https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine/
https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine-an-update/
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.[/i]
A sober view.
FYFMFE
tldr
@HoustonHusky @LoneStarDawg @UW_Doog_Bot @RatherBeBrewing @GrundleStiltzkin @RoadTrip
Sorry not sorry reads like Kremlin primer.
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? [/b][/i] 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.[/b]
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]
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.[/b] 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.
https://twitter.com/mod_russia/status/1505141259882704897?s=20&t=xxj0dJ1i_9AUM-kS12sI0g