sycasey said:
It's also pointless to fact-check someone who clearly hasn't even read many of his own sources. He posted a bunch of broken links above. Also obviously did not read those Time articles before posting the cover images or else he would know they had nothing to do with "global cooling."
My point exactly - trolling is very cheap for him. Fact-checking is expensive.
dajo9 said:
Putin88 tends to be wrong when bad things happen to Russia and he tends to be right when good things happen to Russia. He was wrong throughout 2022 around Kyiv and Ukraine's advances in the east. He was wrong about Bakhmut in that he tried to present it as some important strategic victory when it was just facesaving propaganda at enormous loss of life. He was right about Russia not being overrun in Ukraine's 2023 offensive. If good things happen for Russia in 2024 then Putin88 will be right again.
It very much depends on how you define "right." Most of the time he does so with fake numbers and misinformation.
Let's take Russia's Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. Early in the war, Putin88 claimed thy were going to be a gamechanger. They have been an unmitigated failure for Putin and Russia. The developers of the missile were arrested for its failure (that's what happens when you embarrass an emperor). They claim it was treason and that they were corruptly working with China, which may be true and a pretext - corruption is rampant as is selective prosecution.
Today, Russia launched 10 khinzals at civilian targets in Kharkiv and Kyiv. All were shot down by decades old US missile defense systems. They haven't used the khinzals in quite a while since they were so unsuccessful but today was the biggest launch they've had. And the
biggest failure. For sh(ts and giggles, I searched for "hypersonic" in the Ukraine thread and found these posts. Were they correct? They certainly don't seem so now. And I do recognize that Putin88 will respond to this post by claiming that Ukraine has never shot down a kinzhal, that it's the best missile ever, and that it killed over 100M Ukrainian soldiers today, etc. etc. I won't see the post, but I guess you people will.
Cal88 said:
Russia as well has high-end long distance weapons in large quantities, including hypersonic missiles that they've used to take out an entire foreign troop training campus in western Ukraine in one shot. These missiles can't even be tracked by radar and are unstoppable.
Cal88 said:
The other issue with US doctrine potentially being applied in the Ukraine front is that the US has always operated with its logistical and support infrastructure well out of harm, it wouldn't be the case here. Russia can bomb air bases with hypersonic missiles 1,000km away, or shoot down any tanker or AWACS from 500km-600km out. Those are very large, slow, non-maneuverable targets flying well above ground level and are no match for Russian S-400s and S-500s coming in at Mach 14 (3 miles per second), undetectable by radar due to the plasma layer they fly through. The USAF doesn't have the means to fully suppress Russian AA systems with its fleet of F18s with HARM anti-radar, it can only make a dent into Russian stocks, while taking a lot of losses.
Unfortunately I can't search beyond the last 12 months so I don't have access to his whoppers from 2022 other than by randomly cherry-picking, which I spent 5 minutes doing.
I did find this whopper from August 2022 lol. Another ridiculous pro-Putin prediction that never even remotely came to pass.
Cal88 said:
They've already captured about 2/3 of the territories they intend to keep, they're going to take Nikolayev, Odessa, Zaporizhia and Kharkov sometime next year, about 35%-40% of Ukraine, almost all of its Russian speakers and 60% of Ukraine's GDP, and call it a day.
Since he made that post, Russia has not gained any terrain, let alone doubling as he promised would happen by now.
Here's another one from the same period where he defends the success of the attempt Russia made to capture kyiv (which Russian shills now pretend was merely a feint and didn't really count). This is from mid-August 2022.
Cal88 said:
Russia's initial multi-pronged assault was a fairly bold "decapitation" gamble, they were hoping for a quick regime change or a settlement with Zelensky's govt that would have given them essentially the Donbass and all Minsk Agreement points. It was primarily foiled by the intervention of US, UK and French leaders who bolstered Ukrainian military morale and promised them unlimited military and financial support.
We're most likely going to end up with the same result, regime change in Kiev, but with the Russians doing it the hard way, through the destruction of the Ukrainian armed forces and the conquest of half the country.
...
To date, Ukraine has lost nearly 200,000 soldiers, that's a leaked official estimate of UA killed in action, wounded, captured or deserted. I'd reckon we're around halfway through the total body count of this war, or slightly past, depending on how far this conflict will continue to be fed.
Russian losses are about 12,000-14,000 KIAs, with around maybe twice that amount wounded. In other words, they are easily winning this war of attrition, especially when you consider that their heaviest losses came in the early stages of the war when their forces were spread very thin. Russia went in with less than 200,000 troops against a total Ukrainian force of over half a million.
They are currently rotating their army on the front and proceeding methodically forward behind a wall of artillery, expending around 30,000-40,000 shells per day. The current ratio of firepower used on the frontline is around 10 to 1 for the Russians, and the body count will reflect that kind of imbalance.
Unfortunately we're beyond any compromise that could stop the carnage at this point, with Zelensky's govt talking about taking back Crimea when they should be pragmatically trying to save 3/4 of their country, and stave off the culling of another 100,000-200,000 men in the meatgrinder. By this time next year, the Russians will have taken all Russian-speaking regions and Zelensky will be left with a landlocked leftover western Ukraine, the poorest and least industrialized part of the country.
2 weeks later, with a different made up defense of Russia's initial attack on Kyiv.
Cal88 said:
The analysis of this Marine Lt Gen. is similar to that of many other military analysts. Basically, Russia used up around 40,000 troops in and around Kiev to pin down around 150,000-200,000 Ukrainian troops for the defense of the capital. And yes indeed, they were very much strained from a logistical standpoint, but they've managed to achieve their primary goal.
Here he is a few days later gleefully claiming that Russia had already killed 250k Ukrainians (a 50-100k jump from just a few days prior). Also gets bonus points for pretending Minsk II was an actual agreement with Russia that Ukraine single-handedly violated. Wildly false claims, that he probably will still stand behind.
Cal88 said:
You're married to an idiotic narrative that is ending up destroying Ukraine and killing a quarter million people in the process, when Ukraine could have been left unscathed by simply following the Minsk II Agreements that it signed several years ago.
Here he is days earlier making a wildly false claim about what would happen to Europe last winter. He will make excuses for why this was wrong and use false sources to claim that it actually was true or will be true but look at the certainty of what he said last year. All of his projections posts are like this. I suppose if you make enough projections, eventually some will come true but the vast majority are like the ones I've shared.
Cal88 said:
Europe is not going to get through this winter unscathed, the economic damage is going to create unprecedented social and political turmoil. The sanctions on Russia, which have not hurt that country one bit, are destroying European economies. There`s going to be a lot of blowback and a fundamental shift in domestic and foreign policy in a number of European governments in the next year or two.
Here he is from July 2022 lol.
Cal88 said:
The Russian army is a ground juggernaut that has been hitting its stride for the last couple of months. The Ukrainian army has put up a heroic resistance early on, but they are simply facing a stronger, deeper opponent who is waging this war on its own terms. The Ukrainians are already very thin at the front, with battalions being replenished by poorly equipped men with minimal training and most of all, little in terms of firepower volume on their side, and virtually no air support. This is not a good situation.
...
The Russians are going to grind it out all the way to the Dniepr, taking over nearly all of the eastern bank, and they will push across the southwestern bank cutting off Odessa. This is where they are likely to be by the next mud season, which starts in mid-October.
Another 30,000-50,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers, unless someone puts forward a political solution. That initiative is likely to come from western Europe, due to the enormous economic cost that the region is going to be facing. The problem is that the worst of it is going to hit this winter/spring, by then the Russians will have done their damage.
June 2022 lol. He predicted Russia would have almost half of Ukraine by the end of 2022. Since the date of that post, Russia has actually lost more ground than they've gained.
Cal88 said:
Ukraine has already lost 1/4 of its territory, and the Russians will take roughly 40-45% of present-day Ukraine, all the predominantly Russian-speaking regions, including Odessa and Kharkiv, basically historic Novorossiya along with parts of Malorussia (NE Ukraine). This area represents about 2/3 of Ukraine's GDP and wheat belt, and all of its coastline.
They will achieve this by the end of the year, continuing to grind away Ukrainian forces, which are currently depleting at a rate of about 1,500 men/day. Most of these poor souls are dying in one-sided artillery duels where Russian forces are mostly beyond their reach. The losses this coming month are going to snowball into a loss of morale and increased desertions and surrenders in the Ukrainian ranks. Already the situation has grown so dire that Ukraine is imposing mandatory conscription of all adult women under 60...
...
Once that line of defense is breached and the Russians are behind it, Chapman is Gone, they will have a clear run to Dnipro and the eastern heartland of Ukraine, their daily advances will be more pronounced (though they won't repeat their early tactical errors of overextending), and they will be able to shift their personnel and artillery to the Mikolayev front, the same way they moved their Mariupol troops up to the Donbass a month ago. They will take Mikolayev and cut off Odessa, and move north on Zaporizhia towards Dnipro.
Here he is from May 2022:
Cal88 said:
Agreed. Russia's main objective is to encircle the ~60k strong Ukrainian forces on the Donbass front, which I think they will achieve within the next 2-4 weeks. These forces are the main Ukrainian army body outside of the cities, without which Russia will have a free rein over the entire eastern bank of the Dniepr river.
So why would anyone listen to anything Cal88 has to say?
