ALERT RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE - Consolidated Thread
- Thread starter danielboon
- Start date
northern watch
TB Fanatic
northern watch
TB Fanatic
northern watch
TB Fanatic
Pandemonium as video shows Russian separatists running wild inside the Russian border.
8:40
View: https://youtu.be/2Zf3-QFZHQY
8:40
Last edited:
wait-n-see
Veteran Member
Ukrainian soldier explains that in Chasiv Yar most civilians are waiting for the Russians.
View: https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1664728580859867136
View: https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/1664728580859867136
Posted for fair use.....
www.aljazeera.com
5 Jun 2023
This is the situation as it stands on Monday, June 5, 2023.
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 467
As the war enters its 467th day, here’s a look at the main developments.
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 467
As the war enters its 467th day, here’s a look at the main developments.5 Jun 2023
This is the situation as it stands on Monday, June 5, 2023.
Fighting
KEEP READING
list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Pro-Ukraine fighters attack southern Russia; offer to trade POWs
list 2 of 4Russian attack wounds 20, including children in Ukraine’s Dnipro
list 3 of 4Wagner boss says Russian forces laid mines to harm his fighters
list 4 of 4‘Stop sending weapons, hold talks’ to end Russia-Ukraine war
end of list- The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence renewed its plea for operational silence around a long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia, posting a video with the words: “plans love silence”.
- Russia’s defence ministry said it repelled a cross-border incursion by a group of pro-Ukrainian “saboteurs”, the Interfax news agency reported.
- Pro-Ukraine groups of Russian partisans said they had captured several soldiers during a cross-border raid into southern Russia and would hand them over to Ukrainian authorities.
- Russia launched a new wave of air assaults on Ukraine, striking an airfield in a central region but failing to hit the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities said.
- A Russian air raid hit a residential district in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, killing a two-year-old girl and injuring 22 residents, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said at least 500 Ukrainian children had been killed since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
- Alexander Kamyshin, a senior Ukrainian government official, expressed “disbelief” after learning that nearly half of Kyiv bomb shelters inspected in an internal audit were closed or unfit for use.
- Fighting continued around Bakhmut, a city in eastern Ukraine that has seen the longest and bloodiest battle since the war began.
Diplomacy
- Ukraine Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov rejected an Indonesian peace plan its defence minister suggested during a Singapore security summit. “It sounds like a Russian plan, not (an) Indonesian plan,” Reznikov said.
- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said representatives from Turkey and Sweden will meet on June 12 to try to bridge their differences about the Nordic country joining the security alliance.
- China’s Defence Minister Li Shangfu warned against establishing “NATO-like” military alliances in the Asia-Pacific, saying they would plunge the region into a “whirlpool” of conflict.
Weapons
- Zelenskyy said Russia was using a network of suppliers to evade international sanctions designed to prevent it from making missiles and other weapons. He accused unnamed countries and companies of helping Russia acquire technology with an emphasis on producing missiles.
- The Kremlin said France and Germany’s supply of long-range missiles to Kyiv would lead to a further round of “spiralling tension”. Ukraine has asked Germany for Taurus cruise missiles, which have a range of 500km (310 miles), while President Emmanuel Macron has said France will give Ukraine missiles with a range that would allow it to carry out its long-anticipated counteroffensive.
Doomer Doug
TB Fanatic
Meanwhile Ming the Merciless had one of us F-22 stolen knockoff's close buzz a US recon plane on Saturday. On Sunday Ming the Merciless had one of his Chinese navy ships close pass' like NEARLY RAM a US navy ship.
When the US complained about it thd Chinese warmonge told the US to stay away fro china.
Finally our feckless DOD Austin is ignored by China won't even meet him.
PREPARE FOR WAR WITH CHINA WHO DESPISES US.
That is 3 major diomatic/Milotary incidents in ONE weekend.
When the US complained about it thd Chinese warmonge told the US to stay away fro china.
Finally our feckless DOD Austin is ignored by China won't even meet him.
PREPARE FOR WAR WITH CHINA WHO DESPISES US.
That is 3 major diomatic/Milotary incidents in ONE weekend.
Cedar Lake
Connecticut Yankee
Gives a idea/context of how open and big these areas are compared to the urban city fighting.
The Ministry of Defense published a video of the destruction of the equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during an attempted large-scale offensive in the YuzhnoDonetsk direction.
t.me
The Ministry of Defense published a video of the destruction of the equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during an attempted large-scale offensive in the YuzhnoDonetsk direction.
Slavyangrad
The Ministry of Defense published a video of the destruction of the equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during an attempted large-scale offensive in the YuzhnoDonetsk direction #source
t.me
Cedar Lake
Connecticut Yankee
MOD update on the counter-offensive in Zaporozhye.
See post above for the visual context.
The Ministry of Defense about the attempts of the enemy to go on the offensive in the Zaporozhye direction.
On the morning of June 4, the enemy launched a large-scale offensive in 5 sectors of the front in the YuzhnoDonetsk direction with the introduction of the 23rd and 31st mechanized brigades from the strategic reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the support of other military units and subunits.
In total, 6 mechanized and 2 enemy tank battalions were involved.
The enemy's goal was to break through our defenses on the most vulnerable, in his opinion, sector of the front. The enemy did not achieve his tasks, he was not successful.
As a result of skillful and competent actions of the Eastern Group of Forces, the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine amounted to more than 250 personnel, 16 tanks, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, 21 armored fighting vehicles.
The commander of the united group of troops, the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Gerasimov, during this period was at one of the forward command posts in this direction.
t.me
See post above for the visual context.
The Ministry of Defense about the attempts of the enemy to go on the offensive in the Zaporozhye direction.
On the morning of June 4, the enemy launched a large-scale offensive in 5 sectors of the front in the YuzhnoDonetsk direction with the introduction of the 23rd and 31st mechanized brigades from the strategic reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the support of other military units and subunits.
In total, 6 mechanized and 2 enemy tank battalions were involved.
The enemy's goal was to break through our defenses on the most vulnerable, in his opinion, sector of the front. The enemy did not achieve his tasks, he was not successful.
As a result of skillful and competent actions of the Eastern Group of Forces, the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine amounted to more than 250 personnel, 16 tanks, 3 infantry fighting vehicles, 21 armored fighting vehicles.
The commander of the united group of troops, the chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Gerasimov, during this period was at one of the forward command posts in this direction.
Colonelcassad
Минобороны о попытках противника перейти в наступление на Запорожском направлении. С утра 4 июня противник начал крупномасштабное наступление на 5 участках фронта на южнодонецком направлении с введением в бой 23-й и 31-й механизированных бригад из состава стратегических резервов ВСУ при...
t.me
Doomer Doug
TB Fanatic
Meanwhile Ming the Merciless had onek of us F-22 stolen knockoff's close buzz a US recon plane on Saturday. On Sunday Ming the Merciless had one of his Chinese navy ships close pass' like NEARLY RAM a US navy ship.
When the US complained about it thd Chinese warmonge told the US to stay away fro china.
Finally our feckless DOD Austin is ignored by China won't even meet him.
PREPARE FOR WAR WITH CHINA WHO DESPISES US.
That is 3 major diomatic/Milotary incidents in ONE weekend.
When the US complained about it thd Chinese warmonge told the US to stay away fro china.
Finally our feckless DOD Austin is ignored by China won't even meet him.
PREPARE FOR WAR WITH CHINA WHO DESPISES US.
That is 3 major diomatic/Milotary incidents in ONE weekend.
DuckandCover
Proud Sheeple
Deja vu post? Possibly caused by a software glitch?? Posted at 10:22 last night and again this morning.
"Ming the Merciless".... LOL. Sorta like "Biden the Barbarian".
phloydius
Veteran Member
Note: Article behind paywall. Converted pictures which are highly relevant to the topic to thumbnails (that you can click on to see large version) for bandwidth reasons.
www.nytimes.com
An image of a Ukrainian soldier wearing a patch containing the Totenkopf symbol, an example of Nazi iconography, that was posted on the Twitter account of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, then deleted. Credit... Vlad Novak, via Ukraine MOD Twitter account
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff
June 5, 2023 Updated 5:29 a.m. ET
KYIV, Ukraine — Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine last year, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: a soldier standing in a group, another resting in a trench and an emergency worker posing in front of a truck.
In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.
The photographs, and their deletions, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II.
That relationship has become especially delicate because President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has falsely declared Ukraine to be a Nazi state, a claim he has used to justify his illegal invasion.
Ukraine has worked for years through legislation and military restructuring to contain a fringe far-right movement whose members proudly wear symbols steeped in Nazi history and espouse views hostile to leftists, L.G.B.T.Q. movements and ethnic minorities. But some members of these groups have been fighting Russia since the Kremlin illegally annexed part of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and are now part of the broader military structure. Some are regarded as national heroes, even as the far-right remains marginalized politically.
The iconography of these groups, including a skull-and-crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards and a symbol known as the Black Sun, now appears with some regularity on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front line, including soldiers who say the imagery symbolizes Ukrainian sovereignty and pride, not Nazism.
In the short term, that threatens to reinforce Mr. Putin’s propaganda and giving fuel to his false claims that Ukraine must be “de-Nazified” — a position that ignores the fact that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. More broadly, Ukraine’s ambivalence about these symbols, and sometimes even its acceptance of them, risks giving new, mainstream life to icons that the West has spent more than a half-century trying to eliminate.
“What worries me, in the Ukrainian context, is that people in Ukraine who are in leadership positions, either they don’t or they’re not willing to acknowledge and understand how these symbols are viewed outside of Ukraine,” said Michael Colborne, a researcher at the investigative group Bellingcat who studies the international far right. “I think Ukrainians need to increasingly realize that these images undermine support for the country.”
In a statement, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that, as a country that suffered greatly under German occupation, “We emphasize that Ukraine categorically condemns any manifestations of Nazism.”
So far, the imagery has not eroded international support for the war. It has, however, left diplomats, Western journalists and advocacy groups in a difficult position: Calling attention to the iconography risks playing into Russian propaganda. Saying nothing allows it to spread.
Even Jewish groups and anti-hate organizations that have traditionally called out hateful symbols have stayed largely silent. Privately, some leaders have worried about being seen as embracing Russian propaganda talking points.
Questions over how to interpret such symbols are as divisive as they are persistent, and not just in Ukraine. In the American South, some have insisted that today, the Confederate flag symbolizes pride, not its history of racism and secession. The swastika was an important Hindu symbol before it was co-opted by the Nazis.
In April, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a photograph on its Twitter account of a soldier wearing a patch featuring a skull and crossbones known as the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head. The specific symbol in the picture was made notorious by a Nazi unit that committed war crimes and guarded concentration camps during World War II.
The patch in the photograph sets the Totenkopf atop a Ukrainian flag with a small No. 6 below. That patch is the official merchandise of Death in June, a British neo-folk band that the Southern Poverty Law Center has said produces “hate speech” that “exploits themes and images of fascism and Nazism.”
The Anti-Defamation League considers the Totenkopf “a common hate symbol.” But Jake Hyman, a spokesman for the group, said it was impossible to “make an inference about the wearer or the Ukrainian Army” based on the patch.
“The image, while offensive, is that of a musical band,” Mr. Hyman said.
The band now uses the photograph posted by the Ukrainian military to market the Totenkopf patch.
The New York Times asked the Ukrainian Defense Ministry on April 27 about the tweet. Several hours later, the post was deleted. “After studying this case, we came to the conclusion that this logo can be interpreted ambiguously,” the ministry said in a statement.
The soldier in the photograph was part of a volunteer unit called the Da Vinci Wolves, which started as part of the paramilitary wing of Ukraine’s Right Sector, a coalition of right-wing organizations and political parties that militarized after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.
At least five other photographs on the Wolves’ Instagram and Facebook pages feature their soldiers wearing Nazi-style patches, including the Totenkopf.
NATO militaries, an alliance that Ukraine hopes to join, do not tolerate such patches. When such symbols have appeared, groups like the Anti-Defamation League have spoken out, and military leaders have reacted swiftly.
Last month, Ukraine’s state emergency services agency posted on Instagram a photograph of an emergency worker wearing a Black Sun symbol, also known as a Sonnenrad, that appeared in the castle of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi general and SS director. The Black Sun is popular among neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
In March 2022, NATO’s Twitter account posted a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier wearing a similar patch.
A Ukrainian service member is wearing what appears to be a Black Sun on the chest of her uniform in this photograph published by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Feb. 14 and on the NATO Twitter account before being deleted. Credit... General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Both photographs were quickly removed.
In November, during a meeting with Times reporters near the front line, a Ukrainian press officer wore a Totenkopf variation made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced “Reich”). He said he did not believe the patch was affiliated with the Nazis. A second press officer present said other journalists had asked soldiers to remove the patch before taking photographs.
Ihor Kozlovskyi, a Ukrainian historian and religious scholar, said that the symbols had meanings that were unique to Ukraine and should be interpreted by how Ukrainians viewed them, not by how they had been used elsewhere.
“The symbol can live in any community or any history independently of how it is used in other parts of Earth,” Mr. Kozlovskyi said.
Russian soldiers in Ukraine have also been seen wearing Nazi-style patches, underscoring how complicated interpreting these symbols can be in a region steeped in Soviet and German history.
The Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939, so it was caught by surprise two years later when the Nazis invaded Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Ukraine had suffered greatly under a Soviet government that engineered a famine that killed millions. Many Ukrainians initially viewed the Nazis as liberators.
Factions from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its insurgent army fought alongside the Nazis in what they viewed as a struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty. Members of those groups also took part in atrocities against Jewish and Polish civilians. Later in the war, though, some of the groups fought against the Nazis.
Some Ukrainians joined Nazi military units like the Waffen-SS Galizien. The emblem of the group, which was led by German officers, was a sky-blue patch showing a lion and three crowns. The unit took part in a massacre of hundreds of Polish civilians in 1944. In December, after a yearslong legal battle, Ukraine’s highest court ruled that a government-funded research institute could continue to list the unit’s insignia as excluded from the Nazi symbols banned under a 2015 law.
Today, as a new generation fights against Russian occupation, many Ukrainians see the war as a continuation of the struggle for independence during and immediately after World War II. Symbols like the flag associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Galizien patch have become emblems of anti-Russian resistance and national pride.
A Russian volunteer fighter for the Ukrainian Army, center, wearing a Galizien patch and another featuring a Totenkopf in southern Ukraine in 2022. Credit... Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
That makes it difficult to easily separate, on the basis of icons alone, the Ukrainians enraged by the Russian invasion from those who support the country’s far-right groups.
Units like the Da Vinci Wolves, the better-known Azov regiment and others that began with far-right members have been folded into the Ukrainian military, and have been instrumental in defending Ukraine from Russian troops.
The Azov regiment was celebrated after holding out during the siege of the southern city of Mariupol last year. After the commander of the Da Vinci Wolves was killed in March, he received a hero’s funeral, which Mr. Zelensky attended.
“I think some of these far-right units mix a fair bit of their own mythmaking into the public discourse on them,” said Mr. Colborne, the researcher. “But I think the least that can and should be done everywhere, not just Ukraine, is not allowing the far right’s symbols, rhetoric and ideas to seep into public discourse.”
Kitty Bennett and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. @tmgneff
Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
Troops’ use of patches bearing Nazi emblems risks fueling Russian propaganda and spreading imagery that the West has spent a half-century trying to eliminate.
Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History
Troops’ use of patches bearing Nazi emblems risks fueling Russian propaganda and spreading imagery that the West has spent a half-century trying to eliminate.An image of a Ukrainian soldier wearing a patch containing the Totenkopf symbol, an example of Nazi iconography, that was posted on the Twitter account of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, then deleted. Credit... Vlad Novak, via Ukraine MOD Twitter account
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff
June 5, 2023 Updated 5:29 a.m. ET
KYIV, Ukraine — Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine last year, the Ukrainian government and NATO allies have posted, then quietly deleted, three seemingly innocuous photographs from their social media feeds: a soldier standing in a group, another resting in a trench and an emergency worker posing in front of a truck.
In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.
The photographs, and their deletions, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II.
That relationship has become especially delicate because President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has falsely declared Ukraine to be a Nazi state, a claim he has used to justify his illegal invasion.
Ukraine has worked for years through legislation and military restructuring to contain a fringe far-right movement whose members proudly wear symbols steeped in Nazi history and espouse views hostile to leftists, L.G.B.T.Q. movements and ethnic minorities. But some members of these groups have been fighting Russia since the Kremlin illegally annexed part of the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014 and are now part of the broader military structure. Some are regarded as national heroes, even as the far-right remains marginalized politically.
The iconography of these groups, including a skull-and-crossbones patch worn by concentration camp guards and a symbol known as the Black Sun, now appears with some regularity on the uniforms of soldiers fighting on the front line, including soldiers who say the imagery symbolizes Ukrainian sovereignty and pride, not Nazism.
In the short term, that threatens to reinforce Mr. Putin’s propaganda and giving fuel to his false claims that Ukraine must be “de-Nazified” — a position that ignores the fact that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. More broadly, Ukraine’s ambivalence about these symbols, and sometimes even its acceptance of them, risks giving new, mainstream life to icons that the West has spent more than a half-century trying to eliminate.
“What worries me, in the Ukrainian context, is that people in Ukraine who are in leadership positions, either they don’t or they’re not willing to acknowledge and understand how these symbols are viewed outside of Ukraine,” said Michael Colborne, a researcher at the investigative group Bellingcat who studies the international far right. “I think Ukrainians need to increasingly realize that these images undermine support for the country.”
In a statement, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that, as a country that suffered greatly under German occupation, “We emphasize that Ukraine categorically condemns any manifestations of Nazism.”
So far, the imagery has not eroded international support for the war. It has, however, left diplomats, Western journalists and advocacy groups in a difficult position: Calling attention to the iconography risks playing into Russian propaganda. Saying nothing allows it to spread.
Even Jewish groups and anti-hate organizations that have traditionally called out hateful symbols have stayed largely silent. Privately, some leaders have worried about being seen as embracing Russian propaganda talking points.
Questions over how to interpret such symbols are as divisive as they are persistent, and not just in Ukraine. In the American South, some have insisted that today, the Confederate flag symbolizes pride, not its history of racism and secession. The swastika was an important Hindu symbol before it was co-opted by the Nazis.
In April, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry posted a photograph on its Twitter account of a soldier wearing a patch featuring a skull and crossbones known as the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head. The specific symbol in the picture was made notorious by a Nazi unit that committed war crimes and guarded concentration camps during World War II.
The patch in the photograph sets the Totenkopf atop a Ukrainian flag with a small No. 6 below. That patch is the official merchandise of Death in June, a British neo-folk band that the Southern Poverty Law Center has said produces “hate speech” that “exploits themes and images of fascism and Nazism.”
The Anti-Defamation League considers the Totenkopf “a common hate symbol.” But Jake Hyman, a spokesman for the group, said it was impossible to “make an inference about the wearer or the Ukrainian Army” based on the patch.
“The image, while offensive, is that of a musical band,” Mr. Hyman said.
The band now uses the photograph posted by the Ukrainian military to market the Totenkopf patch.
The New York Times asked the Ukrainian Defense Ministry on April 27 about the tweet. Several hours later, the post was deleted. “After studying this case, we came to the conclusion that this logo can be interpreted ambiguously,” the ministry said in a statement.
The soldier in the photograph was part of a volunteer unit called the Da Vinci Wolves, which started as part of the paramilitary wing of Ukraine’s Right Sector, a coalition of right-wing organizations and political parties that militarized after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.
At least five other photographs on the Wolves’ Instagram and Facebook pages feature their soldiers wearing Nazi-style patches, including the Totenkopf.
NATO militaries, an alliance that Ukraine hopes to join, do not tolerate such patches. When such symbols have appeared, groups like the Anti-Defamation League have spoken out, and military leaders have reacted swiftly.
Last month, Ukraine’s state emergency services agency posted on Instagram a photograph of an emergency worker wearing a Black Sun symbol, also known as a Sonnenrad, that appeared in the castle of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi general and SS director. The Black Sun is popular among neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
In March 2022, NATO’s Twitter account posted a photograph of a Ukrainian soldier wearing a similar patch.
A Ukrainian service member is wearing what appears to be a Black Sun on the chest of her uniform in this photograph published by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Feb. 14 and on the NATO Twitter account before being deleted. Credit... General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Both photographs were quickly removed.
In November, during a meeting with Times reporters near the front line, a Ukrainian press officer wore a Totenkopf variation made by a company called R3ICH (pronounced “Reich”). He said he did not believe the patch was affiliated with the Nazis. A second press officer present said other journalists had asked soldiers to remove the patch before taking photographs.
Ihor Kozlovskyi, a Ukrainian historian and religious scholar, said that the symbols had meanings that were unique to Ukraine and should be interpreted by how Ukrainians viewed them, not by how they had been used elsewhere.
“The symbol can live in any community or any history independently of how it is used in other parts of Earth,” Mr. Kozlovskyi said.
Russian soldiers in Ukraine have also been seen wearing Nazi-style patches, underscoring how complicated interpreting these symbols can be in a region steeped in Soviet and German history.
The Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939, so it was caught by surprise two years later when the Nazis invaded Ukraine, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Ukraine had suffered greatly under a Soviet government that engineered a famine that killed millions. Many Ukrainians initially viewed the Nazis as liberators.
Factions from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its insurgent army fought alongside the Nazis in what they viewed as a struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty. Members of those groups also took part in atrocities against Jewish and Polish civilians. Later in the war, though, some of the groups fought against the Nazis.
Some Ukrainians joined Nazi military units like the Waffen-SS Galizien. The emblem of the group, which was led by German officers, was a sky-blue patch showing a lion and three crowns. The unit took part in a massacre of hundreds of Polish civilians in 1944. In December, after a yearslong legal battle, Ukraine’s highest court ruled that a government-funded research institute could continue to list the unit’s insignia as excluded from the Nazi symbols banned under a 2015 law.
Today, as a new generation fights against Russian occupation, many Ukrainians see the war as a continuation of the struggle for independence during and immediately after World War II. Symbols like the flag associated with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Galizien patch have become emblems of anti-Russian resistance and national pride.
A Russian volunteer fighter for the Ukrainian Army, center, wearing a Galizien patch and another featuring a Totenkopf in southern Ukraine in 2022. Credit... Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
That makes it difficult to easily separate, on the basis of icons alone, the Ukrainians enraged by the Russian invasion from those who support the country’s far-right groups.
Units like the Da Vinci Wolves, the better-known Azov regiment and others that began with far-right members have been folded into the Ukrainian military, and have been instrumental in defending Ukraine from Russian troops.
The Azov regiment was celebrated after holding out during the siege of the southern city of Mariupol last year. After the commander of the Da Vinci Wolves was killed in March, he received a hero’s funeral, which Mr. Zelensky attended.
“I think some of these far-right units mix a fair bit of their own mythmaking into the public discourse on them,” said Mr. Colborne, the researcher. “But I think the least that can and should be done everywhere, not just Ukraine, is not allowing the far right’s symbols, rhetoric and ideas to seep into public discourse.”
Kitty Bennett and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. @tmgneff
wait-n-see
Veteran Member
The war we're finally allowed to see
5th June 2023
by Patrick Lawrence
Consider the following paragraphs, which appear in the May 29 edition of the New Yorker :
«“As Tynda and his team fought from the trench, long, heavy gunfire came out of another Ukrainian position, on a hill behind them. Went there later with Tynda. In a blind overlooking no man's land stood an impossibly ancient contraption on iron wheels: a Maxim pistol, the first fully automatic weapon ever made. Although this particular model dates from 1945, it was almost identical to the original version, invented in 1884: a knob-mounted crank, wooden handles, a lidded compartment for adding cold water or snow in case of barrel overheating…”
Over the past year, the United States has provided Ukraine with more than thirty-five billion dollars in security assistance. Why, given American largesse, had the 28th Brigade resorted to such a museum piece? A lot of equipment was damaged or destroyed on the battlefield. At the same time, Ukraine appears to have given up on refitting weakened units in order to build up stocks for a full-scale offensive expected to take place later this spring.
At least eight new brigades were formed from scratch to carry out the campaign. As these units received weapons, tanks and training from the United States and Europe, veteran brigades like the 28th had to hold the line with a badly depleted arsenal.».
The article from which this passage is taken bears the title "Two weeks at the front in Ukraineand is the work of Luke Mogelson, a magazine correspondent with a dozen years of experience.
Mogelson's text is accompanied by photographs of Maxim Dondyuk, a Ukrainian about Mogelson's age of 40, whose work focuses on history and memory, subjects that suggest much thought goes into those 1/1000ths of a second when Dondyuk clicks his shutter.
There is a lot to think about and say as we read this article. I will soon have more to say about the excellence of Mogelson's text and Dondyuk's photographs.
For now, the first thing to note is that after 15 months of conflict, their work suggests that Western media may finally begin to properly cover the war in Ukraine.
I'll stick with the conditional verb for now, but it could mark a significant turning point not only for the profession but also in public support for the US-NATO proxy war against the Russian Federation.
Luke Mogelson, right, during a panel discussion in 2015 on his coverage of political asylum seekers.
As savvy readers will already know, apart from a few organized incursions near the front lines – officially controlled and monitored, never on the front lines – the correspondents of the New York Times, other major dailies, news agencies and broadcast networks have accepted without protest the Kiev regime's refusal to allow them to see the war as it is.
The content of these professional mystifications was collected from hotel rooms in Kiev and they told stories based on the regime's obviously unreliable accounts of events, while claiming that their stories are correctly reported and factual.
The exceptions here are the correspondents of the Times such as Carlotta Gall, whose Russophobia seems unbalanced enough to satisfy the Kiev regime, and the two Andrews, Higgins and Kramer, who have an exquisite talent for stories that make absolutely no sense.
It was the two Andrews, you may recall, who had the Russians bomb the nuclear power plant they occupied and later bomb their own POW camp in eastern Ukraine.
If the correspondents can't see the war and they don't care, we won't see it either.
The result, as your columnist noted earlier, has been two wars: there is the presented war, the mythical war and the real war.
«Our current brainwashing for war is similar to that which preceded other warswrote John Pilger, the journalist and filmmaker, in a Tweet the other day,but never, in my experience as a war correspondent, have we seen something so relentless and devoid of honest journalism».
That's what makes Mogelson's case so surprising. In its graphic honesty, it's a major step up from the propaganda mush the business media has fed us since the Russian intervention began in February 2022.
Those three Times correspondents we just mentioned? They all have many years of experience on Mogelson. None of them could change their typewriter ribbon, as they said.
Ukrainian trench line at the Battle of Bakhmut, November 2022. (Mil.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Mogelson and Dondyuk spent two weeks last March with a Ukrainian infantry battalion as it fought in the trenches.at a small army position in the eastern region of Donbass, where shock waves and shrapnel had reduced surrounding trees to broken canes».
It was just outside a village south of Bakhmut, the besieged town recently lost to Ukrainian forces.
I have no doubt that these two journalists were officially integrated with the approval of the high command. This is how the kyiv regime is waging this war. But, for some reason – and I'll get to that in a moment – there's no trace of inhibition or self-censorship in the report or the photographs. Both are raw, unflattering, as unforgiving as the scenes they depict:
«By the time I joined the battalion, about two months had passed since he had lost the battle for the village, and during the interval neither side had attempted a major operation against the other. It was all the Ukrainians could do to maintain the stalemate. Pavlo estimated that due to the losses his unit suffered, eighty percent of his men were new conscripts. “They are civilians with no experience,” he said. "If they give me ten, I'm lucky if out of the ten three of them can fight." We were in his bunker, which had been dug out of the backyard of a half-demolished farmhouse; the constant rumble of artillery vibrated through the earthen walls. "A lot of new players don't have the stamina to be here," Pavlo said. “They are afraid and they panic”. His military call sign was Cranky and he was renowned for his temper, but he spoke sympathetically about his weaker soldiers and their fears..
Even for him, a career officer of twenty-three years, this phase of the war had been heartbreaking. On a road that ran past the farm, a board had been nailed to a tree with the painted words "to Moscow" and an arrow pointing east. No one knew who put it there. Such optimistic brilliance seemed like a holdover from another time».
Mogelson then introduces us to the other members of the battalion:
«Only two of the soldiers who were rebuilding the machine gun nest were with the battalion from Kherson. One of them, a twenty-nine-year-old construction worker named Bison—because he was built like one—had been hospitalized three times: after being shot in the shoulder, after being injured by a shrapnel to the ankle and knee, and after being injured by shrapnel to the back and arm.
The other veteran, codenamed Odesa, joined the army in 2015 after dropping out of college. Short and stocky, he had the same serene bearing as Bison.
The astonishing extent to which the two men had adapted to their deadly surroundings brought out the restlessness of the newcomers, who flinched whenever something hissed overhead or crashed nearby.
“I only trust Bison,” Odesa said. "If the new recruits run away, it will mean immediate death for us." He had lost almost all of his closest friends in Kherson. Taking out his phone, he leafed through a series of photographs: “Killed. . . kill . . . kill . . . kill . . . kill . . . wounded. . . Now I have to get used to different people. It's like starting over. Because the high attrition rate had disproportionately affected the bravest and most aggressive soldiers – a phenomenon one officer called “reverse natural selection” – seasoned infantrymen like Odesa and Bison were extremely valuable and extremely fatigued. .
After Kherson, Odesa had disappeared. “I was psychologically in bad shape,” he said. "I needed a break." After two months of rest and recuperation at home, he returned.
His return was not motivated by fear of punishment – what were they going to do, put him in the trenches? – but out of a sense of loyalty to his deceased friends. "I felt guilty," he said. “I realized that my place was here”.»
Reporting and writing of this caliber make Mogelson the dazzling star next to these correspondent-reenactors in their Kiev hotel rooms.
But for my appreciation, it also follows the lead of many notable names from the past. I see in his copy a little Dexter Filkins, a little Bernard Fall, a little Michael Herr, a little Martha Gellhorn, and I would go so far as to say a little Ernie Pyle.
As for Dondyuk's photos, the way they come off the page is reminiscent of Tim Page, Horst Faas, Robert Kapa and some of the other great war photographers of their time.
If this article suggests a turning point or a return to a report with a certain integrity, the project could not have started better.
But let's stick with the "ifs" for now.
There are basically two kinds of journalists: There are analysts, as I call them, who add an interpretive dimension to their coverage — understanding in addition to knowledge. And there are the journalists, the empiricists in the vein of facts who stay close to the ground and don't move much.
Mogelson is of the latter type. Reporters like him invite us to deduce from what they tell us. What should we deduce from a superbly tactile report, to the eye of the camera? No claim of victory
No Man's Land between Russian and Ukrainian forces during the Battle of Bakhmut, November 2022.
(Mil.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Luke Mogelson isn't telling us about an army on the way to victory – or an army that claims to be on the way to victory, or an army that wants the world to think it's on the way. of victory. There are no battlefield successes, no breakthroughs, no high expectations in Mogelson's story. There's "holding the line", though few seem to hold it, and there's staying alive. This is a story more prone to severe attrition among soldiers who wait for the end and wonder how far in time the end will turn out.
In Mogelson's writings we encounter conscripts sent to the front with little or no training. It describes a man who was abducted from a city sidewalk and came under Russian fire three days later. Crippling fear, exhaustion, demoralization, desertions, a sort of Beetle Bailey incompetence – these plague the green conscripts who now make up the majority of AFU infantry.
They fight with Vietnamese-era vehicles shipped from the United States, or muzzle-loaded mortars long out of production, or Soviet-era weapons left over from the days before 1991 — and, with, too little ammunition for this type of material. No difference at all. A 1945 Maxim pistol of 1884 design? Shit.
Mogelson is right to wonder, however briefly, where all the weapons that US and NATO allies are shipping to Ukraine may be. Many of them have already been destroyed, he reports, which is not surprising. Being as close to the scene as he has been frequenting since this spring, he would have done well to tell us something about the greedy people who run the regime and the military as they sell shocking amounts of weapons on the black market as soon as they arrive across the Polish border.
At one point, Mogelson and Dondyuk spend a day in a dugout with a seasoned sergeant named Kaban and a 19-year-old named Cadet, so young he hasn't lost his baby fat. "Later, Kaban told us stories about his past romantic escapades“says Mogelson, “and Dondyuk, the photographer, asked him if he had given lessons to Cadet».
«"It's no use," says Kaban. He will soon die. Cadet laughed, but not Kaban».
These are the voices of war that Mogelson tells us about. You can cut the anxiety out of Cadet's laughter with a knife.
I must mention some wonderful touches in Mogelson's report because it is superlative writing of the kind that is all too rare these days. From the soldier who fired this Maxim gun:The gun operator, a football hooligan with brass knuckles tattooed on his hand, spoke of the Maxim like a car enthusiast praising the performance of a vintage Mustang».
Describing an unwieldy Vietnamese-era personnel carrier, Mogelson tells us:It looked like a green metal box on tracks… The machine at max looked like a blender full of silverware».
Did Gellhorn do better covering the Spanish Civil War for Colliers?
Mogelson shows us the war that a few independent journalists have talked about, but a war that we have yet to hear about in the mainstream media. It is the war that the propaganda machine has hidden from us. And now we know that what independent media correspondents have described is basically the war as it is.
Among many other things, we can now see the obvious indifference of the Kiev regime and its Western supporters to those who are fighting - who, Mogelson tells us, are now working-class Ukrainians, the most privileged having dodged the conscription or otherwise avoided service.
Mogelson reported this article in March, and we can rightly assume that conditions on the front lines of this war are now three months worse. His report makes me want to tap my shoe on the table, Khrushchev-style, both for the shameful conduct of the mainstream media reenacting the work of correspondents, for the senseless loss of Ukrainian lives in the service of the presented war, and for the AFU soldiers – veterans and the untrained conscripts they command – whom the Kiev regime has not quite but almost abandoned.
The new twist on the vaunted counter-offensive is that it won't make much of a difference. We are now talking more about the conditions necessary to begin negotiations. NATO officials, according to Steven Erlanger, correspondent for the Times in Brussels, now plan to do in Ukraine what the allies did in post-war Germany: divide it so that the West joins the alliance and the East is left to the East , therefore, to say.
Mogelson's intention was surely to do a good job, period, and he did. But read in that larger context, its publication seems to me like the start of an effort to prep all those people with blue and yellow flags on their porches for a dose of the reality they've been shielded from all these months.
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, Business Insider, Forbes : They all recently published articles not as good as those of Mogelson, but in the Let's-get-real line.
If I'm right, the real war and the presented war will eventually become one. It was about time, I would say. Not that the mainstream media are about to confess their sins and disgraces in their pitiful coverage of this war. They never will.
Let's not get carried away on this point.
5th June 2023
by Patrick Lawrence
Consider the following paragraphs, which appear in the May 29 edition of the New Yorker :
«“As Tynda and his team fought from the trench, long, heavy gunfire came out of another Ukrainian position, on a hill behind them. Went there later with Tynda. In a blind overlooking no man's land stood an impossibly ancient contraption on iron wheels: a Maxim pistol, the first fully automatic weapon ever made. Although this particular model dates from 1945, it was almost identical to the original version, invented in 1884: a knob-mounted crank, wooden handles, a lidded compartment for adding cold water or snow in case of barrel overheating…”
Over the past year, the United States has provided Ukraine with more than thirty-five billion dollars in security assistance. Why, given American largesse, had the 28th Brigade resorted to such a museum piece? A lot of equipment was damaged or destroyed on the battlefield. At the same time, Ukraine appears to have given up on refitting weakened units in order to build up stocks for a full-scale offensive expected to take place later this spring.
At least eight new brigades were formed from scratch to carry out the campaign. As these units received weapons, tanks and training from the United States and Europe, veteran brigades like the 28th had to hold the line with a badly depleted arsenal.».
The article from which this passage is taken bears the title "Two weeks at the front in Ukraineand is the work of Luke Mogelson, a magazine correspondent with a dozen years of experience.
Mogelson's text is accompanied by photographs of Maxim Dondyuk, a Ukrainian about Mogelson's age of 40, whose work focuses on history and memory, subjects that suggest much thought goes into those 1/1000ths of a second when Dondyuk clicks his shutter.
There is a lot to think about and say as we read this article. I will soon have more to say about the excellence of Mogelson's text and Dondyuk's photographs.
For now, the first thing to note is that after 15 months of conflict, their work suggests that Western media may finally begin to properly cover the war in Ukraine.
I'll stick with the conditional verb for now, but it could mark a significant turning point not only for the profession but also in public support for the US-NATO proxy war against the Russian Federation.
Luke Mogelson, right, during a panel discussion in 2015 on his coverage of political asylum seekers.
As savvy readers will already know, apart from a few organized incursions near the front lines – officially controlled and monitored, never on the front lines – the correspondents of the New York Times, other major dailies, news agencies and broadcast networks have accepted without protest the Kiev regime's refusal to allow them to see the war as it is.
The content of these professional mystifications was collected from hotel rooms in Kiev and they told stories based on the regime's obviously unreliable accounts of events, while claiming that their stories are correctly reported and factual.
The exceptions here are the correspondents of the Times such as Carlotta Gall, whose Russophobia seems unbalanced enough to satisfy the Kiev regime, and the two Andrews, Higgins and Kramer, who have an exquisite talent for stories that make absolutely no sense.
It was the two Andrews, you may recall, who had the Russians bomb the nuclear power plant they occupied and later bomb their own POW camp in eastern Ukraine.
If the correspondents can't see the war and they don't care, we won't see it either.
The result, as your columnist noted earlier, has been two wars: there is the presented war, the mythical war and the real war.
«Our current brainwashing for war is similar to that which preceded other warswrote John Pilger, the journalist and filmmaker, in a Tweet the other day,but never, in my experience as a war correspondent, have we seen something so relentless and devoid of honest journalism».
That's what makes Mogelson's case so surprising. In its graphic honesty, it's a major step up from the propaganda mush the business media has fed us since the Russian intervention began in February 2022.
Those three Times correspondents we just mentioned? They all have many years of experience on Mogelson. None of them could change their typewriter ribbon, as they said.
Two weeks in the trenches
Ukrainian trench line at the Battle of Bakhmut, November 2022. (Mil.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)Mogelson and Dondyuk spent two weeks last March with a Ukrainian infantry battalion as it fought in the trenches.at a small army position in the eastern region of Donbass, where shock waves and shrapnel had reduced surrounding trees to broken canes».
It was just outside a village south of Bakhmut, the besieged town recently lost to Ukrainian forces.
I have no doubt that these two journalists were officially integrated with the approval of the high command. This is how the kyiv regime is waging this war. But, for some reason – and I'll get to that in a moment – there's no trace of inhibition or self-censorship in the report or the photographs. Both are raw, unflattering, as unforgiving as the scenes they depict:
«By the time I joined the battalion, about two months had passed since he had lost the battle for the village, and during the interval neither side had attempted a major operation against the other. It was all the Ukrainians could do to maintain the stalemate. Pavlo estimated that due to the losses his unit suffered, eighty percent of his men were new conscripts. “They are civilians with no experience,” he said. "If they give me ten, I'm lucky if out of the ten three of them can fight." We were in his bunker, which had been dug out of the backyard of a half-demolished farmhouse; the constant rumble of artillery vibrated through the earthen walls. "A lot of new players don't have the stamina to be here," Pavlo said. “They are afraid and they panic”. His military call sign was Cranky and he was renowned for his temper, but he spoke sympathetically about his weaker soldiers and their fears..
Even for him, a career officer of twenty-three years, this phase of the war had been heartbreaking. On a road that ran past the farm, a board had been nailed to a tree with the painted words "to Moscow" and an arrow pointing east. No one knew who put it there. Such optimistic brilliance seemed like a holdover from another time».
Mogelson then introduces us to the other members of the battalion:
«Only two of the soldiers who were rebuilding the machine gun nest were with the battalion from Kherson. One of them, a twenty-nine-year-old construction worker named Bison—because he was built like one—had been hospitalized three times: after being shot in the shoulder, after being injured by a shrapnel to the ankle and knee, and after being injured by shrapnel to the back and arm.
The other veteran, codenamed Odesa, joined the army in 2015 after dropping out of college. Short and stocky, he had the same serene bearing as Bison.
The astonishing extent to which the two men had adapted to their deadly surroundings brought out the restlessness of the newcomers, who flinched whenever something hissed overhead or crashed nearby.
“I only trust Bison,” Odesa said. "If the new recruits run away, it will mean immediate death for us." He had lost almost all of his closest friends in Kherson. Taking out his phone, he leafed through a series of photographs: “Killed. . . kill . . . kill . . . kill . . . kill . . . wounded. . . Now I have to get used to different people. It's like starting over. Because the high attrition rate had disproportionately affected the bravest and most aggressive soldiers – a phenomenon one officer called “reverse natural selection” – seasoned infantrymen like Odesa and Bison were extremely valuable and extremely fatigued. .
After Kherson, Odesa had disappeared. “I was psychologically in bad shape,” he said. "I needed a break." After two months of rest and recuperation at home, he returned.
His return was not motivated by fear of punishment – what were they going to do, put him in the trenches? – but out of a sense of loyalty to his deceased friends. "I felt guilty," he said. “I realized that my place was here”.»
Reporting and writing of this caliber make Mogelson the dazzling star next to these correspondent-reenactors in their Kiev hotel rooms.
But for my appreciation, it also follows the lead of many notable names from the past. I see in his copy a little Dexter Filkins, a little Bernard Fall, a little Michael Herr, a little Martha Gellhorn, and I would go so far as to say a little Ernie Pyle.
As for Dondyuk's photos, the way they come off the page is reminiscent of Tim Page, Horst Faas, Robert Kapa and some of the other great war photographers of their time.
If this article suggests a turning point or a return to a report with a certain integrity, the project could not have started better.
But let's stick with the "ifs" for now.
There are basically two kinds of journalists: There are analysts, as I call them, who add an interpretive dimension to their coverage — understanding in addition to knowledge. And there are the journalists, the empiricists in the vein of facts who stay close to the ground and don't move much.
Mogelson is of the latter type. Reporters like him invite us to deduce from what they tell us. What should we deduce from a superbly tactile report, to the eye of the camera? No claim of victory
No Man's Land between Russian and Ukrainian forces during the Battle of Bakhmut, November 2022.
(Mil.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Luke Mogelson isn't telling us about an army on the way to victory – or an army that claims to be on the way to victory, or an army that wants the world to think it's on the way. of victory. There are no battlefield successes, no breakthroughs, no high expectations in Mogelson's story. There's "holding the line", though few seem to hold it, and there's staying alive. This is a story more prone to severe attrition among soldiers who wait for the end and wonder how far in time the end will turn out.
In Mogelson's writings we encounter conscripts sent to the front with little or no training. It describes a man who was abducted from a city sidewalk and came under Russian fire three days later. Crippling fear, exhaustion, demoralization, desertions, a sort of Beetle Bailey incompetence – these plague the green conscripts who now make up the majority of AFU infantry.
They fight with Vietnamese-era vehicles shipped from the United States, or muzzle-loaded mortars long out of production, or Soviet-era weapons left over from the days before 1991 — and, with, too little ammunition for this type of material. No difference at all. A 1945 Maxim pistol of 1884 design? Shit.
Mogelson is right to wonder, however briefly, where all the weapons that US and NATO allies are shipping to Ukraine may be. Many of them have already been destroyed, he reports, which is not surprising. Being as close to the scene as he has been frequenting since this spring, he would have done well to tell us something about the greedy people who run the regime and the military as they sell shocking amounts of weapons on the black market as soon as they arrive across the Polish border.
At one point, Mogelson and Dondyuk spend a day in a dugout with a seasoned sergeant named Kaban and a 19-year-old named Cadet, so young he hasn't lost his baby fat. "Later, Kaban told us stories about his past romantic escapades“says Mogelson, “and Dondyuk, the photographer, asked him if he had given lessons to Cadet».
«"It's no use," says Kaban. He will soon die. Cadet laughed, but not Kaban».
These are the voices of war that Mogelson tells us about. You can cut the anxiety out of Cadet's laughter with a knife.
I must mention some wonderful touches in Mogelson's report because it is superlative writing of the kind that is all too rare these days. From the soldier who fired this Maxim gun:The gun operator, a football hooligan with brass knuckles tattooed on his hand, spoke of the Maxim like a car enthusiast praising the performance of a vintage Mustang».
Describing an unwieldy Vietnamese-era personnel carrier, Mogelson tells us:It looked like a green metal box on tracks… The machine at max looked like a blender full of silverware».
Did Gellhorn do better covering the Spanish Civil War for Colliers?
Mogelson shows us the war that a few independent journalists have talked about, but a war that we have yet to hear about in the mainstream media. It is the war that the propaganda machine has hidden from us. And now we know that what independent media correspondents have described is basically the war as it is.
Among many other things, we can now see the obvious indifference of the Kiev regime and its Western supporters to those who are fighting - who, Mogelson tells us, are now working-class Ukrainians, the most privileged having dodged the conscription or otherwise avoided service.
Mogelson reported this article in March, and we can rightly assume that conditions on the front lines of this war are now three months worse. His report makes me want to tap my shoe on the table, Khrushchev-style, both for the shameful conduct of the mainstream media reenacting the work of correspondents, for the senseless loss of Ukrainian lives in the service of the presented war, and for the AFU soldiers – veterans and the untrained conscripts they command – whom the Kiev regime has not quite but almost abandoned.
Why now ?
The obvious question is why this article now appears in The New Yorker, a magazine deeply committed to every liberal orthodoxie you can think of, including the doxa of this war and the certainty of an AFU victory. All hell broke loose last year, you will recall, when Amnesty International then CBS News lifted the veil on the realities of the conflict in Ukraine. What's different now? It's hard to say. But the big picture suggests that the publication of this eye-opening article reflects a creeping acknowledgment in all sorts of places – among political cliques, in the Pentagon, in the corporate media – that Ukraine will not win this war and the time has come to prepare for this eventuality.The new twist on the vaunted counter-offensive is that it won't make much of a difference. We are now talking more about the conditions necessary to begin negotiations. NATO officials, according to Steven Erlanger, correspondent for the Times in Brussels, now plan to do in Ukraine what the allies did in post-war Germany: divide it so that the West joins the alliance and the East is left to the East , therefore, to say.
Mogelson's intention was surely to do a good job, period, and he did. But read in that larger context, its publication seems to me like the start of an effort to prep all those people with blue and yellow flags on their porches for a dose of the reality they've been shielded from all these months.
The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, Business Insider, Forbes : They all recently published articles not as good as those of Mogelson, but in the Let's-get-real line.
If I'm right, the real war and the presented war will eventually become one. It was about time, I would say. Not that the mainstream media are about to confess their sins and disgraces in their pitiful coverage of this war. They never will.
Let's not get carried away on this point.
This is the money sentence of that article, which is long overdue.
More and more articles are coming out about the ultimate truths which will finally be revealed, but not soon enough to convince their readers of how they've been suckered all along by some masterful deceits. For an ongoing example, just look at what is essentially a skirmish on the northern front near Belgorod and watch it fade away into obscurity soon without any kind of explanation.
All we'll be shown is the Ukrainian example of a classic Gallic shrug .... oh, well - if you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have been reading that pap.
Cedar Lake
Connecticut Yankee
naegling62
Veteran Member
Something my son #2 and I were discussing about the Soldiers of Fortune in this war, excluding Wagner.
I understand mercs in the 3rd world. You are hired for your knowledge, combat skills to train or command less qualified locals. You are usually going up against low tier technology in arms. What motivates these western mercs going against the Russians? It seems like madness, I can hardly believe you'll live long enough to even use your money.
I understand mercs in the 3rd world. You are hired for your knowledge, combat skills to train or command less qualified locals. You are usually going up against low tier technology in arms. What motivates these western mercs going against the Russians? It seems like madness, I can hardly believe you'll live long enough to even use your money.
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Its like "Mexican Radio"
I dial it in and tune the station
They talk about the u.s. inflation
I understand just a little
No comprende--it's a riddle
I hear the talking of the dj
Can't understand just what does he say?
I'm on a mexican radio
This is the culture Europe has been dealing with for centuries.
View: https://twitter.com/marta_brightman/status/1665717529472299009
View: https://twitter.com/marta_brightman/status/1665717529472299009
bw
Fringe Ranger
Drank the stupid-primitive-Russian-peasant koolaid?
blueinterceptor
Veteran Member
Just a thought. Aside from the folks here. Maybe some countrymen. Some people that make prepper videos and the soldiers and their respective families. It seems like not many people are really plugged into this war.
The news is watered down so much that there’s no horror. Are there any war correspondents? It strikes me that aside from the expenses, most people are clueless about what is going on there or the potential for the nuclear holocaust that could occur.
I would imagine if there were more people in tune with the possibilities, there would be more peace protests.
The news is watered down so much that there’s no horror. Are there any war correspondents? It strikes me that aside from the expenses, most people are clueless about what is going on there or the potential for the nuclear holocaust that could occur.
I would imagine if there were more people in tune with the possibilities, there would be more peace protests.
Nice rhyme and just in time!
As long as the DJ uses lots of good words like frijoles y tortillas y Dos Equis, I'm there!
CaryC
Has No Life - Lives on TB
From what I've read through, granted I didn't read all of it, it's a whitewash of Nazism in Ukraine. What would I base that on?
1st: Depending on which side of the Dnieper River one was on, which more or less divides Ukraine into two separate viewpoints, is how you see what is going on. In WWII if you lived in the west side, they fought WITH the Germans/Nazi's against Russia, and were seen as liberators.
If you lived on the east side you fought WITH the Russians AGAINST the Germans. And Russia was also seen as a Liberator.
So to whitewash Nazi influence in the western side, is to promote propaganda, and to not only not understand the conflict as it is today, and the desire and reintegration of Eastern Ukraine, and Crimea, as it was then, but also now.
To off handedly use Zippy being a Jew, as a reason for no nazism is also a whitewash. While I am sure there were/are Jews who would turn against their own people, and Biblically I could call out several, in modern times I only need one: Soros.
This "problem" while in modern times goes back to the 1990's has been around since the 700's. While no one likes what Russia has done, I'm sure Russia also doesn't like what NATO/US has done either.
Sad it took a war with no peace negotiations.
CaryC
Has No Life - Lives on TB
We have no troops there, nothing invested, but money that is being printed.
Might also want to remember that the peacenicks of the '60s are the ones promoting this war.
northern watch
TB Fanatic
Russia says it sees 'no prospects' for further grain deal renewal
Reuters
June 5, 20237:40 AM EDT
Updated 3 hours ago
June 5 2023 (Reuters) - Russia's foreign ministry said on Monday that it saw no prospects for extending the Black Sea grain export deal, which is set to expire in mid-July, Russian news agencies reported.
TASS news agency quoted the ministry as saying that it was continuing consultations with the United Nations, and that ship inspections had resumed. RIA news agency said a new round of Russia-U.N. talks would take place in Geneva on June 9.
The deal was originally brokered by Turkey and the United Nations last July to allow Ukraine to resume exports from its southern ports, which had been blockaded by Russia since the start of its invasion.
To help convince Russia to back the deal, a three-year pact was also struck last July in which the U.N. agreed to help Moscow carry out its food and fertiliser shipments.
Russia has repeatedly threatened to quit the deal, complaining that obstacles still remain to its own exports of food and fertiliser.
It also demands the reopening of a pipeline carrying ammonia from Russia to the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Pivdennyi - known in Russian as Yuzhny - for export to global markets, and the reconnection of its agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT international payment network.
The agreement last came up for renewal on May 18 and Russia agreed at that point to extend it for 60 more days, to July 17.
Reporting by Reuters; writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey
Russia says it sees 'no prospects' for further grain deal renewal | Reuters
Reuters
June 5, 20237:40 AM EDT
Updated 3 hours ago
June 5 2023 (Reuters) - Russia's foreign ministry said on Monday that it saw no prospects for extending the Black Sea grain export deal, which is set to expire in mid-July, Russian news agencies reported.
TASS news agency quoted the ministry as saying that it was continuing consultations with the United Nations, and that ship inspections had resumed. RIA news agency said a new round of Russia-U.N. talks would take place in Geneva on June 9.
The deal was originally brokered by Turkey and the United Nations last July to allow Ukraine to resume exports from its southern ports, which had been blockaded by Russia since the start of its invasion.
To help convince Russia to back the deal, a three-year pact was also struck last July in which the U.N. agreed to help Moscow carry out its food and fertiliser shipments.
Russia has repeatedly threatened to quit the deal, complaining that obstacles still remain to its own exports of food and fertiliser.
It also demands the reopening of a pipeline carrying ammonia from Russia to the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Pivdennyi - known in Russian as Yuzhny - for export to global markets, and the reconnection of its agricultural bank Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT international payment network.
The agreement last came up for renewal on May 18 and Russia agreed at that point to extend it for 60 more days, to July 17.
Reporting by Reuters; writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey
Russia says it sees 'no prospects' for further grain deal renewal | Reuters
wait-n-see
Veteran Member
First time ever, abandoned German Leopard 2. The tank was abandoned by Ukrainian troops in failed offensive attempt and it's possible it will be captured by Russian forces.
View: https://twitter.com/MapsUkraine/status/1665731272834940928?cxt=HHwWgICwiY3x7p0uAAAA
View: https://twitter.com/MapsUkraine/status/1665731272834940928?cxt=HHwWgICwiY3x7p0uAAAA
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wait-n-see
Veteran Member
I'm pretty confident the expected screening action in the Ulgedar section is currently underway. The current Ukrainian force commitment is much too large to be a probing or reconaissance action. Looks like we're off to the races.
View: https://twitter.com/witte_sergei/status/1665739235276488706?cxt=HHwWhICw8cnA8p0uAAAA
View: https://twitter.com/witte_sergei/status/1665739235276488706?cxt=HHwWhICw8cnA8p0uAAAA
Cedar Lake
Connecticut Yankee
''To help convince Russia to back the deal, a three-year pact was also struck last July in which the U.N. agreed to help Moscow carry out its food and fertiliser shipments.
Honor your commitments.
This is exactly why Russia will likely have to push this all the way - EVERY time they attempt to work out an agreement with the West (US) they get stabbed in the back. Effectively any agreement with the US is worthless.
Ukraine is Going Kamikaze
sonar21.com
CaryC
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Ask Native Americans how that worked out for them.
I'm glad to be here, but they were treated very bad.
Bit of an historic - look back 2014 - 100% correct prediction on how the US was going to start this war:
www.theguardian.com
Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.‘
In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia | John Pilger
John Pilger: Washington's role in Ukraine, and its backing for the regime's neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world
www.theguardian.com
Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.‘
Cedar Lake
Connecticut Yankee
Statement is still true today,Bit of an historic - look back 2014 - 100% correct prediction on how the US was going to start this war:
In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia | John Pilger
John Pilger: Washington's role in Ukraine, and its backing for the regime's neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world
Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.‘
We in the
danielboon
TB Fanatic
EndGameWW3 Retweeted
CJ
@CasualArtyFan
·
21m
Russians admit they’ve been pushed out of Novodontesk, after initially claiming the Ukrainian attack was “stopped.” Notable here is that the 37th Marine Brigade operates NATO gear, including AMX-10 RC.
CJ
@CasualArtyFan
·
21m
Russians admit they’ve been pushed out of Novodontesk, after initially claiming the Ukrainian attack was “stopped.” Notable here is that the 37th Marine Brigade operates NATO gear, including AMX-10 RC.
danielboon
TB Fanatic
Jonathan Beale
@bealejonathan
·
23m
U.K. Defence Min
@JSHeappey
asked by MPs if #Ukraine military ops over the past 24 hours were the start of long awaited offensive replied “it might be”. Also said too early to say Russian claim of halting “major” attack near Donetsk were credible
@bealejonathan
·
23m
U.K. Defence Min
@JSHeappey
asked by MPs if #Ukraine military ops over the past 24 hours were the start of long awaited offensive replied “it might be”. Also said too early to say Russian claim of halting “major” attack near Donetsk were credible
danielboon
TB Fanatic
EndGameWW3 Retweeted
Thomas van Linge
@ThomasVLinge
·
34m
#Russia : in a latest video the insurgents state they are the only authority in the village of Nova Tavolzhanka in what appears to be claim of control over the #Belgorod town. View: https://twitter.com/ThomasVLinge/status/1665744922006134789
Thomas van Linge
@ThomasVLinge
·
34m
#Russia : in a latest video the insurgents state they are the only authority in the village of Nova Tavolzhanka in what appears to be claim of control over the #Belgorod town. View: https://twitter.com/ThomasVLinge/status/1665744922006134789
wait-n-see
Veteran Member
Vremievsky salient situation as of 18.00 June 5, 2023 East of the Vremievsky salient, an AFU armored group managed to push Russian troops out of Novodonetskoye. During the attack, for the first time, Ukrainian formations used German Leopard tanks - now there are two Leopards and five AFVs in Novodonetske. The AFU are regrouping as they suffered heavy losses in manpower. Also, Russian gunners destroyed 9 wheeled armored vehicles. West of Novodonetsk, about 10 pieces of equipment and 40-100 infantrymen were stationed in the forest belt. In addition, the concentration of forces of the 37th Naval Infantry Brigade of the Ukrainian Navy in the direction of Urozhaynoye was noted. Most likely, the enemy plans to attack the flank of the Russian grouping once reserves arrive.
View: https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1665742938574401537?cxt=HHwWgsC9zZGY9J0uAAAA
View: https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status/1665742938574401537?cxt=HHwWgsC9zZGY9J0uAAAA
danielboon
TB Fanatic
EndGameWW3
@EndGameWW3
·
1h
Update: The Estonian Ministry of Defense: We need military reinforcements from NATO due to the growing Russian threats.