Ukraine

[WszystekPoTrochu]

Re: Ukraine

3) This is about tactical nuclear warheads in Belarus, not Russian troop build-up. It would be completely pointless Ukraine diverting troops to the border to counter that threat - in fact that would create a juicy target. If there is a corresponding Russian troop build-up, that's another story, but I'm not aware of any reports that this is happening.

Pete

Nukes are not gifted abroad, but stationed. It always means owners' troops loitering around them.


I'll just stress that they make almost no sense in context of NATO. If you ask me, you were fully correct with

Belarus is being set up.

The question is what's the goal - most probably it's setting up for seizing power, not for framing them into war.

[WX]

Re: Ukraine

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-28/tanks-destroyed-russia-ukraine-war-leopards-t-72/102235254

Ukraine's battlefields are shaping up to look like a tank time warp. Russia is thought to have lost more than half its operational tank fleet since the start of the February 2022 invasion and is now "scraping the barrel," according to military analysts.
Images that have emerged in recent weeks show Moscow has started dragging 70-year-old museum pieces into the conflict.
Onlookers have mocked the move, referring to the fleet of T-62 and T-55 tanks — which first appeared in the 1940s — as "dad's army".

[gypsie]

Re: Ukraine

.......Russia is too big to conquer………...

This could be a different kind of war in that respect.
Were there other hot wars where the out come was simply to push the enemy back to its borders, but very much militarily in tatters and its economy in shatters?

[gypsie]

Re: Ukraine

.... dad's army

As the Russians flee their positions; 'Don't panic!! Don't panic!!!"

[epoxyboy]

Re: Ukraine

Lukashenko hospitalised after meeting Putin. Isn't this the second time in as many weeks?

https://news.yahoo.com/president-belarus-hospitalised-meeting-putin-204642610.html

Pete

[dutchpp]

Re: Ukraine

The ISW Russian offensive campaign assessment, May 27.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-27-2023

Key Takeaways

• Wagner Group mercenaries appear to be withdrawing from Bakhmut city to reconstitute and regroup in the rear as Russian offensive operations decrease in and around the city.
• The Russian military command may be transferring Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DNR) forces to relieve Wagner Group forces in Bakhmut city.
• The Russian transfer of DNR elements to Bakhmut may decrease the tempo of Russian offensive operations on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
• The Russian military command appears to be reinforcing Bakhmut’s flanks with regular formations, however.
• Former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin accused Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin of planning a coup against the current Russian leadership.
• Ukrainian officials denied Western reporting that suggested that a Chinese diplomat expressed interest in a negotiated ceasefire in Ukraine amidst the likely renewal of Russia’s information campaign surrounding negotiations.
• Russian forces continued limited offensive operations northeast of Kupyansk and south of Kreminna.
• Russian forces continued to launch unsuccessful offensive operations on the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
• Ukrainian forces continued to strike rear logistics nodes in southern Zaporizhia oblast.
• The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) warned on May 26 that Russian forces are preparing to conduct large scale provocations to create radiological danger at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).
• The Russian Ministry of Justice registered the civil society group “Council of Mothers of Wives” as a foreign agent on May 26, likely to curb resistance to ongoing and future Russian force generation efforts.
• Russian authorities are escalating efforts to portray Russia as a safe guardian of Ukrainian children.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Re: Ukraine

An interesting article on Bulgaria:

https://medium.com/@snowythefirst/how-bulgaria-secretly-saved-ukraine-and-why-kiril-petkov-is-an-unsung-hero-of-this-war-5b13a292bd75

[birlinn]

Re: Ukraine

if Russia wants to know why so many neighbouring countries wanted to join NATO, they should look to what they did to them during and after WW2.

[Johan R]

Re: Ukraine

if Russia wants to know why so many neighbouring countries wanted to join NATO, they should look to what they did to them during and after WW2.

With whos help? Look what happened at Yalta.

According to Roosevelt, "if we attempt to evade the fact that we placed somewhat more emphasis on the Lublin Poles than on the other two groups from which the new government is to be drawn I feel we will expose ourselves to the charges that we are attempting to go back on the Crimea decision." Roosevelt conceded that, in the words of Admiral William D. Leahy, the language of Yalta was so vague that the Soviets could "stretch it all the way from Yalta to Washington without ever technically breaking it.

Eventually, the United States and the United Kingdom made concessions in recognizing the communist-dominated regions by sacrificing the substance of the Yalta Declaration although it remained in form.

Yalta Conference - Wikipedia

[birlinn]

Re: Ukraine

Read about the fall of Berlin.
Why were most Germans hoping for the Americans to reach them before the Russkies?

[WX]

Re: Ukraine

Read about the fall of Berlin.
Why were most Germans hoping for the Americans to reach them before the Russkies?

Because a lot of German soldiers on the Eastern Front had written letters and told stories while on leave about what was happening in the name of the Reich. And that is without taking into account Stalin's attitude to anyone that defied him.

[skuthorp]

Re: Ukraine

Re #12311….
At the end of WW2 there was no stomach, or likely capacity for going straight into WW3 with Russia…….

[Peerie Maa]

Re: Ukraine

Re #12311….
If the USSR was such a benign colonial administrator, why did so many people risk their lives trying to leave?

With Soviet backing, national Communist parties absorbed their Social Democratic rivals and established one-party dictatorships subservient to the Communist Party in Moscow. State security services arrested, imprisoned, and sometimes executed dissenters. Show trials of supposedly disloyal Communist Party leaders took place across the East Bloc from the late 1940s into the 1950s, but were particularly prominent in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania. They testified to the influence of Soviet advisers and the unrestrained power of the domestic secret police in the satellite states, as well as Stalin’s urge to establish complete control — and his increasing paranoia
<snip>
For many people in the East Bloc, everyday life was hard throughout the 1950s. Socialist planned economies often led to production problems and persistent shortages of basic household items. Party leaders encouraged workers to perform almost superhuman labor to “build socialism,” often for low pay and under poor conditions. In East Germany, popular discontent with this situation led to open revolt in June 1953. A strike by Berlin construction workers protesting poor wages and increased work quotas led to nationwide demonstrations that were put down with Soviet troops and tanks. At least fifty-five protesters were killed and about five thousand were arrested during the uprising. When the revolt ended, the authorities rescinded the increased work quotas, but despite this apparent concession the protest strengthened the position of hardliner Stalinists within the East German government.

Communist censors purged culture and art of independent voices in aggressive campaigns that imposed rigid anti-Western ideological conformity. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Communist states required artists and writers to conform to the dictates of socialist realism, which idealized the working classes and the Soviet Union. Party propagandists denounced artists who strayed from the party line, and forced many talented writers, composers, and film directors to produce works that conformed to the state’s political goals. In short, the postwar East Bloc resembled the U.S.S.R. in the 1930s, although police terror was far less intense

https://www.macmillanhighered.com/Br...e_ch28_20.html

Potsdam Conference (July 1945)
The leaders present were Stalin (USSR), Truman (USA), and Attlee
(Britain)
Agreements:

USSR to gain eastern Poland and Poland to be compensated with some German territory-the
German border was settled at the Oder-Neisse Line.
Nazi Party to be banned and Nazi war criminals to beput on trial.
Disagreements:
Stalin demanded harsh reparations from Germany for the USSR-demanded $20 billion
compensation. This figure was rejected by Truman and Attlee–they did not want to make
the same mistakes as at Versailles.
Stalin denied a naval base in the Mediterranean
Stalin had set up a communist government in Poland without free elections being held
<snip>
The creation of Satellite States
The USSR responded to its nuclear inferiority by
strengthening its control over Eastern Europe.
Rigged elections, violence, intimidation another methods
were used to gain control over Eastern European states
including Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
By 1947 all eastern European states apart from
Czechoslovakia had communist governments(Czechoslovakia
came under communist government in 1948)
No free elections had been held as agreed to at Yalta.
<snip>
15
Events of the Hungarian uprising
-29 October–3 November: The new Hungarian government introduced
democracy, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion (the leader of the
Catholic Church was freed from prison). Nagy also announced that Hungary was
going to leave the Warsaw Pact.
-4 November:At dawn, 1000 Russian tanks rolled into Budapest. By 8.10 am they had destroyed
the Hungarian army and captured Hungarian Radio–its last words broadcast were ‘Help! Help! Help!’
Hungarian people–even children–fought them with machine guns. Some 4000 Hungarians killed
fighting the Russians.
-Khrushchev put in Janos Kadar, a supporter of Russia, as Prime Minister.
-Nagy was executed
<snip>
Berlin had been a source of tension between the superpowers since 1945.
In 1961 it again reached crisis point.
-The high standard of living in West Berlin contrasted sharply with the condition in communist East Berlin–
it continually reminded people in the eastern areas that communism was not a successful system to live
under.
-It was estimated that 2.7million people had crossed from East to West Berlin between 1945 and 1960.
Many of these were young, skilled, professional people–the East was suffered a ‘brain drain’ as these
educated men and women left to make new lives in the West. It seemed likely that this would continue if
their exit route through West Berlin was not blocked.
-Khrushchev also suspected the USA of sending spies into East Berlin and from there into the Eastern bloc
through West Berlin.
-Khrushchev gave the USA a 6 month ultimatum to get out
of Berlin or go to war.

https://www.cranbourne.hants.sch.uk/...r-Revision.pdf

No wonder Eastern European Nation States want nothing to do with Pootins government.

[gypsie]

Re: Ukraine

An interesting article on Bulgaria:

https://medium.com/@snowythefirst/ho...r-5b13a292bd75

Absolutely.

Today, the once mighty stick of Gazprom has turned into an empty condom.

[epoxyboy]

Re: Ukraine

Overnight drone attack on Kyiv, 52 of 54 shot down, one killed.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-65736730

Pete