Putin starts “military operation” on Ukraine

[Victor68]

On 12/12/2023 at 10:50 AM, inlinesix said:

The illusion that Putin is NOT a dictator?

Not forgetting that Putin invaded Ukraine.

Not forgetting that Russian illegally annexed Crimea.

I thought there were so much analysis on Putin will be out since he is going to lose this war soon? So why worry if he is a saint or not since he will be gone.

I am more concerned of those left behind to clear these shits. Will it be another Afghanistan or Syria? Probably not because it is Afterall European nation but the poorer ones. 

[inlinesix]

On 12/12/2023 at 10:55 AM, Victor68 said:

I thought there were so much analysis on Putin will be out since he is going to lose this war soon? So why worry if he is a saint or not since he will be gone.

I am more concerned of those left behind to clear these shits. Will it be another Afghanistan or Syria? Probably not because it is Afterall European nation but the poorer ones. 

This mess is created by Putin since 2014.  The financial impact should be borned by Russian Oligarch.

Afghanistan has always been a mess ever since Russian invasion in the 80s.

Syrian mess was created by Assad..

[Victor68]

On 12/12/2023 at 11:00 AM, inlinesix said:

This mess is created by Putin since 2014.  The financial impact should be borned by Russian Oligarch.

Afghanistan has always been a mess ever since Russian invasion in the 80s.

Syrian mess was created by Assad..

I am no judge to this. Let history and the citizens of those directly involved settle. 

[Jamesc]

Not one US soldier is fighting in Ukrainian.

US is ready to defend her allies anywhere in the world!

Even in Asia.

Not sure if China attacks US allies in Pacific

US will say - sorry hor I tied down in Ukraine cannot come and help you

People's imagination that US is bogged down in Ukraine!

Edited December 12, 2023 by Jamesc

[Jamesc]

People write all these nonsense to make us laugh huh?

Please try harder!

[Jamesc]

Expert on everything

suddenly no judge on this!

Edited December 12, 2023 by Jamesc

[Wt_know]

 

[Sosaria]

On 12/13/2023 at 10:28 PM, Singa said:

his paymaster ask him to go low key.

even Xi desperate and has to go Vietnam to try to be friend with them. 

keyword is low key, wolf warrior diplomacy is an epic fail!

Vietnam gave xi equally grand reception as they gave biden. Small countries better to remain neutral and try to court both sides. Anyway I am not sure how any close prc-viet relations will materialize considering their contesting claims in the islands and surrounding seas. Both US and PRC have been viet enemies historically but china is their age-old traditional enemy since long long ago times.

[Kb27]

fight until 2026.. or at least until putin runs out of warm bodies to send. 😁

 

Russia plans to fight in Ukraine until 2026, seeks to capture major cities — German intelligence

Russia is formulating a new medium-term war plan, aiming to extend combat operations in Ukraine for another 36 months and capture major cities, according to a Dec. 14 report by the German newspaper BILD, which cites intelligence sources.

BILD writes that Russia's strategic goals by the end of 2024 include the complete occupation of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and parts of Kharkiv Oblast, extending to the Oskil River.

Russian forces then plan to conquer significant areas of the Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv oblasts by the end of 2026, including the strategic cities of Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhya, the report says.

 

German intelligence reports show that there are no immediate plans for Russian advances toward Kherson or Odesa.

The Kremlin aspires to control territories on the left bank of the Dnipro River, positioning the river as a new front in the conflict.

 

Russia's military is reportedly willing to sustain casualties of up to 100,000 troops per year.

The report adds that Moscow counts on declining Western support for Ukraine and talks about "peace negotiations" to merely simulate a desire for peace. The Kremlin has no intentions for a truce, according to the report.

[Ender]

On 12/15/2023 at 12:50 PM, Kb27 said:

fight until 2026.. or at least until putin runs out of warm bodies to send. 😁

 

Russia plans to fight in Ukraine until 2026, seeks to capture major cities — German intelligence

Russia is formulating a new medium-term war plan, aiming to extend combat operations in Ukraine for another 36 months and capture major cities, according to a Dec. 14 report by the German newspaper BILD, which cites intelligence sources.

BILD writes that Russia's strategic goals by the end of 2024 include the complete occupation of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and parts of Kharkiv Oblast, extending to the Oskil River.

Russian forces then plan to conquer significant areas of the Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kharkiv oblasts by the end of 2026, including the strategic cities of Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhya, the report says.

 

German intelligence reports show that there are no immediate plans for Russian advances toward Kherson or Odesa.

The Kremlin aspires to control territories on the left bank of the Dnipro River, positioning the river as a new front in the conflict.

 

Russia's military is reportedly willing to sustain casualties of up to 100,000 troops per year.

The report adds that Moscow counts on declining Western support for Ukraine and talks about "peace negotiations" to merely simulate a desire for peace. The Kremlin has no intentions for a truce, according to the report.

It sucks to be a Russian with children that are soldier fit now. To sacrifice for a foreign land that is not invading your country, but for a trophy of your leader's ambition.

[Jamesc]

Putin cannot back down

Lose face.

Will also lose life.

[Ghgan]

 

[Ghgan]

 

[Ender]

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67687449

Ukraine war: How TikTok fakes pushed Russian lies to millions

 

By Olga Robinson, Adam Robinson & Shayan Sardarizadeh

BBC Verify

A Russian propaganda campaign involving thousands of fake accounts on TikTok spreading disinformation about the war in Ukraine has been uncovered by the BBC.

Its videos routinely attract millions of views and have the apparent aim of undermining Western support.

Users in several European countries have been subjected to false claims that senior Ukrainian officials and their relatives bought luxury cars or villas abroad after Russia's invasion in February 2022.

The fake TikTok videos played a part in the dismissal last September of Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, according to his daughter Anastasiya Shteinhauz.

The BBC has uncovered nearly 800 fake accounts since July. TikTok says it was already investigating the issue and says it has taken down more than 12,000 fake accounts originating in Russia.

'Villa in Madrid'

Ms Shteinhauz told the BBC she found out about the Russian disinformation campaign when she received a surprising call from her husband while on holiday.

"OK, so now you've got a villa in Madrid," he told her, before sending a link to a TikTok video narrated by an AI-generated voice that claimed she had bought a home in the Spanish capital.

Ms Shteinhauz initially dismissed the video as a one-off, but the following morning she was sent a similar TikTok clip alleging she had bought a villa on the French Riviera. The videos had been circulating among her friends before finally reaching her husband.

Ms Shteinhauz says she does not own property in Spain or France or "anywhere else outside Ukraine".

BBC Verify also traced the pictures of the houses in Madrid and Cannes to two local property websites and they were both still for sale.

Other videos directly targeted her father.

 

Co-ordinated effort

The videos sent to Ms Shteinhauz belong to a vast Russia-based network of fake TikTok accounts posing as real users from Germany, France, Poland, Israel and Ukraine.

Using a combination of hashtag searches and TikTok's own recommendations, BBC Verify was able to trace hundreds of similar videos targeting dozens of Ukrainian officials.

The accounts that posted them used stolen profile pictures, including those of celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Emma Watson and Colin Farrell.

With only a handful of exceptions, they posted just one video each - a tactic TikTok says is new and aimed at evading detection and manipulating the platform's system for recommending videos to users.

BBC/TIKTOK Some TikTok accounts that were part of the network used stolen images of celebrities, like Colin Farrell and Emma Watson, in their profiles

The effort appeared to have been co-ordinated: sometimes videos were released by different accounts on the same day and featured identical, or very similar scripts.

During the investigation, BBC Verify found consistent, circumstantial evidence pointing to a possible Russian origin of the network.

This included linguistic mistakes typical of Russian speakers, including some Russian phrases that are not used in other languages. Also, many of the videos contained links to a website previously exposed by Meta as part of a Russian-linked network impersonating legitimate Western news websites.

BBC/TIKTOK Some of the fake TikTok accounts identified by the BBC used the same stolen profile picture with different names

Many of the videos analysed by BBC Verify targeted Mr Reznikov, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials, portraying them as obsessed with money and uncaring about ordinary Ukrainians or the war effort.

They avoided direct allegations of wrongdoing, but implied politicians had bought luxury property or goods during a time of war - claims that, when checked, always turned out to be false.

Ms Shteinhauz believes this steady drip of innuendo played a role in her father's dismissal: "It affected the life of my dad and his career."

Previously praised as a key figure in Ukraine's efforts to lobby Western countries for arms supplies, Mr Reznikov was sacked from his job as defence minister in September.

One video on its own may not have had any effect, Ms Shteinhauz said, but "when it goes like five times from different parts of the world and from inside the country, it starts to work".

Mr Reznikov lost his job amid an anti-corruption drive and a number of scandals at the defence ministry involving the procurement of goods and equipment for the army at inflated prices. However, he was not personally accused of corruption.

Announcing the decision to replace Mr Reznikov, President Zelensky said "the ministry needs new approaches". Although he made no mention of corruption in his statement, some in Ukraine welcomed the resignation that followed multiple accusations of corruption which involved Mr Reznikov's subordinates.

Roman Osadchuk from the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, who investigated the network in collaboration with the BBC, said that the fake accounts targeting Ukrainians were trying to undermine their trust in the country's leadership.

"They're trying to make Ukraine less resilient in a way and [make] Ukrainian society stop fighting the Russians," he said.

Renee DiResta, technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, says the videos' focus on corruption in Ukraine's war effort was particularly aimed at the West.

"All of these different things they're alleging [about Ukrainian officials] as the forms in which the corruption becomes grift, it would be to undermine continued support, particularly by European countries for the Ukrainian war effort."

More accounts found

When we reported our findings to TikTok, a spokesperson said: "We constantly and relentlessly pursue those that seek to influence our community through deceptive behaviours, and we have removed a covert influence operation originating from Russia, as part of an investigation initiated by TikTok and to which the BBC has contributed."

TikTok said it was still investigating who was behind the network and had found fake videos in two additional languages - Italian and English.

Despite TikTok's efforts to shut down the network, in the weeks since BBC Verify reported the accounts, the app has recommended us dozens more videos that appear to be part of the same network.

Some of them were posted as recently as late November and covered recent events.

 

Edited December 17, 2023 by Ender

[Kb27]

It would seem like cartoon, POW ! they fly out of the car. 😁

but it's real war.

 

[Ender]

If your infantry section met with this swarm of drones, can really GG for the whole section, or maybe platoon. 

 

 

[Kb27]

 

[Playtime]

On 12/16/2023 at 2:05 PM, Singa said:

still cheaper to support Ukraine in her fight against invading Russia then to have to fight Russia directly yourself.

have to say europe is still not doing well.

i cant imagine they still have problem supplying 155 ammo to ukraine.

155 ammo isnt exactly rocket science, the manufacturing power of europe should be pumping them out like nobody business.😑