The unprecedented assault entered its fourth day Friday with Moscow rushing reinforcements and bombing its own territory to try to contain the Ukrainian advance.

A convoy of burnt-out military trucks, some bearing the “Z” symbol of the Kremlin’s war and appearing to contain bodies, sits along the side of a highway.

The video, circulating on social media Friday and geolocated by NBC News, doesn’t show a beleaguered section of the front lines in eastern Ukraine. It is a village in Kursk, across the border in southern Russia.

For days now Vladimir Putin’s forces have struggled to put down an incursion into Russian territory by Ukrainian troops, after a surprise attack that threatened to upend the war’s status quo and open a new front in a daring challenge to the Kremlin.

      • Womble@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        TBH I think this is why Ukraine has dont this. It makes all the “freeze the conflict in its current state” calls mean that Russia would have to give up territory too, which would infuriate the ultra-nationalists in Russia and possibly destabalise Putin’s rule.

    • Railcar8095@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      They should surrender. Putin is sending all those to die defending their territory for selfish reasons. \s

    • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
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      3 months ago

      So my nephew was talking mad shit the other day about gymnastics and how it’s “not a sport” and it’s “for weak girls”.

      I asked him “If it’s so easy, why don’t you go do a couple flips and prove how easy it is?”

      His sister answered saying “Last time he tried that he broke his foot!” and started laughing.

      My nephew immediately glared at us and started crying.

      Russia acts like my 10 year old nephew.

    • Stamau123@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      Already happened once this war, how many times can we get a march on Moscow this decade?

      • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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        3 months ago

        But let’s not.

        Our planet is already severely suffering, let’s not deliberately fuck up the lands to stop nature growing on it.

        Fertilise the soil with Russian bodies on the way there please.

  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Oh, that doesn’t sound like something the Kremlin will take lightly.

    Too bad they sacrificed an insane number of troops just to get their shit pushed back in.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      That would have been a liberation. And a real one, not just a propagandized liberation. If they did, the Russian forces there might find themselves contending with both Ukrainian forces and the Belarusian army that refused to join the Ukrainian invasion.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I get it’s not publicised for a reason but I would love to know what the end goal is.

    Are they just causing havoc to get Russia to commit forces away from the front lines?

    Are they going to dig in and try and defend some of the captured area?

    Are they looking to capture a specific objective like the nuclear plant or a city?

    • Veneroso@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Probably a combination of your second point and to pressure Putin into capitulating on peace talks.

      As opposed to the Putin peace plan, which is we keep the 4 captured zones plus Crimea and you can’t join NATO vs Ukraine keeps Kursk, this nuclear power plant, and then this natural gas distribution site that is the last connection to Europe.

      Putin lost this war on the 4th day of his special military operation. The best he can hope for is to hold onto land. That’s a lot harder when you’re losing land that you had at the start…

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Could have a couple of potential objectives:

      • Punch in the face that makes Russia & especially Putin look bad/weak, so it may hurt Russian/help Ukraine morale
      • May peel Russia’s forces away from the fight in Ukraine, since not only do they have to retake it (it’s not an option), but they may have to commit more forces across the rest of their border in areas that were once considered “safe”
      • If they’re able to secure the territory long-term, it could help in potential future peace talks as a bargaining chip
      • Makes the effects of the war more widely felt by average Russians, since it’s likely conscripted middle-class soldiers there vs the volunteer peons that are sent to die in Ukraine.
      • There is a supply route and a nuclear facility close by to that area, so potentially they’re trying to hit supplies behind enemy lines.

      Hopefully it works out well for them, as it is a big risk given that Russia is still on the offensive.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The best reason I’ve heard speculated is that Russia has stopped doing big advances, which will make it much harder for Ukraine to force losses in a war of attrition. By opening up this front they’re forcing the Kremlin to throw more soldiers at them to be ground into sunflower fertilizer.

        • paddirn@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Yeah, they were about to run out of steam on their offensive and were about to convert to a defensive footing, which would give them an advantage. Taking Russian territory forces the Russians to keep going on the offensive, which could strain them and prevent them from building up their manpower/equipment as much while on the defensive. There’s no way Putin can allow sovereign Russian territory to be taken by another country. It’s a bold move and I hope it pays off.

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Could be something as simple as fucking with the Russians, its a lot harder to justify war when you are losing random bits of territory to the ghost of Steiner The Ukrainian military.

      Also I aint saying the Ukrainians are Nazis I just think its funny to say this is soemhow related to Steiner. Like some rule of two Sith planning or some shit.

  • ATDA@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Many people are saying how many Nazis are in Russia.

    See how easy it was to justify that Putikins?

    • EndlessApollo@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Literally every news site is left center according to them, is it a bug with the bot or is the site really that useless?

      Edit yea is a bug, literally every site also has high credibility and factual reporting according to them (or maybe not? Not every site does apparently, Idk what the heck is up with the site lol maybe it is just useless)

      • catloaf@lemm.ee
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        No, it’s really that useless. The site is American-biased, so any neutral source is at least center-left by its metrics. And the guy running the site has an Israeli Zionist bias too.

        Like Stephen Colbert used to say on his show, “reality has a well-known liberal bias”.

        • RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Completely. Calling NBC news center left is a real head scratcher, that bot is apparently living in an alternative facts reality.

          • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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            MBFC is pretty clear with how they rank “Bias” and I’d say they’re bang on with NBC news. They’re also pretty clear with how they rank factuality and again I’d say they have it correct with NBC News.

            It’s also pretty clear that many Lemmings struggle with the concept that bias and factuality are different things. NBC has a slight left bias but is still factual. They rank Fox News as having an “extreme” Right Bias and they rank them “mixed” factuality.

            You just never see that because no one on Lemmy uses Fox as a source and if they try their post goes nowhere.

            • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              bang on with NBC news

              As in “left wing” in the USA so “centre right” in normal countries?

              • njm1314@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                Which is just a lie that the American corporate media sells us so we’ll forget that corporate bias is a thing too.

              • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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                3 months ago

                MBFC is very clear that they are evaluating from an American Centrist perspective. If it bothers you that much just ignore the “bias” part, the factual part is still very useful…unless you inhabit a world of alternate facts.

                • davidagain@lemmy.world
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                  3 months ago

                  Their credibility and factual reporting metrics are off wry British newspapers in my experience. The bias seems not as far off on British papers if you take an American “centrist” point of view, but firstly, no, the bot isn’t up front about that perspective in its posts at all, and it’s not really up front about that perspective unless you count two or three clicks deep from one or other of the words in the footer. Secondly, the American Overton window is very far to the right on any international scale and the democratic party is pretty centrist or centre right by European standards. To be undecided between the batshit crazy loony alt right “alternative facts” authoritarian compulsive liar Trump and the Democrats isn’t a good basis for establishing the credibility of your bot or your website.

                  They criticise British newspapers for reporting the results of a survey about private renters’ opinions, on the basis that the survey should have compared their views with those in different housing situations and hence wasn’t factual, and then on their website they have news stories whose headlines baldly just say that Trump said a thing, and the thing, as usual, isn’t even close to true.

                  No, I don’t buy their credibility ratings, their factual reporting ratings and I have no reason to suppose that their bias ratings are correct for American sources partly because a bunch of people keep saying that it’s absurd that they claim that some source is left of centre, and most of the things it says about things I know about are incorrect and pretty much wholly in line with what a British Conservative would say.

      • EvilBit@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        It could be that any news org right of “center-left” went full fascist and doesn’t get any traction here but I haven’t been tracking that closely. It feels like a plausible explanation though. Newsweek is a rag, WSJ is straight propaganda now, etc.

        • atocci@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          You seem to be correct, we just don’t see the others. If you look through it’s comment history though, there are news sources rated as other things like “least biased” and “center-right”.

      • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I’d assume that any news that is to the right of “left of center” doesn’t get much visibility on Lemmy. Maybe Lemmygrad or Exploding Heads are a different story, but I figure they’d sooner ban the bot in far-right communities than let it highlight biases.

      • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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        4 months ago

        Literally every news site is left center according to them

        Lemmy has a real, by U.S. standards, left tilt so the majority of the articles posted are going to use sources that fit that. Additionally anything posted from the few right wingers that Lemmy does have aren’t going to get much traction and you will likely never see them.

        You’re asking if the site is “useless” but failing to ask the more important question of “Why is all of my information coming from places that have the same perspective?”

        MBFC is discreetly showing how much of an echo chamber Lemmy can be.

        • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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          3 months ago

          Yes we have a real left tilt, we’re complaining because right wing sources are being listed as left.

          • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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            3 months ago

            MBFC is clear that they are evaluating from an American Centrist perspective. Ignore the “bias” rating and just look at the factual rating.