WAR in Ukraine, Putin approves initiation of special military operation (Part 1)

Damn…in less then three months.

Russia has probably lost around a third of the ground forces it deployed to Ukraine and its offensive in the Donbas region “has lost momentum and fallen significantly behind schedule”, British military intelligence said on Sunday.

“Despite small-scale initial advances, Russia has failed to achieve substantial territorial gains over the past month whilst sustaining consistently high levels of attrition. Russia has now likely suffered losses of one third of the ground combat force it committed in February.”

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Don’t worry…we will be paying for their rebuild.

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Well…if one is 33 or younger they would have missed Afghanistan.:wink:

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Gee what do you think happens next, Putin gives up and goes home or a whole lot of shelling?

Well, given that Russia has been specifically targeting civilian, historical/cultural, and other non-military sites all along, I’d go with the latter. They seem bent on causing as much destruction as possible.

Hellbent is right. A third of their invasion forces? They were talking over a hundred thousand troops before they went in. Jeebus.

190 K to start with. It looks like they have likely lost upwards of 60 K to death, getting wounded, captured, MIA and desertion. They have replaced some of those lost forces with an assortment of foreign troops, conscripts, mercenaries , etc.

The Russian army is a laughing stock. The butt of jokes for the next hundred years

Afghanistan? It’s literally what brought on the collapse of the Soviet Union.

That’s a hot take right there.

Lets see- Cuban missile crisis, Afghanistan, the collapse of the USSR and yes now…Ukraine.

Ya the level of Fail is expert level.

WW1. Winter War. Napoleon, they burned their cities and just waited for him to leave lol.

Russia can’t flatten Ukraine because it will cause a famine in Russia in weeks.

Yeah it does go back a stretch. They do pretty well when armies invade Russia and they wait until its winter. Outside of that…not so much.

…just yesterday

Russian forces are giving up on Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv and retreating after weeks of bombardment and a failed effort to encircle it.

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Stepan Bandera the Hexenbiest short version and why some hone in on this figure constantly. He was a Ukrainian who was working for the Germans as an agent/informant before operation Barbarossa to make the Germans more welcome entering Ukraine which they really didn’t any help considering the NKVD left thousands of dead Ukrainians rotting in the cities as they fled east.

Bandera and fellow Ukrainians the OUN wanted a fascist state but they wanted and independent fascist state. His notoriety came when him and others formed OUN - Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists which was a big part of the Jewish pogroms that was set off against the Jewish population in Ukraine in 1941.

Ultimately Hitler had his own thoughts for Ukraine and didn’t want and independent Ukraine so the Germans arrested Bandera and the heads of OUN in which after which he sat in prison in Berlin until 1944 in which the Germans once they where desperate and losing released him back to Ukraine hoping he would form a partisan force against the Soviets. All accounts show he did that but also fought the Germans as well, his ultimate goal was and independent Ukraine.

After the war he was leading many militias trying to wreak havoc on the Soviets he was ultimately killed by the KGB in Berlin in 1959. So hero or committed fascist, or more likely both?

The reason if people are scratching their heads why the op and many articles keep popping his name up and are saying who gives a ■■■■ is because over the last decade especially his name has been getting restored and more recognition thrown his way at first just marches honoring his birthday and now statues as well as his own national holiday in the Ukraine. Basically the western Ukrainians have a somewhat favorable view of him, especially Lviv. The east and south Ukraine mostly loath him.

A complicated figure to say the least reminds me of a fascist version of Che. The Russians absolutely hate him whether or not his followers back him because of his ideology or his fight for Ukrainian independence all seems to fall on which side of Ukraine they live in.

Now obviously this wasn’t the reason Putin invaded Ukraine it was just his excuse. All accounts show that there is a small but dedicated percentage of the population that is far right, The Azov Regiment gets thrown around a lot they are the poster boys excuse for clearing out the so called Nazis. And well some of them probably are Nazis but the president is half Jewish so not sure how one runs the country is being controlled by Nazis. But they are there just not the amount portrayed by Russia.

■■■■■■■■■ Russia is the biggest wheat exporter in the world. Ukraine is fifth, with less than half of what Russia exports. The same goes for corn and barley. Both countries export more food than they import.

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Flood Saves Ukrainian Village from Russian Occupation | Newsmax

https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/ukraine-russia/2022/05/15/id/1069977/

Yah, probably should have said Putin instead of Russia.