Are you implying there is something sinister about the extremely high rate of deaths of critics of the regime from falling-out-of-skyscraper-window-accidents?!The problem the elites have is that they can't complain. If they moan to another elite they don't know they won't be grassed up and dead in a week. And the rich elites aren't usually the ones who'd try and kill the leader to take power.
No one can complain to Putin, they need to either shut up, or remove him. So it would take someone who decides they'd be in a better position if they removed him.
Russia was being run by Gorbachev not a megalomaniac when they withdrew from Afghanistan in fairness. Putin will never back down on Ukraine imo, dead man walking if he does.It's fine...my thoughts and frustrations also go in constant circles!
Russia's withdrawal from Afghanistan was partly (maybe not much?) pressured by wives and mothers of the casualties.
Given the far higher numbers of Russian casualties in this war, it suggests Russia has a FAR stronger grip on the population than before (media, arrests, crackdowns, influencers, mobilisation threat...)
Agreed, it's a huge difference.Russia was being run by Gorbachev not a megalomaniac when they withdrew from Afghanistan in fairness. Putin will never back down on Ukraine imo, dead man walking if he does.
Deleted - can't display the video of Toropets
Click share under the video, copy the link and paste directly into the post field. No need for extensions or code - the forum software automatically knows what to doThank you ! How did you do that? It stopped working for me after I posted it.
Anyway, if you pause at around 00:40, you can just see the angel of Toropets.
Like many things in Russia lately, this Wagner PMC base in Molkino, Krasnodar is on fire:
Actually...I gave a thumbs up without fully understanding your meaning. Now I get it excellentThank you ! How did you do that? It stopped working for me after I posted it.
Anyway, if you pause at around 00:40, you can just see the angel of Toropets.
As someone else has stated, the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan mainly because of the pressure from the mothers and families of the conscripts being slaughtered there. And that reinforces what I’ve always thought: the driver of the end of the war lies within Russia, not on the battlefields in Ukraine. I just can’t believe that the propaganda will overpower a growing discontent with the returning body-bags. It’ll take time, but that’s where the “culmination” ( in military terms) lies.It's a given that we can only speculate how this will all end.
I'm no historian, but I can only recall one instance in the last 150 years where Russia has backed down. In Afghanistan fighting the Muhadajine terrorists (now called Taliban?). From my recollection, they pulled out as eventually they realised is was a conflict in which they could not succeed. Probably similar to the reasons US UK et al left Afghanistan more recently.
Clearly we are in different circumstances. Ukraine is not Afghanistan and the reasons for Russia being there are not the same. But perhaps most different is Putin is not the same as the Russian leader of that Afghan conflict (forgotten who it was now, Bresniev?).
Can anyone remind us the detail of how that conflict was ended? Are there any similarities?
Russia doesn't do body-bags. It does mobile incinerators instead. We learned this early on in the war.As someone else has stated, the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan mainly because of the pressure from the mothers and families of the conscripts being slaughtered there. And that reinforces what I’ve always thought: the driver of the end of the war lies within Russia, not on the battlefields in Ukraine. I just can’t believe that the propaganda will overpower a growing discontent with the returning body-bags. It’ll take time, but that’s where the “culmination” ( in military terms) lies.
I'm suitably admonished !I think the Russian dead will be a mix of:
- those returning in body bags
- those returning critically injured who then die in hospital
- those that went through the mobile incinerators (possibly not yet/ ever confirmed dead)
- those lying on the battle field
According to the BBC article many of the dead are identified within Russia, and I'm sure many more deaths are (currently) hidden.
Still plenty of numbers for wives and mothers to get stuck into if they wish.
Here's an extract from the article I posted earlier.
"More than 70,000 people fighting in Russia’s military have now died in Ukraine, according to data analysed by the BBC.
And for the first time, volunteers - civilians who joined the armed forces after the start of the war - now make up the highest number of people killed on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.
Every day, the names of those killed in Ukraine, their obituaries and photographs from their funerals are published across Russia in the media and on social networks.
BBC Russian and the independent website Mediazona have collated these names, along with names from other open sources, including official reports.
We checked that the information had been shared by authorities or relatives of the deceased - and that they had been identified as dying in the war.
New graves in cemeteries have also helped provide the names of soldiers killed in Ukraine - these are usually marked by flags and wreaths sent by the defence ministry.
We have identified the names of 70,112 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, but the actual number is believed to be considerably higher. Some families do not share details of their relatives’ deaths publicly - and our analysis does not include names we were unable to check, or the deaths of militia in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine."
Nah ....if a proportion of dead don't go through the mobile incinerator on the battle field, then we know they and their relatives all continue to go through the social incinerator in mother Russia.I'm suitably admonished !
No need to do that. Just join our friendly state-sponsored grieving mothers and wives club. We will give you tea, sympathy, and hold your hand as you peacefully pass away.Yeah, if loved ones don’t come home, what are they gonna do about it? Oh, let’s go and complain to that friendly soldier with the rifle, I’m sure that’ll end up going well
Personally I very much doubt NATO Special forces are in Russia. The political fallout from capture would be too much of a risk. Satellites and drones can easily identify potential targets for strikesThe good thing is, and I might be wrong on this, but the SAS and SBS (and other euro SFs) are probably playing a
huge part in searching out and then sending back co-ordinates etc of these sites (just as they did in the Gulf War).
And those blokes can move around and lie low under your f*cking feet and you wouldn't have a clue
they were there. No way in a million years that those f*ckwit, backward russian army pricks have anything like that
capability or be able to detect, because they are morons.