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Ukraine Update: Pro-Russian sources react to their stunning defeat ... and it's hilarious [1]

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Date: 2022-09-11

What a rout looks like.

Today has been a delightful stream of liberated towns as Russia scrambles out of Kharkiv Oblast—with or without its equipment. There are unconfirmed reports of major retreats in Kherson, but I’m going to hold off on posting those until we get better information.

Some of these Kharkiv retreats are bizarre. Take this wonderful video:

What’s amazing about this video is that it has been geolocated to Kozacha Lopan, north of Kharkiv, literally on the Russian border.

Kozacha Lopan is particularly significant because 1) there was no reason for Russia to actually abandon it. There are no supply issues, it’s on the freaking border, off a major 4-lane highway 30 kilometers from Belgorod. Russia reinforced it with pre-made concrete bunkers. It would’ve cost Ukraine dearly to try and take it. So why abandon it? Yet we’re seeing that on all those border towns. When Russia decided to abandon the oblast, they really mean pulling everything out.

As we celebrate Ukraine’s stunning victory, pro-Russian sources are finding hilarious ways to cope. Let’s take a look at some of them.

How it started:

How it’s going:

How it started:

How’s it going:

There’s this weird narrative on the pro-Russian side that Ukraine has paid a heavy price in its counteroffensive.

x The Ukrainians are taking immense casualties, but it's pure cope to emphasize this. They don't care, for the current situation they have functionally unlimited amounts of meat for the grinder. Trading 3000 soldiers for some strategically important space is nothing to them. — Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) September 10, 2022

Russian resistance melted with few shots fired. Ukraine outran Russian artillery in a matter of hours. Did Ukraine suffer casualties? Of course. It’s war. But there’s nothing to suggest mass casualties on either side.

These sources will point to video of a caravan of ambulances rushing to Kyiv. Yet even that imagery is maybe a couple dozen ambulances? That’s not mass casualty. That’s a couple dozen injured. If that’s the extent of Ukrainian casualties, this would be an even more stunning victory.

Funny how copium makes their fantasies “obvious.”

Here let’s go to a tankie Substack:

My view is fairly simple: Ukraine cannot and will not reach meaningful objectives - what we call “operational depth” - and has in fact thrown much of its carefully crafted premium reserves into a dangerous position. I believe it’s highly likely that these top rate Ukrainian formations are about to be savaged [...] For Ukraine, one of the basic problems is that Russia has such an enormous advantage in firepower - aircraft, tube artillery, rocketry, and tanks - that any offensive must reach operational depth quickly in order to disrupt Russia’s ability to bring this firepower to bear. In the Izyum sector, this simply isn’t possible. Lacking the ability to operationally compromise Russian forces here, Ukraine will find itself in a good old fashioned shootout against an enemy with vastly superior firepower - not only that, but it is in fact Ukraine that now faces operational complications, having blasted their way into a salient with no prospects for crossing the Oskil in force and exploiting.

That aged well.

x I predicted a Sputnik moment when Russia invaded Ukraine.



I was wrong.



Ukraine is the country that is achieving a Sputnik moment. Its counteroffensive has shocked the world. https://t.co/dlnlimaYQY — Clint Ehrlich (@ClintEhrlich) September 11, 2022

Don’t worry, though. Tucker Carlson’s favorite “expert” now says that “Russia still has the capacity to crush the Ukrainian military if it chooses to fully mobilize” and if Ukraine pushes harder, Russia will respond with nuclear weapons. So Ukraine needs to stop all that winning.

x Some Russia enjoyers coping pic.twitter.com/ZDafMf2Rn6 — ogel (@TheWastingTimes) September 10, 2022

That entire thread is great. Very satisfying, stuff like this:

In contrast to Russian Twitter, Russian Telegram is ready to draw and quarter Putin.

More:

x To understand the insanity of #Russia|n chauvinism, just read this excerpt from a Russian Nazi TG channel: “The cultural catastrophe is due to collapse of the innate to our culture understanding of the total spiritual and intellectual supremacy of Russians over Ukrainians.”



1/2 pic.twitter.com/oCOVf2oyDo — Alex Kokcharov (@AlexKokcharov) September 11, 2022

More:

x Russian milbloggers seem to be increasingly appalled by the "business as usual" attitude adopted by the Kremlin after the Ukrainian offensive, symbolized by today's "City Day" fireworks display in Moscow. Here a text relayed by the influential Telegram account @WarGonzo pic.twitter.com/P1VC734I08 — Thomas (@ThEsteveRobert) September 10, 2022

If you’re wondering why pro-Russian Telegram and Twitter are so different, the Telegram contingent are far-right nationalists, and thus have greater freedom to criticize the Russian military operation. On Twitter, it’s more rote propagandists and tankies repeating the party line, no matter how ludicrous.

This is fun:

x Putin’s macho army of testosterone-fuelled washing machine removal men defeated by volunteer lesbians and pink-haired coders programming drones. — MattinWoolwich (@MattWWoolwich) September 10, 2022

And yes to this:

x Ostpolitik is over. No more frozen conflicts and off-ramp ceasefires to avoid humiliating Putin. Ukraine’s western allies not yet in should enter the Anglo-American-Polish led “military victory and full Russian withdrawal” camp in light of this week’s decisive counteroffensives. — Boris Ryvkin (@BRyvkin) September 11, 2022

Anglo-American-Polish is a great formulation. Western Europe hasn’t been useless, but its desire to appease Putin has hobbled it and left it behind, and even more so with Ukraine’s now rapid gains. France wanted to lead a new European army. That dream is dead. Germany will likely be a great partner in Ukraine’s reconstruction, but no one is going to depend on it militarily. Spain and Italy have done the bare minimum.

Who has stepped up? The US, UK, Poland, Canada, Australia, the Baltic nations, Slovakia, and Czechia. Poland has launched a military buildup that will make it the strongest in Europe. (If only its government’s backslide into authoritarianism-lite wasn’t so worrying...)

x Hard to explain just how central the myth of Russian military invincibility is to their psyche.



It's like, imagine if football World Cups were played once every 80 years, Brazil built their entire national identity around winning the last one, then lost 5-1 to like Guyana. — Dmitry Grozoubinski (@DmitryOpines) September 10, 2022

Perfect analogy.

x Still thinking about that lady telling Russian soldiers to put sunflower seeds in their pockets — Billy (@O3hasbeen) September 8, 2022

I think of her every single day.

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