Comments by "jeppen" (@jesan733) on "Wagner Swipes Through West BAKHMUT with FAB-500s" video.

@sonaruo perhaps you should google e.g. "difference between volunteer and mercenary" before making such a statement? If you did, you wouldn't lose face. Simply put, a foreign volunteer enlists in a regular army, is part of that army's chain of command, and get regular pay. However, a mercenary is usually paid higher salaries and will not have enlisted in the regular armed forces and won't be part of a regular chain of command. Thus foreign volunteers are afforded Geneva convention protections and are combattants that if captured shall be treated as POWs. This does not apply to mercenaries. The reason Russia calls the foreign volunteers in Ukraine "mercenaries" is that Russia wants to incite war crimes among its soldiers and wants to scare people to not volunteer, because they essentially say "we will routinely commit war crimes, refuse to honor the geneva convention and simply execute you if we capture you, so don't come here".
17
Ukraine doesn't use mercenaries. That's Russia.
16
@deadpoetlive Russia did say it. Russian state TV was extremely cocky. The internet never forgets.
14
@sonaruo dude, do you think Ukraine has artillery ammo stashed in or close to areas contested by infantry? When the arty range is many miles?
13
@Dan-jl5ej what are you talking about? Most countries would defend, wouldn't they? There has been countless wars and defenders are often more motivated. Why are you surprised this happens a millionth time and ascribe it to Zelensky?
7
@alikaraahmet5050 did you read the entire thread before making a fool out of yourself?
6
@corvusduluth depends. If they don't fight, then they're just foreign nationals.
5
@olgag6581 google this phrase: "In fact it turns out she’s not completely lying. They thought they’d take Kyiv in two days, not three".
4
@sonaruo so Ukraine is out of artillery ammo, but when rashists take at most a city block a day, then they lose a lot of small-caliber artillery ammo to them? Makes sense.
4
@Sun-Tzu- "They haven't been trying to take it." Cope, little Russian bot.
3
@pajcka that was a huge amount of Russian fantasies.
3
@alikaraahmet5050 so what is their salaries, and what salary did they have at home? The Swedes I know who volunteers get far, far less in UA than at their jobs at home. People volunteer because they have a strong sense of what's right. You're laughing as a muslim at this thought. Very understandable, since your religion and upbringing often leaves you morally stunted. But anyway, you should try to acquire a sense of how others work too.
3
@alikaraahmet5050 I don't think that's true, but even if it is, Ukraine would then turn to insurgency like Afghanistan, and eventually Russia would have to leave anyway. All roads lead to Russia leaving.
3
Perhaps the US will have to give Ukraine air superiority tools, e.g. F16 and related air-to-air missiles.
2
@alikaraahmet5050 ok, so we're you the result of a cousin marriage? Or why didn't you understand?
2
@sigmasix3719 I've never seen you state anything reasonable ever. You're kind of Russian propaganda extrapolated to twice the ridiculousness.
2
@olliefoxx7165 they are volunteers. Stop lying to encourage war crimes.
2
@Telco nerd they're volunteers, not mercenaries, regardless of how gory it is.
2
@alikaraahmet5050 no, they're not fighting for money and they're part of the regular army. Thus volunteers. Being a muslim isn't a good enough reason to lie and support fascism, is it? So I recommend stopping it, because you're just losing face on behalf of your ummah.
2
@thematic3893 great that you put in this "unless they get lots of support from the US and EU", because if your statements turn out to be wrong, you can always claim that whatever support they got was "lots".
2
@domi4587 ah, so Olga doesn't cut it? Then google "Russian propagandist Mardan says it's really good that Russia didn't win in three days - it will do wonders for Russian citizens and state.". Also, CIA Director William Burns has been clear that according to their intelligence (and btw according to what each of us can witness based on the realities of the early Russian invasion attempt) Putin was planning on a very swift takeover of Kiev, like two days.
1
@JAllanC12 "Russia controls over 20% of former Ukraine and at least 70% of its GDP." 17% and perhaps 25%. "If you look at a map of Ukraine at night, it is dark." It's not. Russia's terror bombings failed and electricity was fairly quickly restored. "By US DoD numbers Ukraine has lost 100K to over 250K soldiers with casualties 3 times that. And by DoD numbers Russia has lost less than 20K troops." This is according to the russian-doctored version of the leak. The originals show a solid Ukrainian attrition advantage. "Aerial photos of multiple cities show Ukraine is getting crushed." Front-line cities are turned to rubble by Russia, that's true. Otherwise, no. "In terms of military progress and rebuilding, Russia did more in a year than" Since you've been wrong about everything up until this statement based on Russian propaganda, why should we believe you here? "Russia has advanced more than in Bakhmut." Russia has not had significant advances. The last thing happening were the Kherson rout and the Kupiansk sprint. "Ukraine is getting devastated on the alter of US hubris" Dude, Ukraine wants to defend its territory like almost all other countries. The US is supporting to make this easier, but your statement is nonsense. "geoplolitical goals outlined by US officials like Zig Brzezinski in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard" New conspiracy theory to me. "My family is in Ukraine" So why are you not there, fighting with Ukraine for liberation? Why are you outside, supporting rashism in the comment fields? "It is why the US was able to carry out two coups in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014." The revolution of dignity was a popular revolution. Ukraine wanted to orient toward the EU and the Kremlin refused, having their man in Kiev unleash the Berkut on protesters, killing them. After the popular revolution, democracy was immediately restored and reinvigorated, and since then, power has changed hands peacefully after free and fair elections.
1
@JAllanC12 there are strong diminishing returns to firing more shells. Ukraine get coordinates to identified targets from drones and proceed to one-shot them. Russians tries to blanket whatever is in front of it.
1
@Craigx71 "They feel the same as the families of the 14k civilians killed in dpr by Ukrainian artillery since 2014..." That's a very common Russian propaganda lie, but the number includes all deaths on both sides, and is mostly combattants. And of course a big chunk is the 300 who perished when Russia shot down MH-17. There's no evidence to say that Ukraine has been causing more collateral damage in artillery exchanges, except of course that we know Ukraine evacuates more while Russia wants civilian casualties on its side to get propaganda material.
1
@Dan-jl5ej "The Ukrainians in the Donbas region are of Russian origin and they have been bombed/killed/terrorized since 2014." No, they haven't been. There has been a low-intensity war and people on both sides have been killed. "They said enough is enough and we want to be part of Russia. So what are the Ukrainians from the western part of Ukraine "defending" from?" Russia invaded and occupied the territory, maintained propaganda and staged sham referendums. These actions are illegal and war crimes. Besides, people can't break away like that. See e.g. Chechnya, Catalonia, Kurdish independence struggles and many more.
1
@fabirkemarian6370 members of its citizenry, yes, but also it was their actual military planning to do this quickly.
1
@drgreenthumb2190 "no they didn't they started the war like that so Ukraine had to send soldiers to all different places" Everything the Russians did tell another story. Their VDV were sent in huge numbers to hostomel and were slaughtered. They sent lightly armed brutal police (forgot their name) to help keep Kiev calm under occupation. They sent sabotage and assassination groups. They had tried to bribe officials to surrender. And so forth. The US intelligence clearly indicated the plan banked on being able to take Kiev quickly.
1
@67wouter poor guy, do you believe all that nonsense? Who told you? Macgregor or Ritter? Someone else in the RT stable of liars?
1
@JAllanC12 deepstatemap shows four occupied areas: north, central, south and crimea, with sizes. The sum right now is 106928 sq km out of Ukraine's total of 603628, which computes to 17,7%. So my 17% was a bit low, admittedly. If you exclude Crimea it's 13.2% occupied, but Crimea is Ukraine, so... Teixeira's leak show favorable attrition for Ukraine, and there's a doctored version of the originals that show a favorable attrition for Russia. "There are multiple "front line" cities to use your term. They are decimated. And infrastructure across the country is damaged or destroyed. [...] That is not repaired. You can minimize it in a dehumanizing way. It is millions of homes. Crushed." Yeah, that's Russian Mir. That's what you support. "The fact of US effort in Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya are irrefutable. The US pulled out of all without rebuilding or stabilizing any of those countries." All of these interventions are quite different and the level of support provided also quite different. If you're thinking of e.g. the early 90-ies intervention in Somalia, the goal was to stave off and protect efforts to stave off a widespread famine caused by civil war. I'm perfectly fine with the US effort in Libya; given the Arab Spring it was a no-brainer to not let Khadaffi crush the rebellion. Iraq was obviously a mistake and didn't have good enough justification. In Afghanistan, at least they tried. Yemen isn't a US war, but rather Saudi/Iran. Vietnam is too far back and too complex to discuss. Anyhow, the US is a democracy. Each administration is different. If you get food poisoning at a pizzeria, how many times must the ownership change hands before you can go there again? Yeah, yeah, I know, deep state and your 100-year old conspiracy theory of US geopoliticial policy. Sigh. I can't waste hours arguing against the rest of your Kremlin talking points. I just find it ridiculous that you talk about "Bandera" and "fascism", dissing the Revolution of Dignity, while you support rashism and the Russian's endless series of actual war crimes. Still you're not a drooling troglodyte like most of your friends here, so hat's off for that, but why a literate guy like you are stuck in all that cherry-picked and biased Kremlin nonsense, I'll probably never understand, and I certaintly won't be able to fix it. You have to decide to detoxify, or live like that all your life.
1
@Sun-Tzu- why 100,000? Why not 1,000,000 if you're going to make up numbers? Perhaps you should blame the evil men who wages this war, i.e. Putin and his siloviki?
1
@Sun-Tzu- "Why do you think the Ukri lines just suddenly collapsed?" Lots of possible reasons. One is the FABs. Another is that it's not just meat waves of convicts now, but a bit more professionalism. A third that Ukraine choose to be more elastic now just before the counteroffensive. "Why have the Russians just been doing probing attacks and artillery for months? Why have the Russians been losing record low soldiers all war during the largest battle?" That's just the ridiculous Russian propaganda perspective. It's common knowledge that Russia has attacked with meat waves of convicts that have been mowed down, with likely a 5:1 attrition ratio favoring Ukraine. "While the Ukris are losing record high troops?" They're not. "Why end the battle when it's killing so many of the enemy?" That's just cope. Russia desperately wanted to make progress this winter and has been unable to. They're losing face by annexing territories they don't control and will never fully control.
1
@hendrikvanleeuwen9110 I doubt airfields can be that big a problem; they should be able to create them, also the F16 has decent range in relation to the size of Ukraine. As for pilots, one could look for retired volunteer F16 pilots. Yes, it would be nice if Sweden donated Gripens.
1
@hendrikvanleeuwen9110 Ukraine shouldn't concentrate assets anyway, so they'll need many airfields and it wouldn't be feasible for Russia to waste missiles on making holes in them all especially since Ukraine can patch them up pretty quickly. Russia had to give up the electricity grid terror bombing due to ineffectiveness and probably dwindling missile reserves. Your arguments do have some merit, but I don't think they're showstoppers if this becomes crucial. The US isn't going to let Ukraine get crushed, so they will figure something out.
1
@mrobocop1666 so you're saying the US airforce is basically inferior to the Russian airforce? Well, ok, they'll have to work on that then.
1
@ScharfSchutzen I thought Russia copied the US jdam thing here.
1
@acupofsagetea7410 you're an emoji child.
1
@pnh9399 because Ritter said so?
1
@rizkyzulkarnain7725 explain.
1
@Tomsmith-dl7xz can you prove that? I've only heard of volunteers.
1
@olliefoxx7165 of course I'm serious. Ok so you don't know the practical and legal difference between mercenaries and volunteers either. You guys are so uneducated.
1
@pnh9399 I'll take that as a yes. You trust Ritter et al and refuse real news.
1
@thematic3893 you just spoke to me, and I didn't ask you about specifics. I just noted you were too much of a coward to make a clear prediction.
1
@AdrianFahrenheitTepes so let me know which PMCs are FIGHTING on the Ukrainian side and what their numbers are. When I talk about volunteers, it's people who've joined the ukrainian army rather than a PMC. I'm arguing that there are virtually no mercenaries/PMCs fighting on the Ukrainian side, and that the foreign nationals fighting are volunteers, part of the Ukrainian army, and as such they're protected by the Geneva convention. (Russia pretends all foreigners on the Ukrainian side are mercenaries to entice and make the threat of war crimes.)
1