It depends on the way you phrase it. Ukrainian ambassador Melnyk often makes demands and tries to give orders, he doesn't make requests and doesn't ask for stuff.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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What if the officers hold a gun to the soldier's head and says either you kill the innocent or I kill you. It still doesn't excuse them but many will take the path of becoming a murderer.
Has that happened?
In that hypothetical scenario yes many will and yes they will become a murderer.
After the fact they can't say they were forced to do it as a defence. Soldiers who carry out orders they know to be wrong are complicit with them.
They can get as much on high alert as they wish, but disgruntled enemies from the inside will often find the weak spot in the armor.
The thing is that things could get far uglier until it gets better for the Russian people because they would walk into the unknown if Putin's removal is anything but peaceful. Those guys from United Russia - Putin's ruling party are like Trumpists in the US.
If the aftermath of WW2 has shown us anything, it would be the fact that such defense no longer holds in an official court dealing with cases of war crimes. Several Nazis from to the lowest grunt in certain areas to the top military/political brass have served sentences going from jail time to capital punishment. War criminals from those days have been hounded up to this day, and thus we can imagine that the same will fall upon several Russian soldiers in this day and age with far greater amounts of evidence that can be gathered.
My own guess is that Ukrainian figures are exaggerated by much less than 60%, maybe 25% at most.
The latest British MoD estimate was 32% less than than the Ukrainian estimate of the same date, but I tend to think that the Ukrainian estimate is more accurate than many assume, even if still an exaggeration. This is for various reasons: for example, I would be surprised if Ukraine doesn't have at least one agent embedded within the Russian MoD, with access to casualty figures.
Im not sure how true that is. It seems like NOW that ex nazi soldiers are sometimes charged but I think at the time the Allies made a point of not going after the rank and file. But whether that was more pragmatic than ethical I don’t know.
In all honesty I used 60% because there’s a chance it’s realistic, but also because it reduces the killed and injured from 1600 to 1000 (if we assume the wounded rates are what they have been historically), which is a round number. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if it’s later shown that Ukraine was largely accurate, and closer to the truth than my example. Either way I seriously doubt that the Russians could replace lost soldiers at that rate, whether it’s a 1000 or 1500 per day. They both seem unrealistic. And even if they can replace the sheer numbers of men, they’d need to be able to make up for the lost equipment and knowledge to use that equipment. Which from my fairly ignorant assessment of war seems unrealistic.
I once read that during the 1973 Yom Kippur war between Egypt and Israel, Ariel Sharon, who was a general in Israel’s southern command at the time, specifically based his battle plan on the concept of letting as many experienced Egyptian soldiers as possible die of thirst/starvation in the Sinai desert. He did this on the basis that Egypt could get new weapons from the Soviet Union far far quicker than they could train people to actually be soldiers and use them.
" When approached by City A.M., no one at the Kremlin was available to comment. "
Made me chuckle.
It’s unlikely to get “far uglier” considering that it’s already, well, the worst possible scenario. And if you will imagine that there’ll be a coup it will most likely be done by someone who’ll hope to get something from the West (ease the sanctions) by drastically changing the situation in Ukraine. A coup to replace Putin that doesn’t include change in the foreign policy, at least, simply doesn’t make sense.
Seems like a likely source of inside information from Putin’s close circles.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/05/03/ftse-100-markets-live-news-russian-oil-energy-apple/
Russia apparently paying in dollars from their reserves to avoid default…pressure cranking up on Vlad.
Russia apparently paying in dollars from their reserves to avoid default…pressure cranking up on Vlad.
I watched a report earlier today on a portuguese news channel, where ukranian soldiers were knocking on some doors, confronting people with pro-russia posts they had posted on social media, and taking them away. Looked shady as feck.
Or Scholz can just stay home instead of going to the photo op he's invited to.
Well done Lavrov.
If Serioja continues talking they might send the dome together with the operators.
Who would have thought that, on the back of repeating stories about Hitler being Jewish, doubling down by accusing Israel of supporting a neo-nazi regime in Kyiv could have backfired? I always thought that Lavrov was more intelligent than most of the goons over there but the whole regime currently resembles some hopelessly drunk bloke who has soiled himself and is now staggering around the bar challenging all-comers.
Maybe Lavrov gets pressured to say these things. But that's giving him a huge benefit of the doubt.
Zelensky thanking Sergey Lavrov about this.
Either that or he has realised that it's a lost cause anyway and he just doesn't give a f*** anymore.
He’s a highly accomplished liar and propagandist, so making things up is pretty routine.
Sure, but usually his lies didn’t sound this stupid.
Perhaps we have all been giving him too much credit over the years? Perhaps he really is this stupid.
Well I've definitely been giving Putin too much credit, thinking he was an evil but highly clever chessplayer in the world of geopolitics. But invading Ukraine has turned out to be a yuge blunder.
Remember he’s a judo master. The past 10 weeks, the sinking of the Moskva, it’s all rope-a-dope before he strikes.
Surely he’s told exactly what to say. The US certainly scripts everything their diplomats say at a podium.
Just imagine if - just before the Russian May 9th victory parade is about to start - several missiles hit the bridge linking Crimea with the mainland and it comes crashing down into the sea. We can only dream.
*sigh*
"How to make sure the German chancellor and especially his party gets even less motivated to support my cause" for beginners.
"How to make sure the German chancellor and especially his party gets even less motivated to support my cause" for beginners.
He’s quite right. It’s because their military isn’t trained to make those game changing medium and small unit combat decisions the way a truly modern military is trained. They’re not even fighting like it’s the “last war” or the one before that. Small unit tactics and decentralized decision making was being developed in Verdun and the Somme 100+ years ago.
If only the chancellor helped defend Ukraine as fervently as you’re defending him
Some balls you need to do that there.
Putin’s Elite Units Are Refusing to Fight in Ukraine, Soldier Says
https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-elite-units-are-refusing-to-fight-in-ukraine-soldier-says
https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-elite-units-are-refusing-to-fight-in-ukraine-soldier-says
The kind of people who would get annoyed by this are the kind of people you don’t want anyway, as they’re patently just paying lip service. Scholz looks pathetic to the entire world.