Also Russia Today France satellite TV channel was hacked and was showing footage of bombs landing in residential areas.
I hope this keeps going as it can really undermine Putin’s propaganda efforts.
It’s entirely possible that this story was propaganda produced by Belarus itself. They’re kind of in a bind; the government there is besties with Putin, and allowed Putin to use their territory to stage a lot of the Russian forces, but at the same time, they can see the shit show that this attack has been so far, and the massive response to it by the rest of the world. They don’t want to piss off Putin, but at the same time, they don’t want to piss off everyone else, so a “Hey man, we tried, but those lazy-assed soldiers of ours wouldn’t go for it!” message is their best hope of walking the tightrope between these two forces, either of which could crush Belarus in short order if they decided to do that.
That seems plausible to me. Certainly more plausible than the idea that soldiers ordered into battle are able to say “fuck you” to their commanders, and leave the commanders shrugging their shoulders and going, “well, we tried. What can we do?”. Unless maybe the Belarus military is even more fucked up than the Russian one.
my guess: Belorussia is sitting on the fence and watching how things pan out … if in 10-20 days the russians cannot control ukr (and besiege kiev) - they might cut a deal with “the west” and turn on Putin to get rid of sanctions…
No more russian forces on their soil, that kind of staff/deal …
Mr.P. surely cannot take on any more conflict there, so any military threats can easily be laughed off … and could be countered with “shall we indulge in helping out our beloved ukrainian brothers in the south?”, or was that just miscommunication on your side
Turkey is closing the strait, and sending supplies to Syria by air is the same as heating an oven with cash.
Oh my god, that might be the best metaphor I’ve ever read.
3 years ago gas got down to .99 cents a gallon or .20:Pounds per liter.
Except in that scenario, the nukes probably wouldn’t go off. There’s a lot of stuff in those things that needs to happen in a particular order with particular timings for them to work. If even one step is affected by a missile going off course and/or crashing, the whole thing probably won’t work. You’d have a nasty radioactive mess to clean up, but not an explosion.
Gee, it’s almost as if letting blatant corruption run wild through your country and government has a downside. Why weren’t we told?
To be fair, Russia has never needed much of a reason to retaliate against soldiers who were captured and repatriated.
Viktor Gulevich is also one of the people targeted with personal sanctions by the UK.
Good news every one! Trump has figured out how to fix all this!
Speaking of the situation in Ukraine, Trump told donors that the US should put Chinese flags on America’s F-22s and then ‘bomb the s***’ out of Russia
They’ve presumably also got family still in Russia.
Of course, some of them may also have family in Ukraine.
Huh. So if that’s the case I wonder how long before Putin turns on them?
Sure, up to the border - but supposedly one of the first things the Ukrainians did was sever rails lines at those borders, just like they blew bridges and blocked roads. So, great, Russia gets reinforcements to the border … then what? How do they get them the rest of the way?
Yes, and Russian soldier never sees anyone in his family ever again. Amazingly, some people find giving up family very difficult.
He probably won’t, as long as Lukashenko remains in power. After all, even without the dubious contribution of troops from Belarus, they are still letting Russia stage out of their territory, which has been a big help in the northern prong of the encirclement of Kyiv.
It just occurred to me that if nothing else this little contretemps has turned Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” from an all-too-real scenario to outright farce.
Missing one’s family is certainly something to think about. But they also have to weigh that against the atrocities they’re asked to commit.
I recall that this was one of the problems that contributed to the stalemates in WWI. Intact rail lines behind the line were great at bringing up equipment and reinforcements, but once there, if they were to be used in an attack, they had to cross no man’s land on their own, which was much more difficult. It also created the problem that the defenders could bring up reinforcements to hold the line faster than the attackers could bring in new units to exploit any openings that the initial attack created.
Russia might end up with a great big pile of supplies at the border, that can only move into Ukraine at a trickle.
Lukashenko holds his office because Putin props him up, and the country was full of Russian units already. This one would be expected to involve a straightforward disposal of the hesitant leaders and replacing them with more “reliable” ones, in the old tradition.
That actually seems to be the case. They are having a lot of issues moving from nodal hub sites and into the field where the supplies are needed. It’s showing a real problem with the logistics and even tactical doctrine of the Russian military. You have to wonder what would be happening if the Ukrainians actually had a way to strike at their rail hubs.
Just the airplane pest again. Looking at Flight Tracker and spotted 3 Rossiya Airlines 747-446 Freighters, two from Moscow and one from Leningrad heading South, one over Cairo and the other two over Turkey. Destination unknown. (as of 6:45pm CST).
Ownership getting them out of the country in case Putin tried to Nationalize them for logistics? Or heading for Ethopia (they abstained on voting for UN sanctions on Russia) for unknown purposes?
Also worth noting is Turkish Airlines is still flying the Moscow-Istanbul route commercially. Probably not a bad idea to get Europeans and Americans who want out (not to mention folks from elsewhere–and Russians), but still the only one…
OK, I’ll leave it be. Just injecting a few random facts to acres of speculation (damn fine speculation, IMHO, but still…)
Press on.
A green light was given for a transfer of Jets from NATO to the Ukraine.
Now things are getting serious…with regards to NATO-Russian relations…
Can I see a confirmation of this?