#мясные волны

[tomorrowusa]

Putin needs more cannon fodder for his disastrous invasion of Ukraine.

Putin calls up 160,000 men to Russian army in latest conscription drive, at crucial moment in Ukraine war

Putin places no value on human lives – even Russian ones. Russia now has over 930 thousand casualties. This war is all about Putin's ego and his effort to restore the decrepit old USSR in all but name.

It's not clear how many of those Russian casualties were killed by fellow Russians.

'Shoot them' — Russian commander ordered troops to open fire on their comrades, intercepted call suggests

Russians gain nothing by fighting for Putin except, maybe, a bullet in the back from other Russians. Anybody of conscription age should try to get out of the country ASAP.

[helenpabloba-blog]

Плюсы отдыха в на Азовском море

Если сравнивать Азовское море с Черным, то наберется не менее двенадцати плюсов в пользу первого, все потому, что именно там, начиная с Таганрога и продолжая дальше, вплоть до Крыма, есть все, что нужно любому туристу. И в первую очередь, это благоприятный лечебный климат. На Азовском море курорты делятся по сторонам света: южные, северные, восточные, западные. И в каждом из них есть все условия для лечебного отдыха взрослых и детей, страдающих бронхолегочными заболеваниями, кожными болезнями и болезнями суставов. Тем, кто плохо переносит отдых в горах, которыми богато черноморское побережье, прямая дорога в Ейск, а кто хочет лечиться грязями, то можно остаться там же или к вашим услугам поселок Пересыпь, станица Голубицкая. Ну, а кому по вкусу другой вид отдыха – принятие морских и солнечных ванн, то есть большой выбор замеч��тельных мест для такого времяпрепровождения и это второй плюс – большая пляжная зона не ограниченная территорией прибрежных гостиниц. На каждом шагу не встречаются платные пляжи, и даже дикие пляжи оборудуются мусорными баками и кабинками для переодевания. Вопреки обыкновенному мнению, местные жители ведут себя вполне корректно и не имеют привычки спать на пляже и мусорить там же, да и за распитием спиртных напитков тут мало кого можно застать. Да и отдыхающие из частного сектора и пансионатов ведут себя на удивление хорошо, поэтому третий плюс – чистота воды и пляжа. И сюда заодно можно отнести отсутствие медуз и гниющих водорослей.  А раз уж зашла речь об отдыхающих, то сразу можно подумать о четвертом плюсе – нет столпотворения на пляже: туристам не надо искать место на пляже и ходить по головам. Все потому, что здесь в этом плане хорошо – всегда найдется если не укромное место, то хотя бы такое, чтобы на вас не летел песок (или камни) из-под ног мимо проходящих людей и разговоры соседей не отвлекали от шума моря. Для любителей высоких волн тоже найдется местечко: коса Долгая или Должанская; Очаковская. Так что встречаются и гостиницы для серфингистов, что еще один плюс – пятый – как для самих спортсменов экстремалов, так и для желающих посмотреть на огромные волны, не отказывая себе в удовольствии там и искупаться. Шестым плюсом являются песчаные, галечные, ракушечные и смешанные пляжи. Можно по желанию найти и такие, и такие, что удобно: маленьким детям есть где строить песочные замки, а взрослым можно будет и позагорать на мелкой гальке, и набрать крупных камней (красивых ракушек) для декора своего дачного пруда или аквариума. Седьмой плюс – отсутствие комаров. Конечно, кровососущие иногда залетают и сюда, но это большая редкость, чтобы приехавшие туристы не могли нормально отдохнуть без фумигатора, так что добро пожаловать в Темрюк, Ейск, Кучугуры и Приморско-Ахтарск, которые, практически, свободны от этих насекомых. Много зелени – восьмой плюс. Если уж парк, то с тенистыми аллеями, если двор, то с навесом, цветами и виноградными зарослями. И на каждой улочке растет фруктовое дерево: слива, абрикос, черешня. Девятый плюс – экскурсии. На Азовском море есть на что посмотреть: город Азов с его достопримечательностями, Музей им. Поддубного, Морской порт Ейска, грязевые вулканы и Ханское озеро. Десятый плюс – питание. Качественные молочные продукты, всегда свежая и вкусная выпечка, мясные блюда, сладости, компоты из сочных ягод и домашнее вино, которое обязательно стоит купить вместо банальных сувениров. Одиннадцатый плюс – удобства для детей. В некоторых городах на берегу моря еще не сильно развита развлекательная инфраструктура, но кое-где встречаются достойные парки аттракционов, мини-зоопарки, детские площадки. К тому же мелководье Таганрогского залива да и почти всего Азовского моря отлично подходит для отдыха с детьми. А последний плюс – цена путевки. Стоимо��ть жилья в частном секторе сравнима с предложениями в том же Геленджике или Анапе, да и многие базы отдыха и минигостиницы позволяют выбрать оптимальный по цене вариант номера или летнего дома. Кому-то, может быть, непрозрачность Азовского моря покажется странной, но это не результат загрязнения, а особенность иловых вод, которые еще и лечебные, поэтому не стоит обращать на это внимание, предаваясь лишь безмятежному и такому желанному отдыху на море!

[tomorrowusa]

On the 1204th (or is it the 1205th?) day of Putin's "3-day special operation", Russian losses have exceeded 1,000,000.

Russian military losses in Ukraine exceed one million since full-scale invasion

The total combat losses of Russian troops from February 24, 2022, to June 12, 2025, in the war against Ukraine amount to approximately 1 million 340 people, of which 1,140 were lost in the past 24 hours.

From the main article linked on top...

The scale of losses since the full-scale invasion in 2022 is a direct result of Russia’s “meat grinder” approach to fighting, which relies on sending waves of troops into enemy fire, sacrificing many so that a few can get through. Vladimir Putin’s strategy has allowed Russian forces to make steady – but painfully slow – advances into eastern Ukraine, but at an estimated cost of 53 casualties per square kilometre seized. [ ... ] One response is to return wounded soldiers to combat duty before they have fully recovered. Some Russian soldiers have reportedly complained that they are being forced to return to the front before their medical treatments are finished. CNN reported that Ukrainian drone operators have released video footage appearing to show Russian soldiers on crutches in combat zones. Military recruiters also visit Russia’s prisons with the offer of full pardons for those who survive a combat tour. Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service says Russia’s ministry of defence has recruited an estimated 180,000 soldiers using this method, which was introduced by Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in the summer of 2022. [ ... ] This influx of money has transformed the lives of people living in some of Russia’s most economically deprived regions. This increased prosperity has bolstered support for Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. But the departure – and, in many cases, permanent loss – of so many men has shifted the demographics of many small communities, which are now populated largely by women, young children and the elderly. [ ... ] Although Russia has a large population, its human resources are not endless and have been under strain even before its mass invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, bringing enormous combat losses and seemingly endless demands for more and more soldiers. Russia was already experiencing a demographic crisis. The proportion of society of child-bearing age is low, reflecting a dip in the birth rate in the 1990s. The COVID pandemic increased the mortality rate among Russia’s adult population, while hundreds of thousands of young men left Russia in 2022 to avoid military service. A long-term legacy of this war will undoubtedly be a shrinking population, despite the state’s efforts to encourage women to have more babies. Even those Russian women who aspire to earn the newly reinstated “Mother Heroine” award by bearing and raising ten or more children may struggle to find men to father them.

So Putin has been using convicts, North Korean mercenaries, and already wounded soldiers to fight his illegal and pointless war.

George Barros of the US Institute for the Study of War spoke with the Kyiv Independent. Much of the conversation centered on Russia's vulnerable economy.

Here's an article on Russia's war exhaustion.

‘War Exhaustion’ Could Mean Russia Is Defeated in Ukraine

And here's the latest daily information update on Russian losses compiled by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It's the first release to show Russia over the 1,000,000 mark.

^^^ I wonder if the number of tanks (10,933) includes the ones captured by Ukrainian farmers early in the war when Russians were retreating.

To me, it looks like Russia is the one running out of cards. Share this with people who think Russia is winning or those who are unaware of Russia's massive losses.

[tomorrowusa]

« I would like to draw your attention to one specific trait of the Russian or Soviet empire: the extremely low value of human life. This is not just an internal problem. In international relations, a low value of life is an indispensable currency of aggression, a natural resource of sorts, the raw material of war. For an aggressor it can "buy" what nothing else can buy: time.

For decades, Operation Desert Storm, which took place in 1991, epitomized the revolution in modern warfare. Western armies have invested heavily in keeping their personnel out of harm's way.

Putin's army, however, is the army of yesterday. And exactly this is its gruesome advantage. It can sustain losses that would be absolutely unacceptable for any Western country. But it is also technically advanced enough to counter Western military technologies.

Western science was first to "dronize" warfare, to minimize the involvement of troops on the ground and use machines for new tasks.

Putin's army, while also using real drones, “dronizes” the human beings as well. It has turned soldiers into dispensable, single-use units. »

— Exiled Russian author Sergey Lebedev. It is from a speech he gave at The Helsinki Debate on Europe in mid May and adapted as an article at Voxeurop.

Mr. Lebedev focused on Russia's occupation of Eastern Europe after World War II as its greatest crime and the war in Ukraine as a continuation of that crime. The way Russia regards its troops has made such criminality possible.

Even before Communism, Russian leaders regarded their troops as expendable. They have had little regard for the lives of their subjects for centuries. This has continued through the war in Ukraine where Russian officers order their troops to do "meat wave" suicidal attacks which seldom accomplish anything.

The culture of violence pervades Russia's military. That leads to low morale which results in counterproductive poor performance by troops. If your own officers turn their guns on you in battle, why should you bother putting in any extra effort?

Why Don’t Russian Soldiers Revolt?

If badly treated Russian soldiers started shooting abusive and incompetent commanders, the war in Ukraine would end in weeks.

[tomorrowusa]

Kim Jong Un Suggests Trump Bromance Is Over

We'll see how long the Putin-Kim bromance lasts now that North Korean troops are under fire.

North Korean troops taking casualties in Russia's Kursk Oblast, Zelensky confirms

[tomorrowusa]

Some people in the West believe Putin's propaganda about Russia's overwhelming strength. Though if you do a simple reality check, you'll notice that Russia's "3-day special operation" in Ukraine is now in Day 870.

Yekaterina Shulman used to work as a consultant to the Russian government. She left Russia soon after Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Here are some excerpts from an interview she gave to RFE/RL.

I’ve called Russia a “bureaucratic autocracy.” It’s a personalist autocracy in strict political science classification. We don't have a ruling party like party autocracies. Russia is not run by a military junta like military autocracies. We don't have an established succession mechanism that monarchies have. So we’re a personalist autocracy: Power is concentrated in the hands of the leader and his immediate surrounding. However, we’re a big country that can't be run by a president and his five friends [alone]. [ ... ] The Russian state has never paid that much money to its people for anything -- for their work, for their life, for their death, for whatever. The idea that Russia is a country of limitless resources is a propaganda picture. But the strange thing, and it is so strange that we can't realize it, is this: It has always been the case in Russia's history that people are abundant but money is scarce. Hard currency, gold, or foreign currency have value; people have no value whatsoever. “We have as much [human capital] as we need.” Now it's the other way around. I can't adequately explain to you, I can’t even explain to myself what a gamechanger it is. They don't understand it themselves, because they've never seen anything like this. [ ... ] [W]e don't have enough Russians. We have more money than we know what to do with, but we don't have the people -- either on the front lines or back home. We have a huge labor deficit, and very slowly there comes a realization that you can't pay 1.25 million rubles to a person who in two weeks’ time will be killed in a senseless “meat grinder,” as the expression goes. The army management doesn't understand this yet. The political leadership doesn't understand it yet but is slowly beginning to realize it. I don't know what the implications will be; I can only tell you as a social scientist that it's a huge change. [ ... ] Whatever factor we take -- be it the labor crisis that I mentioned, the demographic situation, the economic imbalances, the aging of personalist rule, the infighting of the clans, where now everyone has a little private army of their own -- each and every one of these factors and all of them in combination are factors of long-term decline. As a Russian citizen, as a Russian educator, I get no pleasure at all in saying this. The question that I get is whether this or that event or occurrence or tendency will, in stark terms, upset Putin or defeat Russia; and the answer is no, not immediately. But none of them will go away. It will be a country with an aging society, with a disbalanced economy, with an incompetent leadership, and these are the factors of inevitable decline. It’s very bad. It's bad for the country; it's bad for the continent.

Russian rulers dating back to the tsars have regarded their large populations of poor people as cannon fodder to be used in wars when needed. This has sometimes compensated for corrupt and incompetent military leadership. But Russia is running out of troops to send on "meat wave" attacks in Ukraine. And hundreds of thousands of tech savvy young people have already left the country since the war began. Russia is experiencing a self-inflicted demographic wound.

Putin has to rely on technology from China and arms manufacturers in North Korea to keep his war going. Out of frustration he's bombing children's hospitals and apartment buildings in Ukraine. Terrorism is his only response to a deteriorating situation.

Russia may look real big on maps but in economic terms, it has a GDP similar to that of Italy.

Narcissism is a common trait among dictators. This war is driven by Putin's nostalgic desire to bring back the USSR of his youth in all but name. He wishes to be the Peter the Great of the 21st century. This is essentially the War of Putin's Ego. But all the bluster of Putin, his propaganda machine, and his Western lickspittles can't indefinitely mask the precarious nature of contemporary Russia.

[tomorrowusa]

Russia doesn't exactly have a free press. So the extent of Russian losses in its illegal invasion of Ukraine is not yet fully grasped by the public there. But occasionally they get bits of the truth from friends and relatives who are Putin's cannon fodder at the front.

Anton Andreev, a Russian soldier from the fifth company of the 1009th regiment, painted a bleak picture of Russia’s offensive in the Ukrainian northern region of Kharkiv. His unit had been decimated, he said, with only 12 out of 100 soldiers still alive as they came under constant Ukrainian fire and drones in Vovchansk, a prime target of Russia’s advances. “They just chop us up. We are sent under machine guns, under drones in daylight, like meat. And commanders just shout ‘forward and forward’,” Andreev said in a video message.

An 88% fatality rate can't be good. We hear a lot about the stalled Russian offensive in the east of Ukraine but not as much about the enormous price they're paying for these small advances.

In the first week of the offensive, Russian troops seized about 99 sq miles of Ukrainian territory – some of its biggest gains in 18 months – raising serious questions about Kyiv’s ability to defend itself. But Ukraine has been largely able to stabilise the front, alleviating immediate fears in the west that Moscow might be able to encircle Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city. “I don’t know if I will get out of this or not, but I need to say this to honour the memory of those who died like meat here because of certain individuals,” Andreev said in the clip, which was first published by the Russian outlet Astra and verified by the Guardian.

It's only through rare and blunt snippets on social media that Russians get a hint of the true human cost of the war.

Russian conscripts get only a week or two of training before being sent to Ukraine; they are obviously intended as dispensable cannon fodder. By comparison, US military personnel get two months of basic training and usually some specialized training thereafter. This is the "mighty" Russian Army which Western tankies and far right Putin apologists tell us that we should greatly fear.

Russia may be big but it is also pathetic.

Putin just conducted a purge of the Defense Ministry and gave a top job to a cousin. Nepotism is a proven way to win a war! /sarcasm

Putin extends defence ministry purge, hands job to a relative

And Putin is now in North Korea, a satellite state which pretty much enslaves its starving population, so that he can pick up weaponry that Russia can't produce on his own.

Vladimir Putin to visit North Korea as he seeks further military support

[tomorrowusa]

Russian state media loves "Moscow Marjorie" Taylor Traitor Greene. They undoubtedly hope that her attempt to oust Speaker Johnson creates chaos and prevents the already overdo aid package to Ukraine from passing.

The Russian government is engaged in an effort to destabilize and weaken liberal democracies. Greene fits in nicely with their plans.

Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S.

In a classified addendum to Russia’s official — and public — “Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation,” the ministry calls for an “offensive information campaign” and other measures spanning “the military-political, economic and trade and informational psychological spheres” against a “coalition of unfriendly countries” led by the United States. “We need to continue adjusting our approach to relations with unfriendly states,” states the 2023 document, which was provided to The Washington Post by a European intelligence service. “It’s important to create a mechanism for finding the vulnerable points of their external and internal policies with the aim of developing practical steps to weaken Russia’s opponents.” The document for the first time provides official confirmation and codification of what many in the Moscow elite say has become a hybrid war against the West. Russia is seeking to subvert Western support for Ukraine and disrupt the domestic politics of the United States and European countries, through propaganda campaigns supporting isolationist and extremist policies, according to Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Post. It is also seeking to refashion geopolitics, drawing closer to China, Iran and North Korea in an attempt to shift the current balance of power.

Just a quick word to point out that Putin is under the delusion that his Axis of Authoritarians would have Russia as its head. China is stronger than Russia and will not kowtow to a country which has a GDP not much bigger than Italy's and is suffering enormous losses in a war with a country which has only a quarter of Russia's population.

Using much tougher and blunter language than the public foreign policy document, the secret addendum, dated April 11, 2023, claims that the United States is leading a coalition of “unfriendly countries” aimed at weakening Russia because Moscow is “a threat to Western global hegemony.” The document says the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order,” a clear indication that Moscow sees the result of its invasion as inextricably bound with its ability — and that of other authoritarian nations — to impose its will globally.

In addition to old school revanchism, Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine is a test to see how far the liberal democracies will let Putin go.

For Mikhail Khodorkovsky — the longtime Putin critic who was once Russia’s richest man until a clash with the Kremlin landed him 10 years in prison — it is not surprising that Russia is seeking to do everything it can to undermine the United States. “For Putin, it is absolutely natural that he should try to create the maximum number of problems for the U.S.,” he said. “The task is to take the U.S. out of the game, and then destroy NATO. This doesn’t mean dissolving it, but to create the feeling among people that NATO isn’t defending them.” The long congressional standoff on providing more weapons to Ukraine was only making it easier for Russia to challenge Washington’s global power, he said. “The Americans consider that insofar as they are not directly participating in the war [in Ukraine], then any loss is not their loss,” Khodorkovsky said. “This is an absolute misunderstanding.”

Putin was taken aback by both Ukraine's fierce defense and by Western resolve to protect the independence of a European democratic state. He refuses to admit that he made an enormous blunder so he continues to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Russians while hoping that his US servants like Greene, Gaetz, and Trump will rescue him.

[tomorrowusa]

Russia is a closed totalitarian society. Greater effort is required to determine what is going on beneath the surface. Despite Tucker Carlson's glowing propaganda postcards from Moscow, Russia is experiencing what might charitably be called supply chain issues in its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.

Russia is struggling to provide ammunition and weapons for its war in Ukraine, according to Western officials. It is facing "extreme challenges" in obtaining sufficient equipment and materiel, an official said. It comes as concerns over the provision of Western weapons to Ukraine are mounting. As the war enters its third year, the supply of ammunition, arms and manpower looks set to be a critical factor. "Russia's domestic ammunition production capabilities are currently insufficient for meeting the needs of the Ukraine conflict," a Western official claimed, saying Moscow has been able to increase its supply only by seeking out alternative sources of ammunition and weapons, which does not offer a long-term solution. They pointed to the impact of sanctions as one cause. "Sanctions are hitting the Russian military industrial complex hard, causing severe delays and increasing costs. An inability to access Western components is severely undermining Russia's production of new systems and repairs of old systems, with long-term consequences for the quality of weapons produced," they said.

This is the time to supply Ukraine with more aid. But assistance is being held up by MAGA American weakness Republicans led by Putin ally Donald Trump.

The claims about Russian weapons supply come ahead of the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. The assessment from Western officials is that Russia has not given up on its original goals of "subjugating" Ukraine. But they said Russia does not have a clear plan to bring that about other than hoping that in the long term its superior manpower and resources will make the difference by grinding its neighbour down. Russia is currently producing more ammunition than Ukraine is receiving. However, Russia may be close to its limits of supply while there remains the possibility that Ukraine could still get more from its allies.

Putin really doesn't want the world, and especially Russia, to know about the catastrophic extent of Russian losses. One pro-war Russian blogger killed himself after he was forced to remove posts about massive Russian fatalities in their Pyrrhic advance through Avdiivka.

Russian war blogger reportedly dies by suicide after saying 16,000 Russian troops lost in battle for Avdiivka

Multiple Russian pro-war Telegram channels have reported that Andrey Morozov, a Russian soldier who runs a popular Telegram channel and goes by the pseudonym Murz, has died by suicide. Lawyer Maxim Pashkov, who said he spoke to Morozov the previous night, reported that the military blogger shot himself. According to Pashkov, there was “no sign” during their conversation that Morozov was considering taking his life. On Wednesday morning, Morozov published a series of posts on his channel in which he said that he was going to shoot himself and asked his readers “not to be sad” about his death. He asked to be buried in the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic.” Morozov wrote that on February 20, his superiors forced him to delete a post from his channel. According to BBC Russian, this likely refers to a post in which Morozov said that the Russian army lost 16,000 soldiers and 300 armored vehicles during the battle for control of the village of Avdiivka. The BBC noted that the post drew fierce criticism from Russian propagandists, who accused the blogger of “slandering the Russian Defense Ministry.” According to Morozov’s final messages, the order from his superiors was issued under pressure from the “political prostitutes led by [propagandist] Vladimir Solovyov.”

Interestingly, the late Andrey Morozov's estimate of 16,000 Russian deaths was not far from the Ukrainian estimate of 17,000 dead Russians in the same operation. Overall, Ukrainian figures of Russian losses are reasonably accurate.

[tomorrowusa]

I'm not exactly a sunny optimist. But when there's a viral mindless piling on of negative evaluations, it's time for a reality check.

Ukraine pulled out of the town of Avdiivka because it values the lives of its troops exponentially more than Russia values its troops. Avdiivka is now little more than a pile of rubble which has little strategic value. Undoubtedly Ukraine left a few surprises for the Russians there. ;)

A couple of writers for the journal Foreign Policy spent time talking with participants at the Munich Security Conference (MSC). SitRep is a weekly digest of news and analysis at Foreign Policy. Here are some excerpts.

SitRep had what we thought was a fairly innocuous question for NATO’s top military official Saturday morning. Two years in, are you pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances in fending off Russia’s full-scale invasion? “I’m not!” shouted Dutch Adm. Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, pounding his fist on the table and sending the silverware in front of him clattering in the 15th-century vault-turned-restaurant in the Bayerischer Hof Hotel’s basement. “Pessimists lose wars. Is it difficult for Ukraine? Yes. If you would have asked in 1942 in Europe, ‘How is the war going?’ I don’t think there were a lot of people that were overly optimistic. We still won.”

Americans in particular have short attention spans. A reminder that wars can last longer that one NFL season. US involvement in World War II lasted 3 years 9 months from Pearl Harbor to Japan's formal surrender.

Even accounting for the fact that these types of conferences are saturated with navel-gazing governmental self-congratulations tours, we think the naysayers of the naysayers have a point. Russia is far from starting to win. First, the narrative seeming to take root in some speeches and headlines that Ukraine is on the cusp of losing the war is way off base. The battlefield situation is serious but not to the point where Ukraine is at risk of a full-scale collapse or even facing major setbacks on the front lines, according to the assessments of more than a dozen European defense officials and experts we spoke to. Russia has taken the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka but at an enormous cost in lives and ammunition for a city that has no real strategic significance. [ ... ] Indeed, the scale of Russian losses in the war is truly staggering. Two years in, the Kremlin is still scrambling to transform the country to a wartime economy, and those losses will be hard to recoup. Russia has suffered some 315,000 casualties—accounting for 87 percent of its prewar troop levels, according to a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment—as well as lost 2,200 of its 3,500 prewar tanks and 4,400 of its 13,600 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.

Those Russian losses figures are somewhat conservative. More on that in a moment.

Even as Ukraine faces a new wave of ammunition shortages spurred by the political stalemate in Congress over U.S. funding for Ukraine, its lines are holding and European defense officials credit Kyiv with rationing its ammunition smartly and efficiently. [ ... ] Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba was one official who didn’t downplay the significance of Russia’s capture of Avdiivka. “When a citizen of Europe reads in the news that Ukraine retreated from Avdiivka, you should realize one simple fact—Russia has gotten closer to your home.” [ ... ] Russian President Vladimir Putin shouldn’t be popping any champagne bottles just yet. “Let’s remember we are 724 days into Russia’s three-day war,” Bauer said.

Russia is currently trying to frighten us with talk of nuclear missiles in space. They have done this before. They drew red lines that Biden then stepped over and there's no response to the Western moves. One thing Russia is proven to be good at is bullshit.

The second anniversary of Russia's full scale invasion is later this week. It is estimated that Russia has suffered US$49.75 billion in losses in this war. Keep in mind that despite its geographic size, Russia has an economy about one-half the size of California's which has less than a third of Russia's population.

Ukraine currently puts Russian fatalities over the 400,000 mark.

402,430 is a number greater than the populations of the capitals of 39 of the 50 US states. Only in a dictatorship where dissidents are murdered would such massive losses in a futile war be allowed.

[tomorrowusa]

Journalists covering a demonstration in Moscow by wives of Russian soldiers were arrested by Putin's police.

Some 20 journalists were detained by police in central Moscow on Saturday at a rally of Russian soldiers' wives calling for their men to be returned from the front in Ukraine. Independent Russian news outlet SOTA reported that 27 people were taken from the demonstration and transported to the nearest police station. Reuters news agency said one of its journalists was among those detained while filming women laying red carnations at the tomb of the unknown soldier in the shadow of the Kremlin's walls in central Moscow. Moscow police did not comment on the raid. "Journalists should be free to report the news without fear of harassment or harm, wherever they are. We are committed to covering world events in an independent, unbiased, and reliable way, in keeping with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles," a Reuters spokesperson said in a statement. The demonstration was organized by a group called The Way Home, which urged "wives, mothers, sisters and children" of reservists from across Russia to come to Moscow to "demonstrate (their) unity." The Moscow prosecutor's office said Saturday that the rally had not been coordinated with the authorities. Authorities warned against calling for and participating in unauthorized demonstrations. For several weeks, wives of currently mobilized Russian men have been campaigning for their husbands' return from the front, as well as opposing further mobilization. 

In Russia, an "unauthorized demonstration" is one which does not support Putin and his fascist policies.

Speaking of fascists, Tucker Carlson is apparently in Moscow.

Tucker Carlson Being Spotted in Moscow Sparks Frenzied Speculation

The reported appearance of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in the Russian capital has sparked intense speculation over the purpose of the conservative media personality's visit to Moscow. Carlson arrived in Moscow on February 1, and was spotted attending the Bolshoi Theater in the capital, according to Russian outlet, Mash. Questions quickly swirled over why the TV anchor would have traveled to Moscow, and whether he intended to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin during the visit.

A Tucker interview with dictator Vladimir Putin would probably be as incisive as his interview with Trump. 😝 Perhaps Putin will let him see the famous Trump pee tapes.

Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll decide to defect while in Russia. His views are much more in tune with a totalitarian state than with the United States.

[tomorrowusa]

When the US warned Russia about the likelihood of a terrorist attack, the Crocus City Hall venue was specifically mentioned in the warning. Of course Putin didn't listen and the result was a catastrophe.

A U.S. intelligence warning to Moscow two weeks ahead of a deadly March 22 terrorist attack included specific reference to the Crocus City Hall concert venue that was targeted, The Washington Post reported on April 2. According to the report, which was later confirmed by The New York Times, U.S. officials told Moscow that the Islamic State extremist group was plotting an attack and that Crocus City Hall was a potential target. The warning did not include specifics about the timing of the attack but said it could come within days, intelligence sources told the two newspapers. Four gunmen stormed the concert hall outside of Moscow just before a concert, killing 144 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in Russia since 2004. The Islamic State, a designated terrorist group, quickly claimed responsibility for the attack.

Putin prefers to live in his fantasy bubble. If Russia mass produces fake news, it's not a stretch for Putin to fabricate his own reality. And it suits him to try to blame Ukraine even when few people with expertise in terrorist activity believe him.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials and commentators have claimed without evidence that Ukraine might have played a role in the attack. Ukrainian officials have denied any involvement and have accused Moscow of using the tragedy to ramp up its war against their country. [ ... ] The Crocus attack was a major failure for Russia's security forces, which critics say are focused on stifling domestic political dissent and opposition to the war against Ukraine, often prosecuting political opinions as "terrorism" or "extremism."

The Crocus attack and the emerging background details about it show that dictators do not keep you safe.

Like any autocrat, Putin is far more concerned about his own prestige and power than about the lives of his countrymen. Look at the losses he's subjecting Russia to just so he can pretend to be the 21st century equivalent of Peter the Great.

[tomorrowusa]

Thanks to House Republicans under orders from Putin's puppet Donald Trump, Ukrainian forces are being starved of ammunition. Despite that, they are still outfighting Russian invaders in the east of the country.

Putin is desperately sending mass waves of cannon fodder dubbed "meat waves" against better trained Ukrainians.

Russia's 'meat wave' assaults leave frozen corpses uncollected as Russian soldiers 'just go and die,' Ukrainian sniper says

Russia's "meat assault" tactics on a key battlefield are leaving frozen bodies that Russia isn't collecting, a Ukrainian sniper said. The sniper, a special forces officer with the call sign "Bess," told CNN that the dead soldiers "just lie there frozen." "Nobody evacuates them, nobody takes them away," he said. "It feels like people don't have a specific task, they just go and die." Bess, which means "demon" in Ukrainian, spoke to CNN from Avdiivka, a town in eastern Ukraine that for months has been the scene of some of the most intense fighting in the war. The tactic deployed by Russia involves sending wave after wave of generally poorly trained and unsupported soldiers at Ukrainian positions, to try to overwhelm them so that other troops can then progress. The tactic, which experts say has been used frequently in the war, is one that Russian elite soldiers — paratroopers and marines — have recently been refusing to take part in, a Ukrainian official said.

Putin is a sociopath who has as little regard for Russian lives as he does for Ukrainians. In the past ten days, estimated daily Russian fatalities have ranged from a low of 740 to a high of 1,070. At that rate, cumulative Russian fatalities could reach 400,000 as soon as Valentine's Day.

To Putin the war is just a board game with lots of blood.

The next time there's a mutiny in Russia, I hope its leaders don't foolishly back down like the late Yevgeny Prigozhin did. Giving Putin a break will only result in them ending up like Prigozhin.