I hope news like this is routinely being shared with Russians….via millions of phone texts, coverage by foreign media outlets that Russians still have access to etc.
I assume that’s all happening to some degree. Many of Lucian’s readers probably have good instincts about that.
Particularly amid signs that many Russians still support their dictator’s war, it seems so important that the especially grisly ground truth of their aggression—and lethally brutal treatment of their own conscripts—gets put in front of Russia’s public consistently.
Britain’s declassification and dissemination of intel is a great tactic .
These guys are a cold bunch shooting their own to stop them retreating. But not surprising considering how they can torture innocent Ukrainian civilians merely because they are patriots to their county I just read an article about that when the war started. Here is a quote from the article about one Russian soldier that participated in that activity in a call to his wife " A soldier named Maksym called his wife from outside Kyiv. He told her everyone was drinking because life there without liquor was too much to bear. “How will you protect yourself if you are tipsy?” .“Totally normal," he replied. "It’s easier to shoot civilians.” Incidentally MTG says not another penny will go to Ukraine under Republicans?
So much respect and sympathy for the Ukrainians for what they're up against. Dismay and apprehension for the US where it seems like plenty of people would be willing to accept a fascist dictator wannabe to get 10¢ off a gallon of gas.
Nov 5, 2022·edited Nov 5, 2022Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
The West needs to reacquaint ourselves with the absolute brutalities of Stalinist Russia. The sad fact is that Russia as a political entity can no longer be considered 'civilized' in the modern sense of the word. The regime is fighting for its life, and everything it stands for, on the bones and bleeding corpses of the Russian people. One way to accelerate the Putin's regime's demise is to offer safe haven to any Russian soldier willing to surrender. There are places in the world that are in need of labor with some minimal education and work skills who can do more than baseline agricultural labor. That being the case, put them to work. The United States no longer depends upon cheap migratory labor. Most cash crops are sown, attended, and harvested using sophisticated agricultural machinery. On the other hand, in a trend that economists are already noticing, tending forestlands and removing dead wood fall to lessen the danger and extent of wildfire requires thousands of workers at an annual cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. The same goes with building levees in river basins and other forms of flood control. Sea levels are rising, and we can foresee massive need for an able workforce to do flood control. This work is highly labor-intensive, and right now, the United States is suffering from a severe labor shortage, especially those needed to do pick-and-shovel work There are innumerable other examples that I could cite that would benefit from the labor that could be performed by able-bodied men looking to escape military service from a tyrannical government.
It is an artifact of history that during the Korean War, as recorded by T.R. Fehrenbach in his book This Kind of War, that during the last year of the conflict the biggest issue over which argued was the refusal of tens of thousands of Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war to return to their home countries after the terms of an armistice had been concluded. The American commanders, representing the United Nations which had come together to defend the independence and freedom of South Korea against attack from the north, were fretting because the United States Army, the most visible in numerous of the UN combatants, was suffering thousands of casualties in combat while the negotiators at Panmunjom were arguing over whether the prisoners of war taken by the UN forces would be forcibly repatriated.
First, as a matter of principle, the United States stood against forced repatriation of prisoners of war. They had seen what forced repatriation had been done after World War II when Soviet prisoners of war had been forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union, only to be arrested and tried for treason, and either executed outright, or sentenced to decades of imprisonment in the Soviet Gulag. Back then, American political and military leaders were still in thrall to the prewar isolationist mindset that greatly preferred that the fragmented and dislocated peoples of Europe uprooted by the war remain in Europe, regardless of the change in circumstances that the war had brought. The MAGAhat wing of the Republican Party, meaning its entire membership, takes this exclusionary principle to its extreme as an article of faith. But back in 1945, when Russia was still a wartime ally, the only place for those former POWs would have been in Germany, which itself was a chaotic wreck. The postwar settlement saw two million ethnic Germans forcibly expelled from their communities within the successor states within the Soviet Empire, back to Germany, where they were resettled. The Russian government was adamantly insisting that its POW nationals we returned. We did not have a dog in that fight; and anyone who suggested that for the personal convenience of POWs who hated communism and did not want to return to Russia, that they be allowed to emigrate to the United States would have been laughed out of the room.
Back to Korea, and the politically sensitive situation in which more than 100,000 United Nations POWs refused to return home. The refusal of the communist representatives to accept a propaganda defeat that more than 50 percent of their own POWs were refusing to return to their respective homelands basically prolonged the war another year. To create a diversion the Communists orchestrated a rebellion within the UN POW compounds on Koje-do island, situated in the Pacific Ocean south of the Korean Peninsula, between Korea and Japan. It started off with the capture of American Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd, commander of the American security force supposedly in control of the POW camps on the island. Gen. Dodd was summoned to the camp by the senior commander among the prisoners ensconced there to hear complaints about their treatment. Once inside, behind the wire, Dodd was captured by prisoners in Compound 76 and he was forced to make propaganda statements admitting to mistreatment of prisoners — the same kind of propaganda ploys that communist governments had been employing since the end of the Russian Civil War 1921. The upshot was that Frank Dodd was released, unharmed, on May 10, 1952, only to face the wrath of the Truman administration in the form of Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, Jr's outrage. Dodd was returned home in disgrace, reduced in rank to colonel, and summarily retired. But, it was obvious to those observers on the scene that if the communist leadership had its way, they would slaughter every POW on the island who refused to toe the communist line, and the American government could not afford to allow that to happen.
Enter Brigadier General Haydon L. Boatner, United States Army, the product of a family of professional soldiers. He graduated first in his class at West Point in 1924; and in 1928 he went to the Far East, beginning a long professional career at what was then known as the China Station. Boatner became what was then known as one of the old China Hands, learning Chinese, and ending up on the staff of Gen. Joseph Stillwell. Boatner was the first in his class to make Brigadier General, where after 38 months of service there, where, among other things, he drew up the original surrender terms for the Japanese Army in China in 1945. Now in Korea, he became the Assistant Division commander for the 2nd Infantry Division. So, rather than be tasked to be the officer in charge of the POW camps on Koje-do island, and likely suffering the same sort of humiliating disgrace that his predecessor, Frank Dodd did, Haydon Boatner arrived on post forewarned about what was in store for him; but unlike Dodd, he had the benefit of a quarter of a century of hard-won experience in dealing with the psychology of his erstwhile opponents. Boatner knew from the get go that this was about psychological warfare, pure and simple. He informed the communist OIC that he was sending forces into put down the rebellion, and he did so with minimal loss of life. The few lives that were lost were ended by the communist leadership killing fellow prisoners who resisted their communist ideology.
So, what does that tell us about how we should approach a defeated and unraveling Russian army whose leadership is bent on destroying Russian lives rather than admit their own failings.
First and foremost, we need to remember our own past, where American forces rescued tens of thousands of Vietnamese 'boat people' who took to the sea, men, women, and children alike, to escape the onslaught of the North Vietnamese communist regime. Suffice it to say that many of the principals of that boatlift, and their descendants, are now my neighbors here in California. I am not advocating the same standard of aid for Russian conscripts, to be hauled away to refugee camps around the world, because by and large these men are young and able-bodied, and can be usefully employed to provide necessary labor to do the hard and dirty work of cleaning up the environment, roadbuilding, firefighting, or doing whatever else comes their way that not enough able-bodied people are available to do that kind of work. The Boat People have earned their way into American society, largely because they came as families looking for a new place to call home. We allowed them into our country and recompense for the friendship and service that they gave our Armed Forces when they were there in Vietnam to help their country resist communist takeover. We are doing the same thing for Afghan families who helped our Armed Forces save their country, and who are now left out in the cold.
The same is not due Russian soldiers who, for humanitarian and political reasons we do not want to see slaughtered by the butchers within the Russian government; but giving them some sort of semi-permanent residence is not in the cards. If any of those men subsequently are able to provide valuable services to subvert and defeat the Putin regime, that is a conversation for another day, and I am sympathetic to an upward adjustment in their immigration status. But for now, detailing several tens of thousands of them off to the Amazon rainforest to do environmental work, or firefighting in the Western states, or whatever else comes along that requires strong hands, backs, and legs, I'm game. Whatever works; we do — but, we do it now, now. The opportunity is upon us, and we seize the day.
The possibility of a Russian nuclear attack is growing as conventional warfare is not succeeding for him. What disturbs is Putin himself. He appears to be inflexible and has invested all of his credibility in this war. As I read him he would rather use nukes than lose face.
One would assume the Ukrainians are flooding Russian positions with messages and leaflets to surrender and they will be treated humanely. If you can't retreat safely to the rear the option is to retreat forward where you will have a better chance at life.
Early in the war the Ukrainians were brilliant in using psyops to their advantages. When Russians surrendered they were given a cell phone to call home. Might try that trick here. "Surrender and get a hot meal, cot and cell phone to call home.?
And if the Republicans take control of Congress after the midterms, they most likely will follow through with their threats to withdraw support for the Ukrainians. If trump was in office, his actions suggest he would have helped Russia take Ukraine.
The down side of blocking troop details is the fact the troops you’re blocking have guns of their own. Obviously, some retreats are in complete panic with weapons abandoned in the rush to the rear. But more often soldiers fall back with their weapons. And given the chaos on the field, not much keeps them from shooting the people trying to block their retreat, especially if they’re of another ethnic group, like Chechens. Seems like a formula for civil war inside the Russian army.
Tobias Wolff wrote a memoir about his time in Vietnam back in the day. It’s entitled “ In Pharaoh’s Army”. That’s what these doomed and dreadful Russian guys are now. Pharaoh’s Army.
The Russians are giving up ground far faster than the reports about this are coming in. I and many others pray that Putin will not do as he's threatened, to use tactical nuclear weapons because that's the end of the road for him, any people on the ground (including his own troops) and the rest of the world.
I do wonder if egomaniacs have any conscience at all? Is it a all or nothing ending for them, or can they accept defeat in any form?
It must be a humiliating thing for Putin (a former KGB man) to realize that he's the equal of Hitler in the battlefield-a sure loser who has no idea what he's talking about or doing and throwing troops into a grinder just because he thinks it will improve the situation.
And winter is coming. Already there are reports that the roads are becoming impassable due to mud created during rain storms. Ice will be there soon, too.
Maybe there will be a Christmas truce where Putin's generals will convince him to just accept reality and that he isn't the brilliant military strategist he believed he was. Or that the end will come soon enough by another way.
...if Ukraine warns of a potential head fake, and putin himself warns civilians should not suffer so they should leave, does that tell us that larger weapons might be employed at that juncture when only Ukrainian military is present? I'm not qualified in any way to do more than guess tho.
I hope news like this is routinely being shared with Russians….via millions of phone texts, coverage by foreign media outlets that Russians still have access to etc.
I assume that’s all happening to some degree. Many of Lucian’s readers probably have good instincts about that.
Particularly amid signs that many Russians still support their dictator’s war, it seems so important that the especially grisly ground truth of their aggression—and lethally brutal treatment of their own conscripts—gets put in front of Russia’s public consistently.
Britain’s declassification and dissemination of intel is a great tactic .
These guys are a cold bunch shooting their own to stop them retreating. But not surprising considering how they can torture innocent Ukrainian civilians merely because they are patriots to their county I just read an article about that when the war started. Here is a quote from the article about one Russian soldier that participated in that activity in a call to his wife " A soldier named Maksym called his wife from outside Kyiv. He told her everyone was drinking because life there without liquor was too much to bear. “How will you protect yourself if you are tipsy?” .“Totally normal," he replied. "It’s easier to shoot civilians.” Incidentally MTG says not another penny will go to Ukraine under Republicans?
If her neighbor lay bleeding and dying would she not help him? Here is the article I mentioned earlier: https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-soldiers-ran-cleansing-operation-130015001.html
So much respect and sympathy for the Ukrainians for what they're up against. Dismay and apprehension for the US where it seems like plenty of people would be willing to accept a fascist dictator wannabe to get 10¢ off a gallon of gas.
The West needs to reacquaint ourselves with the absolute brutalities of Stalinist Russia. The sad fact is that Russia as a political entity can no longer be considered 'civilized' in the modern sense of the word. The regime is fighting for its life, and everything it stands for, on the bones and bleeding corpses of the Russian people. One way to accelerate the Putin's regime's demise is to offer safe haven to any Russian soldier willing to surrender. There are places in the world that are in need of labor with some minimal education and work skills who can do more than baseline agricultural labor. That being the case, put them to work. The United States no longer depends upon cheap migratory labor. Most cash crops are sown, attended, and harvested using sophisticated agricultural machinery. On the other hand, in a trend that economists are already noticing, tending forestlands and removing dead wood fall to lessen the danger and extent of wildfire requires thousands of workers at an annual cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. The same goes with building levees in river basins and other forms of flood control. Sea levels are rising, and we can foresee massive need for an able workforce to do flood control. This work is highly labor-intensive, and right now, the United States is suffering from a severe labor shortage, especially those needed to do pick-and-shovel work There are innumerable other examples that I could cite that would benefit from the labor that could be performed by able-bodied men looking to escape military service from a tyrannical government.
It is an artifact of history that during the Korean War, as recorded by T.R. Fehrenbach in his book This Kind of War, that during the last year of the conflict the biggest issue over which argued was the refusal of tens of thousands of Chinese and North Korean prisoners of war to return to their home countries after the terms of an armistice had been concluded. The American commanders, representing the United Nations which had come together to defend the independence and freedom of South Korea against attack from the north, were fretting because the United States Army, the most visible in numerous of the UN combatants, was suffering thousands of casualties in combat while the negotiators at Panmunjom were arguing over whether the prisoners of war taken by the UN forces would be forcibly repatriated.
First, as a matter of principle, the United States stood against forced repatriation of prisoners of war. They had seen what forced repatriation had been done after World War II when Soviet prisoners of war had been forcibly repatriated to the Soviet Union, only to be arrested and tried for treason, and either executed outright, or sentenced to decades of imprisonment in the Soviet Gulag. Back then, American political and military leaders were still in thrall to the prewar isolationist mindset that greatly preferred that the fragmented and dislocated peoples of Europe uprooted by the war remain in Europe, regardless of the change in circumstances that the war had brought. The MAGAhat wing of the Republican Party, meaning its entire membership, takes this exclusionary principle to its extreme as an article of faith. But back in 1945, when Russia was still a wartime ally, the only place for those former POWs would have been in Germany, which itself was a chaotic wreck. The postwar settlement saw two million ethnic Germans forcibly expelled from their communities within the successor states within the Soviet Empire, back to Germany, where they were resettled. The Russian government was adamantly insisting that its POW nationals we returned. We did not have a dog in that fight; and anyone who suggested that for the personal convenience of POWs who hated communism and did not want to return to Russia, that they be allowed to emigrate to the United States would have been laughed out of the room.
Back to Korea, and the politically sensitive situation in which more than 100,000 United Nations POWs refused to return home. The refusal of the communist representatives to accept a propaganda defeat that more than 50 percent of their own POWs were refusing to return to their respective homelands basically prolonged the war another year. To create a diversion the Communists orchestrated a rebellion within the UN POW compounds on Koje-do island, situated in the Pacific Ocean south of the Korean Peninsula, between Korea and Japan. It started off with the capture of American Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd, commander of the American security force supposedly in control of the POW camps on the island. Gen. Dodd was summoned to the camp by the senior commander among the prisoners ensconced there to hear complaints about their treatment. Once inside, behind the wire, Dodd was captured by prisoners in Compound 76 and he was forced to make propaganda statements admitting to mistreatment of prisoners — the same kind of propaganda ploys that communist governments had been employing since the end of the Russian Civil War 1921. The upshot was that Frank Dodd was released, unharmed, on May 10, 1952, only to face the wrath of the Truman administration in the form of Secretary of the Army Frank Pace, Jr's outrage. Dodd was returned home in disgrace, reduced in rank to colonel, and summarily retired. But, it was obvious to those observers on the scene that if the communist leadership had its way, they would slaughter every POW on the island who refused to toe the communist line, and the American government could not afford to allow that to happen.
Enter Brigadier General Haydon L. Boatner, United States Army, the product of a family of professional soldiers. He graduated first in his class at West Point in 1924; and in 1928 he went to the Far East, beginning a long professional career at what was then known as the China Station. Boatner became what was then known as one of the old China Hands, learning Chinese, and ending up on the staff of Gen. Joseph Stillwell. Boatner was the first in his class to make Brigadier General, where after 38 months of service there, where, among other things, he drew up the original surrender terms for the Japanese Army in China in 1945. Now in Korea, he became the Assistant Division commander for the 2nd Infantry Division. So, rather than be tasked to be the officer in charge of the POW camps on Koje-do island, and likely suffering the same sort of humiliating disgrace that his predecessor, Frank Dodd did, Haydon Boatner arrived on post forewarned about what was in store for him; but unlike Dodd, he had the benefit of a quarter of a century of hard-won experience in dealing with the psychology of his erstwhile opponents. Boatner knew from the get go that this was about psychological warfare, pure and simple. He informed the communist OIC that he was sending forces into put down the rebellion, and he did so with minimal loss of life. The few lives that were lost were ended by the communist leadership killing fellow prisoners who resisted their communist ideology.
So, what does that tell us about how we should approach a defeated and unraveling Russian army whose leadership is bent on destroying Russian lives rather than admit their own failings.
First and foremost, we need to remember our own past, where American forces rescued tens of thousands of Vietnamese 'boat people' who took to the sea, men, women, and children alike, to escape the onslaught of the North Vietnamese communist regime. Suffice it to say that many of the principals of that boatlift, and their descendants, are now my neighbors here in California. I am not advocating the same standard of aid for Russian conscripts, to be hauled away to refugee camps around the world, because by and large these men are young and able-bodied, and can be usefully employed to provide necessary labor to do the hard and dirty work of cleaning up the environment, roadbuilding, firefighting, or doing whatever else comes their way that not enough able-bodied people are available to do that kind of work. The Boat People have earned their way into American society, largely because they came as families looking for a new place to call home. We allowed them into our country and recompense for the friendship and service that they gave our Armed Forces when they were there in Vietnam to help their country resist communist takeover. We are doing the same thing for Afghan families who helped our Armed Forces save their country, and who are now left out in the cold.
The same is not due Russian soldiers who, for humanitarian and political reasons we do not want to see slaughtered by the butchers within the Russian government; but giving them some sort of semi-permanent residence is not in the cards. If any of those men subsequently are able to provide valuable services to subvert and defeat the Putin regime, that is a conversation for another day, and I am sympathetic to an upward adjustment in their immigration status. But for now, detailing several tens of thousands of them off to the Amazon rainforest to do environmental work, or firefighting in the Western states, or whatever else comes along that requires strong hands, backs, and legs, I'm game. Whatever works; we do — but, we do it now, now. The opportunity is upon us, and we seize the day.
The possibility of a Russian nuclear attack is growing as conventional warfare is not succeeding for him. What disturbs is Putin himself. He appears to be inflexible and has invested all of his credibility in this war. As I read him he would rather use nukes than lose face.
One would assume the Ukrainians are flooding Russian positions with messages and leaflets to surrender and they will be treated humanely. If you can't retreat safely to the rear the option is to retreat forward where you will have a better chance at life.
Early in the war the Ukrainians were brilliant in using psyops to their advantages. When Russians surrendered they were given a cell phone to call home. Might try that trick here. "Surrender and get a hot meal, cot and cell phone to call home.?
And if the Republicans take control of Congress after the midterms, they most likely will follow through with their threats to withdraw support for the Ukrainians. If trump was in office, his actions suggest he would have helped Russia take Ukraine.
The down side of blocking troop details is the fact the troops you’re blocking have guns of their own. Obviously, some retreats are in complete panic with weapons abandoned in the rush to the rear. But more often soldiers fall back with their weapons. And given the chaos on the field, not much keeps them from shooting the people trying to block their retreat, especially if they’re of another ethnic group, like Chechens. Seems like a formula for civil war inside the Russian army.
Tobias Wolff wrote a memoir about his time in Vietnam back in the day. It’s entitled “ In Pharaoh’s Army”. That’s what these doomed and dreadful Russian guys are now. Pharaoh’s Army.
The Russian are pretty much barbarians. Modern morés mean nothing. They should be treated accordingly 🤬
The Russians are giving up ground far faster than the reports about this are coming in. I and many others pray that Putin will not do as he's threatened, to use tactical nuclear weapons because that's the end of the road for him, any people on the ground (including his own troops) and the rest of the world.
I do wonder if egomaniacs have any conscience at all? Is it a all or nothing ending for them, or can they accept defeat in any form?
It must be a humiliating thing for Putin (a former KGB man) to realize that he's the equal of Hitler in the battlefield-a sure loser who has no idea what he's talking about or doing and throwing troops into a grinder just because he thinks it will improve the situation.
And winter is coming. Already there are reports that the roads are becoming impassable due to mud created during rain storms. Ice will be there soon, too.
Maybe there will be a Christmas truce where Putin's generals will convince him to just accept reality and that he isn't the brilliant military strategist he believed he was. Or that the end will come soon enough by another way.
...if Ukraine warns of a potential head fake, and putin himself warns civilians should not suffer so they should leave, does that tell us that larger weapons might be employed at that juncture when only Ukrainian military is present? I'm not qualified in any way to do more than guess tho.