Ukraine vs Russia III

After refreshing 15 times you will see a translated Russian Telegram saying the Russians have taken defensive measures in Khmeimim airbase. But if you look at a satellite view, you will see that the base is undefendable. There are small farms and a suburb of Jableh going right up to the edge of the airport structures and all around the runway. There is infinite cover to approach, there are 4 roads in, and there is only a fence around the airport with no cleared zone. If the rebels want to take it, they can.

The Syrian rebels took Jableh on the 8th, so they are close.

 

So I haven’t seen it discussed here so apologies if I missed it…but apparently Blinken/Biden are pressuring Ukraine to lower the conscription age to 18. While he was certainly miles better than the alternative….Biden’s handling of the Ukrainian war has been atrocious. Whether that is through Blinken’s influence or Biden’s…I don’t know…

Dear Mr Blinken….what happens to a country twenty years after they lose a substantial number of 18-25 y/o males who haven’t had children? I’ll wait.

 

No, Blinken has been the one in the Biden admin pushing for action. Milley and the rest of the Pentagon were the ones putting up obstacles (US ammo stocks are rather low to be fair), as was Sulliva.

Ultimately though you have to blame Biden. As Harry Truman said, "the buck stops here". Biden's legacy will be very tarnished by this. Not as much as Obama's but everyone's too invested in the narrative to shine a bright light on his weakness.

 

CNN News narrator's voice:

Russian vessels have left port in Syria and are loitering offshore, cruising remarkably slowly as they wait for a decision. There is the possibility of heading for Benghazi in Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar's territory in eastern Libya but without an explicit offer they don't yet have that option.
France and Italy have an urgent need to prevent that and are busy drawing up their counter-offer to Haftar. We have exclusive footage of the French-Italian preparations

​

 

Zelensky responded very publically about that. He will not do it. They lack Weapons (IFV's , Tanks, Anti tank ammo, artillery), they don't lack manpower. If the people fighting now had the resources we know they could get they could defend more effectivelly.

 

Ok, I agree, I might have misspoke. It is not they lack manpower, but there could be things that can be prioritized before lowering the draft age.

 

Obama’s policies were disastrous around Maidan. His admin totally ********ed up there. But there is the caveat that the US had zero political support for getting more involved at that particular moment in light of all the other failures in Afghanistan, the ME and Africa. I think I would even cut a GOP admin some slack had they been in charge at that time.

All roads lead back to W going into Iraq, but let’s pause that discussion for another time.

 

In Ukraine, all roads lead back to Obama chickening out on Assad. The Charles de Gaulle was off the Syrian coast, locked and loaded, and Obama - plus Milliband - backed down in the face of Putin's threats. Hollande is still furious about it.

The lesson Putin learned, correctly, is that Obama will talk loudly but carry a feather duster. He invaded Crimea and then the Donbass the next year. Biden's foreign policy and Nat Sec team was stacked full of no-child-left-behind Obama retreads - Robert Malley in charge of the Iran desk FFS and Putin thought it'd be no different this time around.

He was only half-wrong, which is why we're here

 

There's a very decent case to be made that Iraq paved the way for the Arab Spring and the revolt against Assad but I personally remain skeptical.

There's a reason Assad was, not even willing to allow or happy to encourage but eager to facilitate and arm Syrian jihadis going into Iraq. Atrocity repressions like Hama in 1982 buy you time, usually 15-20 years until the sons of the dead reach adulthood and then there's another revolt.

Several observers were and remain convinced that the Iraq war was an urgently-need release valve for Assad.

 

Just a reminder, I was responding to a post about the "people of Russia" not just the elites.

 

Believe me, I’m 100% with you on the condemnation around Obama’s failed foreign policy in Syria and elsewhere, and the ********tards in his admin and state dept. who think they are so smart that they can finesse their way around dictators and Islamofascists.

I’m just saying that at that particular time, the failure was also due to domestic politics in the US (along with EU chickenshittiness). You had a lot of US Senators saying that they were not going to support efforts in Syria.

 

He doesn't need to do this but his social media team should.

 

Why do they feel that?

Straight question BTW.

 

In an attempt to woo Serbia's President to provide Soviet munitions to Ukraine and to allow Western supplies to go through Serbia to get to Romania, then Ukraine, the Biden administration has come down on the side of the pro-Serbian side on internal conflicts between ethnic Bosniaks (50% of pop) and ethnic Serbians(31%) and Croats(15%) in Bosnia. They've done the same in Kosovo between ethnic Albanians (92% of pop) and ethnic Serbs (4%).

From the perspective of getting Serbia to make Soviet munitions for Ukraine, that has largely been successful, but it has obviously pissed off the Bosniaks and Albanian majorities in Bosnia and Kosovo.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/10/biden-team-messing-bosnia-politics-nato-high-representative-eu/

 

Tomorrow Russia is going to try to sell 1 trillion rubles worth of OFZ bonds. And they will do it, because they have to. But where is the money going to come from if all the banks have negative liquidity?

Well, there's another source of money. Yesterday they essentially printed 850 million rubles out of thin air.

 

Russian IT companies that work with the government are saying they are going bankrupt.

https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2024/12/...ankrotstv-iz-za-klyuchevoi-stavki-tsb-a150166

The issue is that the government usually pays for projects at the end. So these companies have to take out loans to pay for the material and labor costs of the project when they start. But now interest rates are so high they eat up like 30% of the contract's worth. That used to be their profit margin.

 

They also gave Russian police the ability to seize someone's bank accounts without a court order. That's not going to give them a trillion rubles, but it'll drain the accounts of people Russia doesn't want to have money.

 

North Korea is getting modernish versions of the MiG-29 and Su-27 as partial payment for the troops they are sending.

https://www.eurasiantimes.com/russia-to-supply-mig-29-and-su-27-to-north-korea/?amp

The most modern jet North Korea currently has are first-generation MiG-29's, which are hopelessly obsolete compared to current 4th generation fighters South Korea or the US have, let alone something like the F-35. The rest of North Korea's airforce are pretty much museum relics.

 

I sense some desperation from Biden since the election loss. This is in stark contrast to his waffling earlier in the war.

 

Desperation? More like he thought they would have another 4 years to dole out the money, they now have a little over a month to get the money to Ukraine before Trump comes in and freezes the spending.