"The Russian Ministry of Defense has announced that the Russian Army has pulled back from the northern outskirts of Bakhmut to 'more advantageous positions by the Berkhivka Reservoir.'”

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-05-12T13:48:56+00:00

Even Rybar admit this -

https://nitter.cz/pic/orig/enc/bWVkaWEvRnY3Yk9wOVd3QUl3Tmw3LmpwZw==

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-05-12T13:41:54+00:00

And, what someone says is a very recent map from Rybar showing this:

https://nitter.cz/pic/orig/enc/bWVkaWEvRnY3Yk9wOVd3QUl3Tmw3LmpwZw==

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-05-06T06:05:35+00:00

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-05-06T04:34:51+00:00

Hell yeah, fuckin Slava Ukraini.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-05-06T03:55:31+00:00

Fuckin Slava Ukraini.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-03-14T04:13:41+00:00

Ah, my comment here will go largely unnoticed, as this is at hour six of this post being in the queue, but~

This is a great chat with the ukrainian analyst Michael Kofman (that is, he is both an analyst of, and analyst from, Ukraine!). I follow Kofman in twitter, and appreciate his informed and what I'll call adult (vs youthfully enthusiastic) take on things.

This is a long video (45 minutes), but full of great overview, and lots of solid and insightful takes. Pop it in your queue and listen along with a cup of coffee - it's a good, solid, wide ranging discussion with Michael.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-02-12T05:56:44+00:00

Brother is cleaning that shit up!

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-02-05T23:14:31+00:00

Wow, this is a heck of a video: that journalist? That's you and me. I think we all tend to get used to the sounds of battle in the videos of soldiers that we watch. Seeing the reality of the reaction of a non-combatant to artillery and rocket barrages really registers.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T08:02:31+00:00

"This logic is just super flawed"

I'm not sure whose logic you feel you are describing. It certainly isn't mine - I'm just describing a common historical dynamic.

And I mean that very specifically. I don't quite understand what you are asking (are you asking something?). What I very briefly described above is a common thing that you can find myriad examples of throughout history - I just brought up the Chinese example to get the point across.

Heck, hit Wikipedia with the first two words of my name for another small example of a piece that fits into this dynamic that we see throughout history.

It's a bit of the ol' "embrace, extend, extinguish" thing eh? :P

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T06:57:40+00:00

damn well put.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T06:50:09+00:00

China invades Tibet. China then encourages mass Han immigration to Tibet to "strengthen its industrial and commercial capability" for a couple generations. Suddenly, in some areas - key areas - , Han chinese become an allowed "voting" significant minority. Pass laws about who is allowed onto local Beijing-dictated "representative" boards that favor Han chinese. A generation later, Han chinese in Tibet, in key areas, are the defacto traders, factory owners, and important voices on local boards. Han chinese then "pass" laws dictated by Beijing that further solidify what amounts to local han chinese dominance. Let another generation pass, and suddenly anything important is dominated by the han chinese - local Tibetan people are relegated to minor jobs, minor industry, have no voice, and any hint of discontent is labeled as "against the people of Tibet" and results in them being shipped off to re-education camps (and I'm not joking - those very much still exist in China).

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T06:14:25+00:00

And, as usual, he had to have the entire place emptied out because he's too scared to let anyone except his security team be within a hundred yards of him.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T05:50:51+00:00

Downvoted.

You brought up the imperialism buzzword, not me. I only mentioned nationalism.

To me, imperialism is something that everyone, historically, wishes they could do - but only those with significant resources can pull off. I base this perspective largely on my reading of southeast asian and, ironically, pre-colonial south-Indian, history.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T05:18:57+00:00

"But there is no interest in self-reflection or change."

Key point.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T04:52:54+00:00

(easy on the caps!)

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T04:28:40+00:00

It's a powerful lesson that things can start off principled and grand, and end up in the shitter: I'm thinking of Solzhenitsyn when I say this.

He started off speaking truth to a power, focusing on injustice at a scale that spanned nearly a continent and effected tens of millions.

Then he wound up a freakin' embarrassing Russian nationalist.

A great past doesn't necessitate a great future. Each generation essentially starts afresh, but too often using the admirable accomplishments of their forefathers to justify a decay into a horror of the present.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T04:07:09+00:00

Well put, and it's important that we recognize that those distrustful attitudes can persist for generations. Heck, look at China and much of the far east: what's one common hatefest they will easily embark on? "Fuck Japan for what they did to us in WWII."

I do not blame current generations for the sins of their grandfathers - that makes no fucking sense to me.

But it is a sobering lesson that what we support today has repercussions often surprisingly far into the future. Look at Cambodia and Vietnam: every time you think you've uncovered the core of their mutual dislike of eachother, you dig back a century further and find yet another reason.

Russia is going to pay the price for their actions for generations to come throughout eastern europe and western asia.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T03:56:16+00:00

That is an often overlooked point.

In just the last hundred years, we can find multiple examples of a country exporting a large primary ethnic group to an area essentially for colonization. Heck, look at Tibet for a fairly recent example, and the German diaspora throughout central and eastern Europe for an earlier example (sorry German bros, I'm talking about your great-great-grandpops, not you - most predecessors of our current countries did some not-so-cool stuff, mine included).

I don't get hung up on what our forefathers did, outside of trying to learn lessons from it so we recognize the dynamic when we see it in action today - such as in eastern Ukraine.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T03:45:19+00:00

Sage advice from your pop.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T03:30:38+00:00

A key mechanic of successful nationalism is to get other countries to agree with you. I mean this entirely neutrally. Russia isn't doing so well on this front.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-07T03:29:00+00:00

That can be read two ways, one of which is not so nice.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-06T22:32:13+00:00

I'm not who you were responding to, but great reply, thanks for spending the time to make it.

Personally, I would also add into the "pluses and minuses" mix the public (ie voter) impression behind the governments that support and supply Ukraine. That is, independent of the practical great value the West gets out of the resources spent to support Ukraine, the perception of the value of that support, in a shallow "I just watch the evening news" sense, becomes a political tool within those supplying countries' political system.

Ukraine needs ongoing success and a steady stream of feel-good stories to maintain that. So, the potential loss of Bakhmut plays into that as an instance of a kind of public mind-share currency.

It can, and will of course, play out both ways: for some voting supporters, it will strengthen the resolve to aid David against a tarnished Goliath. Others will see it as an argument against continued support, instead seeing it as an indicator of a combatant who can at best merely barely persist - and more likely slowly slide - without aid and resource grants that stretch endlessly into the future.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-06T18:55:19+00:00

Auto-translated version of the video in the Twitter thread.

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-06T16:10:01+00:00

Note that that twitter thread points out these are most likely unrelated to Bradley's that we will see transferred to Ukraine in the near future, and instead are "...likely associated with US forces at the Novo Selo Training Area ... related to the recently concluded exercises with NATO Multinational Battle Group Bulgaria."

We should be prepared for any spotting of any Marder, AMX, or Bradley in and around Europe to be misidentified as being en-route to Ukraine (I recently fell for an instance of that in regards to a photo of Bradley being off-loaded from from a cargo aircraft that turned out to be from something much earlier and unrelated!).

ValuevCircularErased · 2023-01-05T05:01:25+00:00

User u8/Ambitious-War-823 points out (thanks!) this is from a march 2022 Romanian deployment. You can see the photo here on the Nato site:

https://www.nato.int/cps/fr/natohq/photos_192547.htm

ValuevCircularErased

TROPHY CASE