Raoul_Luke
I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
We lack the attention span of a fifth grader. It's turned into a grind so we all started looking for a mental "off ramp" and the media's steady drumbeat of upbeat stories suggesting Ukraine had the upper hand served that purpose. The last thread I remember being posted was @PhilFish suggesting Ukraine could actually win the war. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Wake me up when they start the victory parade in Kyiv. Wait, what? While we were sleep(walk)ing, both the NYT and the WaPo deftly shifted the tone of their war coverage:
Ukrainian newspaper warned The New York Times not to "appease Putin" after an editorial suggested that Ukraine might have to make a "painful compromise" to end the war.
The Times, in an editorial published last Thursday titled The War in Ukraine Is Complicated, and America Isn't Ready, The Times critiqued the Biden administration for its "reluctance to put down clear goal posts" for the war, which began three months ago when Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops invaded Ukraine.
The editorial board wrote that despite Russia's struggles to make any meaningful progress in the conflict, its military "remains too strong" for a decisive victory for Ukraine to be a "realistic goal," encouraging the Biden administration to make clear the limits to how far the U.S. will go to help Ukraine.
Then this from the Washington Post:
But for the first time The Washington Post is out with a surprisingly dire and negative assessment of how US-backed and equipped Ukrainian forces are actually fairing. Gone is the rosy idealizing lens through which each and every encounter with the Russians is typically portrayed. WaPo correspondent and author of the new report Sudarsan Raghavan underscores of the true situation that "Ukrainian leaders project an image of military invulnerability against Russia. But commanders offer a more realistic portrait of the war, where outgunned volunteers describe being abandoned by their military brass and facing certain death at the front."
“We are being sent to certain death,” said a volunteer, reading from a prepared script, adding that a similar video was filmed by members of the 115th Brigade 1st Battalion. “We are not alone like this, we are many.”
Ukraine’s military rebutted the volunteers’ claims in their own video posted online, saying the “deserters” had everything they needed to fight: “They thought they came for a vacation,” one service member said. “That’s why they left their positions.”
And in recent weeks, he said, the situation has gotten much worse. When their supply chains were cut off for two days by the bombardment, the men were forced to make do with a potato a day.
They spend most days and nights in trenches dug into the forest on the edges of Toshkivka or inside the basements of abandoned houses. “They have no water, nothing there,” Lapko said. “Only water that I bring them every other day.”
“Many got shell shock. I don’t know how to count them,” Lapko said.
The casualties here are largely kept secret to protect morale among troops and the general public.
“On Ukrainian TV we see that there are no losses,” Lapko said. “There’s no truth.”
Even Henry effing Kissinger, the prototypical warmonger:
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said this week that negotiations must get underway soon to end Russia's Ukraine war, in order to avoid "a war against Russia itself."
"In my view, a movement towards negotiations on peace needs to begin in the next two months or so. The outcome of the war should be outlined by them before it creates upheavals and tensions that will be even harder to overcome, particularly between the eventual relationship of Russia towards Europe and of Ukraine towards Europe," Kissinger, 98, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
"Ideally, the dividing line should return to the status quo ante. I believe pursuing the war beyond that point could turn it into a war not about the freedom of Ukraine, which has been undertaken with great cohesion by NATO, but into a war against Russia itself, and so this seems to me to be the dividing line, that it is just impossible to define... It will be difficult."
For the logically challenged on the left, "return to the status quo ante" is war-speak for "let Russia have the Donbas and Crimea.
So how is the Brandon administration responding to all this? Duh, they are upping the ante:
US preparing to approve advanced long-range rocket system for Ukraine as Russian TV host warns of crossing a 'red line'
By Jim Sciutto, Natasha Bertrand and Alex Marquardt, CNN
Updated 2:50 PM ET, Fri May 27, 2022
Looks like it's time to wake up and start paying attention to the war again, it's starting to look more and more like WWIII:
U.S. Alarmed by China's Support of Putin's War in Ukraine
BY JON JACKSON ON 5/26/22 AT 1:17 PM EDT
So, y'all okay with that?
Wake me up when they start the victory parade in Kyiv. Wait, what? While we were sleep(walk)ing, both the NYT and the WaPo deftly shifted the tone of their war coverage:
Ukrainian newspaper warned The New York Times not to "appease Putin" after an editorial suggested that Ukraine might have to make a "painful compromise" to end the war.
The Times, in an editorial published last Thursday titled The War in Ukraine Is Complicated, and America Isn't Ready, The Times critiqued the Biden administration for its "reluctance to put down clear goal posts" for the war, which began three months ago when Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops invaded Ukraine.
The editorial board wrote that despite Russia's struggles to make any meaningful progress in the conflict, its military "remains too strong" for a decisive victory for Ukraine to be a "realistic goal," encouraging the Biden administration to make clear the limits to how far the U.S. will go to help Ukraine.
Ukraine newspaper warns New York Times not to "appease" Putin
"Allowing a power-hungry fascist dictatorship to succeed will encourage other dictatorships to try," The Kyiv Independent wrote in an editorial.
www.newsweek.com
Then this from the Washington Post:
But for the first time The Washington Post is out with a surprisingly dire and negative assessment of how US-backed and equipped Ukrainian forces are actually fairing. Gone is the rosy idealizing lens through which each and every encounter with the Russians is typically portrayed. WaPo correspondent and author of the new report Sudarsan Raghavan underscores of the true situation that "Ukrainian leaders project an image of military invulnerability against Russia. But commanders offer a more realistic portrait of the war, where outgunned volunteers describe being abandoned by their military brass and facing certain death at the front."
“We are being sent to certain death,” said a volunteer, reading from a prepared script, adding that a similar video was filmed by members of the 115th Brigade 1st Battalion. “We are not alone like this, we are many.”
Ukraine’s military rebutted the volunteers’ claims in their own video posted online, saying the “deserters” had everything they needed to fight: “They thought they came for a vacation,” one service member said. “That’s why they left their positions.”
And in recent weeks, he said, the situation has gotten much worse. When their supply chains were cut off for two days by the bombardment, the men were forced to make do with a potato a day.
They spend most days and nights in trenches dug into the forest on the edges of Toshkivka or inside the basements of abandoned houses. “They have no water, nothing there,” Lapko said. “Only water that I bring them every other day.”
“Many got shell shock. I don’t know how to count them,” Lapko said.
The casualties here are largely kept secret to protect morale among troops and the general public.
“On Ukrainian TV we see that there are no losses,” Lapko said. “There’s no truth.”
In Stunning Shift, WaPo Admits Catastrophic-Conditions, Collapsing-Morale Of Ukraine Front-Line Forces | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Even Henry effing Kissinger, the prototypical warmonger:
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said this week that negotiations must get underway soon to end Russia's Ukraine war, in order to avoid "a war against Russia itself."
"In my view, a movement towards negotiations on peace needs to begin in the next two months or so. The outcome of the war should be outlined by them before it creates upheavals and tensions that will be even harder to overcome, particularly between the eventual relationship of Russia towards Europe and of Ukraine towards Europe," Kissinger, 98, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
"Ideally, the dividing line should return to the status quo ante. I believe pursuing the war beyond that point could turn it into a war not about the freedom of Ukraine, which has been undertaken with great cohesion by NATO, but into a war against Russia itself, and so this seems to me to be the dividing line, that it is just impossible to define... It will be difficult."
In Stunning Shift, WaPo Admits Catastrophic-Conditions, Collapsing-Morale Of Ukraine Front-Line Forces | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
For the logically challenged on the left, "return to the status quo ante" is war-speak for "let Russia have the Donbas and Crimea.
So how is the Brandon administration responding to all this? Duh, they are upping the ante:
US preparing to approve advanced long-range rocket system for Ukraine as Russian TV host warns of crossing a 'red line'
By Jim Sciutto, Natasha Bertrand and Alex Marquardt, CNN
Updated 2:50 PM ET, Fri May 27, 2022
US preparing to approve advanced long-range rocket system for Ukraine as Russian TV host warns of crossing a 'red line'
The Biden administration is preparing to step up the kind of weaponry it is offering Ukraine by sending advanced, long-range rocket systems that are now the top request from Ukrainian officials, multiple officials say.
www.cnn.com
Looks like it's time to wake up and start paying attention to the war again, it's starting to look more and more like WWIII:
U.S. Alarmed by China's Support of Putin's War in Ukraine
BY JON JACKSON ON 5/26/22 AT 1:17 PM EDT
U.S. alarmed by China's support of Putin's war in Ukraine
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sharply rebuked China for maintaining close ties with Russia as the war in Ukraine continues.
www.newsweek.com
So, y'all okay with that?