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Post by pieter on Mar 23, 2022 16:36:22 GMT -7
Source: www.news.com.au/the-team News.com.au is an Australian website owned by News Corp Australia. It had 9.6 million unique readers in April 2019 and specialises in native advertising, breaking national and international news as well as entertainment, sport, lifestyle, travel, technology and finance.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News.com.au
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Post by pieter on Mar 23, 2022 16:37:17 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on Mar 23, 2022 16:50:52 GMT -7
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Post by karl on Mar 24, 2022 14:52:43 GMT -7
Pieter
It appears as what is currant in Ukraine, the lessons of the last war have either been forgotten or not learnt. The face of war is not a very pretty one for it simply means much death and much destruction and in the end, what is gained but for the planning for the next war.
With the deaths of so many high ranking Russian officers, appears to be a break from the usual, for the usual is old men plan the war that young men die in.
Karl
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Post by Jaga on Mar 24, 2022 22:06:34 GMT -7
Pieter, I heard the same things about these generals. They were unprotected on the unsecured phone lines. Ukrainians don't want to go after regular soldiers, just the commanders.
Apparently Putin and Russia want this war to finish before the victory day in Russia. If this would not happen by then, maybe Russia would quit? Lets hope.
I watch so much news that I don't have a time to come here that often. Lets hope that life would soon go back to normal and this war would be over.
Even if Russia would conquer Ukraine, the partisanship would continue, besides there is so much reconstructions to be done.
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Post by kaima on Mar 24, 2022 23:34:31 GMT -7
Mikhail Khodorkovsky On How To Deal With The “Bandit” In The KremlinMarch 16, 2022 khodorkovsky.com/mikhail-khodorkovsky-on-how-to-deal-with-the-bandit-in-the-kremlin/ A former oil mogul and political prisoner warns the West it must face down Vladimir Putin now in Ukraine or prepare for a much worse war later I have been fighting a personal war with Vladimir Putin for nearly 20 years. It led to my being jailed in Russia for ten years and then expelled, with a warning that life imprisonment awaited me if I ever returned. Do I know the man who did all this to me? I think I do. That is why I look with despair at the defeatist approach of Western leaders, such as Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and Naftali Bennett. It is difficult for me to judge how their actions are seen by their electorates. However, I know well how they are perceived by Mr Putin, sitting at the end of his long table. They fly to Moscow, call him, ask him to stop, but assure him that they will not interfere and do not want him to perceive certain movements as a provocation. The president sees all of this as weakness, and that is extremely dangerous. Part of the problem is that the current leaders of Western countries have never dealt with thugs. Their experience and education relate to interactions between statesmen. The principle of these people’s behaviour is that both sides concede to each other in the interests of their electorate or subjects. War is evil to them, and the use of force is a last resort. This is not the case with Vladimir Putin. He was raised in the KGB, an organisation that relied on force and disregard for the law. While working at St Petersburg City Hall in the early 1990s, he was responsible for the informal interaction of the law-enforcement agencies with gangsters. St Petersburg at that time was perceived in Russia just as Chicago was seen during prohibition. Instead of smuggled whisky, the gangsters were selling drugs and oil. Times changed but his ways of solving issues remained. Some of the conversations between his confidants and known criminals, made public after an investigation by Spanish prosecutors, help us to understand how the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and the poisoning of Alexey Navalny and the Skripals came at the nod of the ringleader. Such acts are the norm within the president’s circles, because he is a thug by nature. Even after more than 20 years in power, having acquired a strongman image and self-confidence, a bandit will always remain a bandit in terms of his perception among those around him. It is a drastic mistake when he is seen as a normal statesman. Russia’s foreign partners fail to understand who he really is. I have plenty of experience of dealing with bandits. After spending ten years in Russian prisons, I can say that the most dangerous thing is to show them any weakness or uncertainty. Any step towards their demands, without a clear demonstration of strength, will be perceived as weakness. Following their logic, if Western countries say they will not give up Ukraine and yet they do exactly that, it means that they are weak. And that makes it likely that Mr Putin will look towards other neighbours, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, who were also previously part of the Russian Empire. You have to understand that Mr Putin, in his head, has long been at war not with Ukraine, but with America. And now America and NATO look to be retreating. He is not the only thug who perceives the situation that way. Other bandits are also watching and waiting their turn, as America’s humiliation echoes around the world. Transnistria is stirring, the Balkans are restless again, Iran is attacking American bases. At some point, America and NATO will retaliate, but by that point, they will be tormented by crows and vultures in various parts of the world, and Mr Putin will not immediately realise that the pushback is serious. The habit of impunity among thugs does not subside so quickly. And that means a worse war, an even bigger one, is likely. Perhaps you do not believe it. But consider this: Mr Putin managed to increase his ratings when he came to office, in 1999, with the war in Chechnya. He solved the problem of controlling his “interim president”, Dmitry Medvedev, by going to war with Georgia in 2008. Having gone to war on Mr Putin’s orders, Mr Medvedev was forced to abandon his own agenda of modernisation. Mr Putin solved the problem of his ratings plunge in 2013-14 by seizing Crimea. Now, the war in Ukraine dwarfs any gripes about a decade of economic decline. If he is allowed to take over Ukraine, the economy will continue to collapse, as a result of corruption and sanctions. A flood of coffins will return home to Russia, for the guerrilla war cannot be stopped. The mood of the population will continue to deteriorate. And in 2024, there will be elections. What is likely to be Mr Putin’s solution? It will be another “special operation”. Moldova is too small, so it is likely to be in the Baltic states or Poland. Unless Mr Putin is stopped in the air over Ukraine, NATO will have to fight him on the ground. As for nuclear weapons, the Russian president has a manic psychosis. He is obsessed with being a historical figure like Stalin. He has placed a huge statue of Prince Vladimir, the creator of Russia, at his Kremlin gate. But he is not suicidal or he would not be sitting at the other end of a 20-foot table from his cronies. He will only use nuclear weapons if he believes there will be no response. But every day NATO rejects the no-fly zone over Ukraine, his self-confidence grows. I do not want my country to face NATO in a global conflict, but trying to talk to a thug without showing him your strength leads exactly to that point. First published in The Economist khodorkovsky.com/mikhail-khodorkovsky-on-how-to-deal-with-the-bandit-in-the-kremlin/
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Post by kaima on Mar 25, 2022 6:03:37 GMT -7
We Need a Return of the Golden Horde The only time Russia enjoyed extended peace was when the Golden Horde held power over them and refused to allow them to continue with their perpetual fratricide and murder - genocide in today's popular language. It seems 300 years of Golden Horde domination wasn't long enough.With Putin dragging Russia back into the Old Ways in his pursuit of rebuilding Imperial Russia, the ultimate - and maybe only - solution seems to be to nuke 'em. Blow them off the face of the earth, leave a radioactive sea and let the world get on with its lives. A good alternative seems to be to call in the Golden Horde and let them selectively behead the violent leaders and impose a peace between these perpetually warring Slavs. Both nuke and Horde solutions seem out of reach and out of reason. What a shame.  |
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Post by kaima on Mar 25, 2022 11:32:05 GMT -7
from THE ATLANTIC Ukraine’s Three-to-One Advantage
It’s not technology or tactics that has given Ukrainian fighters their greatest edge.
By Elliot Ackerman MARCH 24, 2022, 12:43 PM ET  About the author: Elliot Ackerman is the author, most recently, of the novel Red Dress in Black and White and a co-author of the novel 2034. He is a former Marine and intelligence officer who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few nights ago in Lviv, after an early dinner (restaurants shut at 8 p.m. because of curfew), I stepped into the elevator of my hotel. I was chatting with a colleague when a man in early middle age, dressed and equipped like a backpacker, thrust his hand into the closing door. “You guys American?” he asked. I told him we were, and as he reached for the elevator button, I couldn’t help but notice his dirty hands and the half-moons of filth beneath each fingernail. I also noticed his fleece. It had an eagle, a globe, and an anchor embossed on its left breast. “You a Marine?” I asked. He said he was (or had been—once a Marine, always a Marine), and I told him that I’d served in the Marines too. He introduced himself (he’s asked that I not use his name, so let’s just call him Jed), and we did a quick swap of bona fides, exchanging the names of the units in which we’d both served as infantrymen a decade ago. Jed asked if I knew where he could get a cup of coffee, or at least a cup of tea. He had, after a 10-hour journey, only just arrived from Kyiv. He was tired and cold, and everything was closed. A little cajoling persuaded the hotel restaurant to boil Jed a pot of water and hand him a few tea bags. When I wished him a good night, he asked if I wanted some tea too. The way he asked—like a kid pleading for a last story before bed—persuaded me to stay a little while longer. He wanted someone to talk with. As Jed sat across from me in the empty restaurant, with his shoulders hunched forward over the table and his palms cupped around the tea, he explained that since arriving in Ukraine at the end of February, he had been fighting as a volunteer along with a dozen other foreigners outside Kyiv. The past three weeks had marked him. When I asked how he was holding up, he said the combat had been more intense than anything he’d witnessed in Afghanistan. He seemed conflicted, as if he wanted to talk about this experience, but not in terms that could turn emotional. Perhaps to guard against this, he began to discuss the technical aspects of what he’d seen, explaining in granular detail how the outmanned, outgunned Ukrainian military had fought the Russians to a standstill. First, Jed wanted to discuss anti-armor weapons, particularly the American-made Javelin and the British-made NLAW. The past month of fighting had demonstrated that the balance of lethality had shifted away from armor, and toward anti-armor weapons. Even the most advanced armor systems, such as the Russian T-90 series main battle tank, had proved vulnerable, their charred husks littering Ukrainian roadways. When I mentioned to Jed that I’d fought in Fallujah in 2004, he said that the tactics the Marine Corps used to take that city would never work today in Ukraine. In Fallujah, our infantry worked in close coordination with our premier tank, the M1A2 Abrams. On several occasions, I watched our tanks take direct hits from rocket-propelled grenades (typically older-generation RPG-7s) without so much as a stutter in their forward progress. Today, a Ukrainian defending Kyiv or any other city, armed with a Javelin or an NLAW, would destroy a similarly capable tank. If the costly main battle tank is the archetypal platform of an army (as is the case for Russia and NATO), then the archetypal platform of a navy (particularly America’s Navy) is the ultra-costly capital ship, such as an aircraft carrier. Just as modern anti-tank weapons have turned the tide for the outnumbered Ukrainian army, the latest generation of anti-ship missiles (both shore- and sea-based) could in the future—say, in a place like the South China Sea or the Strait of Hormuz—turn the tide for a seemingly outmatched navy. Since February 24, the Ukrainian military has convincingly displayed the superiority of an anti-platform-centric method of warfare. Or, as Jed put it, “In Afghanistan, I used to feel jealous of those tankers, buttoned up in all that armor. Not anymore.” This brought Jed to the second subject he wanted to discuss: Russian tactics and doctrine. He said he had spent much of the past few weeks in the trenches northwest of Kyiv. “The Russians have no imagination,” he said. “They would shell our positions, attack in large formations, and when their assaults failed, do it all over again. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians would raid the Russian lines in small groups night after night, wearing them down.” Jed’s observation echoed a conversation I’d had the day before with Andriy Zagorodnyuk. After Russia’s invasion of the Donbas in 2014, Zagorodnyuk oversaw a number of reforms to the Ukrainian military that are now bearing fruit, chief among them changes in Ukraine’s military doctrine; then, from 2019 to 2020, he served as minister of defense. Russian doctrine relies on centralized command and control, while mission-style command and control—as the name suggests—relies on the individual initiative of every soldier, from the private to the general, not only to understand the mission but then to use their initiative to adapt to the exigencies of a chaotic and ever-changing battlefield in order to accomplish that mission. Although the Russian military has modernized under Vladimir Putin, it has never embraced the decentralized mission-style command-and-control structure that is the hallmark of NATO militaries, and that the Ukrainians have since adopted. “The Russians don’t empower their soldiers,” Zagorodnyuk explained. “They tell their soldiers to go from Point A to Point B, and only when they get to Point B will they be told where to go next, and junior soldiers are rarely told the reason they are performing any task. This centralized command and control can work, but only when events go according to plan. When the plan doesn’t hold together, their centralized method collapses. No one can adapt, and you get things like 40-mile-long traffic jams outside Kyiv.” The individual Russian soldier’s lack of knowledge corresponded with a story Jed told me, one that drove home the consequences of this lack of knowledge on the part of individual Russian soldiers. During a failed night assault on his trench, a group of Russian soldiers got lost in the nearby woods. “Eventually, they started calling out,” he said. “I couldn’t help it; I felt bad. They had no idea where to go.” When I asked what happened to them, he returned a grim look. Instead of recounting that part of the story, he described the advantage Ukrainians enjoy in night-vision technology. When I told him I’d heard the Ukrainians didn’t have many sets of night-vision goggles, he said that was true, and that they did need more. “But we’ve got Javelins. Everyone’s talking about the Javelins as an anti-tank weapon, but people forget that the Javelins also have a CLU.” The CLU, or command launch unit, is a highly capable thermal optic that can operate independent of the missile system. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we would often carry at least one Javelin on missions, not because we expected to encounter any al-Qaeda tanks, but because the CLU was such an effective tool. We’d use it to watch road intersections and make sure no one was laying down IEDs. The Javelin has a range in excess of a mile, and the CLU is effective at that distance and beyond. I asked Jed at what ranges they were engaging the Russians. “Typically, the Ukrainians would wait and ambush them pretty close.” When I asked how close, he answered, “Sometimes scary close.” He described one Ukrainian, a soldier he and a few other English speakers had nicknamed “Maniac” because of the risks he’d take engaging Russian armor. “Maniac was the nicest guy, totally mild-mannered. Then in a fight, the guy turned into a psycho, brave as hell. And then after a fight, he’d go right back to being this nice, mild-mannered guy.” I wasn’t in a position to verify anything Jed told me, but he showed me a video he’d taken of himself in a trench, and based on that and details he provided about his time in the Marines, his story seemed credible. The longer we talked, the more the conversation veered away from the tangible, technical variables of Ukraine’s military capacity and toward the psychology of Ukraine’s military. Napoleon, who fought many battles in this part of the world, observed that “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” I was thinking of this maxim as Jed and I finished our tea. In Ukraine—at least in this first chapter of the war—Napoleon’s words have held true, proving in many ways decisive. In my earlier conversation with Zagorodnyuk, as he and I went through the many reforms and technologies that had given the Ukrainian military its edge, he was quick to point out the one variable he believed trumped all others. “Our motivation—it is the most important factor, more important than anything. We’re fighting for the lives of our families, for our people, and for our homes. The Russians don’t have any of that, and there’s nowhere they can go to get it.” Elliot Ackerman is the author, most recently, of the novel Red Dress in Black and White and a co-author of the novel 2034. He is a former Marine and intelligence officer who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/american-volunteer-foreign-fighters-ukraine-russia-war/627604/ |
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Post by Jaga on Mar 26, 2022 8:56:35 GMT -7
Pieter, I saw the interview with Khodorowsky; after Putin started the war. I still remember when khodorowsky was imprisoned for supporting anti-Putin opposition. I am happy he was able to get out of Russia.
Kai and Karl, I am sorry I don't write that much in the forum but this is because I am trying to get as many news as possible from Poland and the US. Polish news are very good, they have so much insight. I love TVN24 - which is the opposition, but because of the war almost all parts of the government except Ziobro are united. Pres Duda also did good things for opposition since he voted Kaczynski bill to eliminate opposition media.
Poland is becoming an important part of Europe, the front line of the free world.
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Post by pieter on Mar 26, 2022 13:23:31 GMT -7
from THE ATLANTIC Ukraine’s Three-to-One Advantage
It’s not technology or tactics that has given Ukrainian fighters their greatest edge.
By Elliot Ackerman MARCH 24, 2022, 12:43 PM ET About the author: Elliot Ackerman is the author, most recently, of the novel Red Dress in Black and White and a co-author of the novel 2034. He is a former Marine and intelligence officer who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few nights ago in Lviv, after an early dinner (restaurants shut at 8 p.m. because of curfew), I stepped into the elevator of my hotel. I was chatting with a colleague when a man in early middle age, dressed and equipped like a backpacker, thrust his hand into the closing door. “You guys American?” he asked. I told him we were, and as he reached for the elevator button, I couldn’t help but notice his dirty hands and the half-moons of filth beneath each fingernail. I also noticed his fleece. It had an eagle, a globe, and an anchor embossed on its left breast. “You a Marine?” I asked. He said he was (or had been—once a Marine, always a Marine), and I told him that I’d served in the Marines too. He introduced himself (he’s asked that I not use his name, so let’s just call him Jed), and we did a quick swap of bona fides, exchanging the names of the units in which we’d both served as infantrymen a decade ago. Jed asked if I knew where he could get a cup of coffee, or at least a cup of tea. He had, after a 10-hour journey, only just arrived from Kyiv. He was tired and cold, and everything was closed. A little cajoling persuaded the hotel restaurant to boil Jed a pot of water and hand him a few tea bags. When I wished him a good night, he asked if I wanted some tea too. The way he asked—like a kid pleading for a last story before bed—persuaded me to stay a little while longer. He wanted someone to talk with. As Jed sat across from me in the empty restaurant, with his shoulders hunched forward over the table and his palms cupped around the tea, he explained that since arriving in Ukraine at the end of February, he had been fighting as a volunteer along with a dozen other foreigners outside Kyiv. The past three weeks had marked him. When I asked how he was holding up, he said the combat had been more intense than anything he’d witnessed in Afghanistan. He seemed conflicted, as if he wanted to talk about this experience, but not in terms that could turn emotional. Perhaps to guard against this, he began to discuss the technical aspects of what he’d seen, explaining in granular detail how the outmanned, outgunned Ukrainian military had fought the Russians to a standstill. First, Jed wanted to discuss anti-armor weapons, particularly the American-made Javelin and the British-made NLAW. The past month of fighting had demonstrated that the balance of lethality had shifted away from armor, and toward anti-armor weapons. Even the most advanced armor systems, such as the Russian T-90 series main battle tank, had proved vulnerable, their charred husks littering Ukrainian roadways. When I mentioned to Jed that I’d fought in Fallujah in 2004, he said that the tactics the Marine Corps used to take that city would never work today in Ukraine. In Fallujah, our infantry worked in close coordination with our premier tank, the M1A2 Abrams. On several occasions, I watched our tanks take direct hits from rocket-propelled grenades (typically older-generation RPG-7s) without so much as a stutter in their forward progress. Today, a Ukrainian defending Kyiv or any other city, armed with a Javelin or an NLAW, would destroy a similarly capable tank. If the costly main battle tank is the archetypal platform of an army (as is the case for Russia and NATO), then the archetypal platform of a navy (particularly America’s Navy) is the ultra-costly capital ship, such as an aircraft carrier. Just as modern anti-tank weapons have turned the tide for the outnumbered Ukrainian army, the latest generation of anti-ship missiles (both shore- and sea-based) could in the future—say, in a place like the South China Sea or the Strait of Hormuz—turn the tide for a seemingly outmatched navy. Since February 24, the Ukrainian military has convincingly displayed the superiority of an anti-platform-centric method of warfare. Or, as Jed put it, “In Afghanistan, I used to feel jealous of those tankers, buttoned up in all that armor. Not anymore.” This brought Jed to the second subject he wanted to discuss: Russian tactics and doctrine. He said he had spent much of the past few weeks in the trenches northwest of Kyiv. “The Russians have no imagination,” he said. “They would shell our positions, attack in large formations, and when their assaults failed, do it all over again. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians would raid the Russian lines in small groups night after night, wearing them down.” Jed’s observation echoed a conversation I’d had the day before with Andriy Zagorodnyuk. After Russia’s invasion of the Donbas in 2014, Zagorodnyuk oversaw a number of reforms to the Ukrainian military that are now bearing fruit, chief among them changes in Ukraine’s military doctrine; then, from 2019 to 2020, he served as minister of defense. Russian doctrine relies on centralized command and control, while mission-style command and control—as the name suggests—relies on the individual initiative of every soldier, from the private to the general, not only to understand the mission but then to use their initiative to adapt to the exigencies of a chaotic and ever-changing battlefield in order to accomplish that mission. Although the Russian military has modernized under Vladimir Putin, it has never embraced the decentralized mission-style command-and-control structure that is the hallmark of NATO militaries, and that the Ukrainians have since adopted. “The Russians don’t empower their soldiers,” Zagorodnyuk explained. “They tell their soldiers to go from Point A to Point B, and only when they get to Point B will they be told where to go next, and junior soldiers are rarely told the reason they are performing any task. This centralized command and control can work, but only when events go according to plan. When the plan doesn’t hold together, their centralized method collapses. No one can adapt, and you get things like 40-mile-long traffic jams outside Kyiv.” The individual Russian soldier’s lack of knowledge corresponded with a story Jed told me, one that drove home the consequences of this lack of knowledge on the part of individual Russian soldiers. During a failed night assault on his trench, a group of Russian soldiers got lost in the nearby woods. “Eventually, they started calling out,” he said. “I couldn’t help it; I felt bad. They had no idea where to go.” When I asked what happened to them, he returned a grim look. Instead of recounting that part of the story, he described the advantage Ukrainians enjoy in night-vision technology. When I told him I’d heard the Ukrainians didn’t have many sets of night-vision goggles, he said that was true, and that they did need more. “But we’ve got Javelins. Everyone’s talking about the Javelins as an anti-tank weapon, but people forget that the Javelins also have a CLU.” The CLU, or command launch unit, is a highly capable thermal optic that can operate independent of the missile system. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we would often carry at least one Javelin on missions, not because we expected to encounter any al-Qaeda tanks, but because the CLU was such an effective tool. We’d use it to watch road intersections and make sure no one was laying down IEDs. The Javelin has a range in excess of a mile, and the CLU is effective at that distance and beyond. I asked Jed at what ranges they were engaging the Russians. “Typically, the Ukrainians would wait and ambush them pretty close.” When I asked how close, he answered, “Sometimes scary close.” He described one Ukrainian, a soldier he and a few other English speakers had nicknamed “Maniac” because of the risks he’d take engaging Russian armor. “Maniac was the nicest guy, totally mild-mannered. Then in a fight, the guy turned into a psycho, brave as hell. And then after a fight, he’d go right back to being this nice, mild-mannered guy.” I wasn’t in a position to verify anything Jed told me, but he showed me a video he’d taken of himself in a trench, and based on that and details he provided about his time in the Marines, his story seemed credible. The longer we talked, the more the conversation veered away from the tangible, technical variables of Ukraine’s military capacity and toward the psychology of Ukraine’s military. Napoleon, who fought many battles in this part of the world, observed that “the moral is to the physical as three is to one.” I was thinking of this maxim as Jed and I finished our tea. In Ukraine—at least in this first chapter of the war—Napoleon’s words have held true, proving in many ways decisive. In my earlier conversation with Zagorodnyuk, as he and I went through the many reforms and technologies that had given the Ukrainian military its edge, he was quick to point out the one variable he believed trumped all others. “Our motivation—it is the most important factor, more important than anything. We’re fighting for the lives of our families, for our people, and for our homes. The Russians don’t have any of that, and there’s nowhere they can go to get it.” Elliot Ackerman is the author, most recently, of the novel Red Dress in Black and White and a co-author of the novel 2034. He is a former Marine and intelligence officer who served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/american-volunteer-foreign-fighters-ukraine-russia-war/627604/
This is one of the most interesting reports I read about the terrible war in Ukraine right now. Thank you for posting this. It was interesting that these Old Marines that met in Lviv discussed the battle in Kiyv and compared it with battles in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was good that the Marine Jed told fellow marine Elliot Ackerman that warfare in Ukraine is totally different in Ukraine than in Afghanistan and Iraq. That in Ukraine the hight morale, convictions and fighting spirit of the Ukrainian soldiers and officers together with their military tactics and strategies beat the numerous superior Russians.
Thank god the Ukrainians adopted quite successfully the decentralized mission-style command-and-control structure that is the hallmark of NATO militaries. I know Ron that Ukrainian soldiers for years were trained by US-, Canadian-, British-, Lithuanian and Polish army instructors trained the Ukrainians in NATO style warfare. So the Ukrainians will have their old Soviet time, Afghanistan and Warsaw pact training experience and joined military excercises of the Ukrainian and Russian armed forces in the nineties and early 21th century together with that US-, Canadian-, British-, Lithuanian and Polish military training and their 8 years of military experience in the war in Donbas (also called the Donbas War) from 6 April 2014 until today (the present). And next to the Soviet Afghanistan occupation experience and the Donbas War experience the Ukrainians have experience in UN peacekeeping operations in the Congo, South Sudan, Cyprus, Kosovo, Rwanda, Mali and in the Abyei Area, an area of 10,546 km² or 4,072 sq mi on the border between South Sudan and the Sudan that has been accorded "special administrative status" by the 2004 Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the Second Sudanese Civil War.
www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/american-veterans-resistance-academy-ukraine-1319830/
www.army.mil/article/174975/polish_armed_forces_partner_with_u_s_to_train_ukrainian_soldiers
Cheers,
Pieter |
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Post by pieter on Mar 26, 2022 13:36:13 GMT -7
Ron,
My reply was long again, but fact stays that the story of these 2 Old Marines in Lviv is an interesting story. You get an insight of the fighting around Kiyv in the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital. Thank god the Ukrainian fighters are very good and that their NATO training and fighting techniques paid well off. It seems that the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Інтернаціональний легіон територіальної оборони України, romanized: Internatsionalnyi lehion terytorialnoi oborony Ukrainy) or the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, the foreign legion military unit of the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine, created by the Government of Ukraine at the request of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to fight in the Russian invasion of Ukraine is working well. I do believe that that Jed was part of that International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Legion_of_Territorial_Defense_of_Ukrainefightforua.org//ukrforeignlegion.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwuMuRBhCJARIsAHXdnqNvdy7HS97Da68VNr1qZ5egqAlJnWqaNS08b9OQl0N-OObMhUbLaRoaAq5dEALw_wcB
Cheers,
Pieter
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Post by pieter on Mar 26, 2022 16:28:08 GMT -7
Pieter, I saw the interview with Khodorowsky; after Putin started the war. I still remember when khodorowsky was imprisoned for supporting anti-Putin opposition. I am happy he was able to get out of Russia. Kai and Karl, I am sorry I don't write that much in the forum but this is because I am trying to get as many news as possible from Poland and the US. Polish news are very good, they have so much insight. I love TVN24 - which is the opposition, but because of the war almost all parts of the government except Ziobro are united. Pres Duda also did good things for opposition since he voted Kaczynski bill to eliminate opposition media. Poland is becoming an important part of Europe, the front line of the free world.
Very good reply. Yes, thank god Khodorowsky was released from prison and had the chance to London, UK. In 2014, Khodorkovsky re-launched Open Russia to promote several reforms to Russian civil society, including free and fair elections, political education, protection of journalists and activists, endorsing the rule of law, and ensuring media independence. He has been described by The Economist as "the Kremlin's leading critic-in-exile".
Poland has always played an important trade route, diplomatic, military, financial, economical, scientific (Nicolaus Copernicus, Marie Curie), musical (Chopin) and cultural role in Central Europe and Northern Europe. Due to it's location between London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Berlin in the West, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stokholm, Helsinki, Saint Petersburg, Talinn, Riga and Vilnius in the North, Minsk, Kiyv and Moscow in the East and Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Athens and increasingly important Istanbul and Ankara (Turkey) in the South, makes Poland a geopolitical power in Europe. Most important, Warsaw lies inbetween Berlin and Moscow. I remember our train to Poland in the seventies and eighties, it was an international train that went to Moscow as end station. While driving to the East the train stopped in Berlin, Poznań and Warsaw.
Today Poland is important due to the succes of the Balcerowicz Plan (Polish: plan Balcerowicza) from September 1989, also termed "Shock Therapy", a method for rapidly transitioning from an economy based on state ownership and central planning, to a capitalist market economy. Poland became a succesful capitalist economy and Modern Western Democracy. Next to that Poland modernised and expanded it's armed forces, making it one of the largest and strongest armies in Europe.
Today Poland is border land containing the new Iron Curtain between Poland and Belarus, Poland and Kaliningrad and Poland and Ukraine. NATO troop formations are build in Poland and the defense of the Polish borders is strengthened.
Pieter |
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Post by pieter on Mar 27, 2022 3:10:04 GMT -7
Mikhail Khodorkovsky On How To Deal With The “Bandit” In The KremlinMarch 16, 2022 khodorkovsky.com/mikhail-khodorkovsky-on-how-to-deal-with-the-bandit-in-the-kremlin/A former oil mogul and political prisoner warns the West it must face down Vladimir Putin now in Ukraine or prepare for a much worse war later I have been fighting a personal war with Vladimir Putin for nearly 20 years. It led to my being jailed in Russia for ten years and then expelled, with a warning that life imprisonment awaited me if I ever returned. Do I know the man who did all this to me? I think I do. That is why I look with despair at the defeatist approach of Western leaders, such as Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and Naftali Bennett. It is difficult for me to judge how their actions are seen by their electorates. However, I know well how they are perceived by Mr Putin, sitting at the end of his long table. They fly to Moscow, call him, ask him to stop, but assure him that they will not interfere and do not want him to perceive certain movements as a provocation. The president sees all of this as weakness, and that is extremely dangerous. Part of the problem is that the current leaders of Western countries have never dealt with thugs. Their experience and education relate to interactions between statesmen. The principle of these people’s behaviour is that both sides concede to each other in the interests of their electorate or subjects. War is evil to them, and the use of force is a last resort. This is not the case with Vladimir Putin. He was raised in the KGB, an organisation that relied on force and disregard for the law. While working at St Petersburg City Hall in the early 1990s, he was responsible for the informal interaction of the law-enforcement agencies with gangsters. St Petersburg at that time was perceived in Russia just as Chicago was seen during prohibition. Instead of smuggled whisky, the gangsters were selling drugs and oil. Times changed but his ways of solving issues remained. Some of the conversations between his confidants and known criminals, made public after an investigation by Spanish prosecutors, help us to understand how the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and the poisoning of Alexey Navalny and the Skripals came at the nod of the ringleader. Such acts are the norm within the president’s circles, because he is a thug by nature. Even after more than 20 years in power, having acquired a strongman image and self-confidence, a bandit will always remain a bandit in terms of his perception among those around him. It is a drastic mistake when he is seen as a normal statesman. Russia’s foreign partners fail to understand who he really is. I have plenty of experience of dealing with bandits. After spending ten years in Russian prisons, I can say that the most dangerous thing is to show them any weakness or uncertainty. Any step towards their demands, without a clear demonstration of strength, will be perceived as weakness. Following their logic, if Western countries say they will not give up Ukraine and yet they do exactly that, it means that they are weak. And that makes it likely that Mr Putin will look towards other neighbours, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, who were also previously part of the Russian Empire. You have to understand that Mr Putin, in his head, has long been at war not with Ukraine, but with America. And now America and NATO look to be retreating. He is not the only thug who perceives the situation that way. Other bandits are also watching and waiting their turn, as America’s humiliation echoes around the world. Transnistria is stirring, the Balkans are restless again, Iran is attacking American bases. At some point, America and NATO will retaliate, but by that point, they will be tormented by crows and vultures in various parts of the world, and Mr Putin will not immediately realise that the pushback is serious. The habit of impunity among thugs does not subside so quickly. And that means a worse war, an even bigger one, is likely. Perhaps you do not believe it. But consider this: Mr Putin managed to increase his ratings when he came to office, in 1999, with the war in Chechnya. He solved the problem of controlling his “interim president”, Dmitry Medvedev, by going to war with Georgia in 2008. Having gone to war on Mr Putin’s orders, Mr Medvedev was forced to abandon his own agenda of modernisation. Mr Putin solved the problem of his ratings plunge in 2013-14 by seizing Crimea. Now, the war in Ukraine dwarfs any gripes about a decade of economic decline. If he is allowed to take over Ukraine, the economy will continue to collapse, as a result of corruption and sanctions. A flood of coffins will return home to Russia, for the guerrilla war cannot be stopped. The mood of the population will continue to deteriorate. And in 2024, there will be elections. What is likely to be Mr Putin’s solution? It will be another “special operation”. Moldova is too small, so it is likely to be in the Baltic states or Poland. Unless Mr Putin is stopped in the air over Ukraine, NATO will have to fight him on the ground. As for nuclear weapons, the Russian president has a manic psychosis. He is obsessed with being a historical figure like Stalin. He has placed a huge statue of Prince Vladimir, the creator of Russia, at his Kremlin gate. But he is not suicidal or he would not be sitting at the other end of a 20-foot table from his cronies. He will only use nuclear weapons if he believes there will be no response. But every day NATO rejects the no-fly zone over Ukraine, his self-confidence grows. I do not want my country to face NATO in a global conflict, but trying to talk to a thug without showing him your strength leads exactly to that point. First published in The Economist khodorkovsky.com/mikhail-khodorkovsky-on-how-to-deal-with-the-bandit-in-the-kremlin/
I am watching a live interview with Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the Dutch sunday afternoon newsprogram Buitenhof ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buitenhof_(TV_series) ).
Pieterwww.vpro.nl/buitenhof.html |
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Post by pieter on Mar 27, 2022 4:05:29 GMT -7
 Open RussiaOpen Russia (Russian: Открытая Россия; Otkrytaya Rossiya) is a name shared by two political organisations in Russia founded by the exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky with the shareholders of his firm, Yukos (a company closed in 2006). Khodorkovsky states that his organisation advocates democracy and human rights. The first initiative took the form of a foundation whose stated purpose was to "build and strengthen civil society in Russia", established in 2001. Khodorkovsky relaunched Open Russia in September 2014 as a nationwide community platform as part of a group of activities called "Open Media".
In 2017, the organisation was listed as undesirable by Russia's Prosecutor General, and its website banned in Russia. On 27 May 2021, Open Russia announced to cease its operations in Russia to protect its members from the risk of facing criminal prosecution and being imprisoned in the country. "Open Media" is now known as "Mozhem Obyasnit". |
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Post by pieter on Mar 27, 2022 4:08:36 GMT -7
Former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was once the richest man in Russia before spending 10 years in prison for going against Vladimir Putin, speaks with CNN's Erin Burnett about the Russian president's mindset and the state of the country's military a month into the war in Ukraine. #CNN #News
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