Russia installs concrete shelters in Kursk region as Ukraine expands offensive
www.politico.eu
Ukraine’s offensive leaves Vladimir Putin’s henchmen reeling.

Reinforced concrete shelters will be installed across the Kursk region, local Russian authorities announced Thursday as Ukraine keeps up its daring attack on Moscow’s territory.

“Today we began to install reinforced concrete shelters in Kursk. On my instructions, the Kursk city administration identified key points for placing concrete modular shelters in crowded places,” Aleksey Smirnov, Kursk’s acting governor, said in a statement.

Ukraine’s surprise cross-border incursion earlier this month caught the Russians on the hop, and Kyiv’s forces have expanded their offensive, capturing more towns and territory with little resistance.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    925·
    4 months ago

    Not too long ago, a Tankie demanded I find a quote of Putin saying the three days thing. As if he had to say it in some sort of press conference for pretty much the entire military leadership of Russia to say similar shit.

    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      811·
      4 months ago

      Putin technically never said it. Just a lot of his allies and media people did.

      Not that it really matters in the end. Russia was quite sure to take the country in less than a week and failed misserably

      • MataVatnik@lemmy.worldEnglish
        392·
        4 months ago

        To be fair, I listened to a lot of military analysts that studied the first few days of the war and Russia was really fucking close to decapitating Kyiv. Ukraine just came in clutch in the crucial moments, Zelensky survived multiple assasination attempts, Ukranian forces prevented the taking of the Hostomel airport, and Ukranian forces were forward deployed (without having being given orders) prevented attacks into the city. Any one of those failed and Russia could have actually taken Kyiv in a couple weeks.

        • rammer@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          23·
          4 months ago

          The best story I read about the defence of Hostomel was that UAF was handing out weapons to civilians in order to defend the airport.

        • KevonLooney@lemm.eeEnglish
          19·
          4 months ago

          They were not that close, they just drove in from Belarus and dropped some paratroopers with no support. That’s a good strategy for losing your best troops.

          They also didn’t use a few days of bombing to soften up the targets. Ukraine was surprised but all of their equipment was intact. That’s like number one in any attack plan.

          They basically underestimated the Ukrainians and thought they would just run away. Those paratroopers were very good but they are only scary to local police, not to a trained military. Without heavy support, they were sitting ducks at the airport.

        • suction@lemmy.worldEnglish
          121·
          4 months ago

          I’d be careful with these analysts, they’re mainly in the self-promoting business so they make up the most dramatic stories to sell themselves to the media.

          • MataVatnik@lemmy.worldEnglish
            41·
            4 months ago

            Michale Kaufman, Dimitri Alperovich, both people who have visited the front and are in contact with Ukraine officials. Center for Urban Warfare Studies, run by someone in the army. And veterans who were there. They are not random youtubers.

        • WhyFlip@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          4 months ago

          Is it safe to say that Zelensky is a total badass at this point? (And throughout the past 3 years)

      • ours@lemmy.worldEnglish
        18·
        4 months ago

        And it’s also a famously common mistake. WWI initially had a bunch of countries happily go to a quick and decisive little war.

        • alcoholicorn@lemmy.mlEnglish
          8·
          4 months ago

          Hell I remember Cheney (or was it rumsfelt) in 2003 talking about how Iraq would be ready for America to pull out within a year.

      • vxx@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        4 months ago

        Nah, there’s leaked emails of FSB feeding Putin the info that they could take Kyiv in 3 days.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        491·
        4 months ago

        And generally they want proof that one specific thing literally happened when that isn’t really the issue.

        “Oh yeah? Quote Xi Jinping saying he doesn’t like being compared to Winnie the Pooh!”

        • Wahots@pawb.socialEnglish
          12·
          4 months ago

          Bro, there are people in a local groupchat that think the great leap forward was a good thing and are self-proclaimed history buffs obsessed with the years 1939-1945, specifically in Russia and China.

          They harken back to it as a better time, not realizing the irony of it while being a queer American. It’s exquisitely painful to watch 💀

          • Transporter Room 3@startrek.websiteEnglish
            9·
            4 months ago

            I always confront those people with “and what do you think would happen to YOU in such a place? History doesn’t think it will be good” but then they double down or make some mental gymnastic leap to why it’s okay.

            Surely the leopards won’t eat THEIR face.

          • alcoholicorn@lemmy.mlEnglish
            12·
            4 months ago

            I mean the west was sterilizing and imprisoning gay people around that time. Communist countries tend to be way more progressive.

            • Wahots@pawb.socialEnglish
              1·
              4 months ago

              Neither was great, as written about by David K. Johnson in The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. That said, having read much about this time period and the history of the early gay rights movement in the US, I would pick the US any day of the week over the nonexistent gay rights movement in Russia and many other communist countries, who still give people like me the cold shoulder.

              Still, forming a gay civil rights group in 1948 was a progressive step in the right direction (the Mattachine Society), and the leaders paved the way for the more well known gay rights movement in the 1970s. They walked so our ancestors could run.

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.mlEnglish
                12·
                4 months ago

                nonexistent gay rights movement in Russia and many other communist countries

                Russia hasn’t been communist for almost 35 years.

                gay civil rights group

                There’s gay rights groups in communist countries too. They tend to take different forms though, due to different cultures and circumstances; you don’t have to form protection groups if you’re not in danger of getting hate-crime’d.

                In China for instance, they’re more focused on gaining familial acceptance than government persecution. In Cuba, they had a referendum to enshrine LGBT+ rights in the constitution.

      • el_bhm@lemm.eeEnglish
        161·
        4 months ago

        And then proof does not come from a Tankie Wiki or a blatant APT run website - “lol fucking fake disinfor libtard”.

      • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
        9·
        4 months ago

        Sometimes of the most trivial things.

        A conservative once asked me for proof that bikes have a lower co2 manufacturing footprint than a car. It’s funny how they tend to share tactics.

          • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
            3·
            4 months ago

            They aren’t, but if you’re unable to produce a peer reviewed study showing this, then you “lose” the argument. And even then, it’s probably the result of Marxist college indoctrination.

            It’s pure sophistry. It’s taking the form of a rational argument while strangling its purpose.

    • ChocoboRocket@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      4 months ago

      Didn’t they March in with victory day parade attire in their backpacks instead of a second round of ammunition, or rations?

      Said or unsaid, even if the war was going exactly as planned, it’s a shit war that’s executed poorly and will destroy the Russian economy and likely end up losing everything they took, even Crimea.

    • Transporter Room 3@startrek.websiteEnglish
      9·
      4 months ago

      If all the joint chiefs and secretaries of [thing] said “we will be marching in Ottowa in 3 days” it really doesn’t matter if the president said it. Because even if he hasn’t said it in a press conference to the world, he most certainly agrees with the people who DO think it’s a slam dunk.

      I’m sure anything you said or linked would have been met with “that’s western propaganda” like they’re not shaking hands with MAGAts screeching fake news at things they don’t like.

    • Ferrous@lemmy.mlEnglish
      427·
      4 months ago

      Show me where the entire Russian military leadership was saying similar shit.

  • el_bhm@lemm.eeEnglish
    55·
    4 months ago

    Btw. Shelters are to guard against their own artillery and bombing.

    • jaschen@lemm.eeEnglish
      12·
      4 months ago

      I haven’t heard any children’s hospitals getting bombed in Russia. Mostly young cadets who haven’t even finished boot camp.

      Ukraine needs bargaining chips. How about you return our useful men and women POW and in exchange we give you useless cadets that have been semi brainwashed.

      Or pull out of Ukraine and we will give you back your regions we took.