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.
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[/i] 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
