why (since no one had argued the contrary and it's blinding obvious) you felt the need to say such a thing. — Isaac
There's a variety box media sources I trust. Generally, I check that they have some accepted qualification in the field they're talking on, check they have no glaringly obvious conflict of interest, then I see if their overall narrative is similar to mine and trust them, or not, on that basis. — Isaac
Your claim was that it is an actual established fact. — Isaac
Putin's Russia understands this even better. Hence you car read about how much humanitarian aid Russia has sent to the Donbass and Mariupol. After all, it's just a special military operation. — ssu
Alleged strike on Russian fuel depot hurts peace talks - Kremlin — BBC
Western spy agencies weaponize intelligence in attempt to undermine Putin
Western intelligence agencies are waging a psychological war over Ukraine directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, an expert at the genre, who is now effectively taking a dose of his own medicine.
The United States and its allies are painting a picture of a bogged down, demoralized and dysfunctional Russian military taking disastrous losses on the battlefield, and are simultaneously conjuring a vision of growing political tension inside the Kremlin. They claim the Russian leader is isolated, poorly advised and lacking real intelligence on just how badly the war is going. [...]
The willingness of Western governments to be so open about what they are seeing inside Ukraine and Moscow has surprised even some veteran spies.
"It makes intelligence professionals, even former ones like me, nervous, because, of course, it's so ingrained in us to protect sources and methods," Steve Hall, former chief of Russia operations for the CIA, told CNN's Ana Cabrera Thursday. [...]
So what exactly are Western governments trying to do with this novel use of declassified intelligence assessments? Especially given that in many previous geopolitical crises, intelligence was kept secret by routine? [...]
Intelligence, by definition, is a murky business. The information about the Russian operations in Ukraine and the apparent isolation of Putin in Moscow only tell the outside world what the Western intelligence services want to release. There is, therefore, no way for outsiders to know whether these snapshots give the full picture or a more selective one. — CNN
Then hours before the invasion actually happened, the US issued a warning that the incursion was imminent -- and was proven correct. — CNN
Is that your passive aggressive way of saying you agree with me? — Olivier5
I do the same, just better. — Olivier5
the CIA is giving Putin a taste of his own medicine ... which, according to the CIA, Putin's medicine is lying about everything? — boethius
"We're playing Putin at his own game (but everything we say to the global media is, of course, absolutely true). Shh! Don't tell Putin - you're all spies now..." — Isaac
Our protectors just discovered a few weeks ago "intelligence" could be "weaponised". — boethius
No, it's my 'normal aggressive' way of undermining your attempt to imply people have said as much by writing as if you were responding to them. — Isaac
The heat, Ukraine crisis
Host: What’s behind president Zalenskyy’s move to ban 11 political parties in the country and shut down some TV stations.
Propagandist: Uh, there’s currently a war, there’s over 100 000 Russian troops, and, uh, 64 medical facilities have been bombed.
So, ah, in terms of banning things that are in the line of, ah, Russian influence. Uh, those are standard operating procedures during a war.
At this point we don’t even know how long broadcast television will remain in Ukraine, so long as those facilities are being bombed.
Host: So bottom line is you abandon democracy when you’re at war.
Propagandist: I don’t see, any pretence for that. We know that Ukraine has maintained elections throughout this 8 year war against it. Ah, and those, uh, and those elections have all been declared as, uh, as ah, fully recognised, ah, uh, by other, uh, countries. — The Heat: Ukraine Crisis
It is not clear to me, in particular, which media you trust and which you don't trust. — Olivier5
I think both sides here (the West, Russia) stick to the truth when the truth is beneficial to them. Then it's about noticing what is left out. Hence years ago Russia Today could do a great job in objectively covering the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations, because why not? — ssu
BTW, this implies that it is absolutely not obvious to you that one has to trust some secondary sources. — Olivier5
We have to take this information with several grains of salt. Given how the war is going, how close Ukraine is to Russia geographically and culturally and just how badly they assessed this war going, gives us sound reason to suspect that Putin is very much in his own "Trump world". — Manuel
I don't have a crystal ball so no clue really and I don't trust the news in normal times and actively distrust it in war times. — Benkei
It is an established fact that the Russians thought it would be a ride in the park.
There are testimonies of arrested or kidnapped Ukrainians who report that their Russian captors argued with them about pretty much the same things argued on this thread: " But but but why are you resisting? We are only fighting NATO. Why do you hate us so much?" — Olivier5
"It is absurd to claim, as Western governments and the media never cease to do, that Putin is nothing other than a paranoid, “mentally disturbed” man who imagines being “encircled” by hostile powers. No, unfortunately this is not a fantasy, and was being put in place well before Putin, when Russia was completely bled out and on her knees before the West. Let’s also not forget that Putin came to power by positioning himself initially as a strict continuation of Yeltsin and his pro-western policies. This attitude of the Western bloc isn’t the result of an ideological blunder or a disembodied desire for power, but the outcome of its imperialist nature. In order to perpetuate itself, the West needs enemies. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it never accepted the idea of inviting the new Russian capitalist class to the table, because the idea of Russia as an eternal “Other” and a potential threat always prevailed. It also has to be underlined that the elites from the countries of the former Soviet bloc, or of the Soviet Union itself (including the Ukrainians, particularly after 2014), played this card to the utmost in order to consolidate the power of the new layers of oligarchic capitalists and legitimise their position with peoples who wanted revenge on the former custodial power.
One can’t play the game of scorned innocence and claim that the expansion of NATO was only a pretext or diversion invented by Putin, while, for years, the US and her allies have launched themselves into escalating the pressure and encirclement of Russia, considered more and more explicitly as a systemic enemy—while there is hardly any divergence in socio-economic terms with the West...
...Zelensky is certainly not the “Nazi” talked about by Putin, but he isn’t Ho Chi Minh either… The Ukrainian government is a bourgeois government, that serves the class interest of capitalist oligarchs, comparable in every way with those in Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union, and which intends to align the country with the Western camp, without any concern for the predictable consequences. In her masterful 2018 study, Ukrainian critical economist Yuliya Yurchenko aptly analysed this regime as a “neoliberal kleptocracy”. At the same time as being the victim of an inadmissible aggression, Zelensky’s administration doesn’t represent any progressive cause, and it would be totally absurd for left-wing forces worthy of the name to plead the case of arms delivery. ...
This constant duplicity makes the sanctions put in place by the West for decades, indefensible; their capacity to impose them, serves moreover to confirm Western economic supremacy, China and Russia being only marginal at the origin of these kind of measures (3 percent in 2020). The task of the left is to denounce the political function of this mode of action and to show that it is, above all, a means of strangling a country ruffling the world order fashioned by US and Western domination, a measure that indeed differs little from an act of war. ...It is only by following this perspective that we can:
Doing nothing in effect gives free reign to the West to do whatever it wants wherever in wants and no regional power of any kind, will do anything about it. In effect, it sends a signal to other countries you'll take what we give you and you can do nothing about it. — Manuel
As for least bad choice, well, the one in which least amount of lives are lost. — Manuel
At the end of Putin's second term, Jonathan Steele has commented on Putin's legacy: "What, then, is Putin's legacy? Stability and growth, for starters. After the chaos of the 90s, highlighted by Yeltsin's attack on the Russian parliament with tanks in 1993 and the collapse of almost every bank in 1998, Putin has delivered political calm and a 7% annual rate of growth. Inequalities have increased and many of the new rich are grotesquely crass and cruel, but not all the Kremlin's vast revenues from oil and gas have gone into private pockets or are being hoarded in the government's "stabilisation fund". Enough has gone into modernising schools and hospitals so that people notice a difference. Overall living standards are up. The second Chechen war, the major blight on Putin's record, is almost over".[154]
I'm sure some soldiers were convinced it would be a cake walk -- but does that include high commanders and Putin himself? Who knows. I wouldn't be at all surprised if that's the case, but I'm truly uncertain. — Xtrix
You do if you don't want to turn crazy. — Olivier5
No issue with the rest of your post. — Olivier5
Because they are now pulling back, objectively. — Olivier5
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