Didn't know that about Oryx but it's been known by anyone with more than three braincells that Bellingcat stinks to high heaven, given that they've spent the entire Syrian Civil War doing nothing but laundering British glownigger bullshit under a guise of "investigative journalism/OSINT", all done by a fat SomethingAwful goon literally living in his parent's basement. Altho I suppose the glowies compensate him well and he has moved out finally.
This is something the US has never learned. If you bomb a city/country into rubble to "liberate" it from its oppressors, then desert it and leave it in ruins, the people there are going to hate you just as much as they did their former rulers. You have to take care of them if you want their loyalty. This was what every country used to do; the British especially would spend obscene amounts of money on infrastructure after invading and taking over new overseas territories/colonies to ensure the native population would choose to side with them if the French/Germans/Portuguese/Belgians ever tried to invade themselves.
There are two obvious objective problems with prisoner recruitment:
They've been predicting this since before the war even started (hell, ever since Putin took power 20-some years ago), but this time it's totally gonna happen for real, guys.
There's that, and time is on Russia's side. The US economy is death spiraling and if it goes, most likely the entire economy of NATO goes.
Is it really though? I honestly feel like the FedGov can keep their magic money printer going indefinitely because it sure looks like it isn't stopping now, against any rational reasons.
Well, it looked like the music would never stop in 2007 too, and the fundamentals of the economy are a lot worse now. It just takes one big enough shock to make everyone realize it.
Economic delusion lasts until it doesn't, and when the spell breaks it is quite violent.
It's one of those things where a lot of other nations have had a vested interests in making sure the dollar doesn't go tits up even if they didn't particularly like the US. They would have needed to make major moves to make sure that when the dollar collapsed, their economy wouldn't collapse along side of it. This international overreach by the US has prompted pretty much all of those nations to start making moves away from dollar dependency which has in turn forced nations like Brazil who's current leadership does like the American hegemony to start doing the same out of simple self preservation. It's basically turning into a run on the banks, just on a much larger scale. That being said, it takes a long time for so many economic pieces to move, but there is a certain breaking point where it all comes down very rapidly.
It's been this way since Covid; least that is as far as I can remember. As a commodities and stock trader, so much as a fart from the wrong person could send a company's price plummeting many percentages; however, if the fundamentals of the company remain rock solid, there is a greater than 50/50 chance that you will come out of draw down safe and sound. Sure it is bad now, but really, this is just an opportunity to create more generational wealth as it is short term and in 10 years time I'm betting we'll be bouncing beyond all time highs. It's the volatility before the move, we just gotta grit and bear through it like we've done in the 00's and 09's, well grit and slowly buy discounted companies ala Berkshire; value is value and America isn't short of it.
The Fed isn't being irrational, but it's painted itself into a corner. 14 years of banks getting money for nothing means that there's entire sectors of the economy propped by by venture capital gambling- why do you think the writing was on the wall for Silicon Valley Bank when interest rates were raised the the historically modest 4.5%? It can keep interest rates low and inflation keeps rolling, or it can raise them and collapse significant chunks of the economy. For all people talk about China's economy being fake and gay, America's is at least as bad.
And the healthiest, long term move for us as a nation and an economy would be to just let the rot fucking burn. But unfortunately those VC oligarchs that made their fortunes by way of Fed money-printing arbitrage are also now key political financiers and social movers and shakers and they aren't going to let the game stop any time soon if they can help it.
In Donetsk direction, the Yug Group of Forces, Operational-Tactical Aviation, and artillery have eliminated over 250 Ukrainian troops, one tank, three armoured fighting vehicles, nine motor vehicles, Gvozdika self-propelled artillery system, and Msta-B and D-20 howitzers over the past 24 hours.
Ammunition depots of the 102nd Territorial Defence Brigade and 72nd Mechanised Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been hit close to Orekhov (Zaporozhye region) and Ugledar (Donetsk People's Republic).
Russian Defence Ministry shows Niobium radar in action within the special military operation.
Air Defence Force marks its professional day.
For all their faults, the Chinks DO have industrial infrastructure and make actual things. As far as I can tell, all we do in the US anymore is bundle debt into more and more abstract "financial products".
We still have industry and still make things. But unfortunately it's almost all very specialized, and its part as a share of the economy as a whole is very small compared to the "service economy" which all the smart people said us transitioning to 30 years ago would make us much more wealthier and more competitive on the global stage (spoiler: they were lying).
Not now.
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Okay, not really. I'm in my vacation right now across the planet and I thought I would have garbage wifi and would use up all my time in sightseeing places and eating out. Turns out that when you're across the planet, you're jet-lagged the heck out and as a result, I spend my nights not sleeping and doing nothing. Might as well churn up an update. Or maybe I am just autistic that I'm obsessed with the Invasion.
I heard that Prigozhin in an interview (I think it was the one with WarGonzo) was disappointed in the performance of the prisoners recruited by Wagner because the prisoners did not enjoy working together with other Wagnerites (teamwork is essential for their survival) and always kept stealing ammunition.
It was at a point that annexing Ukraine was not Russia's plan, but now? With Russia putting in all the cards and having a moment where it actually feared getting balkanized, Russia at this point will just go for annexation of most of Ukraine to make up for all its losses and humiliation that they suffered. They will now want Odessa, Nikopol, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhye, Chernigov, Sumy, and Kiev. Why? Because that is where all the Russians (or Russian-speaking/cultured Ukrainians) in Ukraine are.
