Ukraine v Russia II

Saddam, the Shah, Allende and co clearly were western puppets.

 

Pretty sure SD already knew all of this. He just wanted Robert to explain it.

 

Do you mean Pinochet, instead of Allende?

 

CNN has a story up based on an interview with a soldier fighting on the front lines in Bahkmut. He describes it as going up against a zombie horde, including the part that they refuse to go down after being shot. I'm going to guess that Wagner drugs up the prisoners before they throw them at the Ukrainians to die.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/01/europe/ukraine-soldiers-fighting-wagner-intl-cmd/index.html

 

That's not uncommon in wars. Just a reminder from WW I. The Dutch were neutral and sold an incredible amount of cocaine to the warring parties. A few years ago one researcher claimed/accused the royal family of the Netherlands to be one of the biggest parties on the scene.

 

Somehow, Kissinger is still alive. And respected. And a Nobel Peace Prize recipient.

 

I think it's generally accepted that Allende committed suicide during the coup. I never saw that question as mattering much; he was killed by the coup, regardless of who pulled the trigger.

As for the origin of the 1973 coup itself - it's pretty clear that the Nixon administration wanted Allende overthrown, and they did some significant meddling to that end (some of which may not have been publicly revealed yet). But the coup itself was also a product of domestic actors and forces within Chile, and was probably supported by some significant portion of the country's population at the time - no real way of knowing how many, of course, and some of the people who supported it likely wouldn't have if they'd known how murderous and protracted the dictatorship would be. Pinochet did get 44% of the vote in the plebiscite that removed him.

In contrast, the 1954 coup in Guatemala seems to have been more clearly a made-in-the-USA affair. Different countries have different stories, even if they're deeply affected by some of the same broader global influences; trying to fit them all into a single neat ideological narrative generally obscures important realities. All the more so if the narrative itself is out of date.

 

I suspect that it's more psychologically devastating for soldiers to survive a human wave attack than a normal attack. The former turns a soldier into an executioner. Nobody honors executioners. Nobody gives medals to especially brave executioners.

 

If any of you ever played Warhammer 40K, this reminds me of how players would use the Imperial Guard penal battalions in the game. Cheap, expendable units to overwhelm players who use smaller, more expensive armies (like the Eldar).

It was darkly funny in the tabletop game, but not so much in real life. And I expect some of the Wagner recruits are guilty of the same types of made up crimes or have been railroaded into jail much like those fictional penal battalion recruits. The Russian legal system being what it is, I don't have any faith that their prisoners are guilty of what they've been convicted of.

 

If the news is right the USA are going to supply the Ukrain with missiles going as far as 150 km.
The pootin has repeatedly declared any missile going over the 80km is a red line.
I'm heading for my doomsday bunker...

 

Talking about crossing red lines.

 

Yeah. I posted an article that was based on an interview with a Ukrainian soldier that was in Bakhmut and it was very tough for them. He mentioned that it took far more bullets than it should have to down the Wagner penal units and that, as a result, the barrels of their rifles would overheat, requiring them to have secondary rifles to fight with, and that they would often run out of ammo. At one point, they used up all of their ammo killing the penal units and had to use grenades to fight off the actually effective fighters in the infiltration units that came in after the penal units. He said one time that Wagner had them surrounded and was almost at the point of overrunning them, but they ended up retreating because darkness fell.

 

I didnot for nothing posted some time ago that the Ukraine fighters should target the regular Wagner fighters behind the cannon fodder first.
If there's no one behind you to kill you when you turn around it might convince the cannon fodder to make run out of there.

 

That assumes the guy in the trenches can see the regular Wagner fighters.. These Wagner fighters are actually experienced soldiers, many of them are former Russian special forces and/or have years of experience fighting in Africa. They aren't going to be bunching up and walking out in the open like the penal units do. In fact, the Ukrainian soldier mentioned it was not uncommon for them to approach from the opposite direction the penal units were coming from.

 

Even more reason to shoot at the regular Wagner first.

 

I’m sure it’s somewhat more complicated than that.