whole Kharkov front is crumbling under the action of a few DRG's. The numbers are also exxagerated, more sensible bloggers talk about 2 to 4k russian soldiers. It's becoming clear that the AFU can somewhat hold pre-prepared position in hot areas, but has no capability to redeploy reserves to new fronts.
The poor 47th fire brigade must be spending more times sitting on cars and trains than actually fighting
iirc John Oliver talked about a particular missile silo which is so old the computers still use punched cards, and there is no soldier who is actually trained on those systems. The door of that same silo is also always open, because it broke and they don't know how to fix it
they make it look so easy, it's frustrating
tbh this is already the case when it comes to the air/sea war. Recent wargames show that in the moment of an attack, the US fleet and airforce in the pacific get missile'd to hell before even being able to operate effectively
For real, western nations really need to get a grip and realize that no one is scared of them anymore. Russia has shown the world that you can fight back against NATO and win. Yet countries like France still seem to think that they can terrorize modern independent nations like they terrorized african tribal communities.
The biggest issue is that the French army, much like any other western army, has no experience in fighting peers. The only two countries in the world which have that are Russia and Ukraine. French officers themselves admitted that the russian army is not the main (arguably only) reference when it comes to peer-to-peer combat operations.
French troops would not fare any better than the élite, nato-equipped ukrainian brigades that smashed their heads against the Surovikin line.
I will say this tho - i never thought i would live to see german tanks burn on russian soil again, and i am sort of excited to see the french being beaten out of russia again
I think this is the case because the west isn't used to fighting an enemy that can match their might.
Think Iraq. Why bother with a narrative? There is a certainty of victory, no damage will come to the west, and iraqi media sure as hell isn't reaching our audiences. So just make up an excuse, invade, and let people forget it until the next current thing.
But russia? It can fight back, it has political and economic leverage, it forces europe to suffer economically, it can inflict losses and shatter the image of nato equipment being unbeatable.
So the media has to scramble to find reasons why we should keep fighting the russians, because our collective subconscious knows that fighting russia is a bad idea in general. The result of this scrambling is a lot of contrasting narratives that keep contradicting each other. Specially because russia itself has the power to counter western narratives and highlight the falsehoods.
Remember Soledar for example? "the situation is difficult but we are holding" until russians started posting selfies from inside the town and it became clear that the UAF had been routed from there days ago.
Or also when they kept claiming that reddit truesim that "attackers suffer 7 times more casualties" during the battle of Bakhmut an excuse to support the "we are grinding them down by losing" narrative. Now ukraine is attacking and people are asking "wait a second, we were told attackers take 7 times more losses, how is ukraine affording this?"
In short, much like they are not used to fighting competent enemies on the ground, they are not used to fighting competent enemies in the media/internet arena. The result is a clusterfuck of lies covered by other lies as soon as they get found out.
Remember that most of them actually believe ua pravda when it says that russians fight with shovels
Comrade, get a hold of yourself. A hundred generations live in us, waiting for the final victory of socialism. And if it won't be us, it's going to be our sons and daughters
Trump at least knew of to look like he knew what he was saying. He was a decent orator and could at least entertain a crowd. Biden is seriously less articulated and coherent than some people i work with, and i am an educator specialized in polyhandicap
i mean, if you look at the footage of diplomatic meetings you can see very obviously by Xi's body language that he takes the presidents of nations like Barbados or Zambia much more seriously than people like Biden or Trudeau
redditors when they have to realize that the mighty ubermensch superior german engineering tanks get blown up by an atgm like literally every other tank
it's so funny to see lengths NAFO bots will go to turn everything into a victory.
a tank was supposed to reach x, but it got blown up halfway through? "But the crew (according to our unsubstantiated speculation) made it out! the mission was a total success!"
a pmc fielding an army of untrained convicts took over the most fortified city in europe after systematically dismantling the defenses put up by dozens of thousands of ukrainian servicemen? "we inflicted casualties! 1 to 182748 casualty rate favoring the defender because reddit says so! total win!"
the counteroffensive gets obliterated by KA-52 and fails to even get close to the first defense line? "probing attacks! We got their attention! Huge victory! Heil Hi... ehrm, Slava Ukraini!
how did these people even end up on here. Like, you won't find me hanging around in neonazi forums for sure. But that would be equivalent to what those people are doing.
More than anything, it's the definitive confirmation that the Lion of Damascus won the civil war. They wouldn't have let him in if there were doubts about his position.
It pretty much says that the arab world has made peace with the idea that Assad and the Ba'ath party are there to stay
Cuba is probably the one i have the most cultural affinity with, so it would not be that hard to adapt and learn the language. But i also can't survive in warm climates, so northern china it is
if i had a time machine i would just go back to 1983 and give Andropov my kidney
I think people have this notion that revolutions in history have been brought about by groups of people that shared the exact same ideology and magically agreed on everything.
This won't, ever, be the case.
We advance our goals by using our voices to influence leftist movements from within, by being radical streams in the big umbrella of "leftism".
I have been a member of the local socialist (socdem) party for a decade, and a local leader in the youth wing. 95% of the times i disagree with the party line. But being there gives me the chance to introduce new ideas, to at least start a debate. Our regional section is the only one that opposed exporting arms to Ukraine, and me and my small clique of radicals are the reason for it. Swiss tanks would be rolling around the Donbass if people like me and my comrades were stuck in our own small ideological sect with 14 members and 0.07% of the vote.
It's not about gloriously leading the people in a long march towards our specific ideals. It's about working in the background to slowly, piece by piece, build a consciousness of geopolitics and class warfare. It's about saying that one sentence that will provoke someone to think differently for once.
China is too smart and cautious to get itself involved in such a conflict. They gave their token support to Serbia and that's it - nobody in the CPC wants China to be seen as the one stirring up conflict in Europe or elsewhere.
Same reason why they don't (openly) support the NPA in the Philippines and they keep reiterating that they want a peaceful solution to the SMO. China cares about being seen as the reasonable mediator, someone countries can rely on to actually stop conflicts instead of escalating them like SOME countries do
Shit's really looking bad for Kurti when even the americans aren't putting up with his crap.
But what was he thinking? Ethnic albanian majors "elected" with 0-100 votes in constituencies of tens of thousands of people. That's clearly a matter of renegotiating the electoral process instead of giving the Mayor title to whoever was there first. I can't believe the Kosovar goverment thought that that was going to work out.
Pre-trial detention under China's security law aims to break the will of those accused, critics say.
