And yes, I am as high as six kites in a hurricane..
So when does China makes it's move on Taiwan? You just know the two dictators already agreed on the timing.
I wanted to be a Monk, but I never got the chants.
KevinD (02-24-2022)
Looks like shit has kicked off for real... war in Europe. This feels surreal. I was hopeful it was just a bluff or maybe a play for the eastern territories, but reports seem to be that it's a full scale invasion.
It looks like the real deal, Russia is aiming to demilitarize the entire country.
I'm sorry to say but looking at the squawking and pathetic outbursts around the world it only drives home that Ukrainians have handled this badly.
Won't execute the Minsk Agreements; intermittent shelling and killing of ethnic Russians in the Donbass; import weapons and foreign 'advisors'; begging for NATO membership. Now they will be back to square one.
If Taiwan started blabbing like Ukraine they would have been invaded within 6 months. Common sense!!
It looks like they're trying to take control of the airport in Kiev and fly troops in. Full-scale assault!
Liveleaks is long gone, but the next best thing for footage is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/ and here: https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/
Also this is a live feed of Twitter updates from (usually) reputable sources: https://www.reddit.com/live/18hnzysb1elcs
Last edited by Godfather; 02-24-2022 at 08:02 AM.
RBP (02-25-2022)
By Ryan Saavedra - The Daily Wire
Explosions are being reported in multiple cities across Ukraine during the early morning hours on Thursday as Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian military forces were launching “special military operations” against the country.
Initial reports indicated the explosions were taking place in the capital city of Kyiv, as well as Kharkiv, Kramatorsk, Odesa, and in Mariupol.
Democrat President Joe Biden responded to Russia launching their full-scale invasion into Ukraine by saying that the world was praying for Ukraine.
“The prayers of the entire world are with the people of Ukraine tonight as they suffer an unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russian military forces,” Biden said. “President Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.”
“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way,” Biden claimed without providing any details. “The world will hold Russia accountable.”
“I will be monitoring the situation from the White House this evening and will continue to get regular updates from my national security team,” he added. “Tomorrow, I will meet with my G7 counterparts in the morning and then speak to the American people to announce the further consequences the United States and our Allies and partners will impose on Russia for this needless act of aggression against Ukraine and global peace and security. We will also coordinate with our NATO Allies to ensure a strong, united response that deters any aggression against the Alliance. Tonight, Jill and I are praying for the brave and proud people of Ukraine.”
RBP (02-25-2022)
By Callie Patteson, Samuel Chamberlain, Mark Lungariello and Mark Moore - New York Post
The death toll continued to mount in the hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on Wednesday night and launched airstrikes, ending weeks of diplomatic stalemate and plunging Eastern Europe into a nightmare of violence and bloodshed not seen since the darkest days of World War II.
More than 40 people in Ukraine were killed and several dozen injured after missiles strikes were launched, said Aleksey Arestovich, adviser to the head of the country’s presidential office.
Ukraine’s military said six Russian planes and one helicopter were shot down amid ongoing aerial assault. The military also said four Russian tanks were destroyed and 50 troops were killed.
Putin claimed Russia was undertaking a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” the country under the guise Russia was defending itself.
Putin announced the operation in a live televised speech that aired before 6 a.m. local time, threatening countries that attempt to interfere with “consequences they have never seen.”
Immediately following the speech, explosions were reported in the capital city Kyiv, Kramatorsk, Kharkiv, Odessa and Mariupol. It wasn’t immediately clear what the targets were.
Russian tanks crossed into Sen’kivka, Ukraine from Belarus Thursday, CNN footage showed. Images of the ground invasion aired after explosions were heard in the nation’s capital.
Ukrainian airspace was closed to civilian aircraft as the region was considered an active conflict zone. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency issued an alert saying there is a risk of “both intentional targeting and misidentification” of civilian aircraft.
The country also imposed martial law as Russian forces launched offenses across the country. A nationwide state of emergency had been in effect, giving officials extra powers to impose restrictions. Under martial law, military leaders are the absolute authorities of Ukraine’s civilians.
Highways could be seen jam-packed with vehicles early Thursday as Ukrainian citizens desperately tried to flee to safety.
Images showed Ukrainian citizens bandaged and bloodied from the bombings. An apartment building was struck outside of Kharkiv, where more casualties were reported.
Putin said the Kremlin has no intention of occupying the country, placing blame for any potential bloodshed on the Ukrainian “regime.”
International intelligence has long expected the Russian leader to use “false flag” operations to justify its aggression against Ukraine.
Putin had directly addressed Ukraine forces in his remarks, urging them to lay down their arms, according to a translation.
President Joe Biden released a statement shortly after military action began, calling the aggression “an unprovoked and unjustified attack” by Russia.
“Putin has chosen a premeditated war that will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering,” he said in a statement late Wednesday.
“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable.”
Biden was briefed on the Russian attack on Ukraine in a secure call late Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.
On the call with Biden were Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and National Security Advisory Jake Sullivan. Biden was also reportedly speaking with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky at just before midnight.
The president planned to meet with G7 counterparts on Thursday morning to announce further sanctions from the US and allies for “this needless act of aggression.”
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement that Putin had launched “a full-scale war” against Ukraine.
“Strikes continue on peaceful Ukrainian cities,” Kuleba said. “This is a war of aggression. Ukraine will defend and win. The world can and must stop Putin. It’s time to act – just now.”
The invasion follows frantic diplomatic efforts by the US and its Western allies to find a middle ground with Moscow after rejecting the Kremlin’s insistence that Ukraine be kept out of NATO, as well as that the alliance draw back its forces from Eastern Europe and not deploy missile systems inside Ukraine.
On Wednesday, a US defense official told reporters that Russian forces “could go at any hour now” and added that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “near 100 percent of all the forces [in place] that we anticipated that he would move in.”
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby backed that assessment, telling reporters that “we believe that they are, they are, they are ready. I’ll just put it — just leave it at that. They’re ready.”
US officials estimated that Russia had massed between 150,000 and 190,000 troops along Ukraine’s border in recent months, which one diplomat described last week as “the most significant military mobilization in Europe since the Second World War.”
The situation began deteriorating on Monday after Putin delivered an astonishing speech in which he ranted and raved that Ukraine was not a standalone nation but rather “an integral part” of Russia.
Delivering a distorted history lesson, the Russian leader insisted that “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia — more precisely, Bolshevik, Communist Russia” and lamented that Soviet leaders going back to Vladimir Lenin had erred by “giving in to nationalists.”
“Why did we have to be so generous, and then give these republics the right to leave?” the Russian leader asked at one point, making a clear reference to the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. “Madness.”
At the conclusion of his speech, Putin recognized two pro-Russian breakaway enclaves in eastern Ukraine as independent states and signed a decree ordering troops to the region to perform “peacekeeping functions.”
On Tuesday, President Biden denounced Putin’s actions as the “beginning” of an invasion of Ukraine and announced new economic sanctions targeting Russia.
“Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belonged to his neighbors?” Biden said. “This is a flagrant violation of international law and demands a firm response from the international community.”
The sanctions, which Biden called the “first tranche” of punishments, would affect two Kremlin-backed banks and restrict the trading of Russian government debt on Western finance markets.
Biden also announced that the US would shift an additional 1,000 military personnel to Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from elsewhere in Europe.
That move follows an earlier deployment of 5,000 troops to Poland and Germany from the US, and the shift of another 1,000 troops from Germany to Romania to bolster NATO forces there. Washington has also sent millions of dollars worth of military equipment to Ukraine to counter the Russian threat.
Meanwhile, conditions became more violent in eastern Ukraine, with the Kyiv government saying Wednesday that six soldiers had been killed by separatist shelling in recent days.
The so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic broke away from Ukraine after Russian invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014. Fighting has continued ever since with an estimated death toll of more than 14,000.
Despite Moscow’s insistence that it had no intention to invade, US intelligence continued to show Russia bolstering its forces around Ukraine, leading White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan to say last week that an attack would be “hours or days away.”
Sullivan also predicted that any invasion would be “extremely violent” and be waged “by Russia on the Ukrainian people, to repress them, to crush them, to harm them.”
“We believe that the world must mobilize to counter this kind of Russian aggression should those tanks roll across the border, as we anticipate they very well may do in the coming hours or days,” Sullivan said on NBC’s “Today” show Feb. 21.
The US also informed the United Nations that its intelligence indicated that Russia was compiling lists of Ukrainian dissidents “to be killed or sent to camps” following an invasion.
As late as this week, the Biden administration held out hope the standoff could be resolved diplomatically.
After the White House said Sunday that Biden would be willing to meet with Putin “in principle” as long as an invasion of Ukraine had not yet happened, the Kremlin rejected the olive branch.
“It’s premature to talk about any specific plans for organizing any kind of summits,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters,
“There is an understanding that dialogue should be continued at the level of foreign ministers,” he said, adding that there are “no concrete plans in place” for a presidential summit.
RBP (02-25-2022)
by Stephen Sorace | Fox News
Russian forces entering Ukraine from Belarus have taken control of Chernobyl, the decommissioned nuclear power plant, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Energy claimed Thursday.
Demchenkov Yaroslav claimed that the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate informed him that the Chernobyl, including all installations and repositories, “is fully controlled” by Russian forces.
The plant was the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident when a nuclear reactor exploded in April 1986, spewing radioactive waste across Europe.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other government officials earlier claimed that Russian forces stationed in Belarus were trying to seize Chernobyl as Russian incursions continued across the country.
A Ukraine advisor to Interior Ministry Anton Gerashchenko had said in an earlier Facebook post that the Russian forces entered the exclusion zone from Belarus and that Ukrainian national guardsmen were “fighting hard” to defend the area.
The plant lies in northern Ukraine, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the capital of Kyiv. The nuclear incident happened while Ukraine was still part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The exploded reactor has been covered by a protective shelter to prevent radiation leak and the entire plant has been decommissioned.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
RBP (02-25-2022)
RBP (02-25-2022)
Why in the heck would they want to capture a nuclear wasteland?
RBP (02-25-2022)
Because the have lots of gas