"You’ve decided to prove something to yourself. You are trying to detect an enemy in every shadow because if there is no enemy, there is no fight, and if there is no fight, there is no victory."
Says a deep voice in a recruiting ad, quoted in "Russian army ramps up recruitment as steep casualties thin the ranks/With Moscow wary of ordering a general mobilization, the military is offering perks and applying pressure" (WaPo).
Maybe "break yourself" has more allure in Russian.
And that last sentence is a conundrum of paranoia: "You are trying to detect an enemy in every shadow because if there is no enemy, there is no fight, and if there is no fight, there is no victory."
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49 comments:
serious question?:
WHY would i believe Any Single Word in the WaPo?
WHY do you think that's what the ad says? do YOU speak russian?
WHY would you think this ad's audio was made by russia?
WHY would you think that ad was made by russia?
WHY would YOU believe Any Single Word in the WaPo?
The final sentence should be the caption to a Spy vs Spy cartoon.
Still wondering why the Russians haven't put thier LGBTQ troops into combat yet. Don't they have Pride over there?
It sounds like feminism.
"We do more before 9:00 am than most people do all day." -- US Army recruiting ad
This is the way of militaries the world over: recruit based on visions of James Bond, Rambo, and the Terminator. Reality: Drive trucks, dig dirt with heavy equipment to build barricades, build bridges to move tanks across rivers, and conduct all sorts of logistics transport operations. Sit on guard duty and hope a sniper doesn't kill you before you know it. Sit inside a hot tank and pray that it doesn't get hit by a missile out of the blue.
This is why many countries used a mandatory draft for the public defense. I'm not sure how well this campaign will work in the global gaming and social media era. "Don't interrupt me, I'm playing Minecraft and streaming the video on Twitch to earn Bitcoin."
There is an engineering concept called “proof test”. This is when you test a system to the full limits it is expected to be capable of operating. Sometimes things don’t actually work as designed and break. Sometimes the test is to find that breaking point to prove it is beyond the intended operating limits. Perhaps this is what was meant in the original language to “break yourself”. The proper translation may be to “prove” yourself. The real goal would be to not break yet prove you can go beyond normal and survive.
Either way, the notion that you must have victory to the point of creating an enemy is alarming propaganda.
@gilbar, think of the Post and the Times as the abusive boyfriends that she knows lie to her, but they’re the bad habit she just can’t break. This time they’ll be honest with her. This time she can trust them.
In her defense, the text of the recruitment ad, if correctly translated, does sound a little like the 1980s slogan “The Marines are looking for a few good men.” One difference, from my observations over the years, is that our Marines get put into extremely dangerous situations, but they believe that their hard and demanding training will help them to survive. Not clear to me that the Russians follow the same model. The Russians seem to be very accepting of high casualty rates.
Yeah...that last line is a doozy. I don't think even young, drunk Russian males would fall for that one.
Looking for enemies hiding in dark corners when you're not even sure if you have an enemy, but need to look for one in order to give you a reason to exist is not exactly great recruitment. Especially when you see your friend, neighbor, cousin come back from that dark corner in a zinc coffin.
They should've hired Michael Dorn to do the voice over.
Give the Ruskie recruiters a break! They've got a tough sell. How would you base a recruiting campaign on incompetent leadership, insane tactics, high casualty rates and marginally effective equipment?
I wonder about the translation. "Screw the limits." Has Russian culture really become that Americanized or is that a translator's whimsy?
More meat for the grinder, boys!
Ukraines is much better.
"Come die for a cokehead who's buying mansions in Israel for his parents with money from US taxpayers!"
Heavy losses. Yeah, sure.
I notice that we're getting less and less hysteria about Putin. Guess he's no longer going to CONQUER THE WORLD !!!111
Once they starting passing out the 40,000 million dollars and everyone got their piece of the graft, the excitement died down.
And that last sentence is a conundrum of paranoia: "You are trying to detect an enemy in every shadow because if there is no enemy, there is no fight, and if there is no fight, there is no victory."
How very Russian
Critter said...
Ukraines is much better.
"Come die for a cokehead who's buying mansions in Israel for his parents with money from US taxpayers!"
rcocean said...
Heavy losses. Yeah, sure.
I notice that we're getting less and less hysteria about Putin. Guess he's no longer going to CONQUER THE WORLD !!!111
You creatures are so fucking pathetic
Putin won't be able to conquer anything else, if he can't conquer Ukraine. And since it currently looks like he won't be able to conquer Ukraine, that defangs him.
And Ukraine's recruiting slogan " Avoid a second Holodomor, fight Russian slavery"
Which IS much better
A reminder for the terminally stupid:
1: Biden "green lit" a "small incursion" by Putin
2: When Russia attacked, Biden didn't want Ukraine to fight back successfully. He wanted Zelensky to bug out, and the people left behind to fall apart and lose.
Biden helped cause the invasion. But he bears no credit for the successful resistance.
And if you're a moral / decent human being, you want Putin to lose, and Ukraine to win.
Because any Putin victory, of any sort, makes more such invasions, more death, more destruction, more likely.
So you butt boys of Putin and Biden really should FOAD
“Be all you can be” was apparently already trademarked.
could be after a century or more paranoia is now genetic evolutionary
And Ukraine's recruiting slogan " Avoid a second Holodomor, fight Russian slavery"
============
so USA administration and Media = trying to redeem soul for the first Holodomor betrayal?
"Look! Nazis!" apparently doesn't garner as much support among young Russians as it does among some old Althousians. (FWIW I've always given Russians in general credit for being less prone to conquest-mania than some Europeans I can think of, and the longer this goes on the more I think of Kije' and Oblomov.)
An Army of None.
Maybe "break yourself" has more allure in Russian.
There is a part of every man that wants to join something greater than themselves and to fight for something.
Some of us want to test ourselves and being the hero and earning the adoration of society and particularly breeding female is a core biological drive.
Women seek comfort and security instead.
Greg The Class Traitor said...
And if you're a moral / decent human being, you want Putin to lose, and Ukraine to win.
This is not necessarily true. I want the corrupt Ukrainians to lose too.
You need to realize that the Ukrainians have been killing Russian ethnics in Donbas and Luhansk since the 2014 coup that removed the democratically elected leader of Ukraine.
I think the best outcome is for the war to end and for those eastern Provinces to break away from Ukraine and join Russia.
The Ukrainians have literally sent Nazi's into those provinces killing supporters of the president the US removed through a coup for the last 7 years.
If the Ukes are so thoroughly Nazified, maybe we should be on Putin's side . . .
The Russians may be able to generate enough grinding-power to eke out or garner a win in the Russian-majority areas, settling on the Small Solution in light of the abysmal failure of the Big Solution.
It's doubtful that the pro-Uke coalition will maintain enough cohesion for long enough to support any kind of Ukrainian Big Solution--complete expulsion of Russian forces. Which leaves the Russians with the costs of cleaning up and rebuilding eventually.
A poisoned chalice?
I must break you.
The news always lists guesstimates on the Russian soldiers killed in action. There are probably a lot more Russian soldiers wounded in action that prevents them from returning to action either permanently or taking a long time to heal from their wounds. Also, the article alludes to desertions, which sounds like it is a major problem for the Russian Army. Hence, all of these 3 items I listed (KIA, wounded, & desertions) is why they are recruiting heavily for replacements.
Heavy losses. Yeah, sure.
The weight of sanctions, of gun running, weighs heavily on Biden, Kiev, and aligned nations and peoples... persons. Here's to Summer after Spring.
Narr said...
If the Ukes are so thoroughly Nazified, maybe we should be on Putin's side . . .
War is never a morality play.
Often times both sides are bad.
The people in Eastern Ukraine have been fucked hard in this by both sides including the Ukrainian Government.
Justice would be Russian and Ukrainian and US governments being pulled down. All 3 of these Governments have been doing evil things to them for selfish ends. Independence for East Ukraine and reparations from politicians who have profited there will never happen but it should.
I never thought the Seinfeld episode where they play a game of Risk would be a reasonable facsimile for geopolitics, but here we are. Here's hoping a strong Ukraine can keep Odessa.
Amazing how characters that approve of $40 Billion to continue an unneccessary war & get thousands of people killed over a 8 year old border dispute, bleat about "decency".
Zelensky should negotiating an end to this war and a new border with Russia. Instead, he's getting bribed to continue the war, in order to "hurt putin". Fine for Mr. Zelensky, he'll just go to Israel, France, or Miami when the war's over and live in his mansions. But the dead and maimed Ukrainians aren't going to be so lucky.
Sorry people hate Putin, but the Russians seem to like him. And as an American, its none of my beeswax who the Russians have as their leader. We need to stop the killing.
Whether its Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or Ukraine, we never have a shortage of keyboard commandos and tough guy DC pols like Romney and Miss Lindsey. They never met a cluster bomb they didn't like, especially when its being dropped on some kid in another country.
Russia is suffering a bone spur epidemic.
Achilles said...
Me: And if you're a moral / decent human being, you want Putin to lose, and Ukraine to win.
This is not necessarily true. I want the corrupt Ukrainians to lose too.
Which "corrupt Ukrainians" would that be?
The entire country that would be enslaved under Putin?
Or a few oligarchs? In which case, you worry about them after Putin's lost
You need to realize that the Ukrainians have been killing Russian ethnics in Donbas and Luhansk since the 2014 coup that removed the democratically elected leader of Ukraine.
I think the best outcome is for the war to end and for those eastern Provinces to break away from Ukraine and join Russia.
You need to realize that we all know that story is bullshit
Let's review the actual history, shall we:
1: 2004: On 8 December 2004, the parliament passed Law No. 2222-IV amending the constitution.[9] The law was approved with a 90 percent majority (402 voted in favour and 21 against, with 19 abstentions; 300 in favour required for passage) simultaneously with other legislative measures aimed at resolving the 2004 presidential election crisis. It was signed almost immediately in the parliamentary chamber by the outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and promulgated on the same day. These amendments weakened the power of the President of Ukraine,
2: 2010:
Feb; Yanukovych wins election to the Ukrainian Presidency
On 1 October 2010, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine overturned the 2004 amendments, considering them unconstitutional.
Now, how is it that Constitutional Amendments become "unconstitutional"?
The Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner received several reports alleging that the resignation of four judges in the run-up to the decision occurred as a result of extensive pressure by the executive. On 18 November 2010, the Venice Commission published its report titled The Opinion of the Constitutional Situation in Ukraine in Review of the Judgement of Ukraine's Constitutional Court, in which it stated: "It also considers highly unusual that far-reaching constitutional amendments, including the change of the political system of the country – from a parliamentary system to a parliamentary presidential one – are declared unconstitutional by a decision of the Constitutional Court after a period of 6 years. ... As Constitutional Courts are bound by the Constitution and do not stand above it, such decisions raise important questions of democratic legitimacy and the rule of law
3: 2013: The protests were sparked by the Yanukovych's sudden decision not to sign the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, instead choosing closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. Ukraine's parliament had overwhelmingly approved of finalizing the Agreement with the EU, while Russia had put pressure on Ukraine to reject it
The uprising climaxed on 18–20 February, when fierce fighting in Kyiv between Maidan activists and police resulted in the deaths of almost 100 protesters and 13 police
tl;dr: Yanukovych tried to use the security services to crush the protests by people who were upset that he'd deep fixed an agreement that was vastly favored by the people of Ukraine.
After his attempt at bloody suppression failed, he fled
This, to Achilles, is the "rightful President of Ukraine"
To continue:
Having had his Trojan horse President rightly rejected, Putin invaded Ukraine, in violation of the Budapest Accords, and attempted to steal a chunk of the country.
Achilles thinks it's just so mean that the Ukrainian government fought back against this invasion and partition.
Because, gee, how coudl anyone possibly object to Putin invading their country, right?
And then faking up "elections" to ratify his actions? Because we all know Putin would never engage in vote fraud!
end sarcasm:
Here's the only acceptable outcome:
Russia gets its ass kicked, and is forced completely out of Ukraine, as defined by the Budapest Accords borders. Crimea, Donbas and Luhansk all completely return to Ukrainian control.
Anyone insane enough to want to be under Putin (probably not many of those left, given the way the Russians have been getting all the "Donbas and Luhansk partisan fighters" slaughtered) can move back to Russia.
Anything else is a reward for Putins assault, and guarantees more assaults in the future.
Zelensky should negotiating an end to this war and a new border with Russia.
He had two years to end the Slavic Spring, restore services to Ukrainians, abort the Kiev-aligned military/paramilitary axis assaults of Ukrainians, hold a vote to restore the government, acknowledge Russia's legal title to property, and either close or audit the illicit operation of Wuhan-style labs. A new border or effective border change was a only a proposal to mitigate what seemed to be interminable progress.
"War is never a morality play." Thanks for the newsflash. So why bring up Nazi naztiness?
(I was responding to others, not Achilles specifically, but anyone can play.)
I'd be fine if all parties respected the recognized international borders of Ukraine and left the settlement of ethnic issues to the government of Ukraine. Anything else is interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. (Isn't it pretty to think so?)
If we don't give a crap what Putin does to his people, why give a crap about Putin's objections to the Ukrainian treatment of Ukrainians? Or anyone else for that matter?
My interest is in what's good for the USA and the West in general; if I thought a Putin-Russian win was in our interest I'd support it regardless of morality.
And blog-moralizing.
Ukraine is rounding up the boys on the beach in Odessa. Not sure what slogan they use.
Zelensky is a moron. Ukrainians elected him. Now they are dying. But corruption-ridden Ukraine can join the EU. Super.
Our soldiers are celebrating everything gay all the time, pronouns, and marching in fashionable pumps, and their side is kicking ass and taking names.
Thank God for technology and superior equipment, because in an a protracted ground war we'd be as fucked as a pretty boy at a monkey-pox orgy...
'Russia is suffering a bone spur epidemic.'
Biden got the same number as Trump, but you knew that already...
rcocean said...
Zelensky should negotiating an end to this war and a new border with Russia
Why yes, of course!
After all, we all know how well Russia keeps it's agreements. Why, it's been almost 30 years since the last time Russia "negotiated a border" with Ukraine. And heck, that one lasted almost 20 years, before Russia invaded in 2014.
What is the amazing stupidity that causes you to say things like "he should negotiate with this guy who is well known not to negotiate in good faith"?
"It sounds like feminism."
Are you referring to the idea of screwing the limits and breaking yourself, or the idea that you have to look in the dark shadows for enemies to scalp?
"There is an engineering concept called “proof test”. This is when you test a system to the full limits it is expected to be capable of operating. "
In Rock Mechanics Lab in engineering school we had to glue strain gauges to granite and sandstone core samples and put them in a universal tester where they would be loaded slowly until they were crushed into pieces. I assume this is a good analogy for the average Russian recruit in the Ukraine conquering business.
Greg The Class Traitor said...
You need to realize that we all know that story is bullshit
You are just a dunce. You can read your propaganda 10 times it wont matter.
The west did not like a democratically elected president in Ukraine. He was elected primarily by the eastern block states where his support was.
There was a coup and he was replaced.
The government that replaced him sent the Azov battalion into the eastern provinces where they have been acting like a Nazi Battalion since 2014 killing thousands of Ukrainians who had the temerity to vote for Yanukovich.
Just because Hunter Biden has made millions of dollars in Ukraine does not mean we should support their corrupt government.
You really do prattle on about this stuff like a fool.
Greg The Class Traitor said...
What is the amazing stupidity that causes you to say things like "he should negotiate with this guy who is well known not to negotiate in good faith"?
Now do Joe Biden and the Neocons.
Narr said...
My interest is in what's good for the USA and the West in general; if I thought a Putin-Russian win was in our interest I'd support it regardless of morality.
And blog-moralizing.
Well my view is that an end to this war and the people of the Donbas and Luhansk regions voting which country they want to join is in the interests of the American people.
Apparently you are interested in never ending war with a nuclear power so we can force people in eastern Ukraine to have to live with the Azov Battalion murdering them.
I will be happy when Putin dies, but your position here is clearly not America first or even really rational in any way.
The only people happy with never ending war with Russia are you, Greg the chickenhawk warmonger, and Joe Biden.
Achilles said...
Greg The Class Traitor said...
What is the amazing stupidity that causes you to say things like "he should negotiate with this guy who is well known not to negotiate in good faith"?
Now do Joe Biden and the Neocons.
Ok: anyone who negotiates with modern Democrats is a fool, because they do not negotiate in good faith. See the President Obama and spending limit negations with House Republicans a decade ago.
See, Achilles, the benefit of not being on Putin's side is that I can condemn both him and the Democrats, since both often act in the same way.
Achilles said...
Greg The Class Traitor said...
Me: You need to realize that we all know that story is bullshit
You are just a dunce. You can read your propaganda 10 times it wont matter.
My "propaganda" being an honest retelling of what happened.
The west did not like a democratically elected president in Ukraine. He was elected primarily by the eastern block states where his support was.
There was a coup and he was replaced.
So, the situation is that intellectually and emotionally you're 3 years old?
1: The West didn't give a shit about him getting elected in 2010
2: One of his first acts after getting elected was to conspire with corrupt members of the "Constitutional Court" to throw out parts of the Constitution as "unconstitutional". So as to increase his power.
This would be well described as a "coup"
3: The Ukrainian Parliament overwhelmingly passed an agreement with the EU. Yanukovych unilaterally rejected it, and attempted to force Ukraine under Russia
4: When people protested his efforts to enslave them to Putin, he sent out the security service es to murder them into submission
5: They refused to submit, so he took his illegitimate ass to Moscow.
In short, Yanukovych was a lot like Trudeau, but nastier, and happily less successful
He didn't flee because a "coup" was held, he fled because he was going to be rightfully prosecuted for the murders her ordered.
The government that replaced him sent the Azov battalion into the eastern provinces where they have been acting like a Nazi Battalion since 2014 killing thousands of Ukrainians who had the temerity to vote for Yanukovich.
No, they were not being attacked for voting for Yanukovich. They were being attacked for being enemy agents trying to carve up Ukraine and give part of to Russia.
Which is to say, they were military enemies, and we did far worse to German and Japanese civilians in WWII than Ukraine did to them
And it's really funny you going on with they "they're Nazis" whining, when an equal charge can be laid against Putin Wagner group:
https://chvk-wagner.com/neo-nazi-wagner-mercenary/
Bottom line: Anyone who wants to put you under Communist rule, or Putin's rule, is an enemy for which you can do anything you need to to them
So you can continue to have a wankfest about the Azov battalion, I don't give a shit. Nazis are no worse than Commies, and Putin is still at soul a Commie
Just because Hunter Biden has made millions of dollars in Ukraine does not mean we should support their corrupt government.
You really do prattle on about this stuff like a fool.
Achilles said...
Well my view is that an end to this war and the people of the Donbas and Luhansk regions voting which country they want to join is in the interests of the American people.
Which "people of the Donbas and Luhansk regions" get the vote? The ones who weren't driven out by the Russian takeover?
Who certifies the election results, and does the counting? Shall we send the vote counters from Detroit, Philly, and Atlanta? After all, they aren't any more corrupt that Putin's vote counters.
Here's a better idea: The Budapest Accords get completely enforced, and Ukraine gets its entire country back.
Anyone who wants to live under Russian rule can sell their property and move to Russia.
That way we have an honest vote, no vote counters and poll watchers needed
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