Ukraine Invasion 2: no more Black Sea fleet for you

How do they know about a commercial from 1992?

was that 92? I clearly remember that commercial playing a few times in every NFL broadcast for a couple years. Would have guessed more like late 90s

I’m interested. What’s your image of the people who are producing these videos? Like who are they, what’s their background?

i don’t understand the question

Fair. I’ll try again. I may have misread, I took your post as surprise that the marketing and social media folks behind the account are across old US adverts.

My assumption is that these folks are mostly a bunch of very experienced millenials, probably with decades of experience between them at top marketing and social media firms in Ukraine, Europe, and probably the US too.

These folks either being familiar with old ads, or being familiar enough with the concept to look through old ads to find something to parody, seems very unsurprising.

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Right, like who is that propaganda directed to? US Americans. Of course people writing copy for US MIC war propaganda know a lot about US culture.

This article has some really interesting time lapse / before and after shots showing what shelling does to a town.

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The parallels been Pyyhrrus and Putin aren’t that close.

While he was a mercurial and often restless leader, and not always a wise king, he was considered one of the greatest military commanders of his time.

Pyrrhus was known for his benevolence. As a general, Pyrrhus’s greatest political weaknesses were his failures to maintain focus and to maintain a strong treasury at home (many of his soldiers were costly mercenaries).

Killed while fighting some dude whose mom whacked him with a roof tile. Then some other guy stepped in and cut his head off for good measure.

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https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1614757689631842305

What I gather from Twitter/Mastodon is that Soledar in itself isn‘t that important but from there Russia can attack Ukraine’s lines of communication in and out of Bakhmut.
Bakhmut has been described as heavily fortified and Russia has a hard time capturing directly. If it can’t be supplied and troops rotated in and out though then Ukraine might have to retreat.

The significance of Soledar is it’s the biggest Russian win in 6 months, demonstrating that the RuAF isn’t licked yet.

It’s a proof of concept, that in the war of attrition, just loading up a ton of convicts to be cannon fodder will win victories. So mass mobilization or at least clearing out the prisons will be one way to go.

Not really, it puts Bakhmut in direct danger of encirclement and I’ve read if Bakhmut falls then the rest of Donetsk is going to be much harder, if not impossible to hold. It seems like it could lead to almost all of Donbas falling under Russian control. Which would explain why both sides are fighting so hard for it.

That’s not true. Furthermore, I can’t believe anyone would say it unless that person was at least sympathetic to Russian propaganda.

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good to know

Which part? That Soledar falling makes encircling Bakhmut possible or that Bakhmut falling would make holding the rest of Donetsk precarious?

Like the first part is just restating what Louis said here:

The second part may or may not be true, I have no idea. If it’s not true I don’t know why both sides are fighting so hard for Bakhmut.

Taking Soledar does make an encirclement of Bakhmut more likely, but it represents maybe 20% of the remaining job. At the grinding pace of the battle, the chance that the Russians could breakthrough and quickly encircle large numbers if Ukrainian seems remote. The most likely outcome of a Russian victory is the Battle of Severodonetsk: after vicious urban fighting, the Ukrainians simply pull back and dig in again. The strategic value of the transportation connections in Bakhmut is marginal.

As for motives, the Ukrainian propaganda line is the Russian mercenary (not Army) CEO in that area is trying to enhance his political standing by claiming a victory. My personal guess is the situation is similar to the battle of Verdun in WWI: in a war of attrition sometimes it makes sense to pour everything into one area and get on with the attrition. I also half seriously believe the CEO has a cost plus contract where the more equipment he buys and then lets the Ukrainians destroy the more money he makes.

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If the Bakhmut/Soledar battle ends with the Russians capturing Bakhmut then I can think of at least one difference between Verdun and Bakhmut.

At what point does it become ok to just start shooting down Russian airliners?

The west should just give Ukraine top end Himars rockets so Ukraine can target legitimate military targets deep inside Russia. Tell Russia those deliveries will stop if Russia stops targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure.

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