So, half of occupied Donbas and less than half of unoccupied Donbas want to join Russia. On the whole, much less than half of the total Donbas want to join Russia. Consistent with what I posted.
Those who "voted" to join Russia were Russian troops who had their ballots filled out for them by Putinites in Moscow.
50.9% + 49.6% is not "much less than half". As opposed to 13.4% of occupied Donbas and 19.2% of unoccupied Donbas wanting to stay in Ukraine.
So more like 8 out of 10 and 7 out of 10 wanted to join Russia in 2019.
Well we will see in a few days how people voted now.
One thing the West needs to recognize / remember, that the referendums of this sort have been held in Donbas and Crimea several times before the war and even before 2014. This is nothing new.
Only Russia cares about their sham referendums. The rest of the world couldn’t care less.
I also love the fact that you miscalculated / misinterpreted the numbers from the survey to "much less than half". And once having your mistake pointed out, you just respond with "sham referendums".
Then you accuse me of doubting that you have gone to any college at all, let alone have anything to do with professors of ETH. Please enlighten me, how a person, who went to a much better college than ETH, came to "much less than half"?
Those who "voted" to join Russia were Russian troops who had their ballots filled out for them by Putinites in Moscow.
And those who voted for Biden were most likely filled out by Jill and Hunter? I mean, your president cried fraud, so I guess Americans would know a thing of two about meddling with voting ballots?
HAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! Russians aren't really as incompetent as they seem, they just nice guys!
Shark jumping moment for Loll Master.
Thanks for the humor, psycho-boy. I actually LOLed at that deluded garbage.
What do you know about anything? Nothing in this thread from you came with substance or food for thought. Please register your handle so I can ban you, just like the other retard.
If you don't want to read my posts, go back to reporting them all, you little whiner.
Well, the war in Ukraine might be over very soon, as Donbas will vote for joining the Russian Federation, which will make Donbas, well..... not Ukraine anymore.
If Russia then retracts its troops from the rest of Ukraine, I would considering putting a lid on this war and moving on with our lives. Let Donbas be what it wants and Zelensky will then have more time trying to get the rest of Ukraine to fit Copenhagen Criteria.
Putin would never withdraw his troops. It's a face culture over there and he wouldn't want to look weak.
You are not wrong. There are also referundums in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. If all 4 regions vote Pro-Russia, Putin only will have to retract small parts of his army from Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. Then there won't be any Russian troops on Ukrainian territory at all.
Putin would never withdraw his troops. It's a face culture over there and he wouldn't want to look weak.
You are not wrong. There are also referundums in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. If all 4 regions vote Pro-Russia, Putin only will have to retract small parts of his army from Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. Then there won't be any Russian troops on Ukrainian territory at all.
Well, now. I guess will have to wait and see about that. Putin has his leg in a bear trap. I'll enjoy watching him try to extract himself from this situation.
You are not wrong. There are also referundums in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. If all 4 regions vote Pro-Russia, Putin only will have to retract small parts of his army from Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. Then there won't be any Russian troops on Ukrainian territory at all.
Well, now. I guess will have to wait and see about that. Putin has his leg in a bear trap. I'll enjoy watching him try to extract himself from this situation.
I am not so sure about the outcome in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Donbas will for sure vote for joining Russia, but those two... could go either way. Will be interesting to see what happens if they vote for staying in Ukraine. This way Putin absolutely would lose any legitimacy of keeping his troops there.
Only Russia cares about their sham referendums. The rest of the world couldn’t care less.
I also love the fact that you miscalculated / misinterpreted the numbers from the survey to "much less than half". And once having your mistake pointed out, you just respond with "sham referendums".
Then you accuse me of doubting that you have gone to any college at all, let alone have anything to do with professors of ETH. Please enlighten me, how a person, who went to a much better college than ETH, came to "much less than half"?
I’ll admit I made an assumption based on the headline without reading the article, based on other polls I had seen. But, I do have a question: The poll surveyed 1606 people - roughly half in occupied Donetsk and half in occupied Luhansk, then quotes numbers for all of Donbas including parts under Ukrainian control (where they didn’t survey anyone?). How is that? Since every poll of Ukrainian controlled parts of Donbas show far less support for joining Russia than Russian occupied parts, it’s likely that a legitimate poll would find that joining Russia is not that popular across the entire Donbas.
Putin would never withdraw his troops. It's a face culture over there and he wouldn't want to look weak.
You are not wrong. There are also referundums in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. If all 4 regions vote Pro-Russia, Putin only will have to retract small parts of his army from Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. Then there won't be any Russian troops on Ukrainian territory at all.
There will then be Ukrainian troops in “Russian” territory. What do you think Putin will do about it? Throw another tantrum? What will he do as Ukrainian troops retake control of territory where Russia has held referendums?
I’ll admit I made an assumption based on the headline without reading the article, based on other polls I had seen. But, I do have a question: The poll surveyed 1606 people - roughly half in occupied Donetsk and half in occupied Luhansk, then quotes numbers for all of Donbas including parts under Ukrainian control (where they didn’t survey anyone?). How is that? Since every poll of Ukrainian controlled parts of Donbas show far less support for joining Russia than Russian occupied parts, it’s likely that a legitimate poll would find that joining Russia is not that popular across the entire Donbas.
Good pointing out, must have been a mistake in the article, as it indeed doesn't show where they got the results on Ukrainian controlled parts of Donbas. I found a different article on the same survey and it says nothing about those parts.
You are not wrong. There are also referundums in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. If all 4 regions vote Pro-Russia, Putin only will have to retract small parts of his army from Kharkiv and Mykolaiv. Then there won't be any Russian troops on Ukrainian territory at all.
There will then be Ukrainian troops in “Russian” territory. What do you think Putin will do about it? Throw another tantrum? What will he do as Ukrainian troops retake control of territory where Russia has held referendums?
So far the presence of Ukrainian troops in those four regions is almost non-existent. One village next to Lysychansk in Luhansk and small bits north of Kherson. Further spreading will be halted with additional troops, which will suffice even if they're not well trained.
Another source of doubt within EU will be created, if these regions will vote pro-Russia. It was similar with Crimea, with very high numbers of ethnic Russians there voting pro-Russia giving a different outlook to many European citizens.
Hungary is about to hold a referendum over legitimacy of EU sanctions over Russia:
I mean, it's an interesting article if you're completely detached from reality.
Sensible withdrawals from cities like Mariupol that might have saved many of Ukraine’s best troops were forbidden.
This is Russian propaganda, and there's no evidence to my knowledge that this is true.
Moscow’s determination to destroy Ukrainian forces at the least cost to Russian lives prevailed.
Or, massed artillery from a distance was the only option that didn't result in Russian forces getting routed (like the 35th CAA did when they tried to encircle Kyiv). Note the 80,000+ Russian casualties would disagree that Russian strategy "prevailed".
but now, thanks to the recent failure of Ukrainian counterattacks in the Kherson region, they’ve reached horrific levels that are impossible to conceal. Casualty rates have reached 20,000 killed or wounded a month.
The counteroffensive around Kherson started in September, but the number of 20,000 killed or wounded per month was from June. Therefore, it's not clear how the recent counterattacks in the Kherson region reveal anything about the levels of Ukrainian casualties.
months of hard fighting are eroding the foundations of Ukraine’s ground strength. In the face of this disaster, Zelensky continues to order counterattacks to re-take territory
The author again cites sources from June to support his argument about today. This conflation of past and present is a sign that current statistics don't support the author's arguments.
The recent Ukrainian advance to the town of Izium, the link between Donbas and Kharkiv, seemed like a gift to Kiev. U.S. satellite arrays undoubtedly provided Ukrainians with a real-time picture of the area showing that Russian forces west of Izium numbered less than 2,000 light troops (the equivalent of paramilitary police, e.g., SWAT and airborne infantry).
No source provided for the number of Russian troops in the area, so complete speculation on behalf of the author. And, even if Ukraine didn't kill thousands of Russian troops, they captured hundreds of armored vehicles, thousands of rounds of artillery shells, etc... that they can use.
The Russian command opted to withdraw its small force from the area that is roughly 1 percent of formerly Ukrainian territory currently under Russian control.
Ukraine took back 10% of the land Russia had occupied in a week. This is more land than Russia had captured in the last 4 months. The author is clearly not very good at math (and their grasp of reality is questionable).
However, the price for Kiev’s propaganda victory was high—depending on the source, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 Ukrainian troops were killed or wounded in a flat, open area that Russian artillery, rockets, and air strikes turned into a killing field.
The source cited by the author is from July 1. Two months before the "propaganda victory". Yet, somehow they were able to estimate the number of Ukrainian casualties? The only source claiming 5,000 to 10,000 Ukrainian troops killed or wounded in Kharkiv is the Kremlin.
Russia always had the resources to dramatically escalate the fighting and end the fighting in Ukraine on very harsh terms. Escalation is now in progress.
The only thing escalating is the speed at which Russians are running away.
In a public statement that should not surprise anyone, President Putin announced the partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists. Many of these men will replace regular Russian Army forces in other parts of Russia and release them for operations in Ukraine. Other reservists will augment the Russian units already committed in Eastern Ukraine.
This has been covered extensively elsewhere. Russia has had four "voluntary" partial mobilizations this year. Everybody that is willing and able to serve in the Russian army is already in Ukraine. The 300,000 people that Russia is now recruiting are the ones that explicitly decided NOT to serve. That's why so many people are fleeing Russia. Russia is now scraping the bottom of the barrel to force people to fight a war they don't want to fight, in a country they don't want to be in, with inferior equipment, little or no training, and poor morale. As the ISW has stated, this mobilization does NOTHING to increase Russia's combat strength. And, it takes people out of the economy in Russia.
Germany’s economy is on the brink of collapse.
Links to some guy on the internet ranting. He might as well cite a random third grader. Meanwhile, competent folks at Yale have looked at the effects of sanctions on Russia (hint, it doesn't end well for Russia).
At this writing, it seems certain that Moscow will finish its work in Donbas, then, turn its attention to the capture of Odessa, a Russian city that saw terrible atrocities committed by Ukrainian forces against Russian citizens in 2014.
It seems anything but certain that Moscow will "finish its work in Donbas" unless the author means, runs out of troops and equipment so retreats. And what does the author mean that Odesa is a Russian city? The last map I looked at showed it in Ukraine, which makes it a Ukrainian city.
Moscow is in no hurry.
Moscow hurriedly schedules referendums while they still control Donbas.
Things the author doesn't touch on, that seem extremely relevant (but don't fit their fantasy):
(Low) Morale of Russian troops.
Russia's incredible loss of tanks and other combat vehicles during the war, including hundreds of pieces of equipment in Kharkiv in the last few weeks.
Russia only having around 3500 serviceable tanks at the start of the war, and losing more than 1000 so far. Only 10% of the tanks in storage can be made combat ready. That's why they're shipping 60 year old T-62s to the front lines.
Russia running out of artillery barrels due to fatigue and their inability to make more.
Russia's failure to obtain air superiority.
Russia resorting to buying drones from Iran because they don't have enough of their own.
Proud Russian army, instructing conscripts to be sure to borrow tampons from their girlfriends since they won't be issued bandages.
A woman, who appears to be with long-term military experience, is giving instructions to mobiks on what to take with them. This includes everything that is not armour and uniform, that is, tourniquets, medicines, and women's pads. pic.twitter.com/2geWXw8gmq
That article wasn't interesting at all (except we now know where you heisted that notion that Western media accounts of Putin are somehow inconsistent with his benign actions). Did you even read your own article? The article doesn't discuss Ukrainian chances at all. A lot of it is irrelevant stuff you clowns have been saying on here since this began, and the rest is a warning to us allthat Russia WILL relatively soon use nuclear weapons, which is something YOU were disputing days ago. Can you even try to stay consistent from one page to the next? How many times can you embarrass yourself with flip flopping around?
The author of that Neville Chamberlain sounding piece is doing nothing except pretending that Russia has no choice and will resort to nuclear attack because America supported Ukraine. If these Russian nuclear attacks are indeed what your beloved Russia/Putin is contemplating, few in America or is NATO allies will agree with your garbage on the provocation and morals.
That article wasn't interesting at all (except we now know where you heisted that notion that Western media accounts of Putin are somehow inconsistent with his benign actions). Did you even read your own article? The article doesn't discuss Ukrainian chances at all. A lot of it is irrelevant stuff you clowns have been saying on here since this began, and the rest is a warning to us allthat Russia WILL relatively soon use nuclear weapons, which is something YOU were disputing days ago. Can you even try to stay consistent from one page to the next? How many times can you embarrass yourself with flip flopping around?
The author of that Neville Chamberlain sounding piece is doing nothing except pretending that Russia has no choice and will resort to nuclear attack because America supported Ukraine. If these Russian nuclear attacks are indeed what your beloved Russia/Putin is contemplating, few in America or is NATO allies will agree with your garbage on the provocation and morals.
