Putin's Invasion of Ukraine

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Yep, and Putin plans to add 400k new recruits in his latest mobilization, which even Russian milbloggers say is a bad idea. There's just too many drones along the frontline for infantry alone to be effective. There are so many drones that Ukrainian units compete with each other over Russian targets for the bounty money, with two or sometimes three drones closing in on a single invader simultaneously. If Russia sends out its troops like they've been doing, they'll just add to the casualties. So I expect they'll hit 2 million total casualties by late spring-summer.

And speaking of gasoline, Russia's gasoline imports from India and China and a few other countries are not enough to meet demand, so they're forced to import gasoline from South Korea and Turkey now. Russia keeps threatening to nuke the West, but they're a lot more dependent on the West than vice versa. It seems like the only things they build in Russia are missiles and idiots to use them.

For decades, it has been the West buying russian energy and inadvertently funding the military aggression of Russia on its neighbors. Well now, Russia is the one buying energy from the West and I think that some of that money should be used to bolster Russia's threatened neighbors against military aggression. It's only fair that if fuel may be used to destabilize whole regions, it should sometimes be used to stabilize them.

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Good news for beleaguered Russian troops gloriously fighting for the Fatherland. Putin has sent aid in the form of the bones of a saint to improve morale. All those other plans didn't work, but resorting to magic will surely help a lot.

I've seen footage of these people drinking puddle-water, succumbing to disease (how it happened is a big mystery), and walking around with grievous, possibly fatal, wounds. They plan to show off some old bones to turn this whole situation around. These guys have seen plenty of corpses already, one more won't change anything.

[Cassia]

Good news for beleaguered Russian troops gloriously fighting for the Fatherland. Putin has sent aid in the form of the bones of a saint to improve morale. All those other plans didn't work, but resorting to magic will surely help a lot.

I've seen footage of these people drinking puddle-water, sucuming to disease (how it happened is a big mystery), and walking around with grievous, possibly fatal, wounds. They plan to show off some old bones to turn this whole situation around. These guys have seen plenty of corpses already, one more won't change anything.

Geezus, this planet is teeming with knuckle draggers. It's like our rationality is stuck in the bronze age. Let's check in on Russia’s program to lure “anti-woke” Westerners (from a "Daily Koss" article posted June 30.)

The Hare family
When we last checked in on the Hare family, led by a Texas couple who fled America because they claimed their children were exposed to “too many lesbians,” they had discovered that moving to Putin’s Russia wasn’t quite the conservative paradise they’d imagined.
Unable to find stable housing or work, they spent months relying on churches and the generosity of strangers—the same sort of assistance they’d likely have dismissed as “handouts” had it been provided by the U.S. government. Then they poured nearly all of their savings into what appears to be a dubious business venture that quickly began unraveling. Rather than accept they’d apparently been scammed, the Hares insisted that either \Putin would personally intervene to recover their money or, failing that, “Jesus is our lawyer.”

This update, focused on family patriarch Leo Hare, is just as entertaining.
“When I spoke to Leo earlier this year, he was living separately from his wife in the city of Ivanovo, and his older children had returned to the United States,” reported the BBC. “Asked whether Russia had lived up to his expectations, Leo describes the last two years as the best and worst of his life.”

Sure, his wife seems to have left him, two of his children fled back to the United States, and his life savings disappeared into what appears to have been a scam. “In Russia you don’t have these human rights values,” he said. Still, Leo said he planned to stay because it’s his “destiny.”

His children, meanwhile, voted with their feet. The Hares fled America to save their children. Their children fled Russia to save themselves.

The Huffman family
The Huffman family fled famously woke Texas because their daughter learned that lesbians exist and they claimed they were facing discrimination for being a white Christian family, believing that Putin’s Russia would be a haven for their values.

Instead, their search for a conservative utopia took a disastrous turn. Hoping to speed up his path to Russian citizenship, Derek Huffman enlisted in the Russian military expecting a safe support role. Despite speaking virtually no Russian and having no military experience, he was handed a rifle, rushed through basic training, and sent toward the Ukrainian front. As his wife publicly pleaded for help and admitted she’d resumed drinking under the stress, the family’s dream had become a nightmare.

Well, it turns out Derek is more valuable to Putin as a propaganda prop than as cannon fodder.
Instead of disappearing into the trenches, he’s being paraded around Russia as proof that Americans are fleeing the “woke West” for Putin’s traditional-values paradise. Never mind that his own family publicly begged for help just months earlier.

The Feenstra family
Arend Feenstra talks about visiting Canada after moving to Russia, in a video posted to his family's YouTube channel in April 2026.
These Canadian farmers fled to Russia to escape what they saw as creeping acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, yet the Feenstras quickly discovered they were woefully unprepared for life there. They arrived without speaking Russian, struggled with basic tasks, found themselves relying on locals for warm clothing and other necessities, and ran into financial trouble after sanctions froze access to their money.

When Anneesa tearfully declared on YouTube that she was “very disappointed” in Russia and wanted to leave, the video quickly disappeared, replaced by an apology. Before long, Arend had learned a valuable lesson about life under authoritarianism, publicly insisting he’d “yet to meet anyone who doesn’t like Putin.”

It turns out Canada isn’t so bad after all, though. In a video posted two months ago, Arend said they had temporarily moved back because he was earning “a lot more money” in North America than he ever could in Russia. He also misses being able to visit friends.

But the trips back are expensive. Going from Russia to Canada and back cost $25,000, he said. Plus, he didn’t have much farm equipment in Russia, so he needed money for that too. What are the odds they keep making these trips back home? Do they, one day, just decide to stay?

As the BBC has reported, Russia’s program to lure “anti-woke” Westerners has been a bit of a flop. According to the nation’s figures, just 99 Americans applied to take part between August 2024 and May 2025. Yet, for the Kremlin, success was never really about attracting large numbers of immigrants. A handful of willing Westerners with YouTube channels and compelling origin stories are far more valuable as propaganda than as actual settlers. They can be trotted out on state television to “prove” that even Americans are fleeing liberal decadence for Putin’s Russia.

The irony is that many of them got exactly what they claimed they wanted. The Russian government wasn’t interested in helping them find housing, jobs, or financial stability. If they succeeded, great. If they failed, that was their problem. It turns out the conservative ideal of radical self-reliance loses some of its appeal when you’re the one relying on church charity, strangers’ generosity, and crowdfunding to survive.

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They arrived without speaking Russian

Oof. That alone can get you in significant trouble in Moscow oblast, even if it's one of the languages spoken by ethnic minorities in Russia.

Leo said he planned to stay because it’s his “destiny.”

I call sunk cost fallacy on that one.

And I laughed out loud at "woke Texas". Getting so incensced about gay people just existing that you upend your whole life and LARP Animal Farm is such a level of childish and petty and misinformed that it's a trap that only very conservative people would fall for.

I still don't know why these people don't do some basic research about a country they plan on going to. Even a cursory search reveals lots of problems, from lack of rights to discrimination to economic problems. The only way you can look past all that is just to be incredibly incurious and to take Russian state media as gospel.

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Russian general killed in Ukraine

Lt. Gen. Sergei Milchakov, commander of Russia’s 51st Combined Arms Army who oversaw operations in key sectors of Donetsk Oblast, was reportedly killed in a Ukrainian strike on a Russian military command post last month, Russian media reported on Sept. 14.

The reported death has been linked to a Ukrainian strike on Aug. 26 targeting Russian command posts in occupied Donetsk Oblast.

On Aug. 27, the General Staff confirmed the strike. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said at the time that precision strikes had destroyed concealed Russian command posts in Donetsk and information about "heavy losses" among Russian officers was still being clarified.

Reporting on Milchakov's possible death, Russian independent outlet Vazhniye Istorii said that if confirmed, he would be the 23rd Russian general killed during the war against Ukraine.

23 liquidated generals. Wow, time flies.

Russian propagandist Anastasia Kashevarova said the attack appeared to be a precision strike and suggested there may have been a leak about the command post’s location "from within our own ranks."

*Budanov poker face* Maybe. Start eating your own and see if that helps.

Update:



Make that 24

Major General Anton Grunis, commander of Russia’s 4th Motor Rifle Brigade, was killed in Russia under unknown circumstances.

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[Cassia]

I saw a compilation of drone video showing the last few seconds before hitting individual Russian invaders. So many were old guys, 50s, 60s just wandering around in deserted farm fields. Most didn't have helmets. Half of them had a look like "finally this misery will be over". One guy was an African import. Just poor uneducated people being used. Reminded me of trailer park MAGA morons or US Civil war rebel army. Just poor, uneducated being used up.

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Yeah, most of those are Russians sent on "infiltration" missions. Usually, they're in one or two-man squads, told to move from point A to point B, point B to point C, etc. They receive meager supplies and have little understanding of the overall operation or basically anything at all. Their real task is to find gaps in Ukrainian defenses - places that aren't very well protected. Most of the time, they get spotted and it's curtains. And I think on some level, they know it's a one-way trip.

That said, there are Russians who do get good equipment and supplies (by Russian standards) and do have an understanding of the tactical situation and goal of the operation. They work in fairly large (6-12ish) squads and they have access to drone support, often also artillery support.

The first group is just cannon fodder and a disproportionate amount of the casualties. But the second group are the ones to beat. Blow up the second group, and it's a huge setback for the Russian military. Sometimes, the Ukrainians pull it off - hitting a gathering of troops or while they're in transit or sometimes even paying a visit to their hole in the ground. But mostly, the fodder absorbs the hits for them.

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Ukrainian troops pushed the Russians back so far in the Lyman direction that they not only threw them to the other side of the river, the Ukrainians are now also on the other side of the river with them.

Not only is this a major upset and embarrassment for the Russian government, it also means that Russia cannot envelope the fortress belt and so will instead have to charge it head on...



...and you know how that's been going lately.

For months, Lyman was in a pretty dire situation and Denys was saying they should evacuate. Then he retracted it and didn't say why, only saying that he would say why later. Well, now we know.