooled, you arent biased, at all, ever. You have "your sources" and they are never wrong nor are they trying to tell you what to believe. You arent as stupid as everyone else, we already know that. Not only that, but you have read Aristotle and Aquinas, thats how smart you are!

Tell me: What papers do i read? What have the "powerful" people told me to believe? What do i believe and why is it wrong?

I think anyone treading any papers about this is setting themselves up for disappointment, personally. Print and tv media got themselves scooped hard by osint, and in truth they don't have the cash or manpower to compete with every smartphone on earth...so they haven't even tried to catch up.

(Yesterday at 1:44 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: all Ukraine has to do for victory is not lose.

Too late.

Anyway, The New York Times has apparently decided to stop ignoring Ukraine's troubles.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/world...=url-share

Oh shit, somebody tell the ukrainians they no longer exist. They'll surely take Bel and the NYTs word for it.

(Yesterday at 4:56 pm)Belacqua Wrote:

(Yesterday at 1:44 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: all Ukraine has to do for victory is not lose.

Too late.

They've quit fighting? As of 6 Dec, they're fighting off yet another meatwave near Pokrovsk, and Friday night/Saturday morning shot down almost 600 drones and missiles: https://understandingwar.org/research/ru...er-6-2025/

I am almost embarrassed for you, the way you're parading your shill around without even trying to be subtle or consider your audience. But at the end of the day, you've got your head so far up your ass you need a snorkel to breathe.

Anyway, that source. Hop to it, go fetch it and post it here. Chop chop, little man.

Speaking of pokrovsk, and what the media has actually been saying....if you listened to the papers you'll have heard that there was a full encirclement and a ukranian mech division had been cut off two weeks ago. The papers say this because russia announced it. Turns out they've been sending four or five guys on suicide missions to plant flags in the city to create drone photo ops for domestic consumption. The open source verified situation on the ground is that russia spent 120k lives for selfie in the rubble.

The irony here is that pokrovsk is looking like validation for soviet defense tactics, which ukraine has hybridized for their new kit. They've fixed russian forces at a battle location that, if lost, straightens ukranian defensive lines and strengthens their overall positions. But don't take my word for it. Ask Igor Girkin. Terrorist in cheif, now incarcerated by his former benefactors, and architect for the pretext of full scale war in ukraine.

(Yesterday at 5:31 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: But don't take my word for it.  Ask Igor Girkin.

Or Vasily Chuikov and Georgi Zhukov.