Ukraine Turns To Flying Machine Guns And Autonomous AI-Controlled Drone Swarms To Counter Russian Numbers
from the crossing-the-line dept
It’s no secret that Ukraine is having a hard time in its fight against Russia at the moment. That’s in part because Ukraine is being limited in how deep into Russia it can attack using Western-supplied weapons. But mostly it is a matter of numbers: Russia has more men that it is willing to sacrifice in assaults, and more weapons and ammunition that it can use to pound Ukrainian positions and cities. As Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation, told the UK Times: “We don’t have as many human resources as Russia, they fight, they die, they send more people, they don’t care, but that’s not how we see war.” Since it can’t match Russia in raw manpower and firepower, Ukraine has turned to technology to help it fight back.
In particular, Ukraine has been using drones in a way that is re-defining modern war. First, it is deploying them on an unprecedented scale. Back in December, Ukraine’s President Zelensky said that his country would produce one million drones in 2024. More recently, Hanna Hvozdyar, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Strategic Industries, stated that they would in fact produce two million drones this year, although these are unverified claims. In addition to sheer numbers, Ukraine is also pushing forward the boundaries of drone design. In May, Euromaidan Press reported that Ukrainian forces are mounting machine guns on heavy octocopter drones “to strafe Russian infantry assaults and fire into the trenches from above”:
Right now, Ukrainians are using two types of drones against the Russian infantry: grenade-dropping drones, and kamikaze drones. Dropping grenades accurately is extremely difficult, especially if the infantry is moving, or if the infantry has electronic warfare kits that necessitate operating from a much higher altitude, further reducing the accuracy.
The kamikaze drones, in turn, can only be used once. The development of gun mounts, combined with thermal vision and machine aiming, will change the setting completely.
Another innovative approach involves the use of AI to create a “swarm” of up to seven drones that can work cooperatively to attack tanks and carry out reconnaissance. The Times spoke to a Ukrainian entrepreneur working on this technology in Kyiv, Serhii Krupiienko:
“It’s the equivalent of bringing the steam engine into the factory all those years ago,” says Krupiienko, a software engineer who studied at Stanford University, California. “Our core mission is to get robots to do the fighting, not humans.
“They can communicate with each other, making decisions on which one attacks, which gathers intelligence — and they’ll do it faster than any human.”
Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation Bornyakov told The Times that the country is testing another company’s intelligent swarm technology as well. The New York Times reports on a number of Ukrainian laboratories and factories working on other low-cost autonomous weapons. Bornyakov insisted that Ukraine will not allow any of these killing machines to go “completely autonomous”, without a human making the final decision. But when your soldiers are struggling against larger, better equipped forces in a war that will determine whether your country continues to exist in any meaningful sense, it will be hard to maintain that ethical position. And once that line is crossed, how wars are conducted will have changed forever.
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Filed Under: ai, autonomous killing, drone, kamikaze, kyiv, reconnaissance, robots, swarm, tanks, ukraine, zelensky
Comments on “Ukraine Turns To Flying Machine Guns And Autonomous AI-Controlled Drone Swarms To Counter Russian Numbers”
Horizon: Zero Down was a cautionary tale…
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Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.
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Unfortunately for humanity, desperation is a renewable resource that will outlast all others.
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As was Fallout, stories by Philip K Dick, and numerous other tales of unleashing machine powered warfare on humanity.
Or go down the rabbit hole
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RobotWar
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For what it’s worth, the apocalypse in Horizon was caused by self-replicating autonomous weapons that used bio-matter as resources. We’re thankfully nowhere near that stage, however, and hopefully, if we do get anywhere near that stage, it’ll be banned first. Unfortunately, we already have a Ted Faro in the form of Elon Musk, but it’s fortunate he’s not in the business of making weapons… Yet…
I thought that it was “The Times of London”.
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No, it been The Times <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times"since 1788, before which it was named The Daily Universal Register. It is only The Times of London in countries with newspapers that also have the word ‘Times’ in their names.
Re: Closing tag disappeared, fixing
No, it been The Times <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times"since 1788, before which it was named The Daily Universal Register. It is only The Times of London in countries with newspapers that also have the word ‘Times’ in their names.
Re: Re: And again
No, it been The Times since 1788, before which it was named The Daily Universal Register. It is only The Times of London in countries with newspapers that also have the word ‘Times’ in their names.
No weapon (possibly except Nukes) has ever been banned on ethical grounds
We do not tend to ban weapons because they are too useful, militarily. In as much as the Catholic Church has succeeded in ridding the world of perfidious crossbows and the English longbow, it is only because they have been superseded by the browning machine gun.
The reason we could ban chemical weapons was because they had no conceivable use except to kill civilians. One sudden change of winds and suddenly you are hoist by your own petard. A mortar will do twice as good as what a chemical round might do, especially considering that the enemy is already prepared with anti-chemical weapons countermeasures already like gas masks, though nobody has really figured out how to counter an explosion, economically.
The only possible exception is nuclear weapons. Even so, despite our best efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation, states from the DPRK to Iran have still succeeded in performing the highly complicated process of making a nuclear weapon.
It is furthermore difficult to ban drones when they have been useful in asymmetric warfare. One of the many militias in the ME have been quite successful in employing drones to attack oil refineries. Cheaper variants of drones can be assembled in makeshift workshops in Ukraine, and ultimately that will filter down to every second-rate militia out there. It will be a nightmare to try and control drone proliferation, in as much as it is even possible to control the world’s supply of guns or bullets.
It is perhaps fortunate, though, that the world is also developing countermeasures in abundance. Jamming is fatal to the current generation of manual drones, but that of course wouldn’t apply to autonomous drones. There are, however, for example, countermeasures around the whitehouse against quadcopters, and laser weapon development is coming along nicely so you don’t have to lob a million dollar missile at a hundred dollar drone.
I foresee a time when autonomous drone swarms are banned, and it is when every military has effective countermeasures are already in place.
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To the nuke question, I’d argue that it falls into the same category as chemical weapons. Attempts to use them against enemy armies are largely a waste of time and money, a few dozen conventional explosives can do the same job more cheaply, with less risk of being shot down en route, and without producing radioactive fallout which may be accidently blown into your own army. Likewise, use against fortified underground bunkers is basically replaceable with specifically designed conventional explosives, with positions fortified enough to survive the second generally also able to survive the first. Leaving, as with chemical weapons, no practical uses for them outside the mass slaughter of civilians.
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Anti-personnel mines.
(Yes, I know that the USA has declined to sign that treaty.)
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And chemicals, and sexual violence, etc., etc.
Doesn’t stop it happening again and again and again.
The US has been researching collaborative drones for over a decade –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdix_(drone)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjUdVxJH6yI
Imagine what they can do now…
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The one that came to my mind was the drone shows at the Bejing 2022 Olympics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gFfxu1TYY0
That’s 2,022 drones, all operating in concert. Just imagine what would happen if each one had a mounted machine gun and they could hand off duties between drones. It wouldn’t really matter if someone had a laser defense system; the only defenses would be a strong wind, an EMP, or a saturation of all frequencies used to communicate.
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What can be, unburdened, by what has been
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Nobody gives a fuck you fags
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Re: Most homophobes wanna gobble that knob
You cared you much you posted twice a minute apart.
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God hates fags.
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No. He loves you too.
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So do governments, which is why so many have enacted laws against cigarette smoking in specific locations.
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If god existed, he’d hate the Westboro Baptist Fucks and anyone who spews their hatred, but fortunately, we don’t have to care about what fictional magic sky daddy thinks. Rational human beings reject otherizing people who pose no actual threat to other people.
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Re: Re: Re:2
“Rational human beings” understand why homosexual deviance was illegal for so many years!
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Techdirt and off for the holiday? How about go away forever you cunts.
Re: Sucks to suck bruh
And yet.. here you are.
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Yes, to denounce America-hating neo-Marxists like you.
Re: Re: Re: Cool story bro
Don’t forget to take you meds everyday like the nice men in the white coats said too.
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I didn’t know minorities in America hated America.
As oposed to those that vote Rus- I mean, Republican.
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The only “America” we hate is the imaginary fascist one you regressives want to create.
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Re: Re: Re:2
“Imaginary”? See how imaginary it is come next January when President Trump starts rounding up illegals and prosecuting the the NGOs who’ve been funding the invasion and the Democrats who’ve committed TREASON by working against American Interests.
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Complete Nonsense
The number of errors in this article is embarrassing.
1) The Russians are NOT losing large numbers of troops relative to Ukraine. The actual loss rate is at least 5:1 in favor Russia, and in many places lately it’s been as high as 20:1. The Russian FAB-3000 is annihilating Ukrainian troops in large quantities. Ukraine is losing around 2,000 dead soldier per DAY and have been for months.
2) Ukraine is not limited in attacking inside Russia. What Ukraine does is waste their long-range Western-supplied weapons on pointless attacks on civilian targets inside Russia, which merely angers the Russian public who support the Russian SMO more fiercely. And then the Russians strike back even more heavily against Ukrainian military targets. The Russian do not and never have conducted attacks against civilians in Ukraine.
3) Ukraine’s other problem with long-range weapons from the West is that Russia has the best air defenses in the world and they have learned over the last 2.5 years to counter most Ukrainian strikes.
4) Drones: While Ukraine has been using drones effectively, they are massively out-numbered by Russian drones. The Russians were a little late to the drone game, but their industrial production far exceeds anything Ukraine can do. It is the Russians who are developing drone swarms with AI and networking technology. The Ukrainians are playing catch-up – and it’s far too late for them to succeed, given their massive losses in both men and materiel.
4) You need to stop reading Ukraine news from The New York Times which is nothing but a stenographer for the CIA-written Ukrainian (and Israeli) propaganda.
This war is effectively over. The Russians are taking their time setting up their final push to Kiev. They are in no hurry as they have complete control of the battlefield, their losses are acceptable given the stakes (NATO vs Russia), and their slow, grinding attrition strategy has worked excellently over the course of the war. In economic terms, the West’s sanctions failed utterly, and the Russian economy is now considered a high-income one according to the World Bank.
It was idiotic of anyone to think Ukraine could defeat Russia in any way, shape or form. Prior to the start of the conflict, practically every newspaper and Web site published infographics on the relative Military Balance of the two countries. Only a moron could believe Ukraine had a chance, regardless of how many Western weapons would be supplied.
And once the Russian military-industrial complex revved up, Ukraine’s fate was sealed. Russia now has a military approaching two million mean, and has increased weapons production from two to seven times depending on weapons system.
Ukraine has lost 50 percent of its population, fleeing to the West, and has suffered at least half a million killed soldiers and probably another million and half wounded. Almost all of the current crop of Ukrainian front-line troops are civilians given barely a week or two training before being sent to the front lines, where their survival rate is estimated at four hours. The remaining previously NATO-trained troops are being sent hither and yon to shore up defenses which the Russians are breaching daily and suffering enormous casualty rates that are completely unsustainable by any military.
Yet Biden and NATO continues to escalate the conflict despite the fact that neither the US nor NATO have any chance of defeating the current Russian military, short of using nuclear weapons.
And in that respect, Russia, again, has the best air defenses in the world designed to shoot down ICBMs and IRBMs and cruise missiles, whereas the West has ZERO defenses against Russian supersonic and hypersonic missiles – around 48 of them just visited Cuba on a Russian warship and nuclear submarine.
Let that sink in. Do you want to die for Joe Biden and his neocon cronies?
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Well said. This is an unwinnable war (for Ukraine), and it will also cost America dearly that the shadow government controlling the Biden presidency has prolonged this war against the world’s most heavily-armed nuclear state.
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Well said, tovarish.
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The fight is against fascism. “Joe Biden and his neocon cronies” just happen to be the ones who aren’t rolling over for it.
If fascism is allowed to spread, a lot of us are dead at its hands anyway.
Yeah. This is a fight worth dying for.
Ukraine war
How long before you and the rest of the world will realize they need a serious bounty on these aggressive leaders such as Putin and others.
If this was done, then the leaders of other aggressive countries would think twice about attacking others
How long before you wake up ?
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Uh.
Even the EU doesn’t want to be nuked.
As much as we’d like to just Agent 47/John Wick the fascist fuck and his Chinese backer, unless our hypothetical assassin also can magically destroy the leader’s nuclear stockpile, the only thing the world can do is to resist the invader conventionally.
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Hopefully Ukraine seeks a negotiated peace soon to spare further senseless death.
It’s a great and profound stain on President Biden’s otherwise admirable legacy that he and his collaborators in Congress have funded this very evil war.
Re: 'This is all your fault for defending yourself!'
Better idea if the goal is to ‘spare further senseless death’: That psychotic wanna-be-conqueror Putin stops trying to invade another country.
Ukraine isn’t the one who started this bloodbath it’s positively absurd to try to frame them as the party responsible for not ending it sooner.
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Putin isn’t going to withdraw his forces–why would he? He’s prosecuting a criminal war of aggression and has captured territory that Ukraine has no ability to recover without direct US intervention.
Why should Ukrainian men continue to die for a lost cause rather than the war being concluded with a negotiated settlement?
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Why wouldn’t they give the psychopath their country and ensure that all the lives lost were for nothing rather than continue to fight to keep it and have the chance, even if ever so slight that they can make it too expensive for him to continue?
Gee, lemme think on that one…
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Are you seriously stupid enough to think that Putin will be satisfied with a bit of Ukraine and that’ll be the end of it? Ignorance like yours is why history education needs to be improved.
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When has Putin ever attacked a NATO state? Why would Putin attack a NATO state? Please cite your sources.
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Stupidity or Russian propaganda? Hard to tell but I’m leaning toward the latter.
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“Hopefully Ukraine seeks a negotiated peace soon to spare further senseless death.”
Let’s review, shall we?
and now, Russia wants to negotiate … hoping Ukraine gives in again.
Then Russia will be looking toward Poland, Finland, France …. when will humans realize this doesn’t fucking work?
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You’re a fucking moron. What’s the stark difference b/w Poland/Finland/France…and Ukraine?
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You should try reading journalism other than the obviously incorrect trash you presently rely upon.
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You’re a mor0n. What’s the stark difference b/w Poland/Finland/France…and Ukraine?
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Putin: I really really pinkie swear I will not invade again.
You: Oh sure, you can believe him this time.
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Ukraine is already invaded, and Putin is more than happy to nuke the place.
Meanwhile, guess who’s next after Ukraine is Russian territory? Those countries stated.
And they’d be more than happy to break the Geneva Convention several times to prevent Putin from stepping one foot into their territory.
France, in particular, is more than happy to show Russia how serious they are with a nuclear strike.
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Re: Re: Re:2
So what? Ukraine is in Russia’s sphere of influence and it is not a vital national interest to the US.
Re: Re: Re:3
Ah, I see.
You’re not interested in free trade and not starving the world.
In which case, the answer is very simple.
You’re either Russian or Republican.
We’re not interested in the Russian bullshit. Go cry to you sugat daddy Xi some more, see if he cares.
Re: Re: Re:4
Is the U.S.’s ability to trade freely with the world in any way threatened right now?
Is the U.S.’s ability to meet the caloric needs of its population threatened in any way right now?
Please cite your sources.
Re: Re: Re:5
What has that got to do with anything.
Cite your sources
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You may think this is a clever way to deflect criticism of your pro-Russia talking points, but you’re wrong comrade.
Re: Re: 'Just a liiiiiitle more danegeld and I'll go away for good this time, promise.'
What do you mean, appeasement policies works great… for one side of the equation anyway.
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Yes, doing the right thing here will be the thing that’s a stain on Biden’s legacy.
This is not a charade. Now try again, this time, with feeling.
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Write better propaganda Ivan, or you will be sent to the front lines!
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If you nerds are so keen for Ukraine to keep sending its young men into a meat grinder to prolong what is literally an unwinnable war, why aren’t you there in training, getting ready to join them, or at the very least selling your homes or other assets and donating that money to Ukrainian or international units fighting at the front?
Without direct US intervention (which would, of course, mean nuclear war with Russia), Ukraine cannot win. It has an unmitigable demographic problem.
Re: Re: Re: I'll take 'False Dichotomy' for $500 Alex
‘If you aren’t signing up to be on the front lines of a war how dare you criticize those arguing for an invaded country to just surrender to the one invading them.’
Well that’s an argument I suppose, hope you’re getting paid for shilling for Putin as I’d hate to think you’re doing it for free.
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Why aren’t you training to fight in Ukraine?
Do you own any assets in the U.S. (or whatever your country is)? If so, why haven’t you sold them and donated the money to the international brigade fighting in Ukraine?
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So, why aren’t you joining the Russians and trying to prove the Ukranians that their defense of their homes is a bad idea?
Down in the proverbial trenches, that is.
Unless Putin’s paid you to defend his war online, that is. Then please, do tell me how much he’s paid you to do so.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Because I’m not a detestable WAR-MONGER!
Re: Re: Re:5
And I’m not an insurrectionist.
You, though…
I uave a feeling you ARE.
Re: Re: Re:5
“Because I’m not a detestable WAR-MONGER!”
You’re not detestable? hmmm, I don’t know about that but your comments point toward you being a war monger assistant troll at a minimum and a huge douche at best.
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“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
– John Stuart Mill, 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews
Only fools who know no history and those with a specific agenda appeal to people to accept appeasement.
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Re: Re: Re:2
You’re very dumb. Ukraine cannot win. Putin will never attack a NATO member state. The U.S. has no strategic interest in who controls four oblasts in eastern Ukraine.
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Military interest, no.
Economic interest, yea.
Russia’s trying to starve the world, and China’s more than happy to help.
Not only that, Russia’s done it before. In 2008.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Ukraine’s territorial dispute with Russia is not in any way a vital interest of the United States.
Georgia is even less of a US interest.
Re: Re: Re:3
The US and most other countries on the planet, particular in Europe, have a very strong interest in deterring any countries from annexing others by force. It should be very obvious why.
Re: Re: Re:4
What evidence do you have that Russia plans to annex Europe? In fact, what evidence do you have that Russia even wants to annex Ukraine and not simply turn it into a rump state?
Cite your sources.
Re: Re: Re:5
What evidence do you have that you are not a paid for propaganda keyboard warrior for Putin.
Cite your sources
Re: Re: Re:3
So not only are you an appeasing coward, you are kind of stupid too.
Re: Re: Re:3
“Putin will never attack a NATO member state. ”
Putin said he would never invade Ukraine.
At this point why should anyone believe any of this crap
Re: Re: Re:4
Because anyone with even a basic understanding of great power politics realizes it’s not in Russia’s interest to precipitate war with NATO. Sheesh.
As for Ukraine: again, Ukraine is not an ally of the U.S. or a NATO member, but it is firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence. What happens in Ukraine poses no threat to the U.S.
Re: Re: Re:5
You really are quite naive.
Putin apologist Baghdad Bob, you are just a clown
Re: Re: Re:5
And how exactly was it in Russia’s interest to invade Ukraine other than for a naked land grab? It was a preposterously stupid decision to make and the cost to Russia has be enormous. So why would anyone sane bet on Putin not making further terrible decisions?
As for Ukraine: again, Ukraine is not an ally of the U.S….
…but it is firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence.
If by influence, you mean in a constant state of high defense against unprovoked attack until Putin and his regime are dead, buried and condemned within Russia, then sure, Ukraine is within Russia’s sphere of influence.
What happed in Poland supposedly posed no threat to the US too. That mistake has not been forgotten.
Re: Re: Re:6
Hitler’s regime were not natural enemies of the U.S. and we were dragged into that war by Churchill’s syphilitic war-mongering!
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That would be Hitler attacking Poland.
France and Britain had to defend Poland due to treaties promising Poland Grench and British involvement, ie, putting fucking boots on the ground.
Hitler didn’t stop at Poland, either.
Hell, it was CHAMBERLAIN, not that rat bastard Churchill, who, uh, tried to negotiate with Hitler. Being too broke to run an empire does that to you.
Man, you Russian assholes are especially thick.
Re: Re: Re:7
I think you need a better English thesaurus comrade.
Re: Re: Re:5
Replace Putin with Hitler and Ukraine/NATO with the Soviet Union.
Starting to see a pattern, *tovarisch
And, oh, just to sweeten this pot a little…
All of Eastern Europe is itching to turn the Geneva Conventions into the Geneva Checklists.
That is how much they HATE Russia.
Why is the Ukraine war not ending?
The future of the world rides on how the crisis in Europe plays out. For the war to end, a lot of deals will have to be struck, including one on burying deep the origin of the Coronavirus.
he Cold War years
In a Netflix serial scripted against the Cold War backdrop, Russian KGB agents are embedded in American society. Like Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, they step out from their shadows and from the comfort of their American identity only when they get orders from their handlers to execute a project, like ‘bomb a place’ or ‘kill’ someone. At times these KGB agents are torn between the country of their origin and their love for the American way of life. Many Hollywood offerings build on this ideological conflict of the agents and how they jettison their commitment to Marxism and Leninism and the stability of the Soviet state in favour of the US or the countries of the West.
Read the full story here –
https://theprobe.in/world/why-is-the-ukraine-war-not-ending/
I don’t see how Ukraine will ever win this war without being able to attack inside Russia. The way I see it, the US and others are just throwing money down the tubes and prolonging the inevitable. We waited to long to join the fight against Hitler and are doing the same thing now with Russia.
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Sounds like you’ve got this thing all figured out now huh.
What is it that you suggest the world leaders do in order to quell the present day warfare?
Negotiate?
lol
The last negotiation led to the present situation, the russians lied again but they should be trusted this time because reasons.
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Please explain why the SMO isn’t simply balance-of-power politics and what the U.S. national interest is in who governs four oblasts in eastern Ukraine. Cite your sources.
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They are throwing money in their own pockets.
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They are attacking inside Russia.
https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-weapons-biden-kharkiv-c46c3ca0f0f4893c8c3b0ef53e974438