Comments by "The Zero Line" (@The_ZeroLine) on "Anders Puck Nielsen" channel.

  1. It always amuses me when US tax dollars comes up as an issue when anyone who has studied military aid to Ukraine is aware that not only has it not cost us a dime, but it’s actually profiting us + enabled critical progress and reform to our own arms industry + military procurement philosophy (we’re finally realizing OST tech can perform better than ridiculously overpriced platforms like Switchblade in many cases, using companies like Anduril to substitute for things like JASSM and Hellfire missiles for a tiny of fraction of the price).
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  2. Rostov-on-drone is my favorite Russian oblast. Thanks to drones, Russia is exporting most of its oil via smoke rather than pipeline now.
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  3. This move gains 🇺🇦 so much: 1. Beyond capturing the station that controls gas flow into Europe, Kursk and the KNPP is critical to war efforts as it makes 95% of Russia’s steel and other critical items. It gives them leverage to get Russia out of other areas like the ZNPP if Ukraine captures the Kursk NPP. 2. US restrictions made Putin believe border defenses were unnecessary /he could commit everything in 🇺🇦. No longer. 3. It changes the entire media narrative which was this creeping advance that had lowered domestic morale and created a Russian fed narrative in international media that Ukraine has no hope, more support is a waste and they just to come to the table. 4. It shows how much Western self-deterrence via unfair restrictions on where and what Ukraine can hit has not only hurt their war efforts, but innocent civilians too. 5. It also puts the US and Germany into an awkward position. It makes their policies look silly and ineffective. And it should give Ukraine some leverage that if they want Ukraine to withdraw from Russia, they need to be given something in return that will improve their chances when just fighting from within their own borders. 6. As the video showing one Russian in Kursk saying “I don’t care who flag I live under as long as they actually protect me,” it makes Putin look weak, makes some realize Putin doesn’t care about them and this entire situation is his fault.
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  4. BTW, your interview on John Fink’s Silicon Curtain should be required viewing for political leaders / advisors + military decision makers.
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  5. Some context on Shuster’s Time hit piece: he gloated on Twitter about using rubles in Crimea in 2015 + past article titles include “Ukrainians Want Russia to Invade,” “No, Russia Will Not Interfere in Ukraine,” & “Nazis Have Hijacked Ukraine’s Liberal Uprising,” Anyone noticing a theme? It’s amazing Time let a man openly hostile to Ukraine author this story. Finally, his anonymous “sources” included Arestovych whose ambition is to become president. A guy now living in Europe after becoming unpopular when he argued Ukraine should not do away with a Russian centric culture and blamed an AD mssile for civilian deaths after it hit a Russian missile that then fell to the ground in a residential area.
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  6. One dilemma Russia has faced is that they want to suppress information from getting back from the front and their men’s sloppy comms security, but they also need them for men to fly drones and see their feeds.
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  7. The only situation that’ll work = a frozen conflict in which VP can keep his army in the field. He can’t allow 500k+ bitter troops w/PTSD, addictions & weapons access returning, which’ll also crash the economy.
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  8. Having it ended with a truce mediated by President 🥔 of all people leaves me feeling like I watched an entire thriller season and then the finale was replaced with an episode of Sponge Bob.
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  9. Because Russia doesn’t have sensor suites that can detect them. Also, 🇺🇦 engages tactics like attacking the secure harbors by air to push 🇷🇺 ships out to sea w/the drones waiting.
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  10. @ That’s basically what we’ve been doing. There are also massive financial interests we’d be risking by allowing Russia to run roughshod over Ukraine, including the fact that they’d control so much of the world’s food supply (and already control nearly 100% of fertilizer) that they’d be able unleash famine and trigger refugee crises if we didn’t play ball.
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  11. Academic competition is a very charitable way of saying these guys are letting their egos get in the way of honest reporting. Unless, it played a major role in preventing them from starting earlier toward the south, it clearly was worth it. Ukraine is continuing to work on an attritional model because of the lack of de-mining equipment like MICLICS, aircraft, etc.
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  12. The mobilization has never stopped. Russia is mobilizing at the full capacity they’re able to equip and minimally prepare their soldiers. A mobilization would likely only create political risks and no more capacity.
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  13. @ Not even that. It’s .002% of GDP and about .4% of its military budget if you take the numbers on face value, but those numbers ignore the fact that we assign values to stuff like DPICM, HMWVVs, MRAPs, which we were spending billions on to scrap. So, instead of paying all that money to get rid of something, we say “oh, this is worth $840m” and then hundreds of armored vehicles that were retiring or being retired.
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  14. P’s in a tough fix. Not only can’t he risk the conscripts coming home, he can’t afford to continue paying them yet he also can’t afford the sudden economic crash ending the war will cause and as recents events have shown they’re only capable, at best, of maintaining the current lines.
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  15. The fact that other journalists proposed absolutely non-constructive question is zero surprise. The entire Western media has been played like a fiddle this entire war. Russia is expert at using a system that operates on norms and the assumption of good faith actors that has been thrown out the window in the new world of “alternative facts” and the discovery you can simply lie about everything and it works all the time.
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  16.  @Memovox The US inspector general has not found a single incident of corruption despite the GOP salivating for any corruption to be found. Once Ukraine’s pro-Russian element left at the beginning of the war, corruption levels went down to Western levels. What corruption can you point to? Overpaying for eggs and some Ukrainians paying their way out of serving? Wow-wee!
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  17. “Taking territory” is too general a description and should be qualified by how absolutely negligible the scale of newly captured territory is.
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  18. War is going well. US politics less so. Cutting off aid isn’t even my worst fear. It’s “him” withdrawing from NATO and, for no good reason, saying the US won’t take action if Russia uses tactical nukes in Ukraine. Anyway, Russia’s dire manpower and armored vehicle shortage (IFV, APC and MBT) is really going to handicap Russia and already has begun to. I am also worried he’ll prevent PATRIOT systems that Israel is likely to provide Ukraine as they need to go to the US first and by the time they arrive, have some minor reconditioning done, it’s like he would be in office. Obviously, he could also take the step of forbidding European allies from even transferring interceptors. Not that they would have many to spare.
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  19. He’s a far higher class of expert than most TV news usually have. DR, though, is one of the best mainstream news outlets though.
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  20. That’s an interesting parallel. I’d say you were handicapped more by being given the ability to engage the total warfare doctrine and Ukraine is being restricted from both total warfare and enough systems. That’s what left our men and women (99% men) in Vietnam high and dry.
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  21. I find it frustrating that being objective is considered pro-Ukrainian, but I agree.
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  22. I’ll also add when we see footage it is clear there is no coherent plan in place for defending their ship. It’s mass chaos without sailors sticking to fixed positions and we’ve even seen captains coming to a dead stop in the water out of choice and not damage.
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  23.  @annarock8966 Cool story, bro.
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  24.  @paullangford8179  Exactly. And that’s just one small component of why the aid figures are amortized. People are also failing to factor in issues like the fact deterrence is always cheaper than war. If we’d let Russia just invade Ukraine with no response, imagine how much money we’d lose if China invaded Taiwan regardless of whether we went to war to stop or didn’t. An invasion of Taiwan would cost the global economy trillions. Or the fact that enabling Ukraine to attrit Russia’s military for pennies on the dollar saves us billions we would have spent on military assets just focused on contingencies for the remote possibility of Russian military confrontations.
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  25. Great detail. Thank you. Where did you see that?
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  26.  @mitchyoung93  Oh, wow, tell me you knowing about geopolitics without yada yada yada and tell me about all these “opportunity costs” lost due to aid to Ukraine and I’ll give you a list 10x longer of opportunity costs lost due to not providing Ukraine aid as well as 100 factors from commodity prices that would have been negatively effected for us to preferential market access we get from providing security to our allies.
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  27.  @Memovox  It’s not name calling when it’s true. You’re either a bot or grossly misinformed. In the meanwhile, please cite this all widespread corruption.
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  28. @davidc1878 Your point? That’s what happens when you don’t equitably tax the tiny portion of tax “payers” who hold more wealth than 90% of Americans combined + our middle class tax base goes extinct. Moreover, even if we accepted the face value of the aid, it’s .002% of GDP. It’s not even a rounding error. Furthermore, we give billions of military aid to Pakistan, Egypt, etc. annually and I don’t hear Trump talking about that. Or the fact that the largest part of our deficit has been generated under GOP presidents and literally every economic KPI is cumulatively inferior under GOP admins since 1953.
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  29. Ukraine has quietly captured 36 oil platforms in the Black Sea and driven the 🇷🇺 Navy away from Crimea. More importantly, 🇺🇦 is just miles away from Tokmak, which if captured, will fully collapse 🇷🇺’s ability to supply their southern forces, which is 75% of the war.
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  30. Undermining Western dominance and the rules based order seems like a pretty solid axis of shared interest to me even if they want that for different ends.
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  31. Politicians were angry that their own citizens were the ones clamoring for weapons transfers and not them for once.
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  32.  @cheztaylor8  How is it coming from the “taxpayer’s pocket” when those systems were paid for decades ago and were costing us billions to scrap? There are only a small amount of systems, which are coming of new spending budgets. And that amount is easily covered by the corporate tax revenue generated by sales of new equipment to foreign militaries and our military own alone that’s been spurred by seeing the effectiveness of our arms versus the crap made by Russia and China. Not to mention that you act like it’d be free to tax payers if we didn’t do anything and then encouraged China to invade Taiwan or allow Russia a stranglehold on a major part of the world’s grain supply. You’re either being disingenuous or haven’t considered all the knock on effects.
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  33. @ God are you naive. First of all, I’m not talking about just the EU or simply preferential treatment other countries wouldn’t get though yes we certainly do. Second of all, why do you think so many countries purchase exclusively US arms? Third of all, I can’t help you if you don’t understand our security guarantees (formal or implied) don’t come with economic benefits and special treatment. You think we’re still allowed bases in Japan because they think we’re just swell? Do you know how much more it would cost to project power into the pan-pacific without those bases?
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  34. @ Dude, I can’t even w/dilettantes like you. You haven’t even bothered to look up how much we’ve spent on scrapping DPICM (and how far we still had to go) and haven’t even found the costs so far for scrapping HMMWVs. And do you seriously think because we still use HMMWVs that means we’re not scrapping thousands of them? I can’t spend all day educating you.
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  35. That is short. Even if you made it clear you’d welcome more, it shows how far society has fallen in its standards that anybody could consider this long.
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  36. The NYT called this modestly sized new front, still in its infancy, “a stunning new offensive” + said “selling the war and victory is getting increasingly easy” in 🇷🇺. I want what they’re smoking or if their “source” giggles while feeding them this nonsense.
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  37. Simply put: well with major caveats. Many of which depend on foreign political imperatives. The Western media though, has continued to show a massive level of cluelessness or big picture understanding.
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  38. Hell, France, despite being the EU’s second biggest economy, has given €300m less than Lithuania in arms (which is 64x smaller) and haven’t even reached half-a-billion while Germany is at 17.1b or so so far. France is pathetic.
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  39.  @Zuluknob How do they have more dead? Cause they keep attacking with soldiers that have no training, artillery support, antiquated weapons, horrible ISR, no battlefield medics, no stabilization points. Basically, how much time you got?
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  40.  @anderspuck He was referring to Vlad and his own video content.
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  41. I’ve never been worried about the Ukrainian leaders. It’s solely the “allies” I’m worried about. With the new house speaker + Slovakia’s new leader adding a 2nd opposition in the EU w/most of the non-Baltic EU countries already seeming to want any excuse not to provide anything, I am feeling we’re really edging to a precarious point politically. If Biden can get a funding bill through things should be fine. If not, beyond the US providing more than the entire EU combined, it will be disastrous as the EU will likely use it as an excuse to pull back.
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  42. Kind of important to note that this was a lancet, not a surveillance drone. And I’m guessing they ran across it by coincidence.
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  43.  @kashmirha  I didn’t even know he was Russian when I made those points. But that’s even more damning and goes toward explaining why he was gloating about the rubles. It’s amazing the media hasn’t called him out.
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  44.  @XL0G  Thanks. That is true, but while I may well be wrong, I simply do not trust him to not lie about his sources based on what he’s already displayed in terms of journalistic ethics and personal bias. While, I think he’d avoid major lies he could be caught out on, especially if Time editors are doing their due diligence. However, a status “mix up” of a cited source is the sort of seemingly small, but nefarious “error” that wouldn’t raise major alarm bells if caught and a “correction” was issued. If he’ll lie or at best misrepresent the facts on entire stories to fit a narrative, he’d twist (I.E., lie) a detail as small as this without second thought.
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  45. Uninteresting?! We learned Poland started WWII. 😂 BTW, don’t call it X. You’re just rewarding another megalomaniac.
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  46. Meanwhile, 🇺🇦’s economy has exceeded all growth projections + its budgetary management met or exceeded all targets set when the ECB issued it loans.
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  47. Ironically, one reason 🇺🇦 victory is so important = it’ll become the affordable armory of Europe afterward. They have tons of experience, expertise and more critically, economic labor. They will basically become Europe’s South Korea.
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  48.  @kogorun  Russophilia?! I didn’t even talk about Russia in my post. I talked about a biased author’s agenda. So, yeah, you’ve instantly discredited yourself. And, actually my day job includes analyzing Sino and Eastern European geopolitics as well as the domestic affairs of these states. I was also double majored in Russian history major and political science at UCLA (not that that is especially applicable or makes one qualified in isolation).
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  49.  @Zuluknob Oryx undercounts. They literally only list losses they can visually. LMAO. Try harder.
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  50. Shows how little people know that many are saying both Wagner will be attacking Poland or toppling Lukashenko. We need to bring back more Darwinian factors.
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  51. 🇷🇺 has ground itself down so much for political narratives + w/no concern for sustainability that 🇺🇦 will be able to hold it back from making any significant gains from here on out, but it won’t be able to focus on regaining large swaths of territory now that they’ll need to be conserving materiel. They still have lots of pledged arms incoming though with long term commitments for many partners. So, they won’t be running out of arms. My greatest concern in terms of potential new partners is that South Korea will now not change its policy in order to not alienate Trump. The North Korean troops, without their own armor, are more a hindrance than a help and Russia’s economy is too fragile and its stock to worn down to continue for long.
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  52.  @ulrikschackmeyer848  I have this saved off hand: GOP-led hearing on aid to Ukraine finds no evidence, so far, of misuse Chairman Michael McCaul said good oversight supports efficiency. ByIsabella Murray andShannon K. Crawford March 29, 2023, ABC News
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  53.  @michaelkenny8540  How is Ukraine focused on headline grabbing tactical events? This is nonsense. Just like the idea that Russia has 4x as many men. It’s true they’re losing men 5x as fast though. At one point it was 10-12x as many.
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  54. Estonia, whose GDP is 207x smaller than the GDP of 🇫🇷, 🇪🇸, 🇮🇹 yet they’ve givne more military aid than them. That’s pathetic! France is also blocking buying non-EU shells and joint production not in France.
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  55. Kind of sad you couldn’t figure this out for yourself.
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  56. Interesting, I had only seen on paper, so far, Operation Interflex, Operation Unifier and EUMAM. I had seen that exact quote though. Orbital must not have been mentioned in that though. I can’t put it all, but here are some notes on what I had found: Training Partners, Locations & Numbers EUMAM (EU Military Assistance Mission) * Budget: 123m Euros * Training Locations: Poland, Germany & Bulgaria * Secondary Sites: Estonia (medical training with Norwegian materiel and financial support) * Instructor Origins: Bulgarian, British & American instructors * Program: 15,000 [12,000 Ukrainian soldiers to undergo basic training in rotations of 2-3 months] [2,800 Ukrainian military personnel to receive special training across the three countries in a number of disciplines] [NA additional number to receive NA skills training] Operation Unifier Trainers 1. Australia: 70 - UK/Operation Interflex 2. Canada: 270+ 1. UK/Operation Interflex + Unifier 2. Poland/Operation Unifier 3. Bulgaria 4. Cambodia (sappers) 5. France 6. New Zealand: 149 - UK/Operation Interflex 7. Ireland (sappers) 8. Poland 9. Spain 10. UK 11. US Germany, Bulgaria (and Poland) Where & Trained by Who In Bulgaria/Germany/Poland by US, UK & Bulgaria: 15,000 US Base in Germany (w/British, Canadian & US instructors) and a British base with same instructors) In/By France: 2,000 In/By Spain: 2,400 In UK: 5,550 Minimum Poland : 15,000 spread across Bulgaria Germany): 15,00 ————/ Operation Unifier / Interflex: While at least 7,460+ soldiers were trained by Nov. 11, the objective was to hit a minimum of 10,000+. However, soon they will likely begin to start hitting even greater marks because the program is only starting to really kick into gear now.
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  57. @ Obviously I’m not going to through all the numbers in a YouTube comment. But you could say exactly the same about comments by Trump and right wing news. I obviously wasn’t counting system like PATRIOT and HIMARS or only counting job creation as how I balance the costs. There’s a lot more to it than that.
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  58. The West could and should have prevented escalation by merely by giving Ukraine enough air defense and equipment to protect civilians + infrastructure let alone whole cities and dozens of soldiers each day.
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  59. What seems obvious us, apparently is beyond the “best and brightest” running much of the West. 🤦‍♂️ People should also realize that not every single one of these aircraft need to be a donation, Ukraine can pay for a number of them in the long run if this gets things moving more quickly.
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  60.  @ThomasTomiczek  Here’s a kopeck. Don’t spend it all in one place, botnik.
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  61.  @Memovox  BTW, you tried to use living standards against Ukraine, but as we’ve seen, their living standards were and are far better than Russia. And we’ve seen the bitterness that’s caused among the Russians. We’ve heard endless intercepts with Russians talking about how much better the Ukrainians live than them.
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  62. The ? “how’s Russia’s army still doing well if XYZ problems are true?” didn’t make much sense because he doesn’t know about military matters and by no parameters is 🇷🇺 still doing “pretty well.” I’d have like to hear him asked how many of his viewers held strong anti-Putin before the war and how many were newly dissatisfied. That would be critical information.
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  63. Your content is by far in the top .1% of the highest quality and most insightful.
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  64.  @dirkhouben9960  Your prediction is looking pretty hilariously wrong. But, no, you’re right. At SOME point they’ll be forced…but it could be in 6 days, 6 weeks, 6 months or when a peace deal is settled upon.
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  65.  @agffans5725  The Danes are one of the few countries taking this war even half-seriously. Maybe that’s the benefit of not being overrun with far right agitators.
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  66. This offensive was always going to backfire once the aid package was finally passed.
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  67. You had a question for Jake Broe about the midterms he really didn’t want to address honestly because he avoids politics like the plague. The Republicans are far more hostile to supporting Ukraine than the Dems. The reasons include Trump’s beef w/Zelensky, NATO and the right’s obsession w/the idea that Hunter Biden had some diabolical connections w/Ukraine (beyond the paid board seat that was obviously given to him in the hopes he could influence his father). Anyway, the Republicans will easily win back the house. Look for Biden to put some major aid packages together during the lame duck session before those newly elected Republicans actually assume their offices and block new aid packages. Also, look for them to use the bully pulpit to try and erode support for Ukraine. I don’t think it will have a devastating, but it will cut back the pace and unity of the West. Anyway, You’re by far one of the best analysts on all angles of the conflict. Purely facts and logic and limited speculation and only where it’s the only available tool.
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  68. Question: why does the media, but especially POTUS never explain that the arms given to 🇺🇦 have cost tax payers nearly nothing as most were paid for in the ‘80s & were retired, retiring or being disposed of at huge expense? This could really change US public opinion about spending on 🇺🇦. Examples: DPICM, SDBs, MRAPS and HMMWVs were all being scrapped + Avenger retired. The $ values placed on the packages are put at what these systems would cost new and bought today. Seems like they were thinking of foreign optics + political capital and forgot about domestic ones They’ve also failed to mention how it’s paid for itself 20x over as US weapons performance so out shined Russia’s newest & best systems that our arms industry is getting huge orders from aero to artillery at the expense of 🇷🇺’s market share. All of which = jobs, revenue, etc.
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  69. Only a small 10-15% demo like the stricken Roughly 50% of Russians polled on a New Year’s wish said “peaceful skies and the end of the SMO.” Onl 6% chose “victory in Ukraine.” It doesn’t absolve them of anything though.
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  70. Also, when you look at footage of 🇷🇺 ships coming under drone attack, there’s no coherent tactics visible or pre-planned role or position for each sailor. Worse yet, some captains have chosen to come to a complete stop despite still retaining propulsion.
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  71.  @dpelpal  Each Sucha! and girlish squeal is known to be worth the equivalent of at least 50 pounds of AA flak.
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  72.  @dpelpal  Blyat just makes things worse. It’s the equivalent of two mortar misfires.
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  73. Putin blaming the West for “the Bucha provocation” shows how much of his argument remain brazen lies. They are also founded on the idea he and Russia are one and the same. He knows that 🇺🇦 was never a military threat to 🇷🇺, but rather a threat in terms of the idea that if it became a prosperous democracy it would undermine his governance model. And that’s very different than him believing Ukraine and the West are a threat even if it wasn’t absurd to begin with.
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  74. Guy seems a little all over the place w/a lede deep grasp of this topic. Anyhoo, it’s only a matter of time before IAs start scaling back on manpower w/OSINT now able to provide 90% of the info the agencies do (and often of better quality and more UTD). Personnel w/access to CIs in high place, who deploy and/or have access to our more advanced ISR feeds, etc. is a very tiny proportion of intel agency personnel. Where the line on “civilians” starts/ends is nearly a moot point when it comes to Russia because they already target every type of civilian indiscriminately. Is ringing a bell to let your neighbor know a Russian patrol coming make you a spy/combatant? The line can be moved anywhere. So, it needs to be firm even if it creates a problem for the military or every war will be limitlessly barbaric.
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  75. Many of the most well known names in the West are not, in fact, experts. They never understood the Russian people, culture or Putin. There are many such pundits who are yet given large platforms and assumed to be experts nonetheless. It’s just sad many of them are still being listened to.
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  76.  @andersbjrnsen7203  Macron lost interest when it became clear he couldn’t make his mark on history by being the man to talk Putin down from the ledge. He’s such a clown. Anyway, Denmark doesn’t feel the pressure locally, but they’ve been giving big.
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  77. Bad leadership below him has always been part of Putin’s plan because he doesn’t want a rival. That is doubly true now. He is too paranoid to allow the army to develop a cohesive command structure with a clear leader because that leader may consolidate too much power and too many plaudits.
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  78. This is also known or extremely similar to the sunk cost fallacy.
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  79. You don’t need military strategy for violent protests. You just need to make police scared to crack down on you. The military won’t. The problem is that Putin has a decently big army dedicated just to crushing protests. Anyway, thank god you’re back. You’re one of the best. But it’s been so long YouTube had shoved your channel way down. People have no problems with Russians as long as they’re genuinely against Putin and the war.
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  80. I don’t think my fellow Americans on the right understand the concept of global stability. Any level of harm to America is fine as long as they get to “own the libs.”
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  81. The Lilliputians should be the new name for Russians.
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  82.  @Zuluknob knob is quite an appropriate name for you. Russia has lost everything they brought to the war simply not losing what they already went into the war with. Great work!
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  83. Anders gone wild! It’s an absolute shame he only has 113k subscribers.
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  84.  @ReedPearce-xu3cr Ignore this guy. He’s clearly a bot trying to stir up animosity between Westerners. If he’s not, I just feel a bit bad for him.
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  85.  @userhome000 OMG, a Chinese YouTube user trying to create strife in the West? What a surprise.
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  86. It’s clear. The US doesn’t like the idea of an international court being able to bring arrest warrants against former let alone current presidents.
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  87. How could this be his best video yet?His videos usually have fascinating new insights, but we didn’t learn anything new here. Everything in the interview has already been discussed ad nausea. For example: that Russians have trained to be a-political, that they don’t think protesting can produce any changes, that the corrupt officials just want to go back to corruption as usual, that those against the war flee rather than protest, etc. We knew all this. The only point I found interesting was his perspective was about the videos protesting for better conditions and equipment for their husbands, brothers, sons, etc. as soldiers.
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  88.  @mariaf.6601  Don’t know, but he does try to avoid politics and what he said in the episode I referenced was highly inaccurate. 50% of Republicans say Ukraine should get less or no more aid. And Republicans are crushing the Democrats in the mid terms. Further, Fox and MAGA have turned championing Russia a full time operation.
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  89.  @mitchyoung93  But, yeah, thanks for the hint… 🙄
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  90. BTW, don’t confuse my post with absolving Russians of blame. It’s a sick society and the civilians bear the lion’s share of blame.
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  91.  @abhilashpradhan7671  WWII Russia is the equivalent of one of the members of a bank heist crew turning on its crew mid-robbery and bragging about how it stopped a robbery. But really having only turned on them when they realized the crew was planning to leave them behind for the cops.
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  92. There is no potential negotiated solution because Putin cannot afford to end the war. He CANNOT have a million furious, addicted, PTSD-ridden conscripts with weapons returning to Russia. It’s easy to understand why that would lead to his regime’s collapse.
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  93. I’ll have to disagree that they purposefully formulated a plan to commit war crimes as gambit to challenge the ICC. The war crimes rather have incidentally given them an avenue to challenge the validity of the ICC.
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  94. Sorry to be pedantic, but it should be are with Putin. Not is. But my Danish isn’t great. So, I can’t talk.
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  95.  @andersjjensen  I know the rule. I am a copy editor / writer. You can Google which is correct. While collective nouns usually take is, English grammar rules are complex and not always consistent or logical. “A group of people is” would take because “group” is the subject and not “people.” But not in this case.
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  96.  @tabithan2978  Trump has the most hugely beautiful words.
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  97.  @jasoncowley4718 Yup. There are endless war crimes of staggering evil and brutality happening in eye watering numbers. Much of it with video. Yet the NYT rarely makes a peep about them. But there are a dozen or more articles every day on Israel’s actions despite the long term implications of that war not having one-tenth the long term importance for the shifting world order.
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  98.  @martstam2016  You’re right that they were primarily used as missile platforms to strike land based targets and just as importantly close the grain corridor. VP wishes he never backed out of that. You’re also right that we shouldn’t treat them as utterly incompetent because in some areas they are good and because they still have a massive advantage in men, production capacity and 90% of system types. And an attritional war in which the West continues to transfer tiny volumes of military aid massively favors Russia. Luckily, all it takes to turn things around is the US getting past the GOP roadblock and Europe taking this seriously which it finally looks like it’s starting to. Actually enforcing export bans would REALLY help too. I wonder why countries in the Caucuses are importing thousands of times more high tech tools, aerospace parts, etc. since the sanctions went into place. They couldn’t be acting as middle men could they?!?! 🤦‍♂️
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  99. With the new house speaker + Slovakia’s new leader adding a 2nd opposition in the EU w/most of the non-Baltic EU countries already seeming to want any excuse not to provide anything, I am feeling we’re really edging to a precarious point politically. If Biden can get a funding bill through things should be fine. If not, beyond the US providing more than the entire EU combined, it will be disastrous as the EU will likely use it as an excuse to pull back.
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  100. It’s fun. Not troubling. Besides, you’ve got Kimi Raikkonen.
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  101. A new video from Anders is the sweetest notification one can receive.
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  102. The Western Media has been utterly clueless and only covering the war from afar this entire war while they’ve been utterly obsessed with Israel.
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  103. Not Kharkiv. That’s for sure. That’s an information operation to scare + destabilize 🇺🇦 as well as divert resources to the wrong area.
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  104. Which aspect? He talked about a lot of propaganda topics.
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  105.  @zerg230  You have to be really dimwitted and uninformed to be manipulated by the government. For those who have no time for anything but work, caring for family, etc., I kind of get it because you have no time to inform yourself. For a place like Russia where they’ve been conditioned to be apolitical their whole lives and fed state TV, I get it even more.
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  106. An offensively bad offensive. It’s like Putin’s throwing valuable resources in a wood chipper. He’s not going to get his politically useful win. He’s been smart to basically announce his candidacy yesterday w/out actually announcing.
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  107. As an American, I’d love Norway to buy Hawaii and as much of America as possible. It’d be great to live under a functional government.
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  108.  @Pierluigi_Di_Lorenzo  False. The people of Donbas (and doubly in Crimea) definitely didn’t want 🇷🇺 to invade. 🇷🇺only sent the little green men after efforts to stir popular unrest by saying Kievan forces were coming to massacre Russian speakers failed. In addition to the fake news, they tried paying and arming some local thugs paired with + directed by the FSB to storm gov. building in the oblast in the hopes it would inspire an uprising. Besides, even if the fraudulent claim had been true, the title itself is what most people read so the title was both a lie and intentionally misleading.
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  109.  @Pierluigi_Di_Lorenzo No one said he’s in the KGB. But nice try. Fox News lies/distorts the truth every single day to fit an agenda and/or a narrative without being intelligence agency assets.
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  110.  @Teeurbo  What party line? 🤪
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  111. General Surovikin’s disappearance suggests another major development.
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  112.  @Princip666 Arrest/disappearance. What would you call it?
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  113. The payouts for death and injury benefits + even medical care despite how frequently they deny it to soldiers and how rarely they even make it care.
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  114. Everything they’re doing is unsustainable. It’s clear Putin’s strategy is to go all out right now in the hope that either DT will win + force 🇺🇦 into peace or even if he loses making 🇺🇦 look weak right now will lead the West to think more aid is pointless. Further, his commanders can’t admit how bad their armor and manpower situations are. So, he’s operating on the assumption that 🇺🇦 is weaker than it is & the RFAF is stronger than it is.
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  115. It’s important to note, that nuclear escalation is only a possibility if Putin thinks he’s about to lose power/his life if Ukraine is about to fully reclaim their territory. It’s not a potential due to sudden internal collapse because using nukes doesn’t help him in that situation.
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  116.  @ailinofaolin8897  Spoken like a loser.
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  117.  @qstrian  https://youtu.be/A10Hl913qgg?si=jhJwWW-3DYvFZPve
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  118.  @qstrian  Or his own jewces in this case lol. As a Jew, I am licensed to make that joke BTW.
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  119.  @agffans5725  How dare you?! We’re a nation of scholars and philosophers. Just look at our political discourse. It’d make “the founders” proud.
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  120.  @jamesgornall5731  I see one of the new Kremlin bot lines is trying to revise the humiliating three-day narrative. Unfortunately for you, Putin sent in thousands of riot police with no military equipment or experience to ride with the military vanguard. Proof positive alone, he expected little-to-no resistance. Why else embed thousands of riot police at the tip of your ground forces?
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  121. The Germans can’t wait to back stab Ukraine and Scholz even went on record saying he’d like to restore relations to the pre-war order if Russia pinky promises not to attack again.
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  122. @ Anyone saying the US has a right to is either a Russian or Chinese bot trying to sow dissension among Western populaces. Ignore them.
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  123.  @crinklecut3790  Cool. You’re a coward. Good for you.
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  124. On YT or when interviewed you should address the below issue as it’d make a real-world difference: Neither US media or POTUS explain the actual cost of arms given to 🇺🇦 is a mere fraction of the stated values. Most of those given were already paid for in the ‘80s & were mostly used, retired, retiring or being disposed of at huge expense. Examples: DPICM, SDBs, MRAPS and HMMWVs were all being scrapped + Avenger retired. The $ values placed on the packages are put at what these systems would cost new and bought today. Seems like they were thinking of foreign optics + political capital and forgot about domestic optics. They’ve also failed to mention how it’s paid for itself 20x over as US weapons performance so out shined Russia’s newest & best systems that our arms industry is getting huge orders from aero to artillery at the expense of 🇷🇺’s market share. All of which = jobs, revenue, etc.
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  125.  @jamesgeorge8915  What a silly response.
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  126. One thing no one can dispute is the massive increase of Russian bots that have been deployed in the run up to elections. Each comment usually got one or two bots at most. Now each one is getting 5+ as almost every reply to my comment shows.
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  127. I agree with Nielsen’s overall analysis, which is that any major Russian breakthrough is highly unlikely. So, is he “highly delusional too?” There will likely be some local victories. Maybe Russia will capture Chasiv Yar or the like, but we’re not going to see anything like the Kharkiv counter offensive where the Russians collapsed.
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  128. Germany is literally salivating eyeing Ukraine’s back with a knife.
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  129.  @gorillaguerillaDK  They’re great. Between a pragmatic yet highly civic mindset as well their small sizes, they can run countries very efficiently.
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  130. And, to preempt a dumb comparison reply, 🇺🇸 is doing even worse right now. It’s not a competition. Multiple global leaders are failing miserably.
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  131.  @CaptainBeebi They sound like a Russian bot. Most Americans support Ukraine.
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  132. Erdogan enforced the deal because it’d reduce the profile he has gained on the international stage and make people question his value as a mediator. Great point on the reasons Putin even agreed in the first place. Just sub’ed BTW.
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  133.  @seancidy6008 Well and I don’t need to be diplomatic and I can bluntly say the guy is a dilettante. Even Snyder ie decent at best. Frankly for some of the most high profile “analysts” of this war, it’s clear they don’t do nearly enough research.
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  134. @ Definitely not. Besides, it’d all be “fake news” even if they did.
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  135. @ lol, now Krembots are reporting my comments, hoping to get reality taken down. Just accept it. Even if all you’re hoping comes to pass, 🇷🇺 has sacrificed its economic future to achieve none of its goals + still capture less than 20% of 🇺🇦 (most of it prior to 2014 to boot). Good job!
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  136. @ BTW, the defense budget is “800 million or so”? 😂 Please also tell me where you got $60 m (I’m assuming billion is what you meant) since that’s not even close to the right number. That’s problem with so many people. They don’t know WTF they’re talking about. You’ve seen a couple headlines. Didn’t even read the article and think you’re all filled in.
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  137. @ [re: lost opps I’m assuming] But this wasn’t money on a spreadsheet available to be spent. It’s mostly $ values assigned to old equipment. Not money that could have been invested in a startup. And that’s not how gov. $ is used anyway with random investments.
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  138. @ Considering u didn’t have $ taken out of your wallet, u shouldn’t be expecting to get money put into your wallet, Krembot. This would be like the US spending a billion dollars on our bases in 🇯🇵 to prevent a war w/🇨🇳 and save us trillions and then you’re like “when can I expect to get my 15 cents of that billion back?!”
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  139. @ lol, yeah I’m disingenuous, Mr. Just registered a year ago to post propaganda Krembot? I’m glad you’re routing for genocide and still trying to spread disinfo that Zelensky is somehow getting rich from receiving armored vehicles 😂 or intentionally triggered a genocidal invasion.
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  140. @ Straw man much? People: We need more hospitals! You: Not everyone loves the insurance companies!
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  141.  @shanejean5821  No, it’s actually what Russian media told me. You should do a bit more research. I wouldn’t trust MSM Western media on literally anything besides the most generic of topics: road closures and stuff.
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  142.  @seancidy6008 lol, nothing in your idiotic comment is relevant to my post.
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  143.  @andersjjensen  It’s not correct in English. Maybe in your language it is. You can look this up. It takes literally five seconds.
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  144. Western coverage has been awful + damaging in every way: relentlessly insisting we had “war fatigue,” not detailing (or knowing?) how little military aid has cost 🇺🇸 or how little as a measure of GDP is being given by even the best allies, superficial and misleading battlefield “analyses,” barely reporting on all the atrocities 🇷🇺 is committing in/against Ukraine and worst of all, the geopolitical stakes.
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  145. Undermining Western dominance and the rules based order seems like a pretty solid axis of shared interest to me even if they want that for different ends.
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  146. Putin’s problems are endless, but above all political problems are driving their war effort to ever worse disaster. He can’t do another mobilization. He’s forced to make political driven military movements like sending way too many resources to Belgorod to look strong and competent to domestic problems, which has led to disaster elsewhere. He also can’t afford to lose Bakhmut now despite the fact it’s not strategically important. He also can’t abandon the Donbas despite the fact he and Russians only cares about keeping Crimea.
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  147.  @mufinsp0  I meant they’re not giving Ukraine enough credit for what Kursk means, brings to the table, etc. and making way too much about its impact on the Donbas.
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  148.  @clausmadsen6754  Care to be more specific?
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  149. The fact people and even many journalists couldn’t figure out these answers for themselves shows education systems are failing worldwide.
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  150. Primarily about the media narrative. The MSM rarely put stories in broader context and give Pyrrhic Russian victories (Kremyina) + wasteful barrages the image of 🇷🇺 might and an un-winnable war.
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  151. An eight year estimate makes no sense because it’s quite literally only Putin and his inner circle who have any interest in a war with NATO and they’re all in their mid-70s.
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  152.  @michaellindqvist5288 I’ve been speaking against this sort of POV for years widely and loudly. It’s sad. One side of the aisle are brazen traitors. The other side limp wristed fools.
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  153.  @Himmelgrau68 This Jake Broe distinction doesn’t work. Just by bringing it up like they have hurts 🇺🇦, hurts support for them and makes us look weak while doing NOTHING to prevent escalation. BTW, I’m a fan of Broe.
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  154.  @hakanpetersson2662 Your take is hilariously uninformed.
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  155.  @megawutt It’s clear it’s YOU that doesn’t get it. 🇷🇺 was already hitting 🇺🇦 in the exact same in cycles, but this time 🇺🇦 was extremely low missiles for their air defense while 🇷🇺 had stockpiled many more missiles for the latest strikes and increased production speed and volume.
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  156.  @georgesibley7152  The fact that Putin quite literally sent in riot control police with no military experience or equipment into 🇺🇦 with the military vanguard is proof alone Putin thought there would be little to no resistance and Kyiv would be taken in mere days. Either way, the Russian army has proven to be one big circus with Putin the head 🤡. The fact that shills are down to saying “he never said three days” is the best you can do says a lot about your situation.
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  157.  @tnix80 So, are the ships, like all the jets, going down to friendly fire too? 😂It’s no lie that Russian soldiers were looting washing machines and even toilets at the start of the war. It’s not lie that Russia reuses and strips chips for use in low-end weapons (obviously they get high-end brand new chips for their advanced weaponry). And it’s true that they cannot detect the sea drones. Maybe their subs have the sensitivity to, but not their ships. And, if they can, what’s the excuse for getting taken out so often?
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  158.  @edhargquest8710 Even if they used a passive sensor system dispersed on autonomous vehicles, buoys and seabed devices, I doubt they’d be highly effective at detecting small, slow moving drones (they don’t move at high speed until they actually arrive near the target). And, no, their ships either don’t have sensitive enough sensors or they don’t have good enough software to filter through all the background noise and isolate these small submersible drones.
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  159.  @tnix80  The washing machine meme is about two years out of date. Try harder.
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  160.  @autobootpiloot  Can it detect floating ducks that are miles away. If not, it’s basically useless.
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  161.  @ebrim5013  Trump has depended on Russian banks and investors since the early ‘90s (or at least he did until recently) to finance his businesses and I’m sure they’ve got lots of kompromat on him. So, I think this is pure fantasy
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  162. I think you’re completely wrong about Putin being willing to give up post Feb. 24 annexed territory. They’re already paving the way by changing the language around those lands from “new Russian territories” to “contested territories.”
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  163.  @Memovox You’re a bot. Not sure why I’m even responding, but did you think Ukraine would be able to reach EU living standards DURING war time (war time which has lasted 9 years at this point), not being in the EU and only getting the leverage to expel and imprison their almost exclusively Russian sources of corruptions until the full scale invasion began? Yeah. No. But keep posting for that sweet bot farm $. I’ve seen your username all over videos posting misinfo.
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  164.  @Memovox  Still waiting for all this corruption evidence. Denmark is extremely corrupt! Notice how saying it doesn’t make it true. If Ukraine had been blowing its aid on corruption they’d be losing decisively and they wouldn’t be doing things like repairing critical services over and over again with amazing rapidity. Ukraine has even made sure to install new border guards at every little dinky western border post that are from far away regions to ensure there is no corruption (locals are much more likely to turn a blind eye to those they’ve known their whole lives engaging in illegal cross-border trade or participating it in themselves). They’ve cleaned house in the judiciary removing judges who they couldn’t have removed in non-wartime circumstances. Because Russian influence has been expelled and because the world’s eye is on the country, the reformers can finally get rid of corrupt officials and businessmen without worrying about retaliation. It’s one silver lining to the war. A major reason for this war in the first place was that Russia didn’t want Ukraine showing reform and genuine democracy was not only possible but could bring better living standards.
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  165.  @black_triton9264  Cool story, bro.
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  166.  @ACME_Kinetics  Yeah, 30% of the country, MAGATS, are holding it hostage legislatively and literally with the implied threat of armed revolt if their hero is jailed or barred from running. And, despite Putin’s interview being a massive own goal with answers where Putin drew a parallel to himself and Hitler saying Poland started WWII by invading Germany, which he said is what Ukraine did to him.
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  167.  @dpelpal lmO
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  168.  @peteratlanecove7436 😂
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  169.  @dpelpal lol. And both countries did it all to themselves.
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  170. Mike Johnson and France (Paris has spent leas less on military aid to 🇺🇦 than teensy-tiny Lithuania despite 🇫🇷 being the EU’s 2nd biggest economy) both seem to really want Ukraine to be destroyed.
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  171.  @5daboz You give him a plan and he’ll find 100 reasons it “doesn’t pass mustard” and then leak it to Russia too.
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  172. People still don’t get how cautious Ukraine is being and how much they’re still gaining or how long it takes to go through mine fields. I think Anders’ lack of military knowledge a tiny bit. The DPICMs will be massively helpful too. Finally, if Ukraine does create a true bridgehead across the Dnipro that allows them to move as much manpower and equipment as they want, the war is over. There’s no way to defend the completely unpopulated and almost featureless steppe. However, I still agree with Anders’ overall picture.
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  173.  @andersbjrnsen7203  Finland has that true local pressure, but I am skeptical most Swedes and Norwegians fear a land invasion. A fear of Russia aggression in concentration of Arctic resources, yes. You pointed the most realistic source of tension I failed to think of right now: naval aggression. I think the biggest difference is they have a closer historical experience with Russian aggression and Scandinavians generally have a more common sense, less selfish or more humane attitude than those in Western Europe and the US. Anyway, seems like we basically agree. Scandinavians recognize the threat Russia presents whether it’s to European stability generally or an existential domestic threat.
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  174.  @jonsouth1545  It is one of his poorer analyses since it totally neglects atrophied European weapons productions capabilities and acts like GDP or PPP directly equates to production capacity. However, Europe still does have more aggregate production capacity than Russia. More importantly, it has the ability to scale up production capacity in less than a year if it really WANTS TO. We saw how quickly the usually slow moving Germany built enormous LNG plants when they had to if they wanted to ensure energy stability.
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  175. I agree w/everything said, but I’d substitute “Putin” for “Russia” when talking about the logical state of mind aspect. Also prospect theory might not apply or applies doubly as Putin cannot survive losing this war.
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  176. While 🇷🇺’s military is hollow and inept + running low on equipment, Putin’s not half as desperate as he once was & one area where 🇷🇺 remains the gold standard is information warfare and they are definitely doing in this large part to try and break the will of Western leaders and voters (especially the U.S.) and/or in many cases, give right wing populists and some leftist politicians too, a narrative they already want to sing (I.E., Ukraine’s war is hopeless and Russia is too powerful or it’d cost too much to beat them). As we’ve seen, both the cost and Russian capacity arguments are ludicrous. Russia is drowning and for most of the major Western supporters, their aid has been at the scale of a rounding error. I’m assuming this is what Anders will say in the video. And, if so, it’s the right take. edit: after watching the video, the one area where I disagree with Anders is that the losses are good for their narrative and show resolve. However, in a way, he says this himself.
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  177. Love you Anders, but duh.
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  178. Putin knows his demands are not just unrealistic, but politically impossible for Zelensky even if, he personally, were willing. It shows he still has no idea how bad things are and how much is still being hidden from him. Moreover, In 2021, he also issued an ultimatum demanding NATO withdraw back to its 1997 borders and pledge to never give membership to Ukraine,m and Georgia or allow the Baltics to re-enter + that he would determine where they could place their bases in Europe. Basically, he was always looking for a conflict. This alone is reason enough why the West should know that they cannot include Putin in any peace plan and therefore the only option is to wait until he is no longer in power to formally cement any agreement. It also shows vastly he overestimated his military strength and his energy leverage.
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