What does Putin want (and whatabout it)
nan said:
This is hilarious. Totally nuts. Talk about spinning narratives.
The Levada Center is still listed as a foreign agents in Russia. It is clearly a western funded institution so they have to find a way to explain why Putin is popular for the Putin hating US.
Lets look again at your highlighted paragraph:
"What all this means is that it's wrong to compare directly the ratings of Russian and foreign politicians. In democratic countries, politics is based on competition and the constant contestation between different candidates and platforms. The Russian political system, on the other hand, is based on the absence of a credible alternative. Accordingly, public approval doesn't indicate the country's assessment of concrete political decisions, but a general acceptance of the course chosen by those in power."First of all, Putin was running against four other people, so they had choices, and probably zero choices suffering from dementia. In our country, we only get to choose between two brain dead idiots. WE have no credible alternative!
I have no idea how this affects polling anywhere, but I don't even agree with the assumptions behind that idea.
You're quoted from an article by an official at the Levada Center (the polling center which you say you're relying on) who is telling you why you can't compare a Russian "election" with actual elections in the West.
terp said:
I agree that the US is more democratic. The crazy thing is how much more imperialist and aggressive our Foreign Policy is.
Um, you don't know much about the states that have ruled from Moscow, do you?
I haven't had time to look into it, as I have been too busy erasing people's agency. People think that kind of thing is easy.
jamie said:
terp is on vacation for a week.
he did seem a bit more perturbed lately
jamie said:
terp is on vacation for a week.
He’ll have time to bone up on European history, then.
Jaytee said:
Terp needs to go. He’s way past being offensive.
I think he needs help. Something snapped.
nan said:
Biden can lose, but currently he is trying to lock up Trump so he can't.
You are confused again. The felony cases against Trump are called the rule of law. If this were Russia, Trump would be off in some remote prison by now.
nohero said:
nan said:
This is hilarious. Totally nuts. Talk about spinning narratives.
The Levada Center is still listed as a foreign agents in Russia. It is clearly a western funded institution so they have to find a way to explain why Putin is popular for the Putin hating US.
Lets look again at your highlighted paragraph:
"What all this means is that it's wrong to compare directly the ratings of Russian and foreign politicians. In democratic countries, politics is based on competition and the constant contestation between different candidates and platforms. The Russian political system, on the other hand, is based on the absence of a credible alternative. Accordingly, public approval doesn't indicate the country's assessment of concrete political decisions, but a general acceptance of the course chosen by those in power."First of all, Putin was running against four other people, so they had choices, and probably zero choices suffering from dementia. In our country, we only get to choose between two brain dead idiots. WE have no credible alternative!
I have no idea how this affects polling anywhere, but I don't even agree with the assumptions behind that idea.
You're quoted from an article by an official at the Levada Center (the polling center which you say you're relying on) who is telling you why you can't compare a Russian "election" with actual elections in the West.
The Levada Center is a western funded entity-so it's like you talking there.
tjohn said:
nan said:
Biden can lose, but currently he is trying to lock up Trump so he can't.
You are confused again. The felony cases against Trump are called the rule of law. If this were Russia, Trump would be off in some remote prison by now.
If we followed the rule of law, lots of former presidents would be in jail. Bush is good example. He lied about WMDs and a million people died. Instead of facing prosecution for war crimes, he ended up dancing on Ellen and cutely handing Michelle Obama candy.
nan said:
The Levada Center is a western funded entity-so it's like you talking there.
didn’t you offer the Levada Center‘s poll as support for your claim that western polling showed that Russians liked Putin?
You can show that when Levada accepted foreign grants, it said they made up only 1.5% to 3% of its funding. You can show that Levada doesn’t appear in the National Endowment for Democracy’s grantee search base. You can show that foreign funding isn’t the only thing that can get an organization declared a foreign agent by the Kremlin. None of it matters. Nan is convinced that Levada is a Western-funded pollster.
DaveSchmidt said:
You can show that when Levada accepted foreign grants, it said they made up only 1.5% to 3% of its funding. You can show that Levada doesn’t appear in the National Endowment for Democracy’s grantee search base. You can show that foreign funding isn’t the only thing that can get an organization declared a foreign agent by the Kremlin. None of it matters. Nan is convinced that Levada is a Western-funded pollster.
Yup. Prove me wrong.
DaveSchmidt said:
nan said:
Yup. Prove me wrong.
Why?
because one way or another, it will be fun to watch.
Steve said:
nan said:
Steve said:
nan said:
The Levada Center is a western funded entity-so it's like you talking there.
didn’t you offer the Levada Center‘s poll as support for your claim that western polling showed that Russians liked Putin?
Yes.
And now you're saying it's not reliable, right?
It's simple. Levada Center gets foreign funding for a very small slice of its budget, but makes that control how it operates. It then conducts accurate polls of Russian public opinion, but then writes misleading articles that lie about how to interpret the polls that they report.
Now, you might think it would be simpler to just not conduct accurate polls at all, but you don't understand their "plans within plans".
If Nan was around during the last world war spewing her anti American propaganda, she would have been tried for treason. Hitler didn’t invade Poland because they refused to speak German, but she may have found his mustache somewhat attractive.
Jaytee said:
If Nan was around during the last world war spewing her anti American propaganda, she would have been tried for treason.
I'd like to think that's not true, but then I remember that we did send thousands of people to prison camps just because they had Japanese backgrounds.
In my lifetime at least, there's been a lot of space for anti-war dissent. I remember marching with tens of thousands in NYC against the imminent invasion of Iraq (a war that would not have happened had Gore won the presidency, though apparently such small things as "invade Iraq or not" are indistinguishable sides of the same coin?)
In today's Russia, in contrast, speaking out against the war gets people arrested.
A reminder of the fundamentally imperial nature of Russia:
Worries Over Ethnic Tensions Have Kremlin Treading Carefully on Massacre (NYT)
Where much of the multi-ethnic character of the United States stems from immigration, Russia has never been a similar major migration destination. It's multi-ethnic not because people moved to Russia, but because Russia moved to them. It's a long way from Kalingrad to Vladivostock, and Moscow didn't come to rule over it through peace and love.
Good opinion piece from Timothy Snyder on Putin:
This is from March 23 -
nan said:
jamie said:
Meanwhile - we warned Putin of an upcoming attack and his response was: “these actions resemble outright blackmail and the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
Funny, Vlad media doesn't mention this wrote or the US warning or that ISIS claimed responsibility. Heck, you'd hard know tens of thousands of Russians are dying in Ukraine.
As I've said countless times - the Russian people deserve so much better.
It was not ISIS--it was Ukraine and/or the CIA -- they caught the guys and now there will be retribution and more people will die.
And this is earlier today. Looks like Nan scooped Anne Applebaum.
Russian media alleges Biden/Zelensky/Sunak/Johnson are responsible for ISIS terrorist attack in Moscow https://t.co/oRwYhQNqs8
— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) March 27, 2024
Steve said:
nan said:
Steve said:
nan said:
The Levada Center is a western funded entity-so it's like you talking there.
didn’t you offer the Levada Center‘s poll as support for your claim that western polling showed that Russians liked Putin?
Yes.
And now you're saying it's not reliable, right?
No. You are not getting this. At all.
Jaytee said:
If Nan was around during the last world war spewing her anti American propaganda, she would have been tried for treason. Hitler didn’t invade Poland because they refused to speak German, but she may have found his mustache somewhat attractive.
See, this is why I left MOL last time. This is an extremely offensive statement--as bad as anything terp said. But will Jaytee get a week's vacation? Not holding my breath.
Russia has been proudly showing off how the captured terrorists who perpetrated the killings at the theater have been tortured.
Which gives even more credibility to another report this week - UN report: Credible allegations Ukrainian POWs have been tortured by Russian forces | UN News
nan said:
No. You are not getting this. At all.
We get it. Putin’s support is so strong, even an obfuscating Western-financed pollster can’t hide it.
nan said:
No. You are not getting this. At all.
That's why I asked. Please explain it to me.
Sorry I've been away for so long. I thought of this thread (and the Twitter thread) when I saw this, so I thought I'd share it with you:
https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-great-risk-front-line-collapse-war-russia/
Ukraine is at great risk of its front lines collapsing
According to high-ranking Ukrainian officers, the military picture is grim and Russian generals could find success wherever they decide to focus their upcoming offensive.Unpacked
April 3, 2024
4:00 am CET
By
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
KYIV — Wayward entrepreneur Elon Musk’s latest pronouncements regarding the war in Ukraine set teeth on edge, as he warned that even though Moscow has “no chance” of conquering all of Ukraine, “the longer the war goes on, the more territory Russia will gain until they hit the Dnipro, which is tough to overcome.”
“However, if the war lasts long enough, Odesa will fall too,” he cautioned.
With a history of urging Ukraine to agree to territorial concessions —
and his opposition to the $60 billion U.S. military aid package snarled
on Capitol Hill amid partisan wrangling — Musk isn’t Ukraine’s favorite
commentator, to say the least. And his remarks received predictable
pushback.
But the billionaire entrepreneur’s forecast isn’t actually all that different from the dire warnings Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made in the last few days. According to Zelenskyy, unless the stalled multibillion-dollar package is approved soon, his forces will have to “go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps.” He also warned that some major cities could be at risk of falling.
Obviously, Zelenskyy’s warnings are part of a broad diplomatic effort to free up the military aid his forces so desperately need and have been short of for months — everything from 155-millimeter artillery shells to Patriot air-defense systems and drones. But the sad truth is that even if the package is approved by the U.S. Congress, a massive resupply may not be enough to prevent a major battlefield upset.
And such a setback, especially in the middle of election campaigns in America and Europe, could very well revive Western pressure for negotiations that would obviously favor Russia, leaving the Kremlin free to revive the conflict at a future time of its choosing.
Essentially, everything now depends on where Russia will decide to target its strength in an offensive that’s expected to launch this summer. In a pre-offensive pummeling — stretching from Kharkiv and Sumy in the north to Odesa in the south — Russia’s missile and drone strikes have widely surged in recent weeks, targeting infrastructure and making it hard to guess where it will mount its major push.
And according to high-ranking Ukrainian military officers who served under General Valery Zaluzhny — the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces until he was replaced in February — the military picture is grim.
The officers said there’s a great risk of the front lines collapsing
wherever Russian generals decide to focus their offensive. Moreover,
thanks to a much greater weight in numbers and the guided aerial bombs
that have been smashing Ukrainian positions for weeks now, Russia will
likely be able to “penetrate the front line and to crash it in some
parts,” they said.
They spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely.
“There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us. We don’t have those technologies, and the West doesn’t have them as well in sufficient numbers,” one of the top-ranking military sources told POLITICO.
According to him, it is only Ukrainian grit and resilience as well as errors by Russian commanders that may now alter the grim dynamics. Mistakes like the one made on Saturday, when Russia launched one of the largest tank assaults on Ukrainian positions since its full-scale invasion began, only to have the column smashed by Ukraine’s 25th Brigade, which took out a dozen tanks and 8 infantry fighting vehicles — a third of the column’s strength.
However, the high-ranking Ukrainian officers reminded that relying on Russian errors is not a strategy, and they were bitter about the missteps they say hamstrung Ukraine’s resistance from the start — missteps made by both the West and Ukraine. They were also scathing about Western foot-dragging, saying supplies and weapons systems came too late and in insufficient numbers to make the difference they otherwise could have.
“Zaluzhny used to call it ‘the War of One Chance,’” one of the officers said. “By that, he meant weapons systems become redundant very quickly because they’re quickly countered by the Russians. For example, we used Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles [supplied by Britain and France] successfully — but just for a short time. The Russians are always studying. They don’t give us a second chance. And they’re successful in this.”
“Don’t believe the hype about them just throwing troops into the meat
grinder to be slaughtered,” he added. “They do that too, of course —
maximizing even more the impact of their superior numbers — but they
also learn and refine.”
The officers said the shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles supplied by the U.K. and U.S. in the first weeks of the invasion came in time, helping them save Kyiv — and so, too, did the HIMARS, the light multiple-launch rocket systems, which were used to great effect, enabling them to push Russia out of Kherson in November 2022.
“But often, we just don’t get the weapons systems at the time we need them — they come when they’re no longer relevant,” another senior officer said, citing the F-16 fighter jets as an example. A dozen or so F-16s are expected to be operational this summer, after basic pilot training has been completed. “Every weapon has its own right time. F-16s were needed in 2023; they won’t be right for 2024,” he said.
And that’s because, according to this officer, Russia is ready to counter them: “In the last few months, we started to notice missiles being fired by the Russians from Dzhankoy in northern Crimea, but without the explosive warheads. We couldn’t understand what they were doing, and then we figured it out: They’re range-finding,” he said. The officer explained that Russia’s been calculating where best to deploy its S-400 missile and radar systems in order to maximize the area they can cover to target the F-16s, keeping them away from the front lines and Russia’s logistical hubs.
The officers also said they now need more basic traditional weapons as well as drones. “We need Howitzers and shells, hundreds of thousands of shells, and rockets,” one of them told POLITICO, estimating that Ukraine needed 4 million shells and 2 million drones. “We told the Western partners all the time that we have the combat experience, we have the battlefield understanding of this war. [They] have the resources, and they need to give us what we need,” he added.
Europe, for its part, is trying to help Ukraine make up for its colossal disadvantage in artillery shells. And in this regard, a proposed Czech-led bulk artillery ammunition purchase could bring Ukraine’s total from both within and outside the EU to around 1.5 million rounds at a cost of $3.3 billion — but that’s still short of what it needs.
The officers emphasized that they need many, many more men too. The
country currently doesn’t have enough men on the front lines, and this
is compounding the problem of underwhelming Western support.
However, Ukraine has yet to pull the trigger on recruitment ahead of the expected Russian push, as authorities are worried about the political fallout mobilization measures might bring amid draft-dodging and avoidance of conscription papers. Zaluzhny had already publicly called for the mobilization of more troops back in December, estimating Ukraine needed at least an additional 500,000 men. The draft issue has gone back and forth ever since.
Then, last week, General Oleksandr Syrsky — Zaluzhny’s replacement — abruptly announced that Ukraine might not need quite so many fresh troops. After a review of resources, the figure has been “significantly reduced,” and “we expect that we will have enough people capable of defending their motherland,” he told the Ukrinform news agency. “I am talking not only about the mobilized but also about volunteer fighters,” he said.
The plan is to move as many desk-bound uniformed personnel and those in noncombat roles to the front lines as possible, after an intensive three- to four-month training. But the senior officers POLITICO spoke to said that Syrsky was wrong and “playing along with narratives from politicians.” Then, on Tuesday, Zelenskyy signed some additional parts to an old mobilization law tightening the legal requirements for draft-age Ukrainian men to register their details, and lowering the minimum age for call-up from 27 to 25. But in Ukraine, this is just seen as tinkering.
“We don’t only have a military crisis — we have a political one,” one of the officers said. While Ukraine shies away from a big draft, “Russia is now gathering resources and will be ready to launch a big attack around August, and maybe sooner.”
So, Musk may not be too wide of the mark after all.
For Sale
Rentals
-
Huge Brand New construction Apartment in 2 family home with 4 bedrooms 3 bathrooms
4 Bd | 3Full Ba
$4,500
Since Bernie in 2016 has already been mentioned here by Nan -
Yes, middle class white adults in NJ suburbs who were agnostic about whether Trump or Clinton were elected are privileged compared to all of the people who have been harmed, even died, because of the results of the 2016 Presidential election. Who is elected President does matter.