Russia & Ukraine

Uh oh. Karma Car has arrived in Crimea. This is good stuff. It shows the value of harassing Crimea by striking Sevastopol and striking the Kersh Bridge etc even if a full assault is a ways off.

As the realtors say on Zillow: "Let's get this started." :cool:



Last Monday, I said the following:

"Ukraine sending some signals that they are doing long range planning for Crimea- just to get the Russians attention. (Ukraine had just issued a statement that it when Crimea is taken all illegal migrants/occupiers would be required to leave).

A lot of Russians have already left or are planning to leave. They are well aware that when Russia invaded Crimea many, many Ukrainians had to sell or abandon their houses for just pennies. Just as what the Nazis did to the Jews. And just as the Tatars experienced when the Russians deported them from their homeland, also known as Crimea.

So if you are Russian and own/seized property in Crimea and are expecting to get some value for "your" house, you better sell it and get out while it is still worth something. Otherwise, KARMA is going to pay you a visit SOON."

===============
And now we see this and it will only get worse. More at link.

Not sure there is much of a bargain there for the buyers either. In a civilized country their title to any property that they bought from an illegal occupier after the 2014 invasion would be very flaky. The transaction requires the buyer to think through whether the Ukrainians will ultimately take Crimea or not.


Crimean Property Prices Crash As Ukraine War Hits Home

Moreover, there are also signs that, as the situation in Crimea becomes increasingly fraught and uncertain, many Russians are seeking to exit the local real-estate market at all costs.

Although officially a lot of real estate is being offered at prices that have been reduced by up to 2 percent, many owners are happy to knock off up to 20 percent of a property's declared value in order to get it off their hands as quickly as possible, according to Natalia Massalskaya from Multidom, a Sevastopol realtor.

Dmitry Zhidelev, the chairman of the Crimean Guild of Realtors, says that that the peninsula's real estate has become such a buyer's market that advertised property prices are being slashed by as much as 50 percent by the time a purchase is agreed.

https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-crimea-russia-war-real-estate/32213544.html
 
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misterkel said:
Ukrainian Defense Minister Reznikov

"We are carrying out NATO’s mission, they aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with MORE weapons.”

just to clarify -
WE (UKRAINE) ARE CARRYING OUT NATO'S MISSION.

Not fighting for their own country, fighting as a NATO proxy and sacrificial tool. I feel bad for the Ukrainian, terrible in fact. But not because of Russian aggression. Because of NATO/Western/US arrogance and indifference.
Ukraine is a self-serving war to promote US and NATO interests. Nothing more.
More...

The vatniks are out again this week with the old and tired Kremlin talking point that they are fighting NATO and Ukraine is just being used by the West.

Well... here is the reality. Ukraine is defending itself and democracy by refusing to give into a ruthless brutal dictator who used his military to aggressively attack a sovereign, independent nation. Putin can retreat and leave the country at any time; instead he continues to perpetuate his war crimes and doubling down on assaulting Ukraine. The countries of the West are merely giving Ukraine the arms, money and training to defend themselves from an brutal, oppressive tyrant and his military. This after all is what defending democracy is all about. NATO should step up and do more.
 
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kashirin said:
Bingo!

Eventually on 900 th page we got truth

every Ukrainian should know that truth

you just confirmed what we knew fro the very beginning

nobody in the USA has any concerns about ukrainian freedom, democracy or whatever nonsense you can read on front pages

nobody cares that Ukraine economy is completely destroyed, country literally in ruins, hundreds of thousands dead, ten millions refugees

just provoke russians, frame them evil nation and eliminate cheaply using ukrainian cannon fodder

USA is really really lucky that Russia has such a coward president as Putin

Anybody else would just nuke Poland as a first and last warning and would stop that nonsensic "help" in 1 day
More...

Look who is rambling again. You really should lay off on the vodka, comrade.

Here is is the harsh reality. Putin and his army are losing. The Russian economy is tanked and the only path forward for Putin at this point is a shameful withdrawal and retreat.

After the war, Ukraine will be re-built using the frozen Russian funds as Russia plunges into complete economic collapse and dissolution.
 
Russia’s aggression won’t end until Russians reject Putinism
https://thehill.com/opinion/interna...sion-wont-end-until-russians-reject-putinism/

The recent arrest of a senior German intelligence officer accused of spying for Russia is a timely reminder of the degree to which the Russian secret services may have penetrated Western institutions and of how much they know about Western capabilities and intentions.

Carsten L., the German officer with “access to a trove of top-secret information about the war in Ukraine, as well as knowledge of how it was collected by the U.S. and its allies,” is only the most recent entry on a long list of alleged Russian spies. In October 2021, a few months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization expelled eight members of Russia’s NATO mission for allegedly serving as spies. In May 2016, it was the turn of Frederico Carvalhão Gil, also a senior intelligence official, but this time from Portugal, who reportedly “had access to a wide array of NATO secrets.” Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials openly acknowledge that Russian intelligence agents have infiltrated Ukraine’s security-related institutions.

The extent of Russian penetration of NATO and its affiliated organizations means that the Kremlin is adept at exploiting Western openness for its own ends. But, more importantly, it also means that Vladimir Putin and his comrades have knowledge of NATO military capabilities and intentions. The condition, quantity and quality of NATO member states’ armies are an open book, and it’s possible the Kremlin doesn’t believe devious Western data. But it surely must believe its own spies, especially if their information corroborates open sources.

This matters because it long has been argued — by the Russians and by some Western analysts and policymakers — that Russia had good reason to fear NATO, its potential enlargement into Ukraine, and the possibility of Western missiles being placed on Ukraine’s eastern borders. Putin made these points explicitly in his infamous justification of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since then, he and his minions repeatedly have stated that they had no choice but to attack, in order to forestall “Western aggression” against Russia.

But, as NATO statements reveal, the alliance had no intention of admitting Ukraine anytime soon, if at all. And, obviously, it could have no intention of placing tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of a non-member state. Russian “fears” of Ukraine’s imminent membership could only have been playacting by the Kremlin. Putin could not have failed to know from his intelligence network that Ukraine wasn’t going to be a NATO member for at least two decades, that NATO had no intention of initiating an aggression against Russia, and that Russia’s security was guaranteed by its own military capabilities — which at that time seemed enormous — and also guaranteed by NATO member states’ underfunded, undertrained, under-equipped and undermanned armies.

It’s possible, of course, that Putin and his comrades didn’t believe their own intelligence services, but then the cause of the war must shift from something that NATO and Ukraine may or may not have done to the Kremlin’s — and especially Putin’s — complete alienation from reality, both with respect to the West and NATO and with respect to Ukraine and its relations with Russia.

The fact is that, just as the West had no aggressive intentions vis-à-vis Russia, so too Ukraine — and especially President Volodymyr Zelensky — was perfectly content with good neighborly relations with its northern neighbor. Putin may have believed otherwise but, if so, that belief had to have been the product of his own irrationality and paranoia. And when irrational and paranoid leaders start wars, the blame is never their victim’s.

Unsurprisingly, Finland’s and Sweden’s pending membership in NATO has not provoked cries of anger from the Kremlin. That’s because the problem was never NATO and Russia. The problem was always, and still is, Russia and Ukraine. Ending the war requires a Ukrainian victory, because anything short of a decisive Russian defeat and Putin’s subsequent departure will do nothing to address the root cause of the genocidal aggression: Russia and Putin’s determination to destroy the Ukrainian state and nation — not because Ukraine threatens Russia objectively, but because Russian culture and ideology have, like Nazi culture and ideology did with respect to Jews, demonized and dehumanized Ukraine.

Russia’s aggressive intentions, therefore, will end only when its culture and ideology undergoes a seismic shift and comes to accept Ukrainians as human beings and neighbors. Alas, that kind of shift will take time, unless a major defeat produces a crisis in the Russian mindset and accelerates Russia’s extirpation of Putinism and its ideological and cultural roots in the Soviet Union and Imperial Russia.
 
Today on a Russian channel of Telegram:
A woman who lived close to a military base that was used to shoot down Ukrainian drones was hit by a bullet and died.
Three men decided to bury her in the local cemetery. They dug a pit ten feet deep and lowered the coffin containing the dead woman into the grave.
When she almost touched the bottom, someone dropped the box. An explosion followed that catapulted the woman into the air. The military base thought the flying corpse was a drone and fired at it. The woman was shot dead for the second time.

It is not known whether this was reported as a downed Ukrainian drone to demonstrate the fighting power of the Russian army.

mouse.gif
 
gwb-trading said:
Look who is out of ammo...

Russian artillery fire down nearly 75%, US officials say, in latest sign of struggles for Moscow
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/10/politics/russian-artillery-fire-down-75-percent-ukraine/
More...

"The Russians’ declining rate of fire is not linear, one US defense official noted, and there are days when Russians still fire far more artillery rounds – particularly around the eastern Ukrainian cities of Bakhmut and Kreminna, as well as some near Kherson in the south."


The Russians know that there is one set of ammo requirements for fighting Ukraine, but another set of requirements if NATO enters. And that requires them to reserve lots of ammo for direct war with NATO if things shit the bed and it goes that way.

So that complicates the picture considerably. As the quote above highlights, they definitely are using more and more ammo in some areas. But the question is: At what cost? Are they dipping into their supplies that they were reserving for a fight with NATO or which would be needed to take Moldova and Poland and Boliva or whatever their plan is? Most likely yes. And they are trying to preserve it for the spring offensive. The problem with that is that there are battles going on right now.

The problem is equally with the artillery guns. As discussed early on and highlighted by Mr. Terr, those gun barrels need to be replaced and they are increasingly just going tits up. It affects tank operations as well. I have read articles that report on entire tank units not having a functional tank. The reason: Because the artillery guns have burnt out, the Russians have been excessively using the tanks as stationary artillery, so their guns are worthless now too. The guns on tanks fire with a higher velocity because they are intended to penetrate steel so those puppies take a beating if you are just cranking out round after round as with an artillery gun.

All of this is hard on the civilians, because - in addition to the fact that the Russians are genocidal butchers- all of that old Soviet and WW2 equipment and ammo is unguided and no precision. So the Russians just lop it out there and hope it kills something. Man, woman, child, elderly, dog. Doesn't matter.
 
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