Assault on Kiev: Russian helicopters swoop above Ukraine's capital

[beautifulthailand99]

1 hour ago, BobBKK said:

 Well, we will see, right?  Many 'experts' were claiming Russia ran out of ammo years back and would fight with "shovels". Pretty useful shovels those  lol

No need for a general mobilisation in Russia so far - I think they have committed 360,000 troops out of 1,300,000 so far.  (3,570,000 total including reserves).

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334413/military-personnel-in-russia-by-type/#:~:text=How many soldiers does Russia,and 250%2C000 were paramilitary forces.
 

They were used to build the impenetrable Surovikin lIne - how they laughed but as Bob Monkhouse said of his critics when they laughed at him wanting to be a comedian. Well they are not laughing now. We can add washing machines, toilets, prisoners being conscripted (Ukraine now|!) , endless wunderwafffe - Leopards, Challengers, M1 Abrams  and now the coming F15s , Putin's dying , will be deposed in a coup, body doubles, the much vaunted counteroffensive that went nowhere, economy imploding, sanctions biting, corruption banished, and many more jingo narratives fed to the poulations to make this war seem trivial and we are winning - just a matter of time - victory is assured.

 

Whereas the western military industrial complex charges eye watering amounts for tech that seems oudated in the modern era of conflict and £5 billion UK Ajax tanks that still don't work and aircraft carriers that look like sitting ducks  - the Russians stick glide bomb kits onto tens of thousand of dumb bombs to make deadly accurate FAB bombs, go to the scrapyard to make Turtle Tanks to combat FPV drones and developed the deadly Lancet's in abandoned shopping malls that are fired by catapults at $20k a pop and refurb junkyard tanks that almost run on anything that burns.

 

And that's before we get to a woke army more focused on politcal correctness in ther ranks and mental health of their troops than fighting bloody battles with an enemy not afraid to die or endure misery and suffering.

 

Don't poke the bear has been a mantra down the ages and with good reason - just ask Napoleon and Hitler who found out what exactly that means.

[transam]

37 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

Max Hastings in The Times telling it like it is. Jingoists take note.

 

Almost nobody is telling it like it is. Jingo newspapers bear as much blame for parroting government deceits about Ukraine’s prospects as our ministers themselves, who feel obliged to keep promising victory. Optimists should also abandon the oft-repeated assertion that the Russians are mere bunglers. They are getting steadily better, especially in the field of electronic warfare, and they have far more munitions. Drones are key. Kyiv estimates that Russia is producing or procuring 100,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) a month, while Ukraine can achieve only half that number. Iranian-made Shahed drones cost far less than the western missiles deployed to shoot them down. Russia has doubled its tank production to an estimated 200 a year.

 

https://archive.ph/WOzZ3

 

 

 

A bloke writing in a newspaper.......😃

[transam]

1 minute ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

I write for myself - if anybody finds it interesting then good and if they don't that's good as well and of emojis I care not for I have met Grasshopper in the wilderness. Have a nice day !

I thought you might have..........🤔

[scottiejohn]

7 minutes ago, transam said:

Your garbage is tiresome.......

It is not just tiresome it is totally pointless!

[Rimmer]

Off topic baiting flames and replies have been removed

[rabas]

50 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

They were used to build the impenetrable Surovikin lIne - how they laughed but as Bob Monkhouse said of his critics when they laughed at him wanting to be a comedian. Well they are not laughing now. We can add washing machines, toilets, prisoners being conscripted (Ukraine now|!) , endless wunderwafffe - Leopards, Challengers, M1 Abrams  and now the coming F15s , Putin's dying , will be deposed in a coup, body doubles, the much vaunted counteroffensive that went nowhere, economy imploding, sanctions biting, corruption banished, and many more jingo narratives fed to the poulations to make this war seem trivial and we are winning - just a matter of time - victory is assured.

 

Whereas the western military industrial complex charges eye watering amounts for tech that seems oudated in the modern era of conflict and £5 billion UK Ajax tanks that still don't work and aircraft carriers that look like sitting ducks  - the Russians stick glide bomb kits onto tens of thousand of dumb bombs to make deadly accurate FAB bombs, go to the scrapyard to make Turtle Tanks to combat FPV drones and developed the deadly Lancet's in abandoned shopping malls that are fired by catapults at $20k a pop and refurb junkyard tanks that almost run on anything that burns.

 

And that's before we get to a woke army more focused on politcal correctness in ther ranks and mental health of their troops than fighting bloody battles with an enemy not afraid to die or endure misery and suffering.

 

Don't poke the bear has been a mantra down the ages and with good reason - just ask Napoleon and Hitler who found out what exactly that means.

 

Nice soundbites, some/many are true. Certainly the West is powerless facing Putin and his ... no, wait ... "You are powerless, surrender ..." is the primary message of Russian propaganda!  Oh, what to believe...

 

How about NATO's great weapons superiority. How about NATO's $51 trillion GDP [ref]? What's Russia's GDP?,  no one knows as Russia has stopped reporting any financial data to the World Bank as required to maintain their membership. Maybe ~3% of NATO's would be not far off. How about the West's great technological edge as we have seen by the failure of many of Russia's most vaulted weapons systems, like penetrated impenetrables, stopped unstoppables, and destroyed indestructibles.  Never mind the UK's  aircraft carrier, have you seen Russia's? Anyway the US has 11. 

 

I agree with your previous posted article warning that the West needs to wake up and take Russia very seriously. Time has come. It's a fact of history that enemies only attack when you drop your guard.

 

BTW, I do pray for a stable world but Vladimir Putin is not the path to peace.

 

Edit: reduce estimated Russian GDP to ~3% of NATO's.  4% was before the war.

 

Edited May 18 by rabas

[transam]

2 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Video from two years ago. Irrelevant now.

99 is struggling with his "Red" agenda.....🤭

[beautifulthailand99]

9 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Video from two years ago. Irrelevant now.

You haven't watched it then - he gave that speech in 2015 explaining precisely what has come to pass. .

Edited May 18 by beautifulthailand99

[beautifulthailand99]

4 minutes ago, transam said:

99 is struggling with his "Red" agenda.....🤭

aka Progressive Realism.

[transam]

1 minute ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

aka Progressive Realism.

I gave you a "laugh".....🤣

[transam]

1 minute ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

I made that up but when I googled it I found that Labour Shadow Foreign Secretray says he's one so I'm obviously not that. I'll take Red. (Putin's Russia is certainly not communist though. It's increasingly autocratic state capatalist with a fake democracy akin to Thailand - you get rid of the opposition via legal or other darker means.

So is communist China, Vietnam, now capitalists with the dark side of communism, same as Putin's lot, without the communist badge, but communism is still there, hence the long list of the murdered..........😉

[beautifulthailand99]

To the last Ukrainian whether you like it or not. Do the prisoners get a choice  - social deviants rarely make great citizens and they are surely in prison for a reason ? You know when the BBC and Zelenskiy admits this things are beyond grim.

 

 

Edited May 18 by beautifulthailand99

[Rimmer]

An off topic ramble and very old video have been removed, please stay on topic which is about current events happening in the war:

 

The War in Ukraine

Latest developments and discussion of events in the Ukraine War. 

[rabas]

1 hour ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

I made that up but when I googled it I found that Labour Shadow Foreign Secretray says he's one so I'm obviously not that. I'll take Red. (Putin's Russia is certainly not communist though. It's increasingly autocratic state capatalist with a fake democracy akin to Thailand - you get rid of the opposition via legal or other darker means.

 

Russia under Putin is a kleptocracy.

 

The Rise of Kleptocracy: Power and Plunder in Putin’s Russia

Authors:  Miriam Lanskoy,  Dylan Myles-Primakoff 

[beautifulthailand99]

9 minutes ago, rabas said:

 

Russia under Putin is a kleptocracy.

 

The Rise of Kleptocracy: Power and Plunder in Putin’s Russia

Authors:  Miriam Lanskoy,  Dylan Myles-Primakoff 

Thanks you're right I'll nick that for one of my rambles. Mafia state well describes it. There was an interesting article in the FT a while back that said something like 70% of the world's countries were basically "mafia" states - that sounds about right.

Edited May 18 by beautifulthailand99

[beautifulthailand99]

The Russian onslaught is relentless in the next few days it could turn into a rout.

 

 

[Bkk Brian]

“The Russians don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough. They don’t have the skill & the capability to do it, to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage. I'm confident that the Ukrainians will hold the line,” – General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe 🇪🇺 told reporters after a meeting of the alliance’s defense chiefs at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

 

 

[Bkk Brian]

Latest Update

https://x.com/DefenceHQ/status/1791744851182063715

 

[beautifulthailand99]

6 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

“The Russians don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough. They don’t have the skill & the capability to do it, to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage. I'm confident that the Ukrainians will hold the line,” – General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe 🇪🇺 told reporters after a meeting of the alliance’s defense chiefs at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

 

 

 

The 50,000 strong force being committed to Kharkiv doesn’t look like it has much intentions beyond harassing Ukrainian defences. From the RU perspective it would probably be wise to hold off pushing for Kharkiv city until the situation deteriorates for AFU. The manpower required to take it would just be too significant otherwise,so he's probably right. They have pretty much got all the land they wanted now. From hereonin, they just need Ukraine to either collapse or agree to a peace deal. So the General is right if my informed hunches are correct and most probably a ploy to divert resources and keep Ukraine guessing.

 

So far, the forces that Russia has committed to Kharkiv, up to 30,000 from Belgorod, rising to 50,000 if nearby forces are included, are nowhere near enough to threaten a city the size of Kharkiv, Barros said.The battle is not a territorial struggle for Ukraine’s second city, but more likely a combination of a diversionary attack to weaken defensive lines in the Donbas and an attempt to use bombardment to turn Kharkiv into a ghost town.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/16/ukraines-defences-thin-on-ground-as-russia-advances-on-kharkiv

 

[Bkk Brian]

Just now, beautifulthailand99 said:

 

The 50,000 strong force being committed to Kharkiv doesn’t look like it has much intentions beyond harassing Ukrainian defences. From the RU perspective it would probably be wise to hold off pushing for Kharkiv city until the situation deteriorates for AFU. The manpower required to take it would just be too significant otherwise,so he's probably right. They have pretty much got all the land they wanted now. From hereonin, they just need Ukraine to either collapse or agree to a peace deal. So the General is right if my informed hunches are correct and most probably a ploy to divert resources and keep Ukraine guessing.

 

So far, the forces that Russia has committed to Kharkiv, up to 30,000 from Belgorod, rising to 50,000 if nearby forces are included, are nowhere near enough to threaten a city the size of Kharkiv, Barros said.The battle is not a territorial struggle for Ukraine’s second city, but more likely a combination of a diversionary attack to weaken defensive lines in the Donbas and an attempt to use bombardment to turn Kharkiv into a ghost town.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/16/ukraines-defences-thin-on-ground-as-russia-advances-on-kharkiv

 

I prefer NATO source, General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe than the Guardian 

[beautifulthailand99]

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukrainian-parliament-approves-voluntary-mobilization-of-convicts-for-war-ukraine-russia/

 

Desperate for recruits after a six-month delay in declaring mobilization, Ukraine’s MPs took a page straight from the book of Russia's Wagner Group mercenary force — which also allows convicts to reduce their jail terms through military service.

The lawmakers hope a regulated, voluntary process will allow Kyiv to mobilize up to 10,000 convicts for the war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy must sign the bill before it can take effect.

[Bkk Brian]

7 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukrainian-parliament-approves-voluntary-mobilization-of-convicts-for-war-ukraine-russia/

 

Desperate for recruits after a six-month delay in declaring mobilization, Ukraine’s MPs took a page straight from the book of Russia's Wagner Group mercenary force — which also allows convicts to reduce their jail terms through military service.

The lawmakers hope a regulated, voluntary process will allow Kyiv to mobilize up to 10,000 convicts for the war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy must sign the bill before it can take effect.

That quote of yours is not in the link. One of the reasons being its not like the Wagner recruitment at all. This is in the link and unlike Wagner.....................

 

" those who committed serious crimes including murder, rape, terrorism, dealing drugs and treason, will be ineligible to trade their jail terms for the defense of their country."

 

Also unlike Wagner:

 

"Other prisoners, as long as they weren't convicted of a serious crime, face one condition — no more than three years may remain before the end of their sentences. Requests to be allowed to fight in exchange for freedom must be approved by the courts."

[beautifulthailand99]

9 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

That quote of yours is not in the link. One of the reasons being its not like the Wagner recruitment at all. This is in the link and unlike Wagner.....................

 

" those who committed serious crimes including murder, rape, terrorism, dealing drugs and treason, will be ineligible to trade their jail terms for the defense of their country."

 

Also unlike Wagner:

 

"Other prisoners, as long as they weren't convicted of a serious crime, face one condition — no more than three years may remain before the end of their sentences. Requests to be allowed to fight in exchange for freedom must be approved by the courts."

Check again it most certainly is last 2 paragraphs you may wish to edit your post. One has to wonder would you want convicted prisoners fighting alongside you. How could you ever trust them ?

Edited May 18 by beautifulthailand99

[Bkk Brian]

7 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

Check again it most certainly is last 2 paragraphs you may wish to edit your post. One has to wonder would you want convicted prisoners fighting alongside you. How could you ever trust them ?

Indeed it is last 2 paragraphs. Trust you....lol. but my post still stands. Its nothing like the Wagner recruitment. 

[beautifulthailand99]

11 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

Indeed it is last 2 paragraphs. Trust you....lol. but my post still stands. Its nothing like the Wagner recruitment. 

You will have to take that up with Politico that made the comparison. Sadly I can't link the Prizoghin talk to prisonsers in a Russian jail where he outlines the deal in brutal terms so no convict was unware of what they were getting into. They were volunteers as well - Russian jails like Thai ones are terrible, terrible places. It was you do 6 months and you will probably die but if you live you will get your freedom.

 

Oh here is an accpetable source but not the 6 minute one with translations which is a fascinating piece of source material.

 

 

Edited May 18 by beautifulthailand99

[Bkk Brian]

6 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

You will have to take that up with Politico that made the comparison. Sadly I can't link the Prizoghin talk to prisonsers in a Russian jail where he outlines the deal in brutal terms so no convict was unware of what they were getting into. They were volunteers as well - Russian jails like Thai ones are terrible, terrible places. It was you do 6 months and you will probably die but if you live you will get your freedom.

 

Oh here is an accpetable source.

 

 

I have no idea why you put a video there on this when it was discussed numerous time before on this topic.

 

I was also pointing out facts to you, couldn't care less about Politico and its comparisons, you shouldn't believe everything you read.....lol

 

"We have confirmed that suspects in about 20 serious offences, including rape and murder, are fighters recruited by the Wagner mercenary group in prison and released early to serve in Ukraine."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66364272

 

Beside which Russia copied Wagner and started using prisoners a long time ago, so much so some of their prisons are now empty 

 

Russia's recruited so many inmates to fight in Ukraine that it's shuttering some of its prisons

Russia's prison population has been plummeting as more inmates get recruited to fight in Ukraine.

A local official said on Thursday that some prisons would be closed to "optimize and save money."

Russia's military has been relying on prisoners to plug its manpower gaps.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russias-recruited-many-inmates-fight-054914358.html

 

[beautifulthailand99]

19 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

I have no idea why you put a video there on this when it was discussed numerous time before on this topic.

 

I was also pointing out facts to you, couldn't care less about Politico and its comparisons, you shouldn't believe everything you read.....lol

 

"We have confirmed that suspects in about 20 serious offences, including rape and murder, are fighters recruited by the Wagner mercenary group in prison and released early to serve in Ukraine."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66364272

 

Beside which Russia copied Wagner and started using prisoners a long time ago, so much so some of their prisons are now empty 

 

Russia's recruited so many inmates to fight in Ukraine that it's shuttering some of its prisons

Russia's prison population has been plummeting as more inmates get recruited to fight in Ukraine.

A local official said on Thursday that some prisons would be closed to "optimize and save money."

Russia's military has been relying on prisoners to plug its manpower gaps.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/russias-recruited-many-inmates-fight-054914358.html

 

There's many in the bleeding hearts liberal west who would wlcome getting rid of prisoners wholesale. Not me I am one  (not a prisoner for clarity!).

[Bkk Brian]

2 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

There's many in the bleeding hearts liberal west who would wlcome getting rid of prisoners wholesale. Not me I am one  (not a prisoner for clarity!).

There's many in the bleeding hearts liberal west who would wlcome getting rid of prisoners wholesale.

 

This topic is not about that, so I will leave you there..........

[rabas]

3 hours ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

Thanks you're right I'll nick that for one of my rambles. Mafia state well describes it. There was an interesting article in the FT a while back that said something like 70% of the world's countries were basically "mafia" states - that sounds about right.

 

No. Sounds like obfuscation (propaganda). And, no reference again !  Simply, Putin's Russia is the world's most corrupt country: [reference] [reference top 10] Probably why they will lose. 

 

[beautifulthailand99]

1 hour ago, rabas said:

 

No. Sounds like obfuscation (propaganda). And, no reference again !  Simply, Putin's Russia is the world's most corrupt country: [reference] [reference top 10] Probably why they will lose. 

 

Well Google AI tells me the transparency index is the go to for international comparison. Russia is not good obviously but nowhere near the top. China is bad as well and Ukraine ranks with Thailand. Go figure.

 

https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2023

 

I'm not here to defend Russia , I'm no fan for the record unlike others here either but I just examine the world as I find it and try and figure out where it is going. Anyway I could opine at length and it would probably get deleted so lets stay on topic and discuss current events from authorised sources. I'm deliberately staying off the Israel threads I have views but I simply don't have enough information to fully understand what is going on.

 

Before I go I really appreciate your posts Rabas , your are an intelligent,informed poster who argues well and is open to hearing contrarian evidence if it is the truth whilst having an overall sense of right and wrong and social justice which is why you want Ukraine to win and 'good' to triumph as you no doubt see it. I suspect you don't do emoji hit and runs and consider your thoughts before posting.

 

Others that don't want to engage and simpl snipe , fine. Like I said I'm dispassionate this is an internet forum for what for most folks is killing time which is certainly better to killing people.

 

 

Edited May 18 by beautifulthailand99