Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
Glosses over essentially that little "invasion" of Crimea.
Glosses over the little green men in Donbas since 2014? Ish. "Only 50 foreign fighters" sure.gif
Putin is demilitarizing the Ukraine! Ok, so your invading a sovereign country to defeat its military. Pretty classic communist rebranding there.
Maybe I didn't get to the good part but he took a long time getting there and at some point I've had my fill of rehashed Kremlin talking points.
@RatherBeBrewing will probably be more willing and motivated to post a tequila style takedown.
Not even worth my usual explanation. Mssr Baud is just a simple expert for hire, and his client is Russia. In fact, any of you can hire him to lend his resume to whatever you would like him to justify or distort - it’s not very difficult to find how.
There’s no nice way to say this, but if anyone believes this assclown they are either very dim or are just looking for a source that confirms what they want to believe. I’m dumb for having read it, and even dumber for bothering to write the shit below.
Look at Baud’s articles and interviews. Special military operation this, special military operation that. That’s to avoid Russia’s new laws, where you can’t call their invasion a war. That should be a dead giveaway every time.
Denazification, Russian speaker genocide, THE Ukraine, speaking about the tiny parcels of two oblasts as if they are legitimate republics. Trying to explain the ass kicking in Kyiv as the original plan, and all those dead Russian soldiers are by design to spare civilians, instead of air strikes like the Western strategy. Although Russia has used more cruise missiles in two months than the United States has used in TOTAL in all conflicts in the last 30 years, but few people will check. Jesus, the use of MLRS like the Smerch (successor to the still in heavy use Uragan and Grad) with cluster munitions by both Russia and Ukraine is worse than air strikes for civilians by far.
That seemed like your normal response. The points about the attacks on the cities other than the two in the most south-eastern region make a lot of sense. Are you familiar with this author Baud? I am not. You're dismissing his opinions as Putin mouth--piece works for hire. I'm not sure the sophomoric claim Russia began this invasion and war as a means to rid the Donbas region of Nazis was the premise of the article but it is a fair criticism I suppose. Who were these mercenaries for hire then who had been committing attrocities in that region for years? Where do you get the intel in regard to the quantities and types of munitions being used?
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
It’s a cliche, but Putin is really doing his best to provide us with an Orwellian world.
Different book, but I just recently saw that the only foreword for a translation of Animal Farm that Orwell wrote was for one translated by a Ukrainian refugee in a German camp. Orwell requested no royalties so more refugees could read it. Of the 5,000 copies all but 1,500 were destroyed, mostly by American and British soldiers as the US didn’t want to offend the Soviet occupying force. It’s a shame, and once again shows the overestimation of the Red Army by the West; assuming they would be interested in a book, that they could read, and deduce that it was an allegory. General Eisenhower stopped repatriating Soviet refugees, much to Stalin’s anger, when he found out they were committing suicide to avoid it. The refugees, many of whom were originally taken to Germany as slave labor, were executed or sent to labor camps upon return - for treason.
For an American movie-type ending: the refugee who translated the book eventually made it to the US, becoming a professor at Berkeley, Columbia, and the chair of Byzantine studies at Harvard.
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
It’s a cliche, but Putin is really doing his best to provide us with an Orwellian world.
Different book, but I just recently saw that the only foreword for a translation of Animal Farm that Orwell wrote was for one translated by a Ukrainian refugee in a German camp. Orwell requested no royalties so more refugees could read it. Of the 5,000 copies all but 1,500 were destroyed, mostly by American and British soldiers as the US didn’t want to offend the Soviet occupying force. It’s a shame, and once again shows the overestimation of the Red Army by the West; assuming they would be interested in a book, that they could read, and deduce that it was an allegory. General Eisenhower stopped repatriating Soviet refugees, much to Stalin’s anger, when he found out they were committing suicide to avoid it. The refugees, many of whom were originally taken to Germany as slave labor, were executed or sent to labor camps upon return - for treason.
For an American movie-type ending: the refugee who translated the book eventually made it to the US, becoming a professor at Berkeley, Columbia, and the chair of Byzantine studies at Harvard.
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
Glosses over essentially that little "invasion" of Crimea.
Glosses over the little green men in Donbas since 2014? Ish. "Only 50 foreign fighters" sure.gif
Putin is demilitarizing the Ukraine! Ok, so your invading a sovereign country to defeat its military. Pretty classic communist rebranding there.
Maybe I didn't get to the good part but he took a long time getting there and at some point I've had my fill of rehashed Kremlin talking points.
@RatherBeBrewing will probably be more willing and motivated to post a tequila style takedown.
Not even worth my usual explanation. Mssr Baud is just a simple expert for hire, and his client is Russia. In fact, any of you can hire him to lend his resume to whatever you would like him to justify or distort - it’s not very difficult to find how.
There’s no nice way to say this, but if anyone believes this assclown they are either very dim or are just looking for a source that confirms what they want to believe. I’m dumb for having read it, and even dumber for bothering to write the shit below.
Look at Baud’s articles and interviews. Special military operation this, special military operation that. That’s to avoid Russia’s new laws, where you can’t call their invasion a war. That should be a dead giveaway every time.
Denazification, Russian speaker genocide, THE Ukraine, speaking about the tiny parcels of two oblasts as if they are legitimate republics. Trying to explain the ass kicking in Kyiv as the original plan, and all those dead Russian soldiers are by design to spare civilians, instead of air strikes like the Western strategy. Although Russia has used more cruise missiles in two months than the United States has used in TOTAL in all conflicts in the last 30 years, but few people will check. Jesus, the use of MLRS like the Smerch (successor to the still in heavy use Uragan and Grad) with cluster munitions by both Russia and Ukraine is worse than air strikes for civilians by far.
I've been sitting on this for a while because I wanted to collect my thoughts, and I'm busy af. Your point about referencing a "special military operation" is fair.
The challenge I have - especially when trying to get to the bottom of what's going on - is the rote line we hear "Putin is invading a sovereign country!!" Why? "Because he's worse than Hitler!" What if I want to know more? "Putin apologist!!"
After the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, we heard all about the 50 intelligence officers saying "it has the hallmarks of Russian disinformation!!" Well, frankly, the US Govt's explanation has all the hallmarks of every tim they've gas lit the American public the last 6 years - from Russiagate to Covid and many many parts in between.
So how is this different? Given recent history, "Putin is evil" by itself is not a good enough explanation.
When one searches for more substantive understanding, it's almost always castigated as Russian Misinformation. That might be true to some degree, but when we are not allowed to parse out fact from fiction, we are eternally where we started with the narrative makers stonewalling the conversation. It's happened here on this bored many times.
I think of the information we are hearing as a 3-sided venn diagram - Western narrative, Russo narrative and objective truth. How are we supposed to discern the intersection of the 3-sides when we aren't allowed to even entertain a differing explanation.
Nearly all of the independent media has some nuance around the idea that the US could/should have done more to stop the war before it started. And a lot are so perplexed that they take it a step further, that the US wanted a war to break out. Given the ever escalating rhetoric from the Administration, it's not hard to believe this is the case.
Getting back to Baud: In my view the compelling part of the story he has to tell is that it corroborates in much greater detail what fmr weapons inspector Scott Ritter and ret. Col Douglas Macgregor under Gen Wesley Clark at NATO, and academic John Mearsheimer have been saying the entire tim. Two of those three are US soldiers/officers who are very much still loyal to the US (despite smears).
Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying there seems to be a lot more there then the US want's discussed, for whatever reasons.
Further, this pervading idea that the US govt a would NEVER lie and we must fall in line behind their assertions just seems crazy in light of what's happened the last 6 years - and orders of magnitude more so the last 2.5.
Admittedly I don't know enough about this conflict. But the one thing I do know, is I can not trust the us govt/msm apparatchik. So yeah, I'm going to turn to more independent sources to help understand what's going.
So here is a headline from today's Oregonian. Shocking that after NATO countries are sending tens of billions of dollars of money and military supplies to the Ukraine, that the Russians turned off the oil and gas. What the hell is wrong with supposedly EU elites that they would describe this as "blackmail". Geezus. But it does show the uneven coverage from Western news sources.
President Donald Trump has signed a law that will impose sanctions on any firm that helps Russia's state-owned gas company, Gazprom, finish a pipeline into the European Union.
The sanctions target firms building Nord Stream 2, an undersea pipeline that will allow Russia to increase gas exports to Germany.
The US considers the project a security risk to Europe.
Both Russia and the EU have strongly condemned the US sanctions.
Congress voted through the measures as part of a defence bill last week and the legislation, which described the pipeline as a "tool of coercion", was signed off by Mr Trump on Friday.
Why is the US against the pipeline? The almost $11bn (£8.4bn) Nord Stream 2 project has infuriated the US, with both Republican and Democratic lawmakers opposing it.
The Trump administration fears the pipeline will tighten Russia's grip over Europe's energy supply and reduce its own share of the lucrative European market for American liquefied natural gas.
President Trump told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg during a meeting in 2018 that the Western alliance, particularly Germany, is "totally controlled" by Russia through oil and gas deals.
"We're supposed to protect you against Russia but they're paying billions of dollars to Russia?" Trump asked. "I think that's very inappropriate."
"And the former Chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that is supplying the gas. Ultimately, Germany will have almost 70% of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas. So you tell me, is that appropriate? I've been complaining about this from the time I got in."
Trump called on Germany to "step it up" on their contribution to NATO immediately, "not 10 years from now."
"Germany as far as I am concerned is captive to Russia ... we're supposed to protect Germany while they are getting their energy from Russia, explain that," Trump asked the NATO Secretary-General.
Trump called it "very unfair" to the United States and its taxpayers.
Fox News had some lady on this morning who just had a baby in the United States but she's from Ukraine and just moved back there if I got that part right. She was grateful for having the baby in rhe US because of the incredible health-care versus what people she knows received in Kiev and their babies were beorn prematurely and or didn't survive. Again, I think I got most of that right and Bill and Dana were just gushing over this lady and her requests for $40 billion dollars. Who is this woman demanding the United States give Ukraine $40 billion to defeat Russia? I just couldn't believe Bill and Dana just glossed over that demand.
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
Glosses over essentially that little "invasion" of Crimea.
Glosses over the little green men in Donbas since 2014? Ish. "Only 50 foreign fighters" sure.gif
Putin is demilitarizing the Ukraine! Ok, so your invading a sovereign country to defeat its military. Pretty classic communist rebranding there.
Maybe I didn't get to the good part but he took a long time getting there and at some point I've had my fill of rehashed Kremlin talking points.
@RatherBeBrewing will probably be more willing and motivated to post a tequila style takedown.
Not even worth my usual explanation. Mssr Baud is just a simple expert for hire, and his client is Russia. In fact, any of you can hire him to lend his resume to whatever you would like him to justify or distort - it’s not very difficult to find how.
There’s no nice way to say this, but if anyone believes this assclown they are either very dim or are just looking for a source that confirms what they want to believe. I’m dumb for having read it, and even dumber for bothering to write the shit below.
Look at Baud’s articles and interviews. Special military operation this, special military operation that. That’s to avoid Russia’s new laws, where you can’t call their invasion a war. That should be a dead giveaway every time.
Denazification, Russian speaker genocide, THE Ukraine, speaking about the tiny parcels of two oblasts as if they are legitimate republics. Trying to explain the ass kicking in Kyiv as the original plan, and all those dead Russian soldiers are by design to spare civilians, instead of air strikes like the Western strategy. Although Russia has used more cruise missiles in two months than the United States has used in TOTAL in all conflicts in the last 30 years, but few people will check. Jesus, the use of MLRS like the Smerch (successor to the still in heavy use Uragan and Grad) with cluster munitions by both Russia and Ukraine is worse than air strikes for civilians by far.
I've been sitting on this for a while because I wanted to collect my thoughts, and I'm busy af. Your point about referencing a "special military operation" is fair.
The challenge I have - especially when trying to get to the bottom of what's going on - is the rote line we hear "Putin is invading a sovereign country!!" Why? "Because he's worse than Hitler!" What if I want to know more? "Putin apologist!!"
After the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, we heard all about the 50 intelligence officers saying "it has the hallmarks of Russian disinformation!!" Well, frankly, the US Govt's explanation has all the hallmarks of every tim they've gas lit the American public the last 6 years - from Russiagate to Covid and many many parts in between.
So how is this different? Given recent history, "Putin is evil" by itself is not a good enough explanation.
When one searches for more substantive understanding, it's almost always castigated as Russian Misinformation. That might be true to some degree, but when we are not allowed to parse out fact from fiction, we are eternally where we started with the narrative makers stonewalling the conversation. It's happened here on this bored many times.
I think of the information we are hearing as a 3-sided venn diagram - Western narrative, Russo narrative and objective truth. How are we supposed to discern the intersection of the 3-sides when we aren't allowed to even entertain a differing explanation.
Nearly all of the independent media has some nuance around the idea that the US could/should have done more to stop the war before it started. And a lot are so perplexed that they take it a step further, that the US wanted a war to break out. Given the ever escalating rhetoric from the Administration, it's not hard to believe this is the case.
Getting back to Baud: In my view the compelling part of the story he has to tell is that it corroborates in much greater detail what fmr weapons inspector Scott Ritter and ret. Col Douglas Macgregor under Gen Wesley Clark at NATO, and academic John Mearsheimer have been saying the entire tim. Two of those three are US soldiers/officers who are very much still loyal to the US (despite smears).
Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying there seems to be a lot more there then the US want's discussed, for whatever reasons.
Further, this pervading idea that the US govt a would NEVER lie and we must fall in line behind their assertions just seems crazy in light of what's happened the last 6 years - and orders of magnitude more so the last 2.5.
Admittedly I don't know enough about this conflict. But the one thing I do know, is I can not trust the us govt/msm apparatchik. So yeah, I'm going to turn to more independent sources to help understand what's going.
*I may add on more in the morning when less tired
The US government can be lying just the same as the Kremlin. Considering both sides doesn't necessarily get one any closer to the truth.
The venn diagram can just be three separate circles after all.
Occam's razor says this war is about 3 things.
Ukraine's potential to become a gas competitor to Russia in Europe. (See previous Georgia invasion iirc)
Russia vs. NATO proxy security dominoes.
Russia's gross miscalculation that this would be a 3 day war where they would be greeted as liberators and able to setup a client state easily. (Typical of authoritarian regimes that live in an echo chamber)
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
Glosses over essentially that little "invasion" of Crimea.
Glosses over the little green men in Donbas since 2014? Ish. "Only 50 foreign fighters" sure.gif
Putin is demilitarizing the Ukraine! Ok, so your invading a sovereign country to defeat its military. Pretty classic communist rebranding there.
Maybe I didn't get to the good part but he took a long time getting there and at some point I've had my fill of rehashed Kremlin talking points.
@RatherBeBrewing will probably be more willing and motivated to post a tequila style takedown.
Not even worth my usual explanation. Mssr Baud is just a simple expert for hire, and his client is Russia. In fact, any of you can hire him to lend his resume to whatever you would like him to justify or distort - it’s not very difficult to find how.
There’s no nice way to say this, but if anyone believes this assclown they are either very dim or are just looking for a source that confirms what they want to believe. I’m dumb for having read it, and even dumber for bothering to write the shit below.
Look at Baud’s articles and interviews. Special military operation this, special military operation that. That’s to avoid Russia’s new laws, where you can’t call their invasion a war. That should be a dead giveaway every time.
Denazification, Russian speaker genocide, THE Ukraine, speaking about the tiny parcels of two oblasts as if they are legitimate republics. Trying to explain the ass kicking in Kyiv as the original plan, and all those dead Russian soldiers are by design to spare civilians, instead of air strikes like the Western strategy. Although Russia has used more cruise missiles in two months than the United States has used in TOTAL in all conflicts in the last 30 years, but few people will check. Jesus, the use of MLRS like the Smerch (successor to the still in heavy use Uragan and Grad) with cluster munitions by both Russia and Ukraine is worse than air strikes for civilians by far.
I've been sitting on this for a while because I wanted to collect my thoughts, and I'm busy af. Your point about referencing a "special military operation" is fair.
The challenge I have - especially when trying to get to the bottom of what's going on - is the rote line we hear "Putin is invading a sovereign country!!" Why? "Because he's worse than Hitler!" What if I want to know more? "Putin apologist!!"
After the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, we heard all about the 50 intelligence officers saying "it has the hallmarks of Russian disinformation!!" Well, frankly, the US Govt's explanation has all the hallmarks of every tim they've gas lit the American public the last 6 years - from Russiagate to Covid and many many parts in between.
So how is this different? Given recent history, "Putin is evil" by itself is not a good enough explanation.
When one searches for more substantive understanding, it's almost always castigated as Russian Misinformation. That might be true to some degree, but when we are not allowed to parse out fact from fiction, we are eternally where we started with the narrative makers stonewalling the conversation. It's happened here on this bored many times.
I think of the information we are hearing as a 3-sided venn diagram - Western narrative, Russo narrative and objective truth. How are we supposed to discern the intersection of the 3-sides when we aren't allowed to even entertain a differing explanation.
Nearly all of the independent media has some nuance around the idea that the US could/should have done more to stop the war before it started. And a lot are so perplexed that they take it a step further, that the US wanted a war to break out. Given the ever escalating rhetoric from the Administration, it's not hard to believe this is the case.
Getting back to Baud: In my view the compelling part of the story he has to tell is that it corroborates in much greater detail what fmr weapons inspector Scott Ritter and ret. Col Douglas Macgregor under Gen Wesley Clark at NATO, and academic John Mearsheimer have been saying the entire tim. Two of those three are US soldiers/officers who are very much still loyal to the US (despite smears).
Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying there seems to be a lot more there then the US want's discussed, for whatever reasons.
Further, this pervading idea that the US govt a would NEVER lie and we must fall in line behind their assertions just seems crazy in light of what's happened the last 6 years - and orders of magnitude more so the last 2.5.
Admittedly I don't know enough about this conflict. But the one thing I do know, is I can not trust the us govt/msm apparatchik. So yeah, I'm going to turn to more independent sources to help understand what's going.
*I may add on more in the morning when less tired
The US government can be lying just the same as the Kremlin. Considering both sides doesn't necessarily get one any closer to the truth.
The venn diagram can just be three separate circles after all.
Occam's razor says this war is about 3 things.
Ukraine's potential to become a gas competitor to Russia in Europe. (See previous Georgia invasion iirc)
Russia vs. NATO proxy security dominoes.
Russia's gross miscalculation that this would be a 3 day war where they would be greeted as liberators and able to setup a client state easily. (Typical of authoritarian regimes that live in an echo chamber)
Within the Venn diagram I don't think the Western narrative and Russo narrative circles overlap - at all. I think this more than anything allows the narrative makers to smear any dissenting opinion.
This is the first I'm hearing about UKR being a competitor to Russia for a petrodollar. In the past, UKR collected a fee when Russia used their pipes to transport energy. That went away with the Nordstream projects. (I know nothing about the Georgia Invasion to make an evaluation in this conversation.)
Russia v NATO proxy security dominoes seems to me to be the lynch-pin to this whole conflict. I'm open to being wrong however I see the preponderance of evidence leaning that way.
Russian miscalculations in their war-gaming model for how long this would take appear to be a think. However two claims need to be parsed out. In particular,
Scott Ritter makes the point that the way the US does war is to flatten everything - all of it. Whereas in his view, he thinks Russia does not want to actually destroy UKR or it's infrastructure and is being more methodical and surgical.
Secondly, there is an idea floating around that time is on the side of Russia. They can afford to wait, to operate in a very calculated, maybe surgical, manor. For example, we know their preference is to let Azof rot in the Maripol bunker/complex, As opposed to bursting in like the Kool-aide man.
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
Glosses over essentially that little "invasion" of Crimea.
Glosses over the little green men in Donbas since 2014? Ish. "Only 50 foreign fighters" sure.gif
Putin is demilitarizing the Ukraine! Ok, so your invading a sovereign country to defeat its military. Pretty classic communist rebranding there.
Maybe I didn't get to the good part but he took a long time getting there and at some point I've had my fill of rehashed Kremlin talking points.
@RatherBeBrewing will probably be more willing and motivated to post a tequila style takedown.
Not even worth my usual explanation. Mssr Baud is just a simple expert for hire, and his client is Russia. In fact, any of you can hire him to lend his resume to whatever you would like him to justify or distort - it’s not very difficult to find how.
There’s no nice way to say this, but if anyone believes this assclown they are either very dim or are just looking for a source that confirms what they want to believe. I’m dumb for having read it, and even dumber for bothering to write the shit below.
Look at Baud’s articles and interviews. Special military operation this, special military operation that. That’s to avoid Russia’s new laws, where you can’t call their invasion a war. That should be a dead giveaway every time.
Denazification, Russian speaker genocide, THE Ukraine, speaking about the tiny parcels of two oblasts as if they are legitimate republics. Trying to explain the ass kicking in Kyiv as the original plan, and all those dead Russian soldiers are by design to spare civilians, instead of air strikes like the Western strategy. Although Russia has used more cruise missiles in two months than the United States has used in TOTAL in all conflicts in the last 30 years, but few people will check. Jesus, the use of MLRS like the Smerch (successor to the still in heavy use Uragan and Grad) with cluster munitions by both Russia and Ukraine is worse than air strikes for civilians by far.
That seemed like your normal response. The points about the attacks on the cities other than the two in the most south-eastern region make a lot of sense. Are you familiar with this author Baud? I am not. You're dismissing his opinions as Putin mouth--piece works for hire. I'm not sure the sophomoric claim Russia began this invasion and war as a means to rid the Donbas region of Nazis was the premise of the article but it is a fair criticism I suppose. Who were these mercenaries for hire then who had been committing attrocities in that region for years? Where do you get the intel in regard to the quantities and types of munitions being used?
As an FYI I know not all pro-Russian analysts, journalists, whoever are on the Russian payroll. Some are just commies who never got over it, others just want attention for their work which the media likes to present both sides in something opaque, Russophiles, anti-American sentiment holders, and some are just edgelords and contrarians like the Butter Goblin.
I’ve been on a mini-vacation and started writing this like a week ago, so if it’s disjointed and more incoherent than I’d prefer I am sorry. I thought about deleting this, but the sunken cost fallacy kept me from it. Feel free to ignore, in the future I won’t be as detailed - I just had some wait time at the airport. Did you know that you have to check your bags in a whole hour before take-off? I did but I thought they’d give some leeway when my lady explained to them why she needs a 44 pound checked bag for a 5 night trip and how every item is essential and that 53 minutes is, like, basically an hour. Dude felt bad, offered me an exit row on the next flight. But she said she doesn’t feel comfortable with the responsibility. He felt even more pity and bumped us up from steerage to whatever they call business class now. Free drinks! Neither of us drink, but I appreciate the sentiment, Alaska Airlines is a real pal even though they sponsor a field I’m not fond of.
With you I can’t tell if you’re just specifically hostile to me for some reason since you’ve incorrectly assumed my political views several times and have ignored everything else, or if you just have incorrect information and thus the resulting bad takes. You seem like a smart and reasonable person, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and a well researched answer.
Preface: Russian propaganda isn’t meant to convince the foreign audience. That’s a bonus when it happens. Their job is to steal urgency by creating confusion and alternate narratives.
I was not familiar with this one colonel Baud fellow, but I speak French so I was able to get caught up on him fairly quickly. His bonafides are legit, that’s what makes experts like this so useful for propaganda.
The denazification thing may not be the premise of that article, but he has repeatedly used those words and other terminology that are hallmarks of Russian propaganda. No one says the special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine unless they’re following Kremlin instructions.
It’s not sophomoric, this is the bread and butter of Putin’s machine. In 2014 during the Crimean invasion these billboards were everywhere, they say “on March 16th we decide: swastika or Russia” and what’s funny is that the two options were Yes (join Russia) or No (not be part of Ukraine) but they were the same option, sloppy marketing.
I like how you couch that bolded part. As in you take it at face value that there were mercenaries, the what/why/how is taken for granted while you only asked about who. It was the American mercenaries; Blackwater. They ceased to exist under that name many years before, but they decided to show up in Ukraine to exterminate Russian speakers. Not my work unweaving the origin of this particular turd, but I’ll organize and explain. Context: 2014, Russia invades Ukraine with little green men. A verified, admitted, and fucking obvious fact that Baud still denies.
1. Russian troll farm throws out tons of shit, a veritable diarrhea firehose of falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Villains in Ukraine are: Zionists, Nazi, Communists, George Soros, GOP/DEM, chemtrails, gay frogs, heterosexual frogs, Oregon football will get the hammer, ISIS, China, aliens, Kanye, and monitors engagement.
2 Home run: people like shit about the Erik Prince and his Blackwater mercenaries who killed civvies in Iraq.
3. Aleksandr Dugin, known as “Putin’s philosopher” and a quotable fellow (see below) posts that Greystone a subsidiary of Blackwater is in Ukraine.
4. The commies at Voltairenet stop giving each other rimjobs long enough to screenshot Dugin (yes he’s an imperialist fascist who admires Nazis, but he likes Stalin so they like him).
5. Tankies see that, and it starts making the rounds. Before you know it Iranian TV shows a video from Donetsk of angry locals running at men in what appears to be some kind of SpecOps kit. They are yelling “Blackwater! Blackwater!”
6. Viral. People tweet shit like “Hmm this situation isn’t as clear cut as I thought! Maybe the Russians are the good guys and Ukraine is hiring Blackwater? I dunno what to think.”
7. Major newspapers and other news delivery systems pick up on it. “Are notorious Blackwater operatives in Ukraine???” Small print: we don’t know thanks for clicking and seeing an ad for Turdington’s Dry Ball Lotion here’s some twitter links.
8. Any Slavic language speaker can tell that the people are not yelling Blackwater, they’re yelling ‘rabotai’ which sounds similar and is from the same Slavic root with which Isaac Asimov gave us the word robot. It means work, or get to work. Anyone familiar with those firearms and kit can tell you those are EE gear unlikely to be used by them but possible. Those familiar with Ukraine’s various Spetznaz units can tell you that’s Alfa (Alpha) Group. Computer literacy can show where the original video had been posted weeks prior, and gives context: Russian militia attempted to kidnap the local governor, Alpha rescues him, angry locals yell at him and them to get to work and clear the area from Russian saboteurs. On 3/9/2014 Russian propaganda uses an edited video of Ukrainians from 3/3/14 to claim they are American mercenaries. Dumbasses run with it to get clicks.
Note: Erik Prince did get involved in Ukraine. But much, much later and in a very different capacity. He, with shady Ukrainians and/or Russians, wanted a $10 billion deal with Ukraine. Prince wanted to own MotorSich, a Ukrainian company that China tried to buy. MotorSich manufactures engines for helicopters, jets, civilian and military transportation. The US government didn’t want this to happen as it would drastically improve China’s air power. He’s the brother of Trump’s EdSec Betsy DeVos on the off-chance if anyone was unaware. Source: https://time.com/6076035/erik-prince-ukraine-private-army/?amp=true
The “mercenaries” is another Russian propaganda line. This one I know a lot about - because I went to see in 2014. You’ve taken it for granted that mercenaries existed and terrorized. Question: what’s a mercenary? In this scenario is it someone who receives payment for combat duties, but is not a member of the official armed forces of that country? Like a third party contractor? I know some foreigners came to fight in Ukraine, for and against. Some became well known.
I will say that both Ukrainian forces and the “pro-Russian rebels” (~75% of whom are literally fucking Russian citizens from the country of Russia who are fighting on behalf of Russia and are almost always active duty Russian soldiers) committed plenty of atrocities. But take a wild guess on which side committed them at 4x the rate, if not more?
The easy question of how I know the munitions used: For the MLRS systems: Grad, Smerch, Uragan, Tornado are pretty fucking hard to miss and this type of weapons system is the Russian and Ukrainian artillery of choice. They launch 40 6 foot tall 122mm rockets from tubes mounted on the backs of trucks. Like a Katyusha from WWII. One volley from one truck blankets ~60 acres in death. Cluster munitions are banned - by countries that are signatories which neither are and openly use, as evidenced by tons of videos and pictures of the delivery systems sans clusters.
For the cruise missiles: Ukraine, Russia, and the Pentagon keep us updated. They’re pretty fucking hard to miss lol. They can tell you the origin and model and whether it successfully detonated or were intercepted by Ukraine’s missile defense systems. Russia is quite proud of them, this is not a secret and I have no idea why you think this is at all in question. 20-60% of their missiles have been duds, some have been intercepted, some hit their targets and some didn’t. These are giant fucking things flying up to 5x the speed of sound, being launched from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, airplanes, the Black Sea, and even the Caspian Sea. Pretty hard to miss them, they’re not hiding in a house in Pakistan.
You: how do you know? Russian ministry of defense: we fired a Kh-M72n “Kinzhal” missile at Ukraine at such time and place, here’s a video.
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
Glosses over essentially that little "invasion" of Crimea.
Glosses over the little green men in Donbas since 2014? Ish. "Only 50 foreign fighters" sure.gif
Putin is demilitarizing the Ukraine! Ok, so your invading a sovereign country to defeat its military. Pretty classic communist rebranding there.
Maybe I didn't get to the good part but he took a long time getting there and at some point I've had my fill of rehashed Kremlin talking points.
@RatherBeBrewing will probably be more willing and motivated to post a tequila style takedown.
Not even worth my usual explanation. Mssr Baud is just a simple expert for hire, and his client is Russia. In fact, any of you can hire him to lend his resume to whatever you would like him to justify or distort - it’s not very difficult to find how.
There’s no nice way to say this, but if anyone believes this assclown they are either very dim or are just looking for a source that confirms what they want to believe. I’m dumb for having read it, and even dumber for bothering to write the shit below.
Look at Baud’s articles and interviews. Special military operation this, special military operation that. That’s to avoid Russia’s new laws, where you can’t call their invasion a war. That should be a dead giveaway every time.
Denazification, Russian speaker genocide, THE Ukraine, speaking about the tiny parcels of two oblasts as if they are legitimate republics. Trying to explain the ass kicking in Kyiv as the original plan, and all those dead Russian soldiers are by design to spare civilians, instead of air strikes like the Western strategy. Although Russia has used more cruise missiles in two months than the United States has used in TOTAL in all conflicts in the last 30 years, but few people will check. Jesus, the use of MLRS like the Smerch (successor to the still in heavy use Uragan and Grad) with cluster munitions by both Russia and Ukraine is worse than air strikes for civilians by far.
I've been sitting on this for a while because I wanted to collect my thoughts, and I'm busy af. Your point about referencing a "special military operation" is fair.
The challenge I have - especially when trying to get to the bottom of what's going on - is the rote line we hear "Putin is invading a sovereign country!!" Why? "Because he's worse than Hitler!" What if I want to know more? "Putin apologist!!"
After the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, we heard all about the 50 intelligence officers saying "it has the hallmarks of Russian disinformation!!" Well, frankly, the US Govt's explanation has all the hallmarks of every tim they've gas lit the American public the last 6 years - from Russiagate to Covid and many many parts in between.
So how is this different? Given recent history, "Putin is evil" by itself is not a good enough explanation.
When one searches for more substantive understanding, it's almost always castigated as Russian Misinformation. That might be true to some degree, but when we are not allowed to parse out fact from fiction, we are eternally where we started with the narrative makers stonewalling the conversation. It's happened here on this bored many times.
I think of the information we are hearing as a 3-sided venn diagram - Western narrative, Russo narrative and objective truth. How are we supposed to discern the intersection of the 3-sides when we aren't allowed to even entertain a differing explanation.
Nearly all of the independent media has some nuance around the idea that the US could/should have done more to stop the war before it started. And a lot are so perplexed that they take it a step further, that the US wanted a war to break out. Given the ever escalating rhetoric from the Administration, it's not hard to believe this is the case.
Getting back to Baud: In my view the compelling part of the story he has to tell is that it corroborates in much greater detail what fmr weapons inspector Scott Ritter and ret. Col Douglas Macgregor under Gen Wesley Clark at NATO, and academic John Mearsheimer have been saying the entire tim. Two of those three are US soldiers/officers who are very much still loyal to the US (despite smears).
Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying there seems to be a lot more there then the US want's discussed, for whatever reasons.
Further, this pervading idea that the US govt a would NEVER lie and we must fall in line behind their assertions just seems crazy in light of what's happened the last 6 years - and orders of magnitude more so the last 2.5.
Admittedly I don't know enough about this conflict. But the one thing I do know, is I can not trust the us govt/msm apparatchik. So yeah, I'm going to turn to more independent sources to help understand what's going.
*I may add on more in the morning when less tired
The US government can be lying just the same as the Kremlin. Considering both sides doesn't necessarily get one any closer to the truth.
The venn diagram can just be three separate circles after all.
Occam's razor says this war is about 3 things.
Ukraine's potential to become a gas competitor to Russia in Europe. (See previous Georgia invasion iirc)
Russia vs. NATO proxy security dominoes.
Russia's gross miscalculation that this would be a 3 day war where they would be greeted as liberators and able to setup a client state easily. (Typical of authoritarian regimes that live in an echo chamber)
Occam’s razor is that Russia is attempting to take back the crown jewel of their lost empire. It’s a pretty shitty crown if Ukraine is the crown jewel. But the pickings are slim in that part of the world.
Personal opinion on why options one and two aren’t the casus belli. 1. Ukraine does have gas and oil reserves, but nothing like Russia and much of it is dependent on shale. In the 1970s Ukraine’s most easily exploited reserves were already exported for Moscow’s gain. Ukraine now produces 1/3 of what they did then, which is about enough for Ukraine and gas hungry Germany combined and that’s all. What is it with Germans and gas?
2. If Russia didn’t want to have NATO neighbors then they’ve really fucked it up when Finland and Sweden join. They already have NATO on their borders, invading Ukraine and occupying it just adds more NATO borders. Who thinks NATO was going to attack Russia? They also were never going to allow Ukraine to join, you can’t join with a frozen conflict in progress and Ukraine has had one for eight years.
Your third point does carry some weight. Russia thinking this would be easy pickings and being mistaken, which forced them to double down to avoid loss of face or prestige or domestic power. Putin did this, he needs results. The FSB and GRU spent billions to buy Ukrainian politicians and thought this was going to be easy peasy. They forgot that Ukraine’s politicians corrupt enough to do this are, you know, corrupt. They kept the money and didn’t do shit. Vlad’s oil money is funding a Ukrainian MPs family. His daughter is now “studying” at the London School of Economics, living in a new penthouse, posting ass pics (sorry no link, I’ll try to find one) on IG to remind the world that her country is suffering and if you hit like you’ll help some orphans.
But it’s mostly the imperialism thing. Putin wrote a cute little historical essay full of made up shit and mistakes. I thought he was bored, and I was wrong; it was an actual manifesto. Historic distortion is a pretty stupid fucking reason for this, but when you’ve been in power this long and have done all kinds of shit then: * Dopamine receptors are short. After quitting drugs I got into working out, trying to bang as many chicks as I could, fashion, cars, greed, booze, grad school, I even tried to better myself. Because I didn’t realize that everything is meaningless and there are no more highs to achieve. Putin has done everything, he’s bored. * Legacy. The way a Subaru wants lesbians inside of them is the same way Putin wants his name in Russian history books.
Note: when this started in 2014 I truly believed that Putin and his kleptocracy needed to keep Ukraine away from the EU for one big reason; they’d get less corrupt in Kyiv and it would endanger Putin’s men and their ability to rob Russia blind.
I am never sure if I agree or disagree with @RatherBeBrewing , or, if I just like his brand of storytelling, but I look forward to his posts about as much as Subaru wants lesbians in them. Most interesting and creative poster in forever, and it isn't close. Probably on Zelensky's payroll and here as a disinformation actor to convince a few retards on a backwater Pac-12 program board that Putin is maybe gay.
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu? published by Max Milo.
This article appears through the gracious courtesy of Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, Paris. Translated from the French by N. Dass.
Glosses over essentially that little "invasion" of Crimea.
Glosses over the little green men in Donbas since 2014? Ish. "Only 50 foreign fighters" sure.gif
Putin is demilitarizing the Ukraine! Ok, so your invading a sovereign country to defeat its military. Pretty classic communist rebranding there.
Maybe I didn't get to the good part but he took a long time getting there and at some point I've had my fill of rehashed Kremlin talking points.
@RatherBeBrewing will probably be more willing and motivated to post a tequila style takedown.
Not even worth my usual explanation. Mssr Baud is just a simple expert for hire, and his client is Russia. In fact, any of you can hire him to lend his resume to whatever you would like him to justify or distort - it’s not very difficult to find how.
There’s no nice way to say this, but if anyone believes this assclown they are either very dim or are just looking for a source that confirms what they want to believe. I’m dumb for having read it, and even dumber for bothering to write the shit below.
Look at Baud’s articles and interviews. Special military operation this, special military operation that. That’s to avoid Russia’s new laws, where you can’t call their invasion a war. That should be a dead giveaway every time.
Denazification, Russian speaker genocide, THE Ukraine, speaking about the tiny parcels of two oblasts as if they are legitimate republics. Trying to explain the ass kicking in Kyiv as the original plan, and all those dead Russian soldiers are by design to spare civilians, instead of air strikes like the Western strategy. Although Russia has used more cruise missiles in two months than the United States has used in TOTAL in all conflicts in the last 30 years, but few people will check. Jesus, the use of MLRS like the Smerch (successor to the still in heavy use Uragan and Grad) with cluster munitions by both Russia and Ukraine is worse than air strikes for civilians by far.
I've been sitting on this for a while because I wanted to collect my thoughts, and I'm busy af. Your point about referencing a "special military operation" is fair.
The challenge I have - especially when trying to get to the bottom of what's going on - is the rote line we hear "Putin is invading a sovereign country!!" Why? "Because he's worse than Hitler!" What if I want to know more? "Putin apologist!!"
After the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, we heard all about the 50 intelligence officers saying "it has the hallmarks of Russian disinformation!!" Well, frankly, the US Govt's explanation has all the hallmarks of every tim they've gas lit the American public the last 6 years - from Russiagate to Covid and many many parts in between.
So how is this different? Given recent history, "Putin is evil" by itself is not a good enough explanation.
When one searches for more substantive understanding, it's almost always castigated as Russian Misinformation. That might be true to some degree, but when we are not allowed to parse out fact from fiction, we are eternally where we started with the narrative makers stonewalling the conversation. It's happened here on this bored many times.
I think of the information we are hearing as a 3-sided venn diagram - Western narrative, Russo narrative and objective truth. How are we supposed to discern the intersection of the 3-sides when we aren't allowed to even entertain a differing explanation.
Nearly all of the independent media has some nuance around the idea that the US could/should have done more to stop the war before it started. And a lot are so perplexed that they take it a step further, that the US wanted a war to break out. Given the ever escalating rhetoric from the Administration, it's not hard to believe this is the case.
Getting back to Baud: In my view the compelling part of the story he has to tell is that it corroborates in much greater detail what fmr weapons inspector Scott Ritter and ret. Col Douglas Macgregor under Gen Wesley Clark at NATO, and academic John Mearsheimer have been saying the entire tim. Two of those three are US soldiers/officers who are very much still loyal to the US (despite smears).
Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying there seems to be a lot more there then the US want's discussed, for whatever reasons.
Further, this pervading idea that the US govt a would NEVER lie and we must fall in line behind their assertions just seems crazy in light of what's happened the last 6 years - and orders of magnitude more so the last 2.5.
Admittedly I don't know enough about this conflict. But the one thing I do know, is I can not trust the us govt/msm apparatchik. So yeah, I'm going to turn to more independent sources to help understand what's going.
*I may add on more in the morning when less tired
The US government can be lying just the same as the Kremlin. Considering both sides doesn't necessarily get one any closer to the truth.
The venn diagram can just be three separate circles after all.
Occam's razor says this war is about 3 things.
Ukraine's potential to become a gas competitor to Russia in Europe. (See previous Georgia invasion iirc)
Russia vs. NATO proxy security dominoes.
Russia's gross miscalculation that this would be a 3 day war where they would be greeted as liberators and able to setup a client state easily. (Typical of authoritarian regimes that live in an echo chamber)
Within the Venn diagram I don't think the Western narrative and Russo narrative circles overlap - at all. I think this more than anything allows the narrative makers to smear any dissenting opinion.
This is the first I'm hearing about UKR being a competitor to Russia for a petrodollar. In the past, UKR collected a fee when Russia used their pipes to transport energy. That went away with the Nordstream projects. (I know nothing about the Georgia Invasion to make an evaluation in this conversation.)
Russia v NATO proxy security dominoes seems to me to be the lynch-pin to this whole conflict. I'm open to being wrong however I see the preponderance of evidence leaning that way.
Russian miscalculations in their war-gaming model for how long this would take appear to be a think. However two claims need to be parsed out. In particular,
Scott Ritter makes the point that the way the US does war is to flatten everything - all of it. Whereas in his view, he thinks Russia does not want to actually destroy UKR or it's infrastructure and is being more methodical and surgical.
Secondly, there is an idea floating around that time is on the side of Russia. They can afford to wait, to operate in a very calculated, maybe surgical, manor. For example, we know their preference is to let Azof rot in the Maripol bunker/complex, As opposed to bursting in like the Kool-aide man.
I’ll agree with you that the longer this goes on the more it favors Russia. Ukraine is a hot ticket to support now, but eventually a really important celebrity will die or an earthquake will hit some places where they use wattle for walls and rusty metal spikes for ceilings or some virgin will go to school and shoot the better looking, more popular kids.
I might disagree on not wanting to destroy, they’ve been really subtle but you can glean hints once in a while. For example, they’ve been destroying Ukraine, while saying that they would like to destroy Ukraine. It does get contradictory because they also say that Ukraine doesn’t exist, but if it did boy would they love to destroy it.
Quick question, the only one that isn’t just a mechanism of delivering my idea but one to answer: why do you keep trusting Russian government affiliated sources? Two days before launching the war they said they wouldn’t invade. They said it wasn’t them in Crimea and then went with a “gotcha it was really us” or that they weren’t in Donbas. Or that they didn’t shoot that plane full of Dutch people who thought no way Malaysia Airlines can fuck up twice in such a short time span. Like what’s the level of credibility they have with you?
Let’s ignore that Scott Ritter is a registered sex offender who went to prison for jacking off in front of his web camera for what he thought was a 15 year old girl. After he had previously tried to pick up minors for sex. His reasoning was he thought it was an adult play acting as a child. I think stings are ethically questionable, but if this dude kept trying to fuck 15 year olds then I question his judgment and thus the validity of what he says.
Just ignore that part. Let’s focus on the fact that he’s done work for Russian state media. Do you think he’s unbiased when the people who pay him are the same baddies invading another country? Rhetorical, don’t answer. He’s been wrong on so many things that saying his name is like telling me about college football and starting it with “Jimmy Lake says”, but Jimmy Lake in addition to being a shitty head coach also whacks off for undercover cops that he thinks aren’t old enough to get a driver’s license.
Anyway, I’m not sure who came up with the theory the US military flattens everything while Russia is “surgical” I know the US military loves them some shock and awe. However the Russian military tactical doctrine is artillery the fuck out of everything and then move in. Those MLRS systems with cluster payloads are surgical the same way the board game Operation is medical school.
Above: surgical.
They’re specifically hitting civilian infrastructure like schools, cultural sites, and hospitals. Kharkiv’s governor was saying back in March that it’s interesting that Russian artillery has singled out and destroyed the city’s schools.
Very nice of Putin to declare a siege of an obsolete steel plant after completely destroying a city slightly more populous than Minneapolis and killing tens of thousands of civilians. Satellite before and after:
A million more examples. Tactical doctrine is the phrase I used. Have you heard of Grozny? Aleppo? Tbilisi?
They, to use the technical terminology, fucked those places up. The US (lazily and with poor effect) tried to hold officers responsible for the My Lai massacre. Do you think Russia will do the same? Fuck no, different standards. It’s just how we, and I include myself because that’s where I’m from and received a good dose of indoctrination, view war. Death is acceptable and the European concept of minimal casualties is stupid. It’s a war, people will die, more people can be made, wars can’t be un-lost, we are tougher and willing to die.
Anyway, here’s some mildly related lighthearted stuff.
Not hostile to your opinion at all RBB. I asked the direct, devil's advocate questions because I really wanted to read your opinions which would flush the details out like you have been providing. I haven't been able to read your thouhhts yet but really look forward to them. I'm not sure exactly where I stand on this issue yet because while I know I shouldn't side with Russia almost ever, something doesn't pass the smell test with Ukraine and our? left's corruption there and it's fanatical desire to destroy Russia at all cost. They have been lying about Russia's influence in our country to the detriment of ours for years and I don't trust their motivation for war there is all. None of that matters as to the historical and regional knowledge you're sharing with us and why supporting Ukraine and going to war may be a good thing.
Not hostile to your opinion at all RBB. I asked the direct, devil's advocate questions because I really wanted to read your opinions which would flush the details out like you have been providing. I haven't been able to read your thouhhts yet but really look forward to them. I'm not sure exactly where I stand on this issue yet because while I know I shouldn't side with Russia almost ever, something doesn't pass the smell test with Ukraine and our? left's corruption there and it's fanatical desire to destroy Russia at all cost. They have been lying about Russia's influence in our country to the detriment of ours for years and I don't trust their motivation for war there is all. None of that matters as to the historical and regional knowledge you're sharing with us and why supporting Ukraine and going to war may be a good thing.
This whole thing started out with moral dilemma potential, but once Europe decided that it would rather keep its lights on than cut Russia off from currency, I stopped giving a fuck.
I am never sure if I agree or disagree with @RatherBeBrewing , or, if I just like his brand of storytelling, but I look forward to his posts about as much as Subaru wants lesbians in them. Most interesting and creative poster in forever, and it isn't close. Probably on Zelensky's payroll and here as a disinformation actor to convince a few retards on a backwater Pac-12 program board that Putin is maybe gay.
Wow, I just read it all in detail and thank you so much for the input. I don't support Russia or Putin. Their position in the world is evil period, end of story. But our government is evil too and needs to be exposed for the greed and destruction it wroughts across the globe. Your incredible insight in regard to Prince being Betsy DeVos's brother and the wealth he has amassed through the industrial war complex is a stellar example. I question everything our? own pravda is demanding we believe as to why we should spend another trillion dollars (hyperbole but we'll probably get there) defending the Ukraine (making Zelensky another billionaire) and taking Russia out at all cost.
So I really never focussed on who the mercenaries in the Donbas region were taking out civilians although your analysis of them not being Blackwater or any subsidiary of them was outstanding! I simply want to know why the Ukraine was fighting in this region killing Russian separatists. Perhaps those reports were also Russian propoganda? The whole Nazi narrative going back to unsettled, WWI and II scores is historically intriguing to me. It does seem these regional bias' against the Jews is something of interest. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and intelligence with us!
Comments
Burglary: De-cluttering Operation.
Armed robbery: Technologically Assisted De-monetization.
It’s a cliche, but Putin is really doing his best to provide us with an Orwellian world.
Different book, but I just recently saw that the only foreword for a translation of Animal Farm that Orwell wrote was for one translated by a Ukrainian refugee in a German camp. Orwell requested no royalties so more refugees could read it. Of the 5,000 copies all but 1,500 were destroyed, mostly by American and British soldiers as the US didn’t want to offend the Soviet occupying force. It’s a shame, and once again shows the overestimation of the Red Army by the West; assuming they would be interested in a book, that they could read, and deduce that it was an allegory. General Eisenhower stopped repatriating Soviet refugees, much to Stalin’s anger, when he found out they were committing suicide to avoid it. The refugees, many of whom were originally taken to Germany as slave labor, were executed or sent to labor camps upon return - for treason.
For an American movie-type ending: the refugee who translated the book eventually made it to the US, becoming a professor at Berkeley, Columbia, and the chair of Byzantine studies at Harvard.
One, they don't write songs like this anymore. Two Putin is scared. He is locked down tighter than the dementia patient and his fake White House.
The challenge I have - especially when trying to get to the bottom of what's going on - is the rote line we hear "Putin is invading a sovereign country!!" Why? "Because he's worse than Hitler!" What if I want to know more? "Putin apologist!!"
After the Hunter Biden laptop story broke, we heard all about the 50 intelligence officers saying "it has the hallmarks of Russian disinformation!!" Well, frankly, the US Govt's explanation has all the hallmarks of every tim they've gas lit the American public the last 6 years - from Russiagate to Covid and many many parts in between.
So how is this different? Given recent history, "Putin is evil" by itself is not a good enough explanation.
When one searches for more substantive understanding, it's almost always castigated as Russian Misinformation. That might be true to some degree, but when we are not allowed to parse out fact from fiction, we are eternally where we started with the narrative makers stonewalling the conversation. It's happened here on this bored many times.
I think of the information we are hearing as a 3-sided venn diagram - Western narrative, Russo narrative and objective truth. How are we supposed to discern the intersection of the 3-sides when we aren't allowed to even entertain a differing explanation.
Nearly all of the independent media has some nuance around the idea that the US could/should have done more to stop the war before it started. And a lot are so perplexed that they take it a step further, that the US wanted a war to break out. Given the ever escalating rhetoric from the Administration, it's not hard to believe this is the case.
Getting back to Baud: In my view the compelling part of the story he has to tell is that it corroborates in much greater detail what fmr weapons inspector Scott Ritter and ret. Col Douglas Macgregor under Gen Wesley Clark at NATO, and academic John Mearsheimer have been saying the entire tim. Two of those three are US soldiers/officers who are very much still loyal to the US (despite smears).
Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying there seems to be a lot more there then the US want's discussed, for whatever reasons.
Further, this pervading idea that the US govt a would NEVER lie and we must fall in line behind their assertions just seems crazy in light of what's happened the last 6 years - and orders of magnitude more so the last 2.5.
Admittedly I don't know enough about this conflict. But the one thing I do know, is I can not trust the us govt/msm apparatchik. So yeah, I'm going to turn to more independent sources to help understand what's going.
*I may add on more in the morning when less tired
President Donald Trump has signed a law that will impose sanctions on any firm that helps Russia's state-owned gas company, Gazprom, finish a pipeline into the European Union.
The sanctions target firms building Nord Stream 2, an undersea pipeline that will allow Russia to increase gas exports to Germany.
The US considers the project a security risk to Europe.
Both Russia and the EU have strongly condemned the US sanctions.
Congress voted through the measures as part of a defence bill last week and the legislation, which described the pipeline as a "tool of coercion", was signed off by Mr Trump on Friday.
Why is the US against the pipeline?
The almost $11bn (£8.4bn) Nord Stream 2 project has infuriated the US, with both Republican and Democratic lawmakers opposing it.
The Trump administration fears the pipeline will tighten Russia's grip over Europe's energy supply and reduce its own share of the lucrative European market for American liquefied natural gas.
https://realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/02/25/flashback_2018_president_trump_told_nato_secretary_europe_is_a_captive_of_russia_as_long_as_theyre_buying_russian_oil_and_gas.html
President Trump told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg during a meeting in 2018 that the Western alliance, particularly Germany, is "totally controlled" by Russia through oil and gas deals.
"We're supposed to protect you against Russia but they're paying billions of dollars to Russia?" Trump asked. "I think that's very inappropriate."
"And the former Chancellor of Germany is the head of the pipeline company that is supplying the gas. Ultimately, Germany will have almost 70% of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas. So you tell me, is that appropriate? I've been complaining about this from the time I got in."
Trump called on Germany to "step it up" on their contribution to NATO immediately, "not 10 years from now."
"Germany as far as I am concerned is captive to Russia ... we're supposed to protect Germany while they are getting their energy from Russia, explain that," Trump asked the NATO Secretary-General.
Trump called it "very unfair" to the United States and its taxpayers.
The venn diagram can just be three separate circles after all.
Occam's razor says this war is about 3 things.
Ukraine's potential to become a gas competitor to Russia in Europe. (See previous Georgia invasion iirc)
Russia vs. NATO proxy security dominoes.
Russia's gross miscalculation that this would be a 3 day war where they would be greeted as liberators and able to setup a client state easily. (Typical of authoritarian regimes that live in an echo chamber)
Within the Venn diagram I don't think the Western narrative and Russo narrative circles overlap - at all. I think this more than anything allows the narrative makers to smear any dissenting opinion.
This is the first I'm hearing about UKR being a competitor to Russia for a petrodollar. In the past, UKR collected a fee when Russia used their pipes to transport energy. That went away with the Nordstream projects. (I know nothing about the Georgia Invasion to make an evaluation in this conversation.)
Russia v NATO proxy security dominoes seems to me to be the lynch-pin to this whole conflict. I'm open to being wrong however I see the preponderance of evidence leaning that way.
Russian miscalculations in their war-gaming model for how long this would take appear to be a think. However two claims need to be parsed out. In particular,
Scott Ritter makes the point that the way the US does war is to flatten everything - all of it. Whereas in his view, he thinks Russia does not want to actually destroy UKR or it's infrastructure and is being more methodical and surgical.
Secondly, there is an idea floating around that time is on the side of Russia. They can afford to wait, to operate in a very calculated, maybe surgical, manor. For example, we know their preference is to let Azof rot in the Maripol bunker/complex, As opposed to bursting in like the Kool-aide man.
I’ve been on a mini-vacation and started writing this like a week ago, so if it’s disjointed and more incoherent than I’d prefer I am sorry. I thought about deleting this, but the sunken cost fallacy kept me from it. Feel free to ignore, in the future I won’t be as detailed - I just had some wait time at the airport. Did you know that you have to check your bags in a whole hour before take-off? I did but I thought they’d give some leeway when my lady explained to them why she needs a 44 pound checked bag for a 5 night trip and how every item is essential and that 53 minutes is, like, basically an hour. Dude felt bad, offered me an exit row on the next flight. But she said she doesn’t feel comfortable with the responsibility. He felt even more pity and bumped us up from steerage to whatever they call business class now. Free drinks! Neither of us drink, but I appreciate the sentiment, Alaska Airlines is a real pal even though they sponsor a field I’m not fond of.
With you I can’t tell if you’re just specifically hostile to me for some reason since you’ve incorrectly assumed my political views several times and have ignored everything else, or if you just have incorrect information and thus the resulting bad takes. You seem like a smart and reasonable person, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and a well researched answer.
Preface: Russian propaganda isn’t meant to convince the foreign audience. That’s a bonus when it happens. Their job is to steal urgency by creating confusion and alternate narratives.
I was not familiar with this one colonel Baud fellow, but I speak French so I was able to get caught up on him fairly quickly. His bonafides are legit, that’s what makes experts like this so useful for propaganda.
The denazification thing may not be the premise of that article, but he has repeatedly used those words and other terminology that are hallmarks of Russian propaganda. No one says the special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine unless they’re following Kremlin instructions.
It’s not sophomoric, this is the bread and butter of Putin’s machine. In 2014 during the Crimean invasion these billboards were everywhere, they say “on March 16th we decide: swastika or Russia” and what’s funny is that the two options were Yes (join Russia) or No (not be part of Ukraine) but they were the same option, sloppy marketing.
I like how you couch that bolded part. As in you take it at face value that there were mercenaries, the what/why/how is taken for granted while you only asked about who. It was the American mercenaries; Blackwater. They ceased to exist under that name many years before, but they decided to show up in Ukraine to exterminate Russian speakers. Not my work unweaving the origin of this particular turd, but I’ll organize and explain. Context: 2014, Russia invades Ukraine with little green men. A verified, admitted, and fucking obvious fact that Baud still denies.
1. Russian troll farm throws out tons of shit, a veritable diarrhea firehose of falsehoods and conspiracy theories. Villains in Ukraine are: Zionists, Nazi, Communists, George Soros, GOP/DEM, chemtrails, gay frogs, heterosexual frogs, Oregon football will get the hammer, ISIS, China, aliens, Kanye, and monitors engagement.
2 Home run: people like shit about the Erik Prince and his Blackwater mercenaries who killed civvies in Iraq.
3. Aleksandr Dugin, known as “Putin’s philosopher” and a quotable fellow (see below) posts that Greystone a subsidiary of Blackwater is in Ukraine.
4. The commies at Voltairenet stop giving each other rimjobs long enough to screenshot Dugin (yes he’s an imperialist fascist who admires Nazis, but he likes Stalin so they like him).
5. Tankies see that, and it starts making the rounds. Before you know it Iranian TV shows a video from Donetsk of angry locals running at men in what appears to be some kind of SpecOps kit. They are yelling “Blackwater! Blackwater!”
6. Viral. People tweet shit like “Hmm this situation isn’t as clear cut as I thought! Maybe the Russians are the good guys and Ukraine is hiring Blackwater? I dunno what to think.”
7. Major newspapers and other news delivery systems pick up on it. “Are notorious Blackwater operatives in Ukraine???” Small print: we don’t know thanks for clicking and seeing an ad for Turdington’s Dry Ball Lotion here’s some twitter links.
8. Any Slavic language speaker can tell that the people are not yelling Blackwater, they’re yelling ‘rabotai’ which sounds similar and is from the same Slavic root with which Isaac Asimov gave us the word robot. It means work, or get to work. Anyone familiar with those firearms and kit can tell you those are EE gear unlikely to be used by them but possible. Those familiar with Ukraine’s various Spetznaz units can tell you that’s Alfa (Alpha) Group. Computer literacy can show where the original video had been posted weeks prior, and gives context: Russian militia attempted to kidnap the local governor, Alpha rescues him, angry locals yell at him and them to get to work and clear the area from Russian saboteurs. On 3/9/2014 Russian propaganda uses an edited video of Ukrainians from 3/3/14 to claim they are American mercenaries. Dumbasses run with it to get clicks.
Note: Erik Prince did get involved in Ukraine. But much, much later and in a very different capacity. He, with shady Ukrainians and/or Russians, wanted a $10 billion deal with Ukraine. Prince wanted to own MotorSich, a Ukrainian company that China tried to buy. MotorSich manufactures engines for helicopters, jets, civilian and military transportation. The US government didn’t want this to happen as it would drastically improve China’s air power. He’s the brother of Trump’s EdSec Betsy DeVos on the off-chance if anyone was unaware. Source: https://time.com/6076035/erik-prince-ukraine-private-army/?amp=true
The “mercenaries” is another Russian propaganda line. This one I know a lot about - because I went to see in 2014. You’ve taken it for granted that mercenaries existed and terrorized. Question: what’s a mercenary? In this scenario is it someone who receives payment for combat duties, but is not a member of the official armed forces of that country? Like a third party contractor? I know some foreigners came to fight in Ukraine, for and against. Some became well known.
I will say that both Ukrainian forces and the “pro-Russian rebels” (~75% of whom are literally fucking Russian citizens from the country of Russia who are fighting on behalf of Russia and are almost always active duty Russian soldiers) committed plenty of atrocities. But take a wild guess on which side committed them at 4x the rate, if not more?
The easy question of how I know the munitions used:
For the MLRS systems: Grad, Smerch, Uragan, Tornado are pretty fucking hard to miss and this type of weapons system is the Russian and Ukrainian artillery of choice. They launch 40 6 foot tall 122mm rockets from tubes mounted on the backs of trucks. Like a Katyusha from WWII. One volley from one truck blankets ~60 acres in death. Cluster munitions are banned - by countries that are signatories which neither are and openly use, as evidenced by tons of videos and pictures of the delivery systems sans clusters.
For the cruise missiles: Ukraine, Russia, and the Pentagon keep us updated. They’re pretty fucking hard to miss lol. They can tell you the origin and model and whether it successfully detonated or were intercepted by Ukraine’s missile defense systems. Russia is quite proud of them, this is not a secret and I have no idea why you think this is at all in question. 20-60% of their missiles have been duds, some have been intercepted, some hit their targets and some didn’t. These are giant fucking things flying up to 5x the speed of sound, being launched from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, airplanes, the Black Sea, and even the Caspian Sea. Pretty hard to miss them, they’re not hiding in a house in Pakistan.
You: how do you know?
Russian ministry of defense: we fired a Kh-M72n “Kinzhal” missile at Ukraine at such time and place, here’s a video.
Personal opinion on why options one and two aren’t the casus belli.
1. Ukraine does have gas and oil reserves, but nothing like Russia and much of it is dependent on shale. In the 1970s Ukraine’s most easily exploited reserves were already exported for Moscow’s gain. Ukraine now produces 1/3 of what they did then, which is about enough for Ukraine and gas hungry Germany combined and that’s all. What is it with Germans and gas?
2. If Russia didn’t want to have NATO neighbors then they’ve really fucked it up when Finland and Sweden join. They already have NATO on their borders, invading Ukraine and occupying it just adds more NATO borders. Who thinks NATO was going to attack Russia? They also were never going to allow Ukraine to join, you can’t join with a frozen conflict in progress and Ukraine has had one for eight years.
Your third point does carry some weight. Russia thinking this would be easy pickings and being mistaken, which forced them to double down to avoid loss of face or prestige or domestic power. Putin did this, he needs results. The FSB and GRU spent billions to buy Ukrainian politicians and thought this was going to be easy peasy. They forgot that Ukraine’s politicians corrupt enough to do this are, you know, corrupt. They kept the money and didn’t do shit. Vlad’s oil money is funding a Ukrainian MPs family. His daughter is now “studying” at the London School of Economics, living in a new penthouse, posting ass pics (sorry no link, I’ll try to find one) on IG to remind the world that her country is suffering and if you hit like you’ll help some orphans.
But it’s mostly the imperialism thing. Putin wrote a cute little historical essay full of made up shit and mistakes. I thought he was bored, and I was wrong; it was an actual manifesto. Historic distortion is a pretty stupid fucking reason for this, but when you’ve been in power this long and have done all kinds of shit then:
* Dopamine receptors are short. After quitting drugs I got into working out, trying to bang as many chicks as I could, fashion, cars, greed, booze, grad school, I even tried to better myself. Because I didn’t realize that everything is meaningless and there are no more highs to achieve. Putin has done everything, he’s bored.
* Legacy. The way a Subaru wants lesbians inside of them is the same way Putin wants his name in Russian history books.
Note: when this started in 2014 I truly believed that Putin and his kleptocracy needed to keep Ukraine away from the EU for one big reason; they’d get less corrupt in Kyiv and it would endanger Putin’s men and their ability to rob Russia blind.
I might disagree on not wanting to destroy, they’ve been really subtle but you can glean hints once in a while. For example, they’ve been destroying Ukraine, while saying that they would like to destroy Ukraine. It does get contradictory because they also say that Ukraine doesn’t exist, but if it did boy would they love to destroy it.
Quick question, the only one that isn’t just a mechanism of delivering my idea but one to answer: why do you keep trusting Russian government affiliated sources? Two days before launching the war they said they wouldn’t invade. They said it wasn’t them in Crimea and then went with a “gotcha it was really us” or that they weren’t in Donbas. Or that they didn’t shoot that plane full of Dutch people who thought no way Malaysia Airlines can fuck up twice in such a short time span. Like what’s the level of credibility they have with you?
Let’s ignore that Scott Ritter is a registered sex offender who went to prison for jacking off in front of his web camera for what he thought was a 15 year old girl. After he had previously tried to pick up minors for sex. His reasoning was he thought it was an adult play acting as a child. I think stings are ethically questionable, but if this dude kept trying to fuck 15 year olds then I question his judgment and thus the validity of what he says.
Just ignore that part. Let’s focus on the fact that he’s done work for Russian state media. Do you think he’s unbiased when the people who pay him are the same baddies invading another country? Rhetorical, don’t answer. He’s been wrong on so many things that saying his name is like telling me about college football and starting it with “Jimmy Lake says”, but Jimmy Lake in addition to being a shitty head coach also whacks off for undercover cops that he thinks aren’t old enough to get a driver’s license.
Anyway, I’m not sure who came up with the theory the US military flattens everything while Russia is “surgical” I know the US military loves them some shock and awe. However the Russian military tactical doctrine is artillery the fuck out of everything and then move in. Those MLRS systems with cluster payloads are surgical the same way the board game Operation is medical school.
Above: surgical.
They’re specifically hitting civilian infrastructure like schools, cultural sites, and hospitals. Kharkiv’s governor was saying back in March that it’s interesting that Russian artillery has singled out and destroyed the city’s schools.
Very nice of Putin to declare a siege of an obsolete steel plant after completely destroying a city slightly more populous than Minneapolis and killing tens of thousands of civilians.
Satellite before and after:
Drone video of Mariupol before and after
American Civil War era surgical:
A million more examples. Tactical doctrine is the phrase I used. Have you heard of Grozny? Aleppo? Tbilisi?
They, to use the technical terminology, fucked those places up. The US (lazily and with poor effect) tried to hold officers responsible for the My Lai massacre. Do you think Russia will do the same? Fuck no, different standards. It’s just how we, and I include myself because that’s where I’m from and received a good dose of indoctrination, view war. Death is acceptable and the European concept of minimal casualties is stupid. It’s a war, people will die, more people can be made, wars can’t be un-lost, we are tougher and willing to die.
Anyway, here’s some mildly related lighthearted stuff.
So I really never focussed on who the mercenaries in the Donbas region were taking out civilians although your analysis of them not being Blackwater or any subsidiary of them was outstanding! I simply want to know why the Ukraine was fighting in this region killing Russian separatists. Perhaps those reports were also Russian propoganda? The whole Nazi narrative going back to unsettled, WWI and II scores is historically intriguing to me. It does seem these regional bias' against the Jews is something of interest. Thanks again for sharing your knowledge and intelligence with us!