they also were able to get into the tv listings Russian satellite TV shows a Ukraine message: ‘blood on your hands’ (yahoo.com)
“You have the blood of thousands of Ukrainians and hundreds of dead children on your hands,”
Russian authorities in Ukraine’s occupied city of Donetsk are tossing the bodies of their dead soldiers in a secret dump “by the thousands” and charging their loved ones money to find them.
That’s according to a new audio recording released by Ukraine’s Security Service on Tuesday, which is purportedly an intercepted telephone conversation between two Russians discussing how one of their missing friends was finally found.
Shouldn’t be hard to locate the site of a mass grave. It would be much easier than finding a general on the move.
I’m quite confident that Western intelligence services already know the locations down to the meter.
Ukraine is making steady progress around Kharkiv. The city will soon be out of range from Russian artillery. That should make the city safer.
From the Guardian:
“Vladimir Putin could view the prospect of defeat in Ukraine as an existential threat to his regime, potentially triggering his resort to using a nuclear weapon, the top US intelligence official has warned.”
I just don’t get it. If Putin figures that a loss in Ukraine would be a threat to his power, then using a nuke would lead to either
- Putin losing power immediately due to an internal “decision”
- Putin losing power when NATO moves against Russia with full force
- Putin losing power by having a nuke dropped on him and 100 million other people in total global destruction.
There is simply no realistic scenario where Putin using a nuke on Ukraine (or anywhere else for that matter) ends in a situation even remotely positive for Putin personally.
The only way he uses a nuke is if he decides to commit suicide by taking as many people as possible with him.
That’s exactly what I told a friend yesterday. It only takes one nut job who’s on the way out anyway.
This stuff can turn around quickly… with regime change.
Well, more than one, I assume. If Biden went full crazy and decided to launch a nuke right now, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be just him walking to a button and pressing it. Surely there’s a guy who carries the “football” that he would have to interact with on some level.
I can’t imagine any nuclear power leaving the button in sole possession of a single person, regardless how authoritarian the regime.
I agree. I think this particular intelligence official is way off base. The scary part is that Putin just might be crazy enough to kill himself by taking out the world with him. That’s the only remotely realistic scenario. But I would like to think that previous experiences with coming close to nuclear war support the notion that the Russian leadership wouldn’t allow it. They might be deluded enough to believe that Ukraine is an evil threat, but it’s hard to believe they would see mutual nuclear annihilation as a net positive.
The more I think about it I have to wonder about the imagery of the May 9 event in Russia.
Putin has always cultivated an image of power for himself. Sitting with a blanket on his lap is way outside his image bubble. He would have worn long underwear before using a blanket or had a heater placed nearby. It’s not like he couldn’t snap his fingers and make it happen. And the cancellation of the flyover when it was supposed to contribute to his nuclear threats with the doomsday plane seems very strange.
Is he on his way out the door? They are already trying to sweep the bodies of dead soldiers under the rug. Are we watching operation “save Crimea”.
The intelligence official is only way off base if you take it for granted that a use of, say, a single nuclear weapon against Ukraine (perhaps going as far as to nuke a city) would necessarily provoke a nuclear response from the US, or a massive conventional response from NATO.
I do not take that for granted.
What I see as a distinct possibility, as a response to a discrete/singular use of a nuclear weapon by Putin, would be something akin to a Wild Bunch finale sort of scenario. That is, the singular “unthinkable” act by itself—the act that everyone expects would result in swift and massive retaliation—actually is met with stunned silence. It’s only the next “shot” that finally provokes the much anticipated retaliation.
So if Putin never takes that second shot—say he just nukes Kiev and then declares victory without another nuke—does NATO or the US alone really have the resolve to see him and raise? Or do we all collectively just fold and cut our losses?
Photos of fighters at the steel works. All of them wounded and still on their feet. I think they’ll all die with weapons in their hands.
These are hard men that don’t quit. They deserve much respect.
If you like watching convoys of Russian armoured vehicles getting obliterated to the sound of high-energy music, then this is the video for you:
A Chinese TV news crew caught the moment a Russian tank displayed its “jack-in-the-box” turret-throwing design flaw.
Look at all those empty turret rings.
I dare any advocate of the Russian autoloader design to say with a straight face that the benefits outweigh the catastrophic flaws.
Frankly at this point I think the tank is going the way of cavalry as it concerns to war.
It looks like the tank turret in the video has a rocket plume from the ignition of the ammo contained within it.
Do we have reason to suspect that Abrams or other western tanks would perform the way the Russian tanks have? I don’t recall the US having similar problems in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I’m sure they wouldn’t pop their tops like champagne but they didn’t face javelins or drones in Afghanistan or Iraq.