Will Putin Invade Ukraine?

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US to send "small number" of ATACMS to Ukraine

After waiting with anticipation for months and recently giving yet another no, it seems like Biden is finally going to come through, though it may not actually be delivered anytime soon.

ATACMS would be a gamechanger and almost certainly be used to destroy the Kerch bridge as well as several military bases and ammo depots otherwise out of reach.  Huge difference on a strategic level.

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Russian tank runs into Russian minefield, soldiers disembark into trench then Russian artillery fires into the trench

The Ukrainians there must be watching in awe, wondering if they should intervene LOL

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190 freedom units = 300km (basically everywhere in Ukraine and a fair bit of Russia and Belarus)



(apologies that the legend is borked, but you get the drift)

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I'm sure you've all heard by now that the Russian Black Sea Fleet HQ in Sevastopol was hit by Storm Shadow cruise missiles.



There was some pretty crazy footage of the second cruise missile making a direct hit and sending large chunks of the structure flying outwards.  That's not the kind of thing you can walk away from.

The strike allegedly killed 9 Russian officers and wounded 16 more, some grievously.  It also might have killed the admiral in charge of the Black Sea Fleet Remnants, which is a hell of a catch, if true.  Biggest Black Sea naval death since Andrei Paliy early into the war.

Interestingly, it seems that some of the photos of the smoking ruin of that building also include pieces of paper reading "Crimea is Ukraine" in Ukrainian.  Quite the statement from behind enemy lines.  I hope they do not remain in enemy hands for much longer.

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The Ukrainians just released footage of a failed Russian assault near Novoyehorivka a few days ago.

The footage is especially brutal and graphic and shows quite clearly that the Ukrainians are extremely proficient with drones and don't mess around.

It also puts to rest our little discussion about whether or not a soldier with a shotgun can realistically down a drone.  Nope.  And attempting a Rambo-style defense will absolutely get you killed.

How to survive a drone attack:
1) Don't be there
2) Surrender immediately, if not before

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Russia just can't catch a break:

Sevastopol is under attack again.

A Russian base came under attack in Nago...that disputed territory near Azerbaijan.  Apparently, by Azerbaijan forces.  This happened a few days ago, but the footage was only just recently posted online.

And last but not least, an Il-76 military transport plane possibly linked to Wagner crashed in Mali (enroute from Belarus, destination Istanbul)

If I had to wager a guess, the plane was named "Loose Ends" in Russian.

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Three more bulk carriers are headed towards Ukrainian ports to deliver goods to China, Egypt, and Spain.

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Russian military strongholds in Kursk (Russia) largely abandoned

the Russian strongholds have been abandoned because the majority of personnel have been transferred to front-line positions in Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk oblasts.

This lines up with only around a fifth of the normal Russian soldiers near Norway and Russian troops being pulled from the border with China and its border with Belarus.

Also, Russian military hardware is being pulled from near Japan and pretty much everywhere else, presumably to be sent to Ukraine.

Russia is all in on Ukraine and committed virtually everything to that war.  Everything else is a distant second.

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Russian propagandist (therefore more or less the words of Putin):

- We will reclaim the lands and peoples living on those lands, roughly as of 1917. That's when the Russian Empire, destabilized after the Bolshevik revolution and taking a different path of development, lost many of its subjects. I'm not just talking about the lands themselves, that goes without saying. I understand that this includes Warsaw, Helsinki, Revel, Liepaja, and of course, the entire Baltic region. These are all our lands, and our people live there. What has been turned into a herd of mindless, trembling creatures, we must rectify. And we will rectify it through the power of Russian weaponry. In this case, I have no faith in diplomacy whatsoever. I believe that we can only reclaim it through the force of Russian arms. Reclaim our people, our subjects, for the Russian Empire back then, and now, the Russian Federation. So that the whole world doesn't turn into Sodom and Gomorrah, which is what's happening in Europe right now.

Let's decode.

* Putin lays claim to all territory that the Russian Empire of 1917 once held and considers it "Russian" regardless of who's living there or what they want.  Only Putin's desires are considered.

* Irredentism - the desire to reclaim lands - in this case, purely through conquest.

* dehumanizing these people and yet a fervent desire to have them as subjects to bolster Russia.  Note that Russia has been having demographic problems (for some strange reason, people don't want to live there) and its invasion of Ukraine has only made this worse.  Putin wants more subjects to counteract this.

* An infantile viewing of the Western world as sinful and deviant and Moscow as righteous, no doubt trying to appeal to Russian Orthodox sensibilities (this charge was and is used on Ukraine often, during and before the war - a keenly aware person would recognize that as an attempt to justify aggression and thus see it as a precursor of invasion)

There you have it, folks.  A warmonger who has no interest in diplomacy, but will take everything by force and thus has to be stopped by force.

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'The perfect target': Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years – ex-KGB spy

The KGB 'played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality', Yuri Shvets, a key source for a new book, tells the Guardian
Fri 29 Jan 2021

Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.

Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians' radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia's intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.

Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.

According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called "spotter agent" who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.

Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.

The ex-major recalled: "For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book

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Pope Francis called for "not playing games" with weapons supplies to Ukraine.

"We should not play games with the martyrdom of this people. We must help them resolve their problems... Right now, I see that some countries are stepping back, unwilling to provide weapons to Ukraine. A process is beginning in which undoubtedly the Ukrainian people will be martyred, and this is not beautiful," he said.

Source

100% agree.

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Freighter successfully docks in Turkey carrying grain from Ukraine

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Saboteurs strike Russian bases

A tanker truck was allegedly destroyed at a military base in the Naro-Fominsky district of Moscow Oblast, while four vehicles with trailers were destroyed at another base in the city of Kaluga

Do the Russians just not have security at their bases anymore?  Cause I read stuff like this frequently and I can't help but wonder at how this stuff is going undetected on the regular.