Mea Culpa, I was wrong. I really thought Russia calling up 300k reserves in the first wave of mobilization meant Russia was calling up 300k men who had recently served or had specialist skills. Nope, turns out its just a giant ethnic cleansing operation in Russia's Asian oblasts.
I mean how else do you describe raiding college classrooms, ethnic Armenian participation at 90% while ethnic Russian neighbors are single digit, and some villages having lost 25% or more of their men? About the only ethnic Russian's finding themselves in this fiasco are those
who showed up at the protests which at this point look like recruitment drives to further isolate average Russians in Moscow and St Petersburg from the war wrecking the rest of the country. So, yea 300k "reserves" is as legit as the sham referenda that started today. My apologies
for thinking Russia would do something militarily rational. Speaking of rationality, Medvedev laid it all out on the table: Russia will use strategic nuclear weapons to keep its stolen lands and people. So thats a direct threat to me and my homeland. Thankfully the US said it
continue to support and supply Ukraine. Great public statement, I wonder what is going on behind the scenes? Wonder if leaves are getting cancelled yet for bomber and submarine crews? I bet NATO assets are going to be looking really hard for tells that would indicate Russia is
prepping for national suicide. I will say, I think of the CBRN/NBC threats, the CB part is probably the least likely. Russia had 40k tons of the stuff and began destroying it in 2002 (with Western funding) and had reached the 85% mark by 2015 armscontrol.org/act/2017-11/ne…
so that stockpile has likely been incinerated. Plus Syria shows that gas is just an impediment to military operations not a silver bullet. On the biologic side, even Putin or perhaps especially Putin is not going to release another global pandemic. Giant tables anyone? Dude is a
germaphobe and he knows that once released biological pathogens go where they will. He lives in Moscow not Racoon City. That leaves the R and the N. He has been fliting with a radiological disaster a few times in this war, but it doesn't really serve a military purpose, not when
you are flooding the zone with untrained conscripts. Of course post nuclear everything is a radiological disaster. That leaves nukes. Someone like @JaysonGeroux might be the better source of info but running off memory as an enlisted soldier the big thing for us with nuclear
defense was distance. Distance from your buddies so you were a less inviting target in the first place and then distance from the blast. Nukes afterall are merely giant explosive devices with some secondary after-effects but the physics of the destruction is pretty straight
forward even if the scale if vastly different. Troops inside AFV's or in foxholes and bunkers not inside the blast radius will still be able to fight. For the Soviet's this was not a problem, they trained to drive through the blast zone. The whole reason the BMP-1 was invented
too allow infantry to fight inside of a nuclear wasteland. Anyone think college students from Yakutia who still can't march instep can pull that one off? That leaves the sheer shock, awe and terror of the weapons. That is probably what Putin would do. Not really dangerous to the
Ukrainian army that probably doesn't have the on the ground force density... but a Ukrainian city.... Whats the difference other than time between rubblizing a city with HE vs nukes? This is where Western resolve is important. If Putin thinks he can get away with it, he might pop
cork. If he knows that popping means war he may well refrain or be forced to refrain. So to my elected leaders @JohnBoozman, @SenTomCotton, and @RepFrenchHill tell #POTUS to stand strong and make US resolve known and to make sure #NATO is resolved as well. For the rest of us left
staring at Armageddon, all we can do is keep on keeping on. Assuming you have a family plan for normal disasters and are not going to be caught completely flat footed anyway. If you don't, well build one. The plans for nukes isn't much different that hurricane, fire, earthquake
or ice storm. Also keep giving, nukes or no Ukraine still needs our help and charities like @MriyaAid and units like the @georgian_legion are still doing vital work. Promote Ukrainian voices into the spaces you inhabit. 3 of my favorites and oft mentioned are @Teoyaomiquu,
@MrKovalenko and @krides. Listen in to @MriyaReport where BTW you can hear more Ukrainian voices like @ferlain and @Heroiam_Slava and otherwise keep the faith. This isn't the height of the cold war where 40K nukes were ready to fly. I am not sure how many of Russia's much
reduced arsenal are deployed and of them how many wont just fizzzle. It might be a small sliver if things go atomically pear shaped, but our species will survive. Until Ukraine wins on Ukraine's terms: Slava Ukraini!
#russiaisateroriststate #shamreferendum #genocideofukranians #UkraineWillWin @mfa_russia <--- still losing despite the whole Gog of Magog shtick.
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More from @JBelcourt73

Sep 24
Can't sleep so I guess I will get an early start on today's essay. Yesterday's blew up and caught me completely flatfooted as I did not consider it among my best works but it obviously resonated. That probably says more about you my readers than it does about me. Nuance is
important and the way I pointed out that Russia is using mobilization to affect an ethnic cleansing of its own minority populations hit a nerve. It shows that despite all the Russia Fuck OFF flying around twitter my readers at least realize that a big chunk of the Russian
population are actually captive peoples and only have value to Kleptograd in the provision of slave soldiers. WE see this idea that its someone else's duty to fight for Russia in the long lines of Russian men trying to flee. Now that they might get a notice (vs minorities being
Read 15 tweets
Sep 22
I bet Bejing is pissed. So as we all know by now, Medvedev says that Russia can use strategic nuclear weapons to keep Ukraine from liberating Ukrainian land. He didn't beat around the bush about it either. This follows on Putin's remarks about, "not bluffing". What many people
do not realize is how this will play in China. Xi just figured out he is shackled to a rabid dog. A primer on China's nuclear theory is needed. Despite what the US Mil-Ind complex and groups such as Rand like to say there was (as of 10-ish years ago the last time I looked) zero
evidence that China kept warheads mated to delivery systems the way the other P5 members do. armscontrol.org/blog/2019-08-2…
Read 13 tweets
Sep 21
So the long awaited "Russian Mobilization" has arrived. No, its not partial, that is poppycock. Its phased which is what I predicted. So lets dig into what it means shall we? There are 3 big take aways and then a bunch of ancillaries.
First, and the most beneficial to the Russian Army is the stop loss effect. Kontracti can no longer quit, contracts no longer expire and thousands of refuseniks now face prison if they do not submit. From a manpower perspective this is the peach, but there is a poison pit in the
center. This will not be good for morale. Telling a soldier he can't leave when he already wants to, when morale is at a low ebb and battlefield success seems impossible and that his fate by remaining is to join his comrades on sunflower duty is going to wreck cohesion. Putin's
Read 22 tweets
Sep 20
In today's episode of moral rot in Russia I will direct my readers to this thread. (Note: I was wrong on his POW status).
Some things that stand out we will start with the bad and move to the good. 1. Although convicted of murder and initially sentenced to the Gulag (special regime) in the Urals he was able to make it to a better prison where he could have a phone, internet and get married. Good
for him, bad for the system as it implies bribes. You don't give a violent felon with an escape history cushy gigs for free anywhere, let alone in a mafia state that runs on corruption. 2. He was recruited into a penal battalion where discipline was "severe", shoot you in the
Read 21 tweets
Sep 19
More moral rot and a lack of moral capital. The list of horrors coming out of the liberated areas continues to grow. A man was found hands bound and castrated, many local villages had torture chambers set up including purpose made torture devices indicating malice-aforethought.
Russia continues to strike at life sustaining infrastructure on the eve of the seasons changing. Besides letting the Ukrainians know why they can never surrender there is another problem. Rot is contagious and destroys morale. @LanguageIearner is reporting that Russia is now
using NKVD-ish barrier troops, red on red incidents as units fight over loot and I saw a report earlier that Russia is also using helicopters to hunt deserters. The Russian army hasn't collapsed yet, but the rot is eating away at it like cancer. Each deserter, trooper willing
Read 18 tweets
Sep 18
My whole essay nuked because of a miss-key.... I was going to explore the idea of proxy war and if it fits the Ukraine war, it doesn't. recreating that work is less than a thrilling prospect. So, you get a condensed version.
NATO and western support for Ukraine is perfectly inline with Article 51 of the UN Charter. The war itself is a direct result of Putin's belief that only powers able to impose their will on other countries are truly sovereign which is most decidedly not in line with the UN
Charter. Further, Russia's conduct of the war is not in line with the Laws of Armed Conflict and would under the standards set at Nuremburg and Tokyo constitute crimes against peace and violate the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. So in short,
Read 7 tweets

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