Catherine wasn’t the only one.
Poland has the misfortune to be in the great central plain of Europe—very desirable land for a variety of reasons.
That poor country has been hacked up, reassembled, hacked up again and turned upside down dozens of times over the last thousand years.
Many of these are conscripts, consider your son calling to say he’s doing exercises the next day and those “exercises” kill him.
I’ve been wondering about this. It was my understanding that troop movements are normally not supposed to be shared. The US used to have whole departments dedicated to censoring soldier’s letters to prevent details escaping. How does that work in the age of cell phones when parents expect their adult children to talk to them everyday?
Once war is declared, you might expect people to say “I’m being deployed mom, can’t say where, but it might be a while before I can talk again” but the invasion of Ukraine was a secret. Setting the immorality if the invasion aside for a moment, what else should the troops have said?
O/T, sort of:
In the Press Briefing currently going on, FoxNews reporter Doocy, as he is want to do, asks questions of Jen Psaki saying “Do you guys…?” in referring to the Biden administration. It drips of condescension and a pathetic attempt to characterize administration officials as less than their positions would merit. The lack of respect is quite clear. Conclusion: Doocy is a hack, seemingly totally unaware that he would not hold his own position were it not for the influence and position of his father. Jen Psaki rarely takes the bait, but never fails to keep Doocy in line. She shows respect, Doocy does not.
I’ve read that 1/3 of the Russian military is conscripts. I would speculate that an even higher percentage fighting in Ukraine are.
I’m Vietnam Nam era vet, drafted ‘69. I remember marching with other vets in front of Wright Patterson AFB chanting “corporations get rich, GIs die.”
There were several unit designators at the start of the invasion, a way for the russians to identify which unit group they were coming from, the Z was just one of those. Likely the source combat command region of the Units. There’s also a V and a few others that have been spotted.
Z is just the one that’s gone viral.
After WWII, wounded war vets flooded into Soviet cities. Since that didn’t align with the “glorious victory” narrative, Stalin eventually ordered them removed. Many were warehoused to keep them out of public view. I predict that Putin won’t make the same mistake. He’ll ship them off straight from the front line and their families and friends will never know. There will be many of these so-called MIAs.
Some background on Stalin’s campaign: https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/the-ends-of-history/russias-lost-war
While here in America, ‘zombie’ can have a different interpretation.
“Let’s band together in the face of unprecedented sanctions putting pressure on our country, and not give into provocations from those whose own prosperity and comfort come from handouts from Western ‘partners’ that are more important than Russia’s national interests,”
Awfully whiney
Defeated the Soviets in the 20’s, though. Catherine was the one that was not satisfied with a puppet on the throne in the Commonwealth and chose war instead to finally erase Poland as a governing entity, its land partitioned among Russia, Prussia and Austria. Napoleon reorganized that later.
And Soviets lost 15,000 in their entire Afghanistan disaster. That was TEN YEARS long.
If Russia’s even lost only 5,000 in two weeks, that’s a catastrophe.
Reports are that Russian deaths in Ukraine have topped 11,000.
'Twas hovering around 75 for a long time before this conflict. That means a Russian solder’s paycheck will buy him only half what it did, just two weeks ago.
Great. So now they can afford just 3 feet of land.
Supercharge the communication of what is going on … Time to put together
This will get the word-of-mouth rolling !!
War has nothing to do with genitals and everything to do with a lust for power. The only reason fewer women have started wars* in recorded history is because paternal states have tended to keep them enslaved, to one degree or another.
*Given the political roles played by many wives and mothers of kings, I’m not even sure we could say definitively that women haven’t started or helped start quite a few wars.
Ukrainians likely exaggerating Russian deaths, but who knows? These are huge numbers in any case.
Take the story of Andrey Sukhovetsky, a major general and second-in-command of Russia’s 41st army who reportedly died in Ukraine.
… … … …
May there be sunflower seed in his pockets.
Great for the morale of the survivors, not to mention the particular guys who have to do the burning. “See just how much we care about your miserable skin?”