The Peanut Gallery: Russian Riots Continue Into Second Day - A Thousand Take to the Street.
January 19, 2024
Welcome to the Peanut Gallery! Your daily dose of unfounded speculation.
Please remember that I know nothing.
I swear to God, fetal alcohol syndrome is a prerequisite for working in the Kremlin.
Russian forces recently made confirmed advances southeast of Kupyansk, and Ukrainian forces recently regained positions southeast of Kupyansk amid continued positional engagements along the entire line of contact.
So begins another Russian clusterfuck.
To be honest, I didn’t think they were stupid enough to try it. I thought this might be a feint, a chance to build up their forces, lick their wounds, and take a breather—like an actual, honest to God breather. The Russian MoD haven’t had a chance to internalize the results of their Avdiivka fuck up, nor to disseminate the lessons amongst trainees. What is the new game plan? What will make Kup’yans’k different from Vuhledar, Bakhmut, and Avdiivka?
To be clear, the information environment is still sketchy, but ISW appears confident there’s been a significant uptick in Russian activity in the region. Sure, maybe this is nothing, but in just a couple days the claim is Russia’s lost over fifty pieces of armor.
If this actually is for real, like no play-play? Then this is it. This is Putin’s final offensive.
Like I know what the media says—I know what US officials say (and trust me we’ll get to that), but I don’t see where Putin goes from here. He’s down to press-ganging migrants off the street, infrastructure is crumbling, and there are riots just north east of the Caspian. Like these are all signs the Kremlin is operating at capacity, yet the demand seems only to grow. Ukraine isn’t even attacking, not seriously. They are purely defensive, yet the Kremlin’s problems are constantly exacerbating.
What happens when Ukraine presses the ‘Go’ button? What other resource can the Kremlin draw on? Putin’s tapped. He’s dropping plates, more and more lately.
Russian forces will be able to determine the location, tempo, and operational requirements of fighting in Ukraine if Ukraine commits itself to defensive operations throughout 2024 as some US officials are reportedly pressing Kyiv to do.
Alrighty, we should get some shit out of the way first. Storyteller has many tendencies, one of which is the tendency to favor aggression. I don’t know how strong Ukraine is because ISW doesn’t assess their position. They focus their intention entirely on the Russian side of the lines, so I am not privy to Ukraine’s weaknesses. I look at 30 Abrams tanks and I think to myself, “Where the fuck have those been all war?” Then I look at headlines and I see everyone bitching about Ukraine’s weakness, with nothing specific to back it up.
Like let’s look at the DoD’s statement critically: they do not think Ukraine should go on the offensive until 2025. We are in mother fucking January and they are making that statement. Am I supposed to take that seriously?
Man, half of today’s text was the ISW outlining the phenomenal stupidity of the DoD’s suggestion. I earnestly feel the West is attempting to spin a ‘Ukraine Weak’ narrative in preparation of a crossing of the Dnipro, though I am aware it means discounting popular consensus and the public statements of most officials. It’s a hypothesis that demands a lot of assumptions, so I encourage everyone to lend it very little credence.
US officials reportedly assess that Ukraine will have to fight a long war and continue efforts to secure as much security assistance as possible for Ukraine before 2025 while expecting that positional fighting may continue in Ukraine until 2026.
Yeah, so apparently the plan is to spend all of 2024 arming Ukraine for a maybe offensive in 2025, at least that’s the tone I’m getting from these weird-ass announcements. In fact the entire world seems to be playing possum, almost as if to lure Putin into a false sense of security. This whole thing might just be to trick him into kicking things off in Kup’yans’k. Yes, I’m aware it’s conspiratorial, but I just don’t buy that Ukraine is as weak as they claim.
Russia is trying to mend its relationship with South Korea to mitigate the impacts of its growing reliance on North Korea.
Can’t unburn that bridge, bub. Sorry.
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree allocating funds for the search, registration, and legal protection of Russian property abroad, which includes property in former territories of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union.
The text of this law was apparently very vague as to what constituted “property”, which could just as well be a claim on anything the Soviet Union ever touched. Frankly, it’s a delusional decree, one not in respecting the sovereignty of their neighbors. It essentially announces they will loot anything they can get their hands on. It’s legalize pillaging.
Protests in support of an imprisoned prominent Bashkort activist continued in the Republic of Bashkortostan, but Kremlin mouthpieces denied reports that the protests are significant in scale.
The Kremlin is tight lipped about these protests, meaning they likely want us to look anywhere but here. I say we look closer. I say fuck them. I say I’m going to make these protests the headline every day they’re up and about. These people deserve to be seen.
Rumor is there were between several hundred to fifteen-hundred protestors in the crowd today. Last time the Kremlin laid in with tear gas and batons, only dispersing the crowd because a local official agreed to release the people they’d arrested. Today they likely started with tear gas and batons and just escalated.
Yet somehow the crowd stayed the entire day. Let’s hope they can do a third.
Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko confirmed that Russian authorities have deported over 2,100 Ukrainians, including 500 children, to Russia for medical reasons in 2023.
Please give Ukraine what they need to bring this to an end.
'Q’ For the Community:
What’s your stance on the DoD’s suggestion that Ukraine should switch to an “active defense” throughout all of 2024?
Join the conversation over on /r/TheNuttySpectacle.