As if their little three-day excursion turning into a 70-day slog with heavy losses didn’t.
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There’s already been unpredictable consequences - you’re losing. To a much smaller country.
Totally unexpected.
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I now choose to believe that the ship sunk because a sailor opened the container for the piece of the True Cross and the wrath of God destroyed the ship.
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True but it depends some on where you look, because some people have been working very hard to spin everything as according to plan. Russian media especially, but for instance the “maybe this is all proceeding as Putin has foreseen” editorial in the NYT comes to mind.
Apparently there’s enough desire to believe being a shameless thug is the same as a strategic genius. A feint on Kyiv can be crammed into that narrative if you ignore all costs and benefits. Losing your flagship, though, is really hard to paint as some kind of victory.
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There’s a pretty good thread over on Reddit trying to compile all of the mistakes and blunders of the past 70 days. It should dissuade anyone from thinking that this has been an example of Putin’s 5-dimensional chess prowess.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/u3pgoo/russias_dumbest_moments_during_the_ukrainian_war/
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I would not suggest one should overestimate the Russians, but the level of ridicule mixed with glee I found in the Reddit thread makes it difficult to distinguish serious shit going down for the Russians from posts just taking the piss because they feel clever.
That said, it’s a fun read it if I don’t take it seriously.
ETA: lost an “if”, found it and put it in its place.
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Must not have had a window handy…
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Flagship? What flagship? Russia never had a flagship in the Black Sea.
(context for people who haven’t read up on Stalinist history)
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That would align with earlier stories of Ukrainians being offered money and simply pocketing it. (I’m sure that they declared that income. 
)
Normally that kind of operation would have double-checking and examples made of cheats. (Real or fake kompromat released on them, etc.) But if it was a corrupt half-assed affair from the start…
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The cruiser was a major air-defense that could interdict a large area from Ukrainian aircraft. They’ll be missing that soon enough.
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Mentions of Fox News in Russian-language media grew 217 percent during the first quarter of this year compared with the final quarter of last year, as news coverage of Ukraine increased, according to an analysis by Zignal Labs, a media tracking company that reviewed social media posts, broadcast media and online websites. CNN, which has about three times the global viewership of Fox News, according to the tracking company Similarweb, was mentioned more often but grew less, by 71 percent.
When reached for comment, a Fox News spokeswoman pointed to segments in which Mr. Carlson was critical of Russia and its president, Vladimir V. Putin.
The article also had several videos of Tucker clips that were used in ruskie propaganda
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I, OTH, wonder at which point Russia will grant Johnson and his cronies asylum?
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Ukraine braces for revenge attacks from Russia after Moskva sinking
Kremlin yet to release details of possible casualties on Black Sea flagship, as Ukrainians hail its demise
Worth reading that one - some key points extracted below:
According to Lithuania’s foreign minister, Arvydas Anušauskas, the cruiser sent out a distress call. By 1.14am local time (2314 BST) on Thursday the Moskva was lying on its side and about half an hour later “all the electricity went out,” he posted on Facebook.
From 2am a Turkish ship managed to rescue 54 sailors. An hour later Turkey and Romania confirmed the ship had “completely sunk”. Ukrainian officials said stormy weather stopped Russian boats from carrying out an evacuation, adding: “Nature was on our side.”
The Kremlin has not given any details on possible casualties among the 510 crew of the Moskva, and has not released any photographs of the stricken ship.
An article published by the Tass state-run news agency initially claimed the “entire crew” had been evacuated. It was later edited to remove the word “entire”. One unconfirmed Ukrainian report said 14 sailors including the chief of Moskva’s medical service were taken to the Crimean port of Sevastopol. The fate of the other 494 was unknown, it said. If they are confirmed to have drowned it would amount to the largest number of deaths of Russian servicemen in a single incident since the second world war.
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