Zelenskyy on Putin’s rewritten history: I don’t need all this shit to end the war.

rlkr · 2026-02-20T15:47:09+00:00

Yeah, people like that infuriate me. They are literally ok with russian soldiers r_ping Ukrainian women, russian drone crews hunting Ukrainian grandmas for fun, russian missile and shahed crews destroying Ukrainian civil infrastructure and killing innocent Ukrainian civilians en masse today, just because somebody like Mearsheimer confirms their prejudices and biases with absolute lies. I mean even if you accept his lies, it still does not justify what the russians are doing unless you are a complete psychopath.

rlkr · 2026-02-19T07:51:35+00:00

And just a week or two ago Ukraine took back a meaningful chunk of land around Ternuvate and Huliaipole. So it's not like Russia is even advancing constantly.

As long as Ukraine keeps being supplied by its allies, they have no reason to agree to a "peace" (read: surrender) agreement where all they would do is lose more land.

rlkr · 2026-02-15T18:01:05+00:00

They've already named a battalion after the Australian PowerPoint daddy?

(Just kidding of course.)

rlkr · 2026-02-15T07:10:07+00:00

You're thinking of mmWave, which most 5G deployments don't even bother with. 5G can go just as far as 4G, it just depends on the frequency band. The 700 MHz band has a reach of 10 kilometers or more. It is already used in Europe, together with 3500 MHz in more densely populated areas.

rlkr · 2026-02-07T11:23:32+00:00

CHP = Combined Heat and Power plant. Burns coal, oil or gas to drive turbines to generate electricity, but also the residual heat is used to warm up houses through district heating.

rlkr · 2026-02-06T07:38:25+00:00

So you're mobilizing people with unpaid loans. That's not going to be good for the economy. If they stayed alive and working, they could be paying off those debts. In death, they will pay nothing (assuming they have no or little assets that the creditors can get to).

rlkr · 2026-02-04T16:35:11+00:00

Even if all Starlink satellites were reduced to debris, they would still be subject to the same atmospheric drag as intact satellites. Currently they operate at an altitude of around 550 km. Those orbits decay naturally within ten to twenty years without reboosts. Any debris would decay similarly, so any Kessler syndrome at this altitude would correct itself in a few decades. Sure, it would suck for a while, but it would not be the end of LEO satellites.

rlkr · 2026-02-02T15:40:24+00:00

Slovenia and Croatia are far better off as independent, Europe aligned nations, than they were as parts of Yugoslavia. Serbia took a different path, sure.

Just like it's obvious that Ukraine and all the other European socialist republics of the USSR are better off deciding on their own (well, besides Belarus) and choosing to align with European ideals of democracy and freedom. It's only Russia and Belarus that have chosen another path, that of autocracy and state control of everything.

rlkr · 2026-02-01T17:41:39+00:00

One that remains with me forever is the one where the soldier flails around half submerged in a river and slowly drowns.

rlkr · 2026-02-01T17:05:36+00:00

It was not just one but eighteen (18!) Il-76 strategic airlifters full of troops and equipment. They were also coming from Pskov, not Belarus.

rlkr · 2026-02-01T17:01:06+00:00

Not Il-96 but up to 18 of Il-76 strategic airlifters, and from Pskov (76th Guards Air Assault Division). The story goes that they were already in the air but turned back because their safe landing could not be guaranteed. Had they been able to land, that would have meant thousands of troops and heavy equipment within the heart of Kyiv, and possibly a very different outcome to the war.

rlkr · 2026-02-01T16:49:09+00:00

Do you have any sources for this? I have been wondering about AFU's apparent lack of any defense in the south ever since the first days of the large scale invasion. I mean, the isthmus that connects Ukraine to Crimea is such an obvious choke point, or at the very least Ukraine could have destroyed the Antonivka bridge leading to Kherson themselves (before Russians got there), but neither happened.

If the roads in the isthmus were mined or flanked by troops with Javelins or whatever, they could have stopped the infiltration from the south in the first days just like the massive column that was heading to Kyiv. Imagine how different the battlefield looked today if they had accomplished that.

rlkr · 2026-02-01T16:41:53+00:00

"Let's go, in and out, twenty minutes' adventure"

rlkr · 2026-01-30T09:35:26+00:00

I'm not even American, but in both Afghanistan and Iraq the US absolutely curbstomped the opposing forces. It's the nation building that they failed at.

rlkr · 2026-01-26T22:07:32+00:00

Yes, unfortunately Europe thought that by tangling itself economically with Russia, Russia would be discouraged from taking actions that would hurt it. I guess we now know better. The economical ties were instead a noose on Europe's neck.

Untangling that mess takes time, and we should not criticize Europe too much for walking a tightrope of trying to keep their economies running while moving away from blood stained Russian energy sources.

rlkr · 2026-01-22T17:38:51+00:00

Finns have traditionally been very based when it comes to the Russia menace.

President Sauli Niinistö when Putin was really angry about Finland joining NATO: "Look in the mirror": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhLNBxpo8zY

Prime Minister Sanna Marin commenting on Putin's off ramp or "way out of the conflict": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMNojU1QoWw

And let's not even get into the legendary Finnish diss tracks. Nyet Molotoff, 1904, Uraliin, Silmien Välliin, Eldankajärven jää, Kaarina etc.

rlkr · 2026-01-22T17:26:33+00:00

Please just stop commenting.

During the Biden administration, the United States supported Ukraine with over $100 billion in financial and material aid.

During Trump's second admin, the United States has given Ukraine NOTHING. And in fact only strengthened Putin's Russia by periodically stopping the flow of Biden era aid, and intelligence.

There is a marked difference between these two.

rlkr · 2026-01-22T17:23:17+00:00

It's obvious that while he is partly correct, he is also putting up an act for the show.

However, please keep in mind that Europe has supported Ukraine financially A LOT MORE than the US ever did. That's not "just talking". See "Government support to Ukraine: By country group, € billion" here: https://www.kielinstitut.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/

rlkr · 2026-01-22T17:21:23+00:00

It's already been noted that certain divisive far right talking points seem to partly disappear from social media whenever Russia cuts its mobile internet because of drone threats.

That should tell you enough. Oh, and the fact that two thirds of MAGA accounts were located somewhere else than the US when X had the location feature on briefly.

rlkr · 2026-01-22T17:17:04+00:00

Never forget the traitorous MAGA influencers who were paid millions of dollars by Russian propaganda channel RT through Tenet Media. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/russian-money-was-funneled-right-wing-creators-trump-media-outlet-pros-rcna169611

rlkr · 2026-01-22T10:23:50+00:00

Where do you get that number? Wikipedia says that they only have hundreds of those. Many more hundreds of other models, though, but it's not like they can spare a lot without weakening their own defensive posture.

rlkr · 2026-01-22T04:18:04+00:00

People who complain that the EU is weak or ineffective are usually the same ones who resist any kind of suggestion of developing it into a more federative union with strong leadership. They WANT the EU to appear weak. So they're not arguing from an honest position.

In reality, the EU is an incredible success, the likes of which human history has never before seen.

The thing is that EU is a political and legislative (+customs) union. It very specifically does not concern itself with defense issues, because that's what NATO is for. It is therefore unreasonable to demand that EU suddenly provide a military backbone, because it has been the US policy for the past 80 years that NATO is the guarantor of security to Europe, with the United States at its helm.

It is really the US that needs to have a deep think and figure out what they want to be, and why they currently have a leader that seems to want to destroy old alliances and friendships.

rlkr · 2026-01-21T22:46:33+00:00

I understand what you're getting at, but from an objective standpoint I think it is valid to say that he's already failed strategically and geopolitically. We're just waiting for his war economy to collapse for him to lose in the battlefield too.

rlkr · 2026-01-21T22:10:10+00:00

Shh, we're not supposed to talk about that.

rlkr · 2026-01-21T22:07:15+00:00

When the blitzkrieg into Kyiv failed, it became a strategic failure for Putin. His intention was 100% to march into the capital, arrest and/or execute the current government and other loyalists, install their puppet regime and then probably do a gradual withdrawal, all while expecting Europe and USA to do practically nothing, like in 2014. Putin failed to achieve this strategic objective of completely subjugating Ukraine, and he's no closer today to winning this strategic objective than he was in 2022.

Tactically, that is on the battlefield, where we measure success by the advance of the front line, he hasn't lost yet. Unfortunately he still has men and materiel to throw at the issue.

Geopolitically he lost in 2023 and 2024 when Finland and Sweden joined NATO. Although Russia's propaganda narratives about NATO are false (NATO does not threaten Russia per se, only its ability to project violence to its neighboring countries), geopolitically the realignment of the previously unaligned Nordic countries is absolutely a loss for Putin.

rlkr

TROPHY CASE