Ukraine 10: Lviv free

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, broken one said:

He said Russians steal everything they can and destroy what they cannot steal, even break glass in windows when they leave, also kill civilians, mostly old people who did not escape. They also found corpses seriously mutilated.

Warfare as always practiced, particularly by invaders.  See, for a single instance, chevauchée, as it was called in France in the 100 Years War.  Even committed on US soil, upon towns and small cities in southern Pennsylvania by Robert E. Lee's glorious Army of Virginia, which also behaved like mercenaries always have, demanding ransom from towns like Chambersburg, to not be pillaged and destroyed.  Chambersburg refused to pay, and was burned to the ground. The 1862 invasion was deliberately done because the CSA was so short of food and everything else -- already.  The idea was the troops could live off the Union lands on everything from food to whatever else they could steal.

[broken one]

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Better kill as many as you can now.

I assume this is what they will try to do. And of course get accused of bad will etc.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, broken one said:

Now he is in the east with group of Westerners, they clean villages of Russian marauders. He said Russians steal everything they can and destroy what they cannot steal, even break glass in windows when they leave, also kill civilians, mostly old people who did not escape. They also found corpses seriously mutilated.

Reminiscent of Red Army soldiers in WWII. And that is when they were "the good guys"

[Toth]

Just now, Corvinus85 said:

Reminiscent of Red Army soldiers in WWII. And that is when they were "the good guys"

The 'good guys' who invaded Poland, the Baltics and Finland before Hitler made them good guys by attacking them, I might add. Every time I let my classes roleplay the war conferences I find it baffling how much Stalin's position mostly boils down to grabbing as much land as he can get away with.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Toth said:

The 'good guys' who invaded Poland, the Baltics and Finland before Hitler made them good guys by attacking them, I might add. Every time I let my classes roleplay the war conferences I find it baffling how much Stalin's position mostly boils down to grabbing as much land as he can get away with.

Stalin’s only redeeming quality was providing “big battalions” to fight the Wehrmacht.

[Maithanet]

6 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Stalin’s only redeeming quality was providing “big battalions” to fight the Wehrmacht.

And the kind of brutal leadership that can ignore casualties towards the greater goal of winning.  Hard to imagine any democracy surviving the experience of the Soviets in 1941. 

You can argue that a democracy wouldn't have been so woefully unprepared and terribly led, but it's not like the French generals covered themselves in glory when thier moment came.

[Varysblackfyre321]

2 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

And the kind of brutal leadership that can ignore casualties towards the greater goal of winning.  Hard to imagine any democracy surviving the experience of the Soviets in 1941. 

Let’s not forget part of that brutal leadership was killing anyone with semi-competence in the military. Because he like Putin feared getting replaced and put his own grip on power over the welfare of his country.

[Werthead]

One of the anomalies that allowed Hitler to get away with becoming as successful as he was, was that he empowered very skilled generals with forward-thinking, fresh ideas who were able to achieve successes way beyond either their technology or numbers really should have allowed.

Of course, they did repay that by repeatedly trying to kill him and it's kind of utterly baffling they failed so many times, so maybe that's another part of the lesson.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

5 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Of course, they did repay that by repeatedly trying to kill him and it's kind of utterly baffling they failed so many times, so maybe that's another part of the lesson.

Sorry, but that trope about German Generals being part of some sorta deep state pro-democracy resistance is rather galling. Probably not what you meant, but it reads that way. 

They tried to off him, after it became clear that Germany was on the losing end of another world war. So them conspiring to off him was little more than an act of self-preservation (which admittedly backfired).

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Explosions in Belgorod (across the border from Kharkiv) Russia.

 

[Fez]

A very large explosion is being reported at a munitions depot in Belgorod, Russia. Unclear if it was an accident or a Ukrainian strike across the border. Either way helps the war effort, but it would be a strong message if the Ukrainian position around Kharkiv is strong enough that they can hit Russia itself now.

ETA: 

[Werthead]

Looks like an ammo mishap. You can see munitions going off all around it.

Russian safety handling in weapons use has been pretty awful throughout the conflict. There's a nasty video of someone standing behind an artillery piece videoing the spent shells coming out the back of the gun and then the camera goes flying because the guy taking the video actually managed to get hit by one of them.

Another video showing Russian soldiers just chucking landmines to one another before laying them down.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Stalin’s only redeeming quality was providing “big battalions” to fight the Wehrmacht

Stalin and Hitler, Stalin vs. Hitler, Hitler and Stalin's methods compared and contrasted, Hitler and Stalin's manner of imposing some sort of legal and administrative structure upon their ethnic cleansing, their take-over of other populations with government administration and law courts and languages that weren't 'their own', re-locating entire populations, virtually enslaving others to keep their war and other manufacture pumping, while attempting to emulate the British Empire's success in doing so with such small number of 'their own,'  Hitler and Stalin's imperial expansion goals and fantasies of them merely retaking what had always been German or Russian, etc. -- brilliant book of information:

Mazower, Mark. (2008). Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe.

https://history.columbia.edu/person/mazower-mark/

 

[kiko]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Sorry, but that trope about German Generals being part of some sorta deep state pro-democracy resistance is rather galling. Probably not what you meant, but it reads that way. 

They tried to off him, after it became clear that Germany was on the losing end of another world war. So them conspiring to off him was little more than an act of self-preservation (which admittedly backfired).

Even more galling when you see how much they are celebrated in the German public almost to the exclusion of all the other efforts to off him for positive reasons. Can't stand that Stauffenberg cult.

[Gorn]

41 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Looks like an ammo mishap. You can see munitions going off all around it.

Russian safety handling in weapons use has been pretty awful throughout the conflict. There's a nasty video of someone standing behind an artillery piece videoing the spent shells coming out the back of the gun and then the camera goes flying because the guy taking the video actually managed to get hit by one of them.

Another video showing Russian soldiers just chucking landmines to one another before laying them down.

Possible, but it's a funny coincidence that out of all the munitions warehouses in Russia, it happened in one of the presumably very few which is within range of Ukrainian missiles.

[Fez]

47 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Looks like an ammo mishap. You can see munitions going off all around it.

Russian safety handling in weapons use has been pretty awful throughout the conflict. There's a nasty video of someone standing behind an artillery piece videoing the spent shells coming out the back of the gun and then the camera goes flying because the guy taking the video actually managed to get hit by one of them.

Another video showing Russian soldiers just chucking landmines to one another before laying them down.

Russian state-owned news at least is apparently claiming that it was a Ukrainian strike and that 4 Russian servicemen were injured; saying that a "shell" hit the depot

I suppose it could be a false-flag op, but striking a legit military target that would hurt your own war effort seems like an odd choice for a false-flag. Or the shell could've accidently come from a Russian mistarget.

And admitting that Ukraine can strike inside Russia seems more embarrassing than admitting that a few Russian soldiers fucked up badly, so this seems like an unlikely cover-up.

 

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Sorry, but that trope about German Generals being part of some sorta deep state pro-democracy resistance is rather galling. Probably not what you meant, but it reads that way. 

They tried to off him, after it became clear that Germany was on the losing end of another world war. So them conspiring to off him was little more than an act of self-preservation (which admittedly backfired).

They were trying to kill Hitler way before that though. The 1944 operation is only the most well-known. The same group of people tried to kill him in 1943 with a bomb on his plan after visiting the Eastern Front, when defeat was not as imminent, but the plane's altitude froze the mechanism. Someone had to go on the plane and hazardously remove the bomb and the operation was not known about until years later. Plus there were multiple attempts to kill him (by other people) before that.

8 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Possible, but it's a funny coincidence that out of all the munitions warehouses in Russia, it happened in one of the presumably very few which is within range of Ukrainian missiles.

True, but that also means it's likely one of the busiest and most heavily-used at the moment.

[Which Tyler]

 

[Toth]

Update on the Russian guy on Youtube: Apparently linking him to videos of dead bodies in Mariupol didn't work out that well. After a couple of other guys then asked him how he can be this pro-Russien, he's now ranting about how he "knows the whole story", that Ukraine is full of Nazis who murder Russians ever since 2014 and that I'm brainwashed by Goebbels propaganda for thinking otherwise when I write "People are dying. Don't be fine with that."

Sigh...

[HoodedCrow]

Paid trolls on YouTube? I wonder how many?