Russian “False-Flag” operations in the Ukraine

Taras_Potatos wrote:You're damn right it didn't go as planned for khuilo and his bunch of barbarians.

You should check this article. Most likely it was scheduled for publication in advance and forgotten. Then Ukrainians have messed up invaders' plans and everything went down the drain from the aggressor's perspective. But the queue was never changed. ruSSian propaganda site RIA NEWS (РІА НОВОСТИ) has published this piece of work, then realized what they have done, and quickly removed this crap from their website. But waybackmachine was able to snapshot this sick man's delirium dream.

So here is the link for the snapshot in ruSSian for those who can read in this language:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051 ... 62336.html

And here is the translation:

https://www.craft.do/s/xCYMgIK4mW0wgt

Enjoy your reading.


And also you should know that all the support whether on personal or on State level, either material or psychological is very important for all of us here.

I did see the item on another board, where the poster had added that it couldn’t be verified as real or disinformation.
But so what?
If real, it simply confirms that Putin had the war planned from day one! If a Ukrainian piece of dis-information, well done! It hit the forum boards and even the media.
As if the Ukrainian’s would ever join hands with their country’s invaders. To simply wander off into Putin’s pipe dream of a pan-Russia singing the Russian version of Jambalaya!
Bull!
The Russians seem to suffer from some sort of amnesia. They are forgetting that once before; not that many years ago they conquered a sovereign nation. Held the cities, won the battles, yet in the end they lost the war, and left Afghanistan with their tails between their legs.

I just discovered this gem of an article:

https://russiandefpolicy.com/2022/02/07 ... n-ukraine/

It's a translation of an analysis of a Russian war with Ukraine from early February, and the author (a former Russian officer) disagrees with the apparently predominant opinion that any war with Ukraine is going to be a cake walk. In fact, he pretty much called out every single thing which went wrong for the Russians except for the insane thunder runs and FUBARed logistics. I think that level of incompetence was even too much for him to envision. But among the things he called out:

- The Russian leadership believed that no one would defend the "Kyiv regime", he argues that this idea is simply ludicrous and that the population in fact hates Moscow
--> Fact check: President Zelensky begs to differ, and 90% of his people agree

- They believed that a first strike would effectively crush the military, he argues that it's ridiculous to believe, that their available number of ballistic missiles and cruise missiles (only a few hundred) will be anywhere near sufficient to bring a country with almost the population size of France to its heels
--> Fact check: Several hundred missile strikes later Ukraine is still enthusiastically into the fight, and international analysts think the Russians are running low on missiles

- They believed that they'd get air superiority pretty fast, but the analyst cautions that the Chechens and Afghans didn't have a single fighter plan and still fought on for years, and that Ukrainian air defense has proven itself to be formidable in the 2008 war
--> Fact check: A week in, there's still no Russian air superiority, the Ukrainian air defense is still in action and the Ukrainian air force is still sortying

- The Russian leadership apparently believed that the Ukrainian forces are in a pathetic state, he disagrees and argues that they've been trained and armed up to NATO standards
--> Fact check: If anyone is in a pathetic state, it seems to be the Russians, so far the only thing which is working for them apparently is burying the Ukrainians under shells, rockets, and bodies of their conscripts

- They were of the opinion to end the conflict in a matter of hours, in response the analyst quotes "seize the city with one parachute regiment in two hours", which apparently is a reference to some Russian MoD's comment about being able to take Grozny in 1994 (not). He claims that the Ukrainian cities make it very easy for them to give the Russians one Stalingrad or Grozny after the other
--> Fact check: Regarding the parachute regiment comment, the (catastrophic) air assault on Hostomel comes to mind. Also, Kyiv still hasn't been taken, and likely won't be for weeks.


- They also think that the West won't send a single soldier to defend Ukraine. He agrees with this assessment, however, he points out that the West will most likely supply the Ukraine with all kinds of military equipment and allow for volunteers to enter the country.
--> Fact check: Yep. West is sending entire train loads of weapons into Ukraine, and also starting to allow volunteers to get involved.



All in all, that dude's like Cassandra. He called it perfectly, lol. I guess he should have been sitting in the MoD and telling Putin what a bad idea this was.

clancy688 wrote:All in all, that dude's like Cassandra. He called it perfectly, lol. I guess he should have been sitting in the MoD and telling Putin what a bad idea this was.

Apparently; like the original Cassandra, no one took the analysis seriously:
“I’m telling you, that Wooden Horse will cause the fall of Troy”!!!

Arol wrote:

clancy688 wrote:All in all, that dude's like Cassandra. He called it perfectly, lol. I guess he should have been sitting in the MoD and telling Putin what a bad idea this was.

Apparently; like the original Cassandra, no one took the analysis seriously:
“I’m telling you, that Wooden Horse will cause the fall of Troy”!!!

I think that when someone advocates a contrarian point of view to someone in power who wants to believe what they want to believe and act upon their beliefs, it is very difficult to move them, especially when there's some "group think" going on. A classic example of that was Bush Jr.'s foray into Iraq. He was fixated on getting rid of Saddam and his WMD and egged on by his neocon friends it was off to war we went even there was an entire chorus of voices protesting that., as well as reasons for doubting the Intel that Bush was getting. And of course, "it's gonna be a cake walk" is one of the most common illusions people who start a war entertain. For Americans another illusion can be summarized " Why we're just going to go in there and get rid of their dictator and help them with elections and set up a democracy for them and that will be the end of the problem." An illusion... What did Bush actually accomplish? He stirred up a hornet's nest, the consequences of which are with us to this day.

Don

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n7axw wrote:What did Bush actually accomplish? He stirred up a hornet's nest, the consequences of which are with us to this day.

Don

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That's what usually happens when you destroy an existing power-structure - you create a vacuum that all sorts of groups will try to fill.

Joat42 wrote:

n7axw wrote:What did Bush actually accomplish? He stirred up a hornet's nest, the consequences of which are with us to this day.

Don

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That's what usually happens when you destroy an existing power-structure - you create a vacuum that all sorts of groups will try to fill.

Right. Nobody liked Saddam. But too few people stopped to think that he might have been serving a useful purpose by sitting on that powder keg.

Don

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Joat42 wrote:

n7axw wrote:What did Bush actually accomplish? He stirred up a hornet's nest, the consequences of which are with us to this day.

Don

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That's what usually happens when you destroy an existing power-structure - you create a vacuum that all sorts of groups will try to fill.

The “Law of Unintended Consequences” does have a habit of coming around and biting history and people on the butt!

Can someone explain something to me which I cannot wrap my head around because it's just too bizarre.

I've seen and heard a lot of Russian apologists from the US and they are all what I call "conservative/republican" (imagine my air quotes here), and their message is that Ukraine is in the wrong and they should just have rolled over to the demands on independence from the separatists and whatever Russia told them to do. These people are even repeating obvious Russian propaganda.

What the fuck happened? Have they been eating led-paint? Are they high on shrooms? Are they on a Russian payroll?

At this point the only explanation that sounds reasonable is

Joat42 wrote:Can someone explain something to me which I cannot wrap my head around because it's just too bizarre.

I've seen and heard a lot of Russian apologists from the US and they are all what I call "conservative/republican" (imagine my air quotes here), and their message is that Ukraine is in the wrong and they should just have rolled over to the demands on independence from the separatists and whatever Russia told them to do. These people are even repeating obvious Russian propaganda.

What the fuck happened? Have they been eating led-paint? Are they high on shrooms? Are they on a Russian payroll?

Short, snarky answer: Yes. All of those. Especially the last one.

Longer answer: Way I see it, this comes down to the societal ideal that current mainstream conservatism is favoriting. US Conservatives are very much convinced that a lot of things are going wrong in modern society, that people have become too permissive, too concerned with appearing understanding and appeasing to be strong. Gay people existing in public, trans people existing in public, people becoming aware that things that seem pretty clear-cut (like the gender binary) are in fact very, very complex and malleable, people waking up to the fact that the system they're living in is fundamentally broken and toxic and that only collective action can fix what decades of rugged individualism have destroyed, these are all threatening to what US conservatives think is a good way of life.
This feeling was one of the big wedge issues that russian disinformation campaigns have attacked and driven deeper: Putin, for a very long time, was heralded as this sort of idealized man's man, a strong, confident, smart leader unafraid to do what needs to be done and who was pretty openly concerned about the same things that I outlined above. His attacks on Russia's LGBTQ+ community, his open derision of things like "free journalism", these were all very attractive; yes, sure, he's a dictator and a tyrant and I guess his disregard for the interests of sovereign ex-USSR nations and their territorial integrity is maybe crossing the line, but he's got legitimate concerns and guess what, he's also not being forced to talk about all this gay shit all the time! Putin gets things done, and gets away with just a slap on the wrist!
In other words, Putin is what US conservatives wished they could be. He is, essentially, free in ways that US conservatives, who have to share their country with people of differing opinions that are unafraid to voice those opinions, aren't.
This all culminated in Trump's ascension to the presidency. Trump, like Putin, quickly became an idealized figure for conservatives, because he too was free - unafraid of criticism, seemingly immune to consequences, and boldly doing what he felt was the right thing to do, and so when we saw Trump and Putin being chummy on the world stage, Trump openly ackknowledging russian concerns about NATO encroachment, Trump even talking about withdrawing from NATO, this all fit into preexisting narratives that US conservatives were already agreeing with.

This all came crashing down on the conservative commentariat when the invasion of Ukraine started and didn't immediately end. Suddenly, Volodymyr Selenskyy, a weak comedy actor turned President, appeared on the world stage as a charismatic leader who comes across as utterly genuine, relatable and unpretentious - and, above all, strong in ways that Putin never has been. We love underdog stories, we love tales of defenders holding out against all odds, we love stories where courage, pluck and cheekiness triumph over cold aggression, and the story of the ukrainian defense is just one of those. In one fell swoop, Putin's image as a canny leader was undermined by his launching of a comedically unprepared assault, Russia's image as a strong country fell apart much like their armored vehicles did, and this left conservative thought leaders scrambling because suddenly everything they thought about Putin turned out to be unjustified.
So, what is one to do in this situation? Some commentators have tried to backtrack their statements, witness Tucker Carlson try to pass off his ridiculing of the Biden admin's war warnings (which, as it turned out, were remarkably correct and precise in hindsight) with an asinine statement about how he "couldn't have known this was serious, because if it had been serious Kamala Harris wouldn't have been involved", and some have turned to just doubling down on their statements even as public opinion turned harshly against them. These latter ones are now reduced to echoing russian propaganda about Ukraine being infested with Nazis and this whole thing not really being a war and all that nonsense.

Note also that Ukraine is absolutely crushing it on the western media front of this particular war. Even fake stories like the "Ghost of Kyiv" get enormous traction, while we're not seeing anything from the russian side. There's no counter-narrative, no footage of people in Ukraine welcoming the russian army as liberators, no stories of ukrainian atrocities, nothing. There's nothing for pro-russian commentators to feed off of except Putin's proclamations, and it shows.