Wars & Rumours of Wars

nivek

As Above So Below
Russia turns on Putin: Politicians demand 'immediate withdrawal' from Ukraine as 100 servicemen are fired for refusing to take part in the invasion

A veteran Russian legislator has issued an appeal to Vladimir Putin to stop military action, bring his troops home and end the war in Ukraine.

Communist deputy Leonid Vasyukevich, 69, blasted the use of Moscow’s servicemen in Ukraine, as a Russian court dismissed more than 100 national guardsmen in the first case of soldiers refusing to fight in Ukraine as politicians demanded the army return home.

Members of the National Guard of the Russian Federation, a separate military branch from the Russian army refused to carry out an assignment related to Moscow's 'special operation' in Ukraine.

A military court in Russia's southern republic of Kabardino-Balkaria found that the defendants 'arbitrarily refused to perform an official assignment' and turned down their appeal.

The hearing was held behind closed doors to avoid revealing 'military secrets,' according to the Moscow Times.


(More on the link)

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Standingstones

Celestial
I like to visit the express.co.uk website. You get a different slant on the world news than you do looking at American news. There is a section on the Ukraine war and Putin than you don’t normally see.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I like to visit the express.co.uk website. You get a different slant on the world news than you do looking at American news. There is a section on the Ukraine war and Putin than you don’t normally see.

I have a BBC News app that I like. Used to read Al Jazeera English for a very different perspective but they have been noodling with their apps and turned me off. Reuters and AP news might as well be the same based thing.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Iran reveals top secret underground drone base under a mountain range where it keeps at least 100 missile-armed UAVs on standby

Iran has revealed it has a massive underground military base brimming with missile-firing drones in a secret bunker beneath a mountain range.

With concrete tunnels and military officials using buggies to get around, it looks like a James Bond supervillain's lair — and it has its very own array of deadly weapons to fit the bill.

The Iranian army gave some details, but not the exact location, of its secret underground base amid simmering tensions in the Gulf.

State TV said 100 drones were being kept in the heart of the Zagros mountains, including Ababil-5, which it said were fitted with Qaem-9 missiles, an Iranian-made version of air-to-surface US Hellfire.


(More on the link)

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Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
Iran reveals top secret underground drone base under a mountain range where it keeps at least 100 missile-armed UAVs on standby

Iran has revealed it has a massive underground military base brimming with missile-firing drones in a secret bunker beneath a mountain range.

With concrete tunnels and military officials using buggies to get around, it looks like a James Bond supervillain's lair — and it has its very own array of deadly weapons to fit the bill.

The Iranian army gave some details, but not the exact location, of its secret underground base amid simmering tensions in the Gulf.

State TV said 100 drones were being kept in the heart of the Zagros mountains, including Ababil-5, which it said were fitted with Qaem-9 missiles, an Iranian-made version of air-to-surface US Hellfire.


(More on the link)

58399871-10863611-image-a-53_1653748703836.jpg


58399869-10863611-image-a-51_1653748697203.jpg


58399883-10863611-image-a-55_1653748707161.jpg


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Aside from Iranian reputation for 3D CGI, I must say that I'm impressed that Iranians are ahead of Russians with drones.

Only thing is a little bit strange, that they keep them in tunnels.

Taking into account that tunnels are very expensive to make, while drones are relatively cheap, I find doubtful that drones are the most valuable asset Iranian army has, so that they have to keep them protected in tunnels. It would make far more sense to keep those few F-14 Tomcats that they have safe in tunnels, because those old birds would have much bigger strategic impact then ten drones they show here. Whole idea about having drones is that one spreads them over a very long front-line so one can attack as many enemy assets as possible. Its not very useful to have them all centralised in one place.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
After spending trillions of dollars on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, the U.S. has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand

The magnitude of the United States’ failure in Afghanistan is breathtaking. It is not a failure of Democrats or Republicans, but an abiding failure of American political culture, reflected in U.S. policy makers’ lack of interest in understanding different societies. And it is all too typical.

Almost every modern U.S. military intervention in the developing world has come to rot. It’s hard to think of an exception since the Korean War. In the 1960s and first half of the 1970s, the U.S. fought in Indochina — Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—eventually withdrawing in defeat after a decade of grotesque carnage. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, and his successor, the Republican Richard Nixon, share the blame.

Dictators and proxy wars

In roughly the same years, the U.S. installed dictators throughout Latin America and parts of Africa, with disastrous consequences that lasted decades. Think of the Mobutu dictatorship in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the Central Intelligence Agency-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba in early 1961, or of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s murderous military junta in Chile after the U.S.-backed overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973.

In the 1980s, the U.S. under Ronald Reagan ravaged Central America in proxy wars to forestall or topple leftist governments. The region still has not healed.

Since 1979, the Middle East and Western Asia have felt the brunt of U.S. foreign policy’s foolishness and cruelty. The Afghanistan war started 42 years ago, in 1979, when President Jimmy Carter’s administration covertly supported Islamic jihadists to fight a Soviet-backed regime. Soon, the CIA-backed mujahedeen helped to provoke a Soviet invasion, trapping the Soviet Union in a debilitating conflict, while pushing Afghanistan into what became a 40-year-long downward spiral of violence and bloodshed.

Across the region, U.S. foreign policy produced growing mayhem. In response to the 1979 toppling of the shah of Iran (another U.S.-installed dictator), the Reagan administration armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his war on Iran’s fledgling Islamic Republic. Mass bloodshed and U.S.-backed chemical warfare ensued. This bloody episode was followed by Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, and then two U.S.-led Gulf Wars, in 1990 and 2003.

Bush and Obama escalate

The latest round of the Afghan tragedy began in 2001. Barely a month after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush ordered a U.S.-led invasion to overthrow the Islamic jihadists that the U.S. had backed previously.

His Democratic successor, President Barack Obama, not only continued the war and added more troops, but also ordered the CIA to work with Saudi Arabia to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, leading to a vicious Syrian civil war that continues to this day. As if that was not enough, Obama ordered NATO to oust Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, inciting a decade of instability in that country and its neighbors (including Mali, which has been destabilized by inflows of fighters and weapons from Libya).

What these cases have in common is not just policy failure. Underlying all of them is the U.S. foreign-policy establishment’s belief that the solution to every political challenge is military intervention or CIA-backed destabilization.

That belief speaks to the U.S. foreign-policy elite’s utter disregard of other countries’ desire to escape grinding poverty. Most U.S. military and CIA interventions have occurred in countries that are struggling to overcome severe economic deprivation. Yet instead of alleviating suffering and winning public support, the U.S. typically blows up the small amount of infrastructure the country possesses, while causing the educated professionals to flee for their lives.

Stupidity on display

Even a cursory look at America’s spending in Afghanistan reveals the stupidity of its policy there. According to a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the U.S. spent roughly $946 billion between 2001 and 2021. Yet almost $1 trillion in outlays won the U.S. few hearts and minds.

Here’s why. Of that $946 billion, fully $816 billion, or 86%, went to military outlays for U.S. troops. And the Afghan people saw little of the remaining $130 billion, with $83 billion going to the Afghan Security Forces. Another $10 billion or so was spent on drug interdiction operations, while $15 billion was for U.S. agencies operating in Afghanistan.

That left a meager $21 billion in “economic support” funding. Yet even much of this spending left little if any development on the ground, because the programs actually “support counterterrorism; bolster national economies; and assist in the development of effective, accessible, and independent legal systems.”

In short, less than 2% of the U.S. spending on Afghanistan, and probably far less than 2%, reached the Afghan people in the form of basic infrastructure or poverty-reducing services. The U.S. could have invested in clean water and sanitation, school buildings, clinics, digital connectivity, agricultural equipment and extension, nutrition programs, and many other programs to lift the country from economic deprivation.

Instead, it leaves behind a country with a life expectancy of 63 years, a maternal mortality rate of 638 per 100,000 births, and a child stunting rate of 38%.

The U.S. should never have intervened militarily in Afghanistan—not in 1979, nor in 2001, and not for the 20 years since. But once there, the U.S. could and should have fostered a more stable and prosperous Afghanistan by investing in maternal health, schools, safe water, nutrition, and the like.

Such humane investments—especially financed together with other countries through institutions such as the Asian Development Bank—would have helped to end the bloodshed in Afghanistan, and in other impoverished regions, forestalling future wars.


Holding poor people in contempt

Yet American leaders go out of their way to emphasize to the American public that we won’t waste money on such trivialities. The sad truth is that the American political class and mass media hold the people of poorer nations in contempt, even as they intervene relentlessly and recklessly in those countries. Of course, much of America’s elite holds America’s own poor in similar contempt.

In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul, the U.S. mass media is, predictably, blaming the U.S. failure on Afghanistan’s incorrigible corruption. The lack of American self-awareness is startling. It’s no surprise that after trillions of dollars spent on wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and beyond, the U.S. has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand.


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Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
After spending trillions of dollars on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, the U.S. has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand

The magnitude of the United States’ failure in Afghanistan is breathtaking. It is not a failure of Democrats or Republicans, but an abiding failure of American political culture, reflected in U.S. policy makers’ lack of interest in understanding different societies. And it is all too typical.

Almost every modern U.S. military intervention in the developing world has come to rot. It’s hard to think of an exception since the Korean War. In the 1960s and first half of the 1970s, the U.S. fought in Indochina — Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—eventually withdrawing in defeat after a decade of grotesque carnage. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, and his successor, the Republican Richard Nixon, share the blame.

Dictators and proxy wars

In roughly the same years, the U.S. installed dictators throughout Latin America and parts of Africa, with disastrous consequences that lasted decades. Think of the Mobutu dictatorship in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the Central Intelligence Agency-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba in early 1961, or of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s murderous military junta in Chile after the U.S.-backed overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973.

In the 1980s, the U.S. under Ronald Reagan ravaged Central America in proxy wars to forestall or topple leftist governments. The region still has not healed.

Since 1979, the Middle East and Western Asia have felt the brunt of U.S. foreign policy’s foolishness and cruelty. The Afghanistan war started 42 years ago, in 1979, when President Jimmy Carter’s administration covertly supported Islamic jihadists to fight a Soviet-backed regime. Soon, the CIA-backed mujahedeen helped to provoke a Soviet invasion, trapping the Soviet Union in a debilitating conflict, while pushing Afghanistan into what became a 40-year-long downward spiral of violence and bloodshed.

Across the region, U.S. foreign policy produced growing mayhem. In response to the 1979 toppling of the shah of Iran (another U.S.-installed dictator), the Reagan administration armed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in his war on Iran’s fledgling Islamic Republic. Mass bloodshed and U.S.-backed chemical warfare ensued. This bloody episode was followed by Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, and then two U.S.-led Gulf Wars, in 1990 and 2003.

Bush and Obama escalate

The latest round of the Afghan tragedy began in 2001. Barely a month after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush ordered a U.S.-led invasion to overthrow the Islamic jihadists that the U.S. had backed previously.

His Democratic successor, President Barack Obama, not only continued the war and added more troops, but also ordered the CIA to work with Saudi Arabia to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, leading to a vicious Syrian civil war that continues to this day. As if that was not enough, Obama ordered NATO to oust Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi, inciting a decade of instability in that country and its neighbors (including Mali, which has been destabilized by inflows of fighters and weapons from Libya).

What these cases have in common is not just policy failure. Underlying all of them is the U.S. foreign-policy establishment’s belief that the solution to every political challenge is military intervention or CIA-backed destabilization.

That belief speaks to the U.S. foreign-policy elite’s utter disregard of other countries’ desire to escape grinding poverty. Most U.S. military and CIA interventions have occurred in countries that are struggling to overcome severe economic deprivation. Yet instead of alleviating suffering and winning public support, the U.S. typically blows up the small amount of infrastructure the country possesses, while causing the educated professionals to flee for their lives.

Stupidity on display

Even a cursory look at America’s spending in Afghanistan reveals the stupidity of its policy there. According to a recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the U.S. spent roughly $946 billion between 2001 and 2021. Yet almost $1 trillion in outlays won the U.S. few hearts and minds.

Here’s why. Of that $946 billion, fully $816 billion, or 86%, went to military outlays for U.S. troops. And the Afghan people saw little of the remaining $130 billion, with $83 billion going to the Afghan Security Forces. Another $10 billion or so was spent on drug interdiction operations, while $15 billion was for U.S. agencies operating in Afghanistan.

That left a meager $21 billion in “economic support” funding. Yet even much of this spending left little if any development on the ground, because the programs actually “support counterterrorism; bolster national economies; and assist in the development of effective, accessible, and independent legal systems.”

In short, less than 2% of the U.S. spending on Afghanistan, and probably far less than 2%, reached the Afghan people in the form of basic infrastructure or poverty-reducing services. The U.S. could have invested in clean water and sanitation, school buildings, clinics, digital connectivity, agricultural equipment and extension, nutrition programs, and many other programs to lift the country from economic deprivation.

Instead, it leaves behind a country with a life expectancy of 63 years, a maternal mortality rate of 638 per 100,000 births, and a child stunting rate of 38%.

The U.S. should never have intervened militarily in Afghanistan—not in 1979, nor in 2001, and not for the 20 years since. But once there, the U.S. could and should have fostered a more stable and prosperous Afghanistan by investing in maternal health, schools, safe water, nutrition, and the like.

Such humane investments—especially financed together with other countries through institutions such as the Asian Development Bank—would have helped to end the bloodshed in Afghanistan, and in other impoverished regions, forestalling future wars.


Holding poor people in contempt

Yet American leaders go out of their way to emphasize to the American public that we won’t waste money on such trivialities. The sad truth is that the American political class and mass media hold the people of poorer nations in contempt, even as they intervene relentlessly and recklessly in those countries. Of course, much of America’s elite holds America’s own poor in similar contempt.

In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul, the U.S. mass media is, predictably, blaming the U.S. failure on Afghanistan’s incorrigible corruption. The lack of American self-awareness is startling. It’s no surprise that after trillions of dollars spent on wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and beyond, the U.S. has nothing to show for its efforts but blood in the sand.


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I have one online friend from Texas. I once asked him weather he thinks that it would be better for US to have national medical care and social programs like in EU, instead of having this huge military expense.

He's just a regular guy, not a corporate guy or government official etc. Not even close of being member of some elite. His opinion was that its more important to have large military than say national health insurance. I was really surprised.

Update :)

Actually, on the second thought, wars create inflation.

When you buy a home, you pay the builder and he pays both for materials and for workers. Then workers buy food and their homes and economic loop keeps its merry go around. But when you blow up a smart bomb, it costs as much as a quite decent brand new car, say $50,000. That $50,000 is now literally blown up and out of economic circulation. So one needs to print another $50,000 to buy a new bomb :) and to keep economy going. And so on, with each bomb used inflation keeps going up.
 
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AD1184

Celestial
When you buy a home, you pay the builder and he pays both for materials and for workers. Then workers buy food and their homes and economic loop keeps its merry go around. But when you blow up a smart bomb, it costs as much as a quite decent brand new car, say $50,000. That $50,000 is now literally blown up and out of economic circulation. So one needs to print another $50,000 to buy a new bomb :) and to keep economy going. And so on, with each bomb used inflation keeps going up.
That's not how economics works. Bombs, bullets, and missiles are not the only consumable items produced and sold. Almost every manufactured item eventually
becomes waste. Modern engineered obsolescence has made that much worse than previously.
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
That's not how economics works. Bombs, bullets, and missiles are not the only consumable items produced and sold. Almost every manufactured item eventually
becomes waste. Modern engineered obsolescence has made that much worse than previously.

pity. at least I tried.
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
@ 29:08 : "When COVID hit ... over 90% of precursor chemicals for anti-biotics come from China ... state media was saying "Let America die in a sea of COVID" ...

 
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nivek

As Above So Below
Vladimir Putin 'loses his 11th general' in Ukraine war as defenders 'ambush his vehicle in Donbas' - taking to 60 the number of senior Russian officers killed during invasion

Major-General Roman Kutuzov was the chief of staff of the 29th Combined Arms Army, according to reports. His vehicle was ambushed by Ukrainians and he died in a fight in Donbas, say sources. His death is the 11th general, but the first such high ranking army officer in more than a month. In 2020, Kutuzov was head of the headquarters of the combined arms formation of Russia's sprawling Eastern Military District. Russian sources say Kutuzov was killed in the area of Nikolaevka settlement, in the Popasnyansky district of the Luhansk People's Republic, close to the frontline.

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nivek

As Above So Below
China threatens Defense Secretary with WAR: Minister tells Lloyd Austin that Beijing will 'smash to smithereens any Taiwan independence plot' and will 'definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost'
  • Def Sec Lloyd Austin met with his Chinese counterpart who said China was prepared to 'go to war' in order to keep Taiwan from becoming independent
  • Austin and China’s Minister of National Defense General Wei Fenghe met for the first time face-to-face on Friday amid the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore
  • 'If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost,' the Chinese Defense Sec stated
  • Austin shared his concerns about China's recent behavior and military activity around the self-governing island
  • Austin noted a 'steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan,' including almost daily military flights near the island by the PRC'
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Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
China threatens Defense Secretary with WAR: Minister tells Lloyd Austin that Beijing will 'smash to smithereens any Taiwan independence plot' and will 'definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost'
  • Def Sec Lloyd Austin met with his Chinese counterpart who said China was prepared to 'go to war' in order to keep Taiwan from becoming independent
  • Austin and China’s Minister of National Defense General Wei Fenghe met for the first time face-to-face on Friday amid the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore
  • 'If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost,' the Chinese Defense Sec stated
  • Austin shared his concerns about China's recent behavior and military activity around the self-governing island
  • Austin noted a 'steady increase in provocative and destabilizing military activity near Taiwan,' including almost daily military flights near the island by the PRC'
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They are just venting their frustration. It will be at least 10, much better 20, years before China will be ready to attack Taiwan. But if they wait that long they can take it without a sweat.

Watching that video above I was amazed how aggressive Chine is policing his own citizens outside China. And even hearing about 800 cases of industrial espionage. China is really pushing the limits and you don't hear anything about that in papers.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Ukraine war: Every bridge leading to key city Severodonetsk destroyed

All bridges to the embattled Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk have now been destroyed, the local governor says. With the city effectively cut off, Serhiy Haidai says delivering supplies and evacuating civilians are now impossible.

Fierce fighting is taking place in the eastern city where Ukrainian officials said Russian artillery had driven its forces out of the centre. For weeks capturing Severodonetsk has been a top military goal for Russia.

Taking Severodonetsk and the nearby city of Lysychansk would give Moscow control of the entire Luhansk region, much of which is already controlled by Russian-backed separatists. All three bridges into Severodonetsk were destroyed, Mr Haidai posted on Telegram. Those residents remaining in the city were being forced to survive in "extremely difficult conditions", he added.

Former British soldier Jordan Gatley is among those to have been killed while fighting to defend the city, his family confirmed on Sunday. Ukraine's President Volodomyr Zelensky described the human cost of the battle for the city as "terrifying". Ukrainian troops, he said, had been fighting Russian forces for "literally every metre".

Reports suggest that about 70% of the city is now under Russian control.


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Ukrainian troops remaining in the city must "surrender or die", a military representative of the pro-Russian self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said. Speaking to media in Donetsk, Eduard Basurin said, "Ukrainian divisions that are there [in Severodonetsk] are there forever."

A top Russian official said Moscow's objective was to protect the self-declared people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. "In general, the protection of the republics is the main goal of the special military operation," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency.

When President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion on 24 February he said Russia's goal was to "demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine". Later another objective was added: ensuring Ukraine's neutral status.

Also on Monday, Ukrainian officials said weapons being supplied by the West were not arriving as quickly as they should. A senior presidential adviser to President Zelensky said that to end the war Ukraine's military needed "heavy weapons parity", posting a list of military hardware he said Kyiv required.



Speaking to the BBC World Service's Newshour, an adviser to the Ukrainian defence minister said troops defending Severodonetsk would have been more effective if heavy weapons had been supplied earlier.

Troops are defending the city "with what we can" but would be "much more efficient at repelling the enemy and liberating Ukrainian land had we received more heavy weaponry by now", Yury Sak said. He added that Russia's advantage was overwhelming - firing an average of 50,000 rounds a day and creating a "barrage of mortar shells, air bombardment, missile strikes" over Ukraine.

In recent weeks Western countries have committed to sending longer-range weapons to Kyiv, including the UK which for the first time said it would be sending multiple-launch rocket systems to help Ukraine defend itself.


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nivek

As Above So Below
I don't think long range weapons can be called 'defensive' weapons, sure they may be used to hit incoming targets further away...Its more likely that long range weapons are used as an offensive weapon hitting targets in enemy territory...Its pushing the envelope a bit to give Ukraine these long range weapons further antagonizing Russia to a point where Russia may follow through and start targeting Western cities or worse, by using nukes...This Ukraine war is a war that did not need to happen...

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