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911 - Red Dawn feat. Radio War Nerd (2/24/25) (Patreon)

Published:
2025-02-25 05:30:15
Imported:
2026-06

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Content

We’re joined by Mark Ames & John Dolan of Radio War Nerd to discuss what may be the wind-down of the war in Ukraine. We look at the political ramifications both domestically and internationally, how the west & Russia have fared militarily, and the lives of the Ukrainians affected by the conflict. Plus, would you believe fighter aircraft, MMA, and a drive-by slagging of union general loser George McClellan all get mentions in this?

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd: https://www.patreon.com/radiowarnerd

NYC: Come see Will & Hesse host an Oscars watch as part of a party for Zohran for Mayor this Sunday, March 2nd @ Nightclub 101: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/partyforzohran

Files

Comments

claus_mc

Ok I'm first

T

I'm gay!

Jes

🧑‍🔧

HamDrawn

The slopification of our souls continues. Bring it on!

Xi

Kinda disappointed this isn't a movie episode with RWN talking about Red Dawn ngl. Still probably gonna be a banger regardless.

JD Nonce

So now is a good time for me to go to Ukraine and join the foreign legion right?

Travis

Felix begins speaking at 6 minutes and 53 seconds

j

Ah both of them! Thank you!

T

Anyone have the Hare Krishna video?

Cody S

Great ep

July17

McClellan's grand equestrian statue in DC actually has his back facing where the Confederate lines were so he could be forever mocked for his sympathies and futilities in life.

Brian Jerse

Does anyone have a link to the crucifixion story?

K H

I'm Gay Actor Michael Douglas.

oguryets

Just like Trump, the Chapo boys can't be bothered to talk to a Ukrainian about the war.

Liathroid Jenkins

Hello this is HIV-negative actor Michael Bug-less

Grant Spalding

They haven’t talked to any Russians either. Don’t really see how it matters.

Skwerral

I think there is. It's on war nerd podcast. Will was a guest.

Alejandro Pepsi

Lol I didn't know that. You hear all the time that's why all confederate statues face north so I could buy it. still, mfer got a statue thats all he'd care about the loser

Alejandro Pepsi

Go back to the hyperbolic chamber with that one, needs work.

Duncan Fraser

There is a two parter on RWN with Will talking about American history from Revolution to current day through films. 🎥

Duncan Fraser

A fellow Revolutions podcast enjoyer, I was skeptical about the recent Mars series but it’s been great so far imo.

Savannakhet

The NAFO lads have logged on.

Brodi Craddock

Mark Ames is such Putin dickrider. Recall that the week before the war, he categorically stated on Truanon that Russia wouldn't invade and that it's all propaganda, which is really testament to his credibility as an "expert" on Russia.

Malik Chaney

That's funny because he's spent the last 3 years getting called a Zelensky dickrider in the RWN comments because he aired on the side of believing western sources who got the invasion right and were reporting exaggerated Russian casualties

Brodi Craddock

I haven't listened RWN in years, but his position here is capitulationist through and through, and in the past he's always (incorrectly) emphasized how well supported in Russia the Putin regime is, and how impressive its achievements are.

etienne

their position was that ukraine was never as good and strong as its western backers wanted it to be and that it would lead to disaster and here we are

YourBabysFather

Episode 911 and it wasn’t a 9/11 episode??? How do you mess this up this bad

Hardcore Virgin

Russia is Luka. Gotta play itself into shape.

Sam Zeng

Mark left Russia because of Putin. He has made it explicit that he does not support Putin and the war.

Creamy Goodness

RWN again showing its ass. I recall their last visit was rife with falsehoods and bad data.

Joseph Mabrey

Do an episode on China you cowards I'm Chinapilled

Brodi Craddock

Sure man. Allow me to quote from this very episode: "Putin's Russia is actually liberal" "Ukraine is filled with Nazis"

glaourgbn

"trump's credibility doesn't hang on the war in Ukraine" sure but Trump said he'd fix it. The dude's credibility is entirely untouchable to the cult.

Rich G

McClellan was on the Epstein list

Here, Try This

Gotta love Mark Ames not recalling that he too said invasion was never going to happen right up to the moment it happened

etienne

one thing i gotta givr to you is that they always sounded happier when russia started winning back than when ukraine had that blip of good fortune at the beginning. but even there, you could say they underestimated putin because they said at first that this would be a disaster and putin would never be stupid enough to go in, and, again, look where we are

Frank Lee Dontcare

They're as confused about their politics as any population subjected to endless western brain rot.

Tim Mullen

Most analysts said the invasion was not going to happen? So what? Should we hold it against people they didn’t trust the IC?

brando

That's just not true Tim, most people and like every media agency said it was gonna happen lmao. The Russian buildup on the border was being reported on as Afghanistan was collapsing to the Taliban, you just weren't paying attention

brando

Incredible how gleefully ignorant people love being about this point when they immediately understand it re. Palestine.

Tim Mullen

Most left wing analysts got it wrong there’s your correction

etienne

okay he said russian cities have liberals in them and paramilitary groups have nazis in them. you could not have found a bigger possible decontextualization

glaourgbn

John needs to talk more my loves. My loves, John needs to talk more.

glaourgbn

chapo also called it wrong my dude

glaourgbn

hey where's the hare christner pres ganging vid, I can't find it.

DK

“A major rival, Russia” is quite divorced from reality.

Dark Belden

He said it almost every time they talked about Ukraine for the first two years. I think that’s enough.

Brodi Craddock

Not true. The context was that the American right are enamored with Putin, which is obviously a bit awkward for Ames because that basically puts him in company with the right, so he said "it's ironic though because Russia is actually fairly liberal". Even Mearsheimer, who sometimes gets shit for being too conciliatory towards Putin, is a million times more credible as a sober analyst, rather than a Putin cheerleader

Here, Try This

I hold it against him because A) he brings this up every time he talks about Ukraine without acknowledging that he did the same B) he’s a journalist, not just a random leftist with a podcast and C) he lived in Russia, is a Russian speaker, claims to be well sourced within that country. Being loud wrong on something he is allegedly expert and doing the “nothing to see here” he accuses mainstream media of when they fuck up makes me question why I should take seriously anything he says.

Brodi Craddock

True, but since then they've demonstrated a lot of moral insight about the war in that they recognize how complicated it is, and they haven't taken firm positions in the way Ames clearly has

Ty G.

Ukraine war episode, be prepared for the absolute most annoying people in the comment section lol

Matteo Ryon

Just tankies who dickride Russia. Same thing at the end of the day

VaultBoy1974

Only slightly disappointed that this isn’t a review of the movie…where is my analysis into the Roadhouse vs Superfly war dammit.

Matteo Ryon

You mean the dick riders who act as if they walked on you fucking their mom's corpse every time someone even the slightest criticism of a product they directly pay for? Yeah, I find those scum-fuckers annoying too

Dang

Lmao

Matteo Ryon

Just stop doing Ukraine episodes. Yall show your whole ass every time. We get the picture by now: you're only against ethnic cleansing when it's Jews doing it

Joseph

Give it another six months of Meleism and we’ll be wishing we were still rivals

ploob

9 1 1

Adam Murphy

Wrong. He admitted being wrong about Russia on the latest war need pod

Kainien Morel

The Radio War Nerd boys didn't fail to impress once again. The whole episode had me immediately thinking of "inevitable" comparisons with the PRC/ROC and a possible Fourth Strait Crisis, for the obvious comparison of disparate power blocs, the possibility of a proxy war over any number of outside motives, the less obvious (though it should be) reality that, unlike liberal Atlanticists or most conservative and reaction Atlanticists, the American left really has no good proposal for "the Taiwan problem" beyond "preventing a repeat of the 1945 Retrocession is not worth causing a Third World War," which should be self-evident but does not actually offer a good foundation for a leftwing program beyond sitting on one's hand. Since Spring 2022, the Taiwanese media has reported the ruling party studying the Russian attempt at a strategic knock-out blow as a curriculum as to "what China, in a war where neither side has any sort of useful combat experience because they can't do the American thing and be at war nonstop for decades, might do wrong, and how they might be tricked into greater mistakes." I guess the example of America against Iraq, or America against Libya, or America against Afghanistan were all a little too depressing to take lessons from. Then in October 2023, we got a new headline: now MOD planners were looking at "Russia's war in Ukraine AND Israel's war in Gaza," for examples of how to come out in the asymmetry of "the enemy next door is sixty times larger than you." What was conspicuously left unsaid was what lessons Taipei was taking from Gaza; given the DPP's conspicuously dogmatic military and political support of Israel, they had to stop just short of, "We're studying what to do after the PRC loses 99% of its population in a nuclear holocaust, then is completely surrounded by a Taiwanese military blockade, and also we get at least fifty billion dollars in war materiel in the first year." Real Donald Rumsfeld "the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns," type shit. But it can pass, because the opposition (with the KMT and its allies controlling the legislature) can only have the same answer to "What to do about Israel" as the DPP, and as noted, the broader left can't offer anything more persuasive as to this open wound left by the Chinese Civil War eighty years ago. On a topic less close to me, it does seem like V. Zelenskyy has committed quite a few unforced errors when it came to the Biden-Trump Showdown Part II. After all, he managed to avoid the most immediate threat: that his, like literally every other government in Kiev since independence from the USSR, would catastrophically fail within 4 to 6 years and their direct opposition voted into their place. Even if Russia failed to pose an existential threat, or the massive economic loss of Crimea and much of the industrialized eastern provinces fell out of memory, banning enough opposition parties would resolve that finally; forget the Russian Federation, elections would be basically as competitive as Singapore's. Why didn't he just hedge his bets vis a vis the United States? To use the example close to my heart, the Tsai and Lai DPP Governments did exactly that: especially in the legislature, the DPP rank and file went straight up MAGA hats and Trump-branded breathing masks, but they were prepared for a big, smiling Biden victory (even if the KMT would probably have preferred Biden substantially, at least before he went full China-hawk, after which it stopped really mattering). How hard is it just to lie to bunch of foreign rubes who can't even find your country on a map, much less coherently analyze said country's opinion on another forced contest between two geriatrics who have to be reminded not to get into arguments about who the original China-hater was? It seems plainly stupid to take such an ideological risk like that, unless in fact, even a sympathetic Donald Trump would be such a political liability that it was better to make that stand for...who? The Atlanticists? John and Jane Q. Democratic Voter? The "oil revenue" question was a nostalgic trigger. Oil reserves, in Ukraine, as far as I know are basically nonexistent; oil transit, per the Soviet Union's export infrastructure, was the question I tink. Remember that more innocent age when a major point of contention between Kiev and Moscow (and Washington hovering over them like a gargoyle) was what share of revenue Ukraine would receive as an in-between for Russian oil and LNG exports into Europe? How Obama, Trump and Biden all had to make the same stupid pitch of "We need to end our use of Russian oil! Except for the 100% that will be exported through Ukraine's share of Soviet pipelines." I know the Chapo boys love to talk about Nordrestream. Nostalgia. Anyway, good episode boys.

Nathan TC

what an awkward thing to try so hard to push

George P

when I discovered Patreon had a block button it made the comment threads so much more readable

Zach H.

Does ‘Red Dawn’ just play like an over earnest comedy to Russians? Like it was ‘Police Squad: Teenage Insurgency’?

Matteo Ryon

It doesn't need pushing. Twice is a coincidence, hundreds of fucking times is a pattern. Cool to see it didn't take the first sycophantic moron long to show up. Go have more of your opinion given to you, little guy; life's easier when you don't have to think

ShreddyCruz

Front lines have barely moved in 3 years “Russia is dominating guys I swear, Putin had a glass of wine and was smiling”

Some.nerd

For Americans war is a place you go, it’s different when it shows up at your door

Sam Bondurant

I get we’re mostly involved in this war for cynical reasons but how is there not a more defined leftist position that includes standing up to Putin for Russia’s working class? Maybe this comes off as gibberish but I have zero desire to align w trump’s ghouls on this conflict.

Joseph

This is really good, thank you

Sam Zeng

I think its fair to critique Ames but you have to critique in good faith or its just not useful. I agree he hasn't been good at covering the war but there are truths in his commentary and coverage. You don't have to agree with people you don't like but you do have to read them carefully.

Damen Irving

I’m all for McClellan bashing

etienne

I was just thinking about that during the 51st State drama, at that point I don't know what I'd prefer between having Vleep van Vlorp from Brussels hand me an Exocet and a FN FAL and tell me I need to die for the European Coal and Steel Council and that after a string of flashy successes I should not accept any deal short of a collapse of the Washington system, versus just become like Maine Deux

Sam Zeng

If you have a position please state it otherwise keep it polite.

Sam Zeng

Russia is a bum and a thug. Not classy

Kyle Smyth

That Ukrainian general is a staunch believer in the Zapp Brannigan approach to warfare

Joseph

He doesn’t have any positions at this point, 2 years ago they were all for defending Ukraine but now there’s no constituency for it right or left. It’s an issue solely supported by 30 NATO heads posting from Langley. So all he’s got is this weak sauce.

Sam Zeng

I am going to keep it 100%. There are no good leftist positions in this war, this war is just a absolute mess. Standing up to Putin's Russia's working class???? This is so ridiculous I don't even know where to start. We can't even link up with the working class in the US how are we going to do it in Russia?

Mungo Franczak

How tf are two Slavic nations at war with each other “ethnic cleansing”?

Mungo Franczak

Is this how you find out that this war was never about Ukraine/Ukrainians

Sam Bondurant

So what’s the bet here, let Putin have Ukraine and eventually Moldova and just bank on him being satisfied?

Louis Ludwig

Leaving aside that the U.S. had no obligation to defend Ukraine, it was reasonable to assume the U.S. would make a full diplomatic push to avoid an invasion, and it only become clearer post-invasion how much the Biden administration viewed the war as a golden opportunity to bog down and isolate Russia, remake Europe’s energy dependence in America’s favor, and cause China to rethink invading Taiwan.

HuffingGasInTheShed

Yes and thank you for shitting on the OS-int dork and their powerful google skills

Joe S.

Absolute nonsense. They've been very open about the fact that they got it wrong and have talked about why that was pretty extensively.

No

WAR NERD LEGION REPRESENT

Aaron

"Nobody thought Russia would turn it around?" What are you talking about? Every single respectable analyst made it clear Ukraine could not possibly win this war from the outset.

lake

Probably not gonna listen to this episode does anyone have any examples of “problematic” stuff they say about Russia or Ukraine? Like quotes?

Ian H

Sam, you and I aren't "letting" Putin have anything. He's not calling to ask our permission. Insofar as we, as political actors, have any influence whatsoever on the foreign policy of any nation, it's a very minor one on the U.S. alone. In light of this, the only position that makes sense or has any hope of occasional success is "yanqui fuera". Yanqui fuera de todo el mundo, yanqui fuera siempre. Post WW2, U.S. intervention has just about universally been a reactionary force with horrible consequences for the peoples impacted by it.

Sam Zeng

I think we need to stay away from Foreign policy because its clear that the left does not have a coherent plan with regards to the huge amount of complexity that goes with it. Also not to mention we don't actually have the power to force either the GOP or the Dems to change their positions. We should probably start to better understand the conditions but also recognize we can do shit all. Yes this includes Gaza, which is even more complex than Ukraine for domestic and international reasons. Nations and international politics has always been a problem for the far left. Marx him self swayed on the question. From condemning Russian imperialism to Praising Irish Nationalism. There isn't a simple and easy position. The question is complicated.

brendo

Just one more shipment of weapons to turn the war in Ukraine's favor, right?

Mark Schneider

So we should be on the side of the Azov/ Right Sector Nazis who demanded that the Russian language not be spoken in Ukraine? Who tore down the War Memorials because Waffen-SS Collaborator Stepan Bandera is the "national hero" with dozens of parks, streets, schools etc. named after him? Who have a theory that they are actually "Aryans" and of a higher racial caste, not dirty "Slavs" & "Asiatics" (as the Germans called the Soviets.) Uhhm, yeah. In truth if one studies the history, the fact that 45% of the populace were primarily Russian-speaking (including Zelensky!) the attempt to purge those people from the society wouldn't end well. But hey, tough guy, why haven't you volunteered? They need meat. Go do it.

Mark Schneider

I'm not a Trump fan. However, as the crew says at the beginning of this episode, the eventual outcome was never in doubt. A country dozens of times larger than the opponent, with an economy 8 times as large, 5 times the population, etc. And it being admitted by every source (NYT, WaPo, etc) up until 3 years ago that Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe. Even a blind pig can find an acorn some times, and foreseeing the outcome here was not difficult for anyone who isn't MSM brainwashed. Trump may not "fix" it, he's opportunistically claiming credit perhaps. But the Ukrainian goose was always going to be cooked.

brendo

He does acknowledge it constantly what are you talking about? You know who else didn't think it was gonna happen? ZELENSKY!!

brendo

That the war should have ended sooner but a lot of "leftists" want more Slavic blood to be spilled

d.a.walker

"You Need The Glory" Minutemen

parker

I mean the thing is the media did not platform any of those people lol

parker

I think chris did an episode on another podcast about Red Dawn if I'm not mistaken

Chris

Dang, the layoffs must have really hit the feds hard if they're just farming out disinfo research like this

Cam

Dogshit episode

king_von_diesel

Greenland and Canada could just be offered full shipping rights through the arctic and become the California/Washington of the Atlantic Northeast, rather than have to listen to a descendent of the habsburgs with congenital conjunctivitis.

Xio Dio

Yeah skipping this one.

Ant koz

This is an important episode. Never forget

etienne

my take since this whole thing blew up is that we'd be treated kinda like puerto rico or guam. see, now im tipping back towards the exocets and fn fals

Michael

This take is fine as long as you acknowledge that on the other side you’ve got extreme Russian nationalists who argue that Ukraine is a “fake” country and view Ukrainian people as being imaginary. (Similar to how Zionists view Palestinians.)

Axel H.

So many NAFOs in the comments -_-

John Murphy

They were talking about sanctions, I'm starting to think the people who reply to Chapo posts are not serious

jason macza

No body puts baby in a corner

Jacob

You look like a pedophile

protob1

You vultures have felt our might, now it is time to reap the whirlwind. We warned you that you would face a storm of steel of a scale not seen since the last world war! There will be no concessions and you will hand over what you owed us at Istanbul and more.

james

Wow that second guest sounds like a grand portly fellow, love it!!

Sam

Such a deranged comment given that they spent the first year of this thing regurgitating wapo NYT trash about Russian casualties and Ukrainian battlefield dominance. That’s ok though you must be a retarded fucking idiot.

james

There’s a PERFECT example of that in this ep!!! You’ll love it!! It falls between 0:00 - 1:16:54

Sam

The Russian working class isn’t opposed to this war. And they shouldn’t be. You have to be so totally propagandized to believe this was some kind of US style powergrab or imperial ambition bullshit. You can’t understand this event if you haven’t fully metabolized what nato really is, what the U.S. was doing in Ukraine for 20 years, and how everything that happened before and after this terrible war was predicated on raw U.S. power and the Freudian neocon death cult that has held court and determined policy in the last 4 administrations. If you think that the same admin that facilitated and is responsible for a genocide in Palestine was at the same time virtuous and on the right side of history in Ukraine, you are just internet brained and not grasping reality.

Sam

You have to be totally propagandized to believe this was some kind of US style powergrab or imperial ambition bullshit. You can’t understand this event if you haven’t fully metabolized what nato really is, what the U.S. was doing in Ukraine for 20 years, and how everything that happened before and after this terrible war was predicated on raw U.S. power and the Freudian neocon death cult that has held court and determined policy in the last 4 administrations. If you think that the same admin that facilitated and is responsible for a genocide in Palestine was at the same time virtuous and on the right side of history in Ukraine, you are just internet brained and not grasping reality.

brando

every time someone says nafo in 2025 they sound like psychotic zionists screaming about "palinazis" lol

Sam Bondurant

The overwhelming majority of our own citizens were in favor of going to war in Iraq. The majority of voters in this country voted for a pedophile/ rapist game show host. Isn’t our entire thing as Chapo listeners thinking we know more than what the average person says in a telephone poll? I get why Russia hates us/ NATO but idk why all the commenters here feel the need to hand it to a bloodthirsty dictator.

brando

Brendo, do you think the president of a country facing invasion may have a different set of incentives (say, avoiding mass public panic, especially among the military) than a self-declared Russia expert who claims to be uniquely well-sourced in the country yet was inexplicably unable to watch videos of mass military deployments that were all over Russian social media

Paul F. Holzfäller

I remember some terminally online gash replying “NAFO” repeatedly after I made some comment about invading Russians being reduced to puddles of borscht. Had to google that shit as I had zero clue as to what they were referring. Thanks for the memory jog.

C. Andrew

"If you aren't with us, you're with the terrorists." - Smartest Man George Dubya Bush

Tim Mullen

Brando you def would’ve been clapping like a seal rooting build up for the invasion of Iraq if this is your level of analysis.

Nathan

McClellan calling himself “the young napoleon” after winning one battle is one of the funniest “he thinks he’s Him” moments. You gotta at least win a war to be napoleon, buddy.

ben

Trump probably learned about McKinley after his ear took some shrapnel. he wanted to know which presidents he’s better at surviving.

Michael

This comment reminded me of an early Chapo episode where they were interviewing a labor organizer and the person said people on the left want to have all these strong opinions on issues like Syria but those same people would struggle to knock on their neighbours door to borrow some sugar.

Rory

Gash?

Shane-A112

i could feel Matts genki through the either as the civil war came 15 minutes in

Rory

Ukranian is not an ethnicity

The Fine Art Revolution

Such poor analysis on this conflict from your guests, it's rather shocking. They haven't bothered to understand this war from sources other than the western media. If you understood what this war is actually about, seizing the Donbas and creating a buffer, and preventing nuclear encroachment, then you'd never keep repeating that Russia was 'not predicted' to win. Ukraine never had a chance to win and Russia was never actually bogged down. They simply were, and are, trying to minimize deployments, using the bare minimum in order to achieve mission goals while minimizing casualties. Russia has no interest in seizing all of Ukraine, or even Kiev. So then you have to ask, "why were military detachments barreling toward Kiev early on in 2022?" This is the stage which gave the west, and these guests, the impression Russia was bogged down right? It was a feint. It allowed them to understand where to better setup the actual front line while it stabilized over the summer. Russia is not "using ukraine" to send a message for the west. What does that even mean? Russia is defending itself from nuclear-tipped missiles encroaching further and further east, making flight times so short, that first strike scenarios become a viable option for the west. This is all within the context of our withdrawal from the INF treaty. Get Jeffrey Sachs on the podcast for someone who actually knows what this conflict is about.

Cary Confino

Stop paying for chapo. Mueller She Wrote would be perfect for you

The Fine Art Revolution

yeah these guys are have some of the worst analysis I've ever seen. Glad I unsubscribed two years ago.

lake

I feel like I’m just asking a question??

Return of The Mac 2nite

“X country has the right to defend itself” ok what doesn’t have the right to defend itself? It’s such an no-nothing statement.

brando

Brother, your brain is so addled with campism that you seem to be unaware that other countries can also take actions of their own agency, in their own imperial interests. Of course it wasn't a U.S. power grab - the U.S. had a negligible role in the entire situation up until 2022. Russia is the one who's attempted to assassinate Ukrainian heads of state, who's invaded the country, and who's committed ethnic cleansing of Crimean Tatars in occupied territory. There's a reason Ukraine and Palestine consistently support each other, while the Israelis vote in favor of Russia at the UN.

Maciek

lol ok fine art revolution

Maciek

“Help me get things to get upset about” is a question worth entertaining?

Maciek

fine art loser more like

brando

Funny you bring up Iraq, it's a perfect comparison in that media and analysts had so many ideological blinders in their commitment to liberal interventionism that they couldn't see what was immediately obvious. Campism has given you similar blinders, and it's why so many leftist media figures and analysts similarly missed something incredibly obvious, as you yourself acknowledged.

Maciek

Matt “yall” a bitch

Maciek

lol stay mad nafo coward

Maciek

That’s a thing he’s repeatedly said he and everyone else got wrong. Nafo coward

Shane-A112

I love watching people pedantically scream at each other in comment sections about Ukraine debating which army plastered in SS imagery is marginally worse than the other

Kendall

There’s a lot that is correct in your comment (buffer zone against nuclear encroachment, which the Russians have been saying for over a decade); however, it’s completely inaccurate to say Mark and John are only understanding this war from Western sources. Mark regularly reads both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian primary outlets in their respective languages and shares those perspectives on the show. I would wager that his statement about “using Ukraine to send a message” is a more metaphorical version of the point you made re: the buffer zone. But I do agree that the discussion could’ve made that clearer—my read is that Mark’s personal connection to the region has absolutely led to muddled analysis (I’m guilty of the same).

The Fine Art Revolution

Excellent follow up. Yes, I should've clarified, I'm not positing that they haven't read any non-western sources, only that this anlaysis, as it was presented in this one format, would be nearly identical to one where they did not bother to read any.

brendo

Brando, the fact you say this is campism to have not believed Biden and Blinken when they said Russia was going to invade reveals a lot about you

brendo

Example?

brando

Again, you can take or leave what heads of state and government officials are saying - Biden and Blinken are as trustworthy as Zelensky and Putin, they're all playing other games. But there was publicly available satellite imagery (from private companies with wildfire and flood detection satellites), countless videos from Russian social media of troop and equipment deployments, and most importantly, they actually did invade Ukraine like everyone said they were going to. If you insist on not believing your lying eyes, that's on you - you seem to have taken the message that the U.S. will always lie in every situation (cannot blame you, there are worse frames of analysis for the world), but are forgetting the whole thing about broken clocks being right twice a day

Doug Cartel

"Russia was not predicted to win" is correct, the west deluded itself into thinking they would lose.

Doug Cartel

I think as a general rule you're not going to see an army fighting at it's full potential or skill in the first months of the war, assuming no other variables are in play. Also, blitzkrieg doesnt exist because no blitzkrieg concept ever took fuel into account.

Patrick Carroll

Going to the chapo comments to fight for Ukraine is really indicative of your desperation

Doug Cartel

Ukraine technically has a "right" to defend itself in a zero context environment, but the massive barrage they dropped on the DPR and LPR caused them to panic and beg Russia for protection, and Russia obliged them, citing Kosovo as a precedent. Never mind that Ukraines entire purpose for existing at the moment is to be Festung Europa for subjugating Russia, and Russia has spent 30 years saying that that political situation is casual belli. It's like warning a cat not to knock a glass off the table and then watching them do it while they stare you dead in the eyes.

Patrick Carroll

I truly pity you. Your insane Ukrainian sectarian hatred has led you to this place where you must watch as Ukraine is taken apart at the joints.

Doug Cartel

FWIW I think you can believe both those things, it's just, the right to defend isnt very important from the perspective of the struggle between the US and Russia. Ukraine has no autonomy in this war. Right wing fangirling over Russia started with the anti gay laws circa 2012 or so.

brando

You are psychologically Israeli.

Patrick Carroll

lol I fundamentally oppose the Israeli genocidal war machine and even I am not this careless with how I talk about Israel. Why not accuse me of being a scheming merchant while you are at it?

brando

Yeah Mr. Patrick Carroll, I'm being anti-semitic against the most Irish-named man on earth - that's so hysterical that now you *really* sound like an Israeli. You fully subscribe to the Israeli ideal of might makes right, and unchallenged domination over their region - Russia is a strong country, so they may ethnically cleanse troublesome Crimean Tatars and kidnap Ukrainian children as they wish, and put a bullet in the head of any dissenters.

oguryets

At least take Dugin's mouth out of your cocktail before you say something you utter idiot. Ukrainian is absolutely an ethnicity.

oguryets

They haven't talked to any Israelis about the war in Gaza either, yet their reportage features numerous Palesitinian journalists. They're inability to come up with 1 Ukrainian guest just shows how little they know about it and how disinterested they must really be in the topic. Frankly I'm surprised they did an episode at all.

brendo

No I completely reject the idea anyone who doubted it was being knee-jerk anti-American, that's stupid. You know why it was convincing that he wouldn't invade? Because the force he had mobilized on the border wasn't large enough to subdue the country, and you can look and see how the early weeks of the war went for Putin with that force. Why people are so fucking cocky saying others were wrong with their predictions, when this war has been full of surprises, really blows me away. Just shut the fuck up man you 10000% didn't predict every development in the Ukraine war

brendo

Him having to flee Russia because he was going to be charged with terrorism, only to be on the side of Putin the whole time... masterful gambit Mr. Ames

Michael

A sentiment people on both sides of the issue can truly get behind.

tendo

Great episode. I don’t know if I buy everything the war nerds are selling but it was breath of fresh air because the establishment media hasn’t updated the party line on Ukraine since the first days of the war.

GuthriesGhost

Mr chapo please do more Ukraine episodes these comments are fucking gold

Ant koz

Been waiting for episode 9/11 for years. We’re finally there! I dedicate this episode to 9/11, on behalf of chapo fuck my balls houso, never forget. 9/11 forever… where were you?

brando

You really seem unable to accept that, despite a "convincing" explanation, you and the sources you looked to were wholly and entirely wrong on something incredibly important - and you seem especially resistant to the idea that there's any lesson to learn in that whatsoever. Besides the fact that you could've known that reasoning was wrong at the time - when actual Russian defense experts were pointing out massive differences between the pre-war deployment and previous Russian deployments for military exercises - I'm just a random individual, not someone posturing as an expert with insider sources in Russia and Ukraine. As such, yeah, my predictions hold less weight than Ames', but sorry, I'm not releasing them to thousands of paid subscribers.

king_von_diesel

Is this a personal preference, or just what you see happening?

Patrick Carroll

lol you really are hysterical now. It’s sad. I don’t support either counter revolutionary state occupying land that red army men fought and died for. But it’s pretty interesting that people cannot even point out that you have been yelling at people online for years about Ukraine and still ended up where you are without assuming they are secret Russian agents sent to upset you. All I was asking you was if the rules you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

brando

What the fuck are you talking about?

Patrick Carroll

I am talking about the bizarre screed you sent me accusing me of being “psychologically Israeli” because you think I am a little cheerleader for Russia the way you are for Ukraine. This is a tough day for you huh?

Sam

Your framing completely removes the fact that Russia is the one who set itself up for this. They invaded in 2014, they set up these illegitimate puppet states. Russia placed troops and munitions in these areas, armed militias and engaged in low-intensity fighting for years in these regions. To use your analogy, the cat was sitting on the table by itself and Russia placed the glass on the table. Then it continuously pushed it closer and closer to the cat until the glass was knocked off, at which point they invaded fully.

Max

How are these similiar in any way, vocal pro-NATO lib posters are very real, nobody would deny that. Maybe you're just a yankee, but these people represent the EU mainstream.

Sam

IDK, call me a liberal or whatever, but I think your read on Ukraine-Russia is bad and excuses Russian imperialism just because it stings the nose of the American empire. Seems a more consistent approach would be that imperialism writ-large is wrong, not just American imperialism.

brando

I'm always happy to continue a pointless, circuitous argument on the Chapo Trap House Premium Feed, but you need to go get some fresh air man

hamburglar

Mark is kind of the point man on Ukraine even on RWN episodes, John has kind of let Mark follow the deeper details while John reads whatever few English sources there are on the Sahel conflicts

Robert Kurvits

Can anyone make out what "coridor" are they talking about regarding liberal dc war hawks? Sounds like "michellan coridor" or something? They say it twice toward thr end... Haven't heard that expression.

Patrick Carroll

lol bro I think you are mixing me up with the other people you are arguing with in these comments. Good luck fighting for Ukraine online! The war effort really seems to be benefiting from it.

hamburglar

Why do people think making an incorrect prediction is some massive gotcha? It’s not the same as being pro-invasion. Part of the reason he said they wouldn’t invade is because it would be stupid!

Patrick Carroll

I also like to blame Russia for everything I don’t like. Wait till you hear about how they put a Cheeto in the White House!!!

Grant Spalding

Situation in Palestine and Ukraine are very different. Palestinians have almost no sympathetic outlets. Ukrainians have much of the mainstream media to put their voice out there.

Goff Costello

Acela Corridor, reference to the train line, I think

Grant Spalding

Are they saying that Russia invading Ukraine is good? Where did they say that?

Christian Bendillo

It’s a good thing Matt wasn’t there, he’s in no state to hear McClellan’s name rn

Ant koz

You’re a hero comrade

Wyatt the Wallaby

The last bit of nafo funding has been allocated to holding will menaker accountable

brando

The point isn't that Ames is some secret, pro-Putin, deep-cover FSB agent - it's just that he is perhaps not the most qualified person to be speaking on this issue, nor the most reliable source to refer to.

Ben

Ricken Hale from Severance on the pod

Joe Schmoe

Will you said “like” a lot this episode

ShreddyCruz

No major cities captured in 2 years of conflict, what crazy Russian chess move is this?

ShreddyCruz

The US has Ohio class nuclear submarines that could kill every Russian from the artic circle. What do we need Ukraine to launch nukes for? Are you crazy?

Dang

He said they carry water to excuse it

bobbyboy32059

There is the part where they claimed a dude got crucified while providing no details about the story.

Patrick Carroll

That’s not how wars work in general, but is even more irrelevant in a war that is being fought in very difficult trench warfare.

Michael

The fact that Mark Ames of all people was ever called a NATO shill just shows how ridiculous the discourse has become on this war.

Mortimer Clue

AVENGE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AVENGE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bobbyboy32059

Do we have any proof that a dude was crucified? Or is this kinda just more owning the libs by believing different propaganda than them? Like when Finkelstein basically burst into tears reciting his fanfiction about Putin's troubled youth. To be clear, make whatever case you want for who you wanna root for on the world stage. I just find this contrarian shit pathetic. Probably the most pathetic thing about MAGAts and Libs has been how fucking gullible they are. I wanna believe people outside that at least try.

b2b saas purveyor

what is that fun music at ~34:10 it's driving me crazy

bobbyboy32059

...the puppet states asked for help? Was that a thing we thought wasnt gonna happen? Are we pretending these are real countries to own the libs?

bobbyboy32059

This kinda left contrarian Russia stanning reminds me of how you can find essay long posts from MAGA schizos that only make sense in a world with just MAGAts and their imaginary Frankfurt school liberals. I think maybe 3 people give a shit about Ukraine.

bobbyboy32059

Why does this even make you mad?

bobbyboy32059

Eh, you shouldn't orrient your politics around spiting someone by contradicting them. That's why we have dipshits acting like Russia never hyper-liberalized itself over night. Don't just be the opposite of them. Be a real boy, Pinocchio.

bobbyboy32059

...why's that dude got the proportions of a child? I don't like jumping straight to calling shit like this fake. But like... That man would have to be like 3'2".

No

You Need The Glory by Minutemen. DEEP VAULT CHRIS YOU CAN'T FOOL ME

No

You Need The Glory by Minutemen

b2b saas purveyor

🙏ah - one of those double nickels tracks that i always skip. thought it was Minuteflag at first

Yarblockos

Do these Ukrainian Nazi units espouse the ideology, or do they just wear the paraphernalia like a Tokyo host club?

Gradient

This is a really wonderful episode on many levels but I think there was way too much dismissal of this outcome as being really quite bad for Russia. Their self-reported economic data is quite dire, and if you transition your thought on sanctions from "We will force their immediate collapse" to "they will lose multiple years of economic growth" then the sanctions were quite successful. If you thought Biden's "wartime Kenyesianism" without the war (Arsenal of Democracy, etc) had bad outcomes, just wait until you have to do wartime Kenyesianism with an actual war consuming your youngest generation. That Russia will get most of strategic objectives is true, but I wish there was more analysis in the media generally about these objectives being quite bad for them. Being a junior partner to China over the long term isn't good, mauling your young men is bad, and making guns over butter won't make your people prosper.

brando

Depends heavily on the individual unit: Azov pre-war was pretty died in the wool, but most of the true believers died in Mariupol and got replaced by larpers, while S14's affiliated paramilitaries are 100% neo-nazis

Jason Matthews

I think that the Russian strategy presupposed a collapse in American influence in regions that might lessen the burden of the economic blockade, mostly in Africa, but in East Asia and even Europe as well. It remains to be seen whether this will pan out. While Russia is dwarfed by China, they would possess more leverage in a future Eurasian world order than they do under the Atlanticists.

brando

That's fair Grant, but it still just results in Ukraine being a proxy solely for people to jack off about domestic American politics, and people generally seem to have an issue with just taking the word of american journalists parachuting in for war tourism (or just watching from abroad) anywhere else. if they had a Ukrainian on, maybe they could've talked about the resurgence of leftist politics among young Ukrainians as a response to Zelensky's neoliberal reforms throughout the war, or anything more substantial than the equivalent of skimming twitter

brando

I should probably add that the same is true for Russia: Wagner are mainly larpers at this point, the Russian Imperial Movement are fascist psychos. Decent rule of thumb is that any of the prominent units that saw intense combat probably lost their ideological core in that combat

Craig

Regardless of one's opinion on the war, I think we can all agree that the loss of human life on both sides has been appalling. War is criminal

Hilary is Pant-suited Syphilis

Being a junior partner to the EU or the US seems like a great deal. Ask Ukraine or Canada or Mexico right now or the Greeks.

Gradient

Is that true, though? We can’t test the other world but being the energy provider for Germany seemed like a descent way to keep stability at least for a few decades.

Gradient

It seems like being a junior partner generally sucks!

fugitivedocument

No one. Not a signle person. Should EVER be forced to fight & die in a fucking war.

Sam Zeng

Its more complicated. Yes the sanctions have effects but probably not what the designers originally intended. Inflation is rampant in Russia atm seems like the problem right now is actually man power. The large recruitment incentives are robbing workers. We are actually seeing disinvestment in critical areas like rail in Russia. Ben Aris has been the most correct on the economic fall outs of the war and BNE news has been excellent.

Andrew Cross

Russia-Ukraine war? BORING Let’s discuss Felix’s fighter jet fixation First mentioned a MiG-31 ‘Foxhound’ at like 7:50 or something

TRaVis

*foxbat

VAN Fan

Yeah you would look like that

NYCM&AHole

No wonder Bernie failed and all the sheeple voted Joe Brandon

Andrew Cross

those F code names (like the one that’s insanely close to the f slur for the MiG-15 lmao) are all NATO reporting names anyway

J. A.

no it doesnt??????

J. A.

oh u being sarcastic

J. A.

he does that everytime

J. A.

Russian imperialism and its the country next door

Gradient

I’ll look him up. Thx for the rec

J. A.

Idk i hope the nk soldiers were real and they gained a lot of intelligence to bring back to the only Korea that isn't fully captured by IJN collaborators

J. A.

meanwhile donald trump on camera: "we will be taking 500 billion dollars in natural resources "

J. A.

well yeah trump cut all their funding

J. A.

he got a fork stuck in him, he was done

J. A.

lol

The Fine Art Revolution

Oh silly me, I guess Russia is fine with military bases and launch platforms at their doorstep since we have subs too. What are you talking about

etienne

yankee go home but i would not get injured over it

Stop the Spread

There are NOT a ton of Nazis in Russia! Just Ukraine… Let them fight.

Maciek

lol sup with u fucking cowards always making your insults so sexual. What kind of pathology is that

Maggie+Al

on Corner spati they pointed out Biden pushed the SPDs vote share lower last week than the SA Goon squads did in 1933.

Ryan Gullage

The malevolent hacking force in the new techno-apocalypsistical series (starring De Niro) is named Felix.

Andrew Cross

his voice is froggy but not because of vaping

Andrew Cross

Eurofighter ‘Typhoon’ mentioned, Dassault ‘Rafale’ alluded to

Ryan Gullage

I don’t think it means anything.

Ryan Gullage

Cool to see Travis Bickle in a House of Cards meets Awakenings kinda thing, though.

brendo

This is such a boring gotcha. Who genuinely gives a fuck that they predicted something wrong in this fucking media environment? What, did you put money on it based on Ames' prediction? You just don't like them for whatever reason and latched onto this as a reason to hate them more. Show me one fucking pundit who's never been wrong

Ryan Gullage

Canada’s never been a junior partner. What happened to the White House the last time this shit went down.

Christopher Price

C14 also recruits from western Ukraine, ie the most ideologically committed corner of the country. If they had won the war, those psychos would have declared war against Poland the next day.

Christopher Price

absolutely insane statement considering that Ames has repeatedly called the invasion a war crime.

Agent Grange

I don't think I agree with the framing that "Russia tried to take Kyiv and couldn't so they are clearly not a strong enough enemy to worry about" like they were roundly beaten. If you really examined the events of that first month of the invasion, it becomes clear that they were able to punch through to Kyiv basically expecting Ukraine to immediately back down and negotiate some sort of settlement-- or barring that there being some sort of popular uprising. Instead Ukraine mobilized their volkstrum, and Russia found themselves looking down the barrel of an urban siege against civilian militia. I don't think they expected Ukraine to be willing to do that, so they cut their losses and refocused on long-term strategic goals in Donbas over a sort of blitzkrieg that would level Ukraine's capital... They also put a weird amount of effort into trying to capture the An-225 Mriya as a part of that blitz, before Ukraine blew up their own plane in an artillery strike then blamed Russia for intentionally destroying it. Russia pulled back almost immediately after it was destroyed. Which I think is kind of poetic and indictive of Russians incursion into Kyiv and why they withdrew. To be very clear, I'm not saying that Russia even did this on some moral basis. I think when this war started they might have felt some naïve sense of post-soviet brotherhood-- that even though this invasion has kicked off, Ukrainians are still our close cousins so when we roll up to their city we'll be able to somehow work all this out. They seemed to underestimate the extent that Ukrainian ultranationalists had completely replaced that with thinly veiled race science and contempt for "muscovite orks." Or y'know, if you are being generous than even just how much of a unifying force an invasion can be.

Tim Mullen

Guys OSINT Brando is here to tell you that you had ideological blinders on for not believing the US government and not reviewing the raw image intelligence yourself. Get a grip dude we read left wing analysts cause the leftist analyst beats anything in the mainstream. It was wrong once you’re arguing in the chapo trap house Patreon comments ffs

Christopher Price

a lot of the good stuff is buried deep in telegram, which might be the real front line of the conflict.

Christopher Price

every leftist from ukraine had to leave or have been totally shunned because all of their analysis is about how the war is dumb, Ukraine is being used a proxy and the country is being looted by the local oligarchs and their nazi paramilitaries

Agent Grange

It's always frustrating when self proclaimed academics and specialists on this topic will default to empty loaded platitudes like "Ukraine has a right to defend itself" while doing absolutely nothing to mention or explain the circumstances surrounding the Minsk Agreements. It kind of is an immediate tell for me that you either don't know what you're talking about, or that you are too much of a coward to mention something that might paint Russia's invasion as a natural response to a increasing crisis rather than a naked act of aggression like everyone in the western press says it is.

Agent Grange

In 2022 they were posting about giving East Karelia to Finland after Ukraine carves up the Muscovite empire. Now they're in here posting "ERMMM THIS WILL FELLOW SAYS 'LIKE' TOO MUCH SOMEONE SHOULD TEACH HIM TO SPEAK PROPERLY... DOGSHIT EPISODE!"

Agent Grange

Every time there's a Ukraine episode I get so excited hoping it'll finally be when Felix talks about the failed Russian operation to capture the AN-225-- the most Ace Combat ass thing to happen in the 21st century. And each time I'm disappointed and have to confront the reality that he might just not even know about it.

g$

drop the oscar episode right now

Andrew Cross

I would love to know more about that

Sneed

Agree 100% They sent an occupation force and weren't expecting an actual fight outside of the Donbas. They also offered the Ukrainian soldiers the chance to put down their weapons and just go home.

Agent Grange

It's a hell of a story that drives me crazy because it's not properly documented and subjected to a lot of propaganda. Russia sent their own division of paratroopers supporter by a helicopter squadron ahead of the front lines to capture Antonov Airport outside Kyiv with the explicate goal of capturing Mriya and flying it back to Russia. They couldn't take off because one of the engines just happened to be dismantled for repairs at the time, so the Russian paratroopers instead got caught in a Ukranian counterattack. Both sides trade blame on who was actually responsible for the plane being destroyed but it seemed like the most likely culprit was Ukraine, who would rather it be destroyed than captured. At any rate, the Russians only pulled out *after* an artillery strike hit the main hangar. There wasn't a lot of strategic value to that one cargo plane, so it had to have been purely a failed propaganda mission or some sense of preserving the Soviet legacy. All around clusterfuck for both sides and indictive of the war overall.

Savannakhet

They're gonna conscript you into SDRA8

Jesse Svetlich

Both those examples from Marx are anti imperialist. That seems like a pretty good rubric.

Matthew Krueger

You're a liberal. I don't think of this kind of analysis as excusing anything as much as I do an attempt to explain things. You somehow concluding that any of the folks talking here prefer one kind of imperialism to another is hilarious.

Matthew

Everyone's so angry you'd think it was an Adam Friedland episode

Proboscis Man

The many critters that we watch on the instant-gram

lake

What are you talking about?? People said that they say problematic stuff. I’m not sure I believe that so I wanted to hear some examples. My guess is nobody can provide any. I’m kind asking for the opposite of what you say.

etienne

we're never gonna see anything like the Dream ever again, unless the Chinese randomly decide they want to get good at planes and want to do a one-off like that just as a flex

Andrew Cross

that’s incredibly stupid but a cool story

——

Or try to say McClellan!

MadamAjab

"We" lol. You're very convincing as a Leftist, especially that part about Gaza, and yes that is sarcasm.

Colin McCarthy

War Nerds are the best! Love these episodes

Sam

Brother, you seem to be retarded.

bator

Radio War nerd is OG as helllll

hamburglar

There’s also a French anti tank missile named “Fagot”

.

Nice. You should go to Ukraine to fight on the frontlines in their supposed “international legion” Anyone who doesn’t want this war to end fucking immediately needs to immediately go to the front lines to fuck around and find out with their bullshit internet comments.

Jack

the international working class

Ham Stroker’s Jackula

I’m just saying you put a Ukrainian guy and Russian guy next to one another I’m not seeing the difference except for one’s pockets are full of nato ammo and receipts for javelin missiles (lost on delivery)

.

Why? You want other people to die in your place? Coward. Here’s the website. Join up and go https://ildu.com.ua

Jonathan Van Gurter

I'm fine pal, you're the one who can't shut up about it.

Return of The Mac 2nite

This framework disregards the Ukrainian ethnic cleansing operations in Donbas that began as early as 2014. Also discards the fact that maidan was an American-NATO coup backed by orchestrated gun violence

Rxk Lenderman

Comments full of people with Halo 3 Geopolitics

.

You’re very obviously not with your “sounds like Russian BS” comment. Go fight for Ukraine then. They need more people to throw into the slaughter. See what it’s like for yourself. Bet you won’t. And since you won’t you should stfu with these types of comments in reaction to people who want the war to end.

Jonathan Van Gurter

Ok, you got me, I'm all signed up. I'll be droning orcs tomorrow. Thanks for showing me the way.

.

“Droning orcs tomorrow” is all I need to know. Please sign up and log off forever

Karl Hungus

The Ghost of Kiev is the friends we made along the way

Dang

Glad they got the right response to their offer

Dang

Famous pro Russian Congressman, Bernie Sanders

Dang

Careful with that talk 'round these parts. Only Ukrainians can be Nazis in chapo land

Casey Edmondson

Hunter should've worked for the coking coal company instead.

Dexter Rappleye

Your description seems about right, I don’t see how it conflicts with chapo/rwn’s though. Russia thought Ukraine would immediately remember whose side they’re on, which turned out to be a disastrous error. But it really doesn’t seem like they could have “taken Kiev” by pure force even if that was the main goal, and it’s insane to fantasize about them rolling into Warsaw/Prague/Berlin etc. like liberals do.

Matt D

New genre of podcast about Ukraine Russian war where one guy only wants to talk about the American civil war

Agent Grange

I broadly agree that Russia does not have the military strength, state resources, and most importantly *political will* to do a larger invasion of Europe-- in that regard I agree with the spirit of what they were saying. But for me the distinction is that I don't agree with the myth making that Russia was repelled by Ukrainian strength of arms back over the border rather than it being a very deliberate retreat on their own terms. It's lead to a lot of supremely annoying myth surrounding Ukraine's military capability, ie Ghost of Kyiv, St. Javlin, all those stupid keychains that are supposedly made out of scrapped T80s but are almost certainly made in Taiwan, so on and so forth. It created this perception that Ukraine was far more equipped for this war than they really were, and is still integral to Zelenskys ploy to escalate the conflict. He has openly said "Ukraine is the army that was able to push back Russia from Kyiv, so there should be a centralized European army that has Ukraine at the forefront because Europe can't repel Russia without us!" I can see how all this ends, and it's with a new stabbed-in-the-back myth perpetuated by Ukrainian ultranationalists where the Ukrainian Armed Forces werent defeated in the field, and only lost to Russia because they were betrayed by the politicians. When in reality, almost the entirety of this conflict has been dictated by Russia's strategic goals up to and including their withdrawal from Kyiv. (The only exception maybe being Kursk, which I am partially convinced Russia is happy to be a sump that sucks all of Ukraine's most well equipped troops off the Donbas front and a pit that Zelensky is tossing all the sections of the army controlled by Azov / Right Sector into in the hopes they die in Russia so he doesn't have to worry about them assassinating him after the war.)

Savannakhet

Hey do you remember when Zelensky backed Israel after October 7th and compared Palestinians to Russians? Now the Hamas government looks like it's going to outlive the Zelensky government. (Small Violin Plays)

gatito

haha you fucking idiot what are you doing here

Hilary is Pant-suited Syphilis

Yeah it is. Thinking back pre 1820’s for examples doesn’t change what role Canada has played with US imperialism in modern times.

jbwhat

If you look at history, the Tzars and Stalin prevented Ukranian from being spoken. Lenin allowed it and then Khruschev allowed it because his mother was Ukrainian. This whole who speaks the language stuff is bullshit. The tzars used French as the court language and in a lot of Russian literature the French envy was on. Nobody mentions that. Also, the nazi stuff isn't as simple as everyone seems to make it. It's my understanding that a lot of the western Ukrainian nazism is a generational response to the Holodomor, so, in a sense it's less Russian than Stalin hate and it came from a linking of western Ukrainians to invading Germans, and it may be bullshit, but I read that however evil and nazi those units were they wouldnt fight Ukrainians. I mean, if you had to eat your Grandma, you'd probably put on any uniform against those who made you do it, and for Christ's sake, early NATO, led by the Dulles bros was totally cool with nazis, even placing them in western German govt post war. I can't speak to Russian nazis, as I'm not as read on that, but I know they exist. This whole language and nazi stuff is a fucking red herring for or other things. I tend to think this particular war is a dick measuring match run by guys (Putin, Biden, maybe Trump) who think the 80s was the greatest time ever and think everything is still tied to that. But, that's just my opinion and I'm totally cool with anyone thinking I'm wrong.

Natalie

I'm sorry if I sound very dumb but I've tried to sub to RWN on patreon before but I don't think you can? Do I just need to be on the 'puter instead of my phone? I've found their episodes online, do people just listen there for free? I enjoy their delivery of information, this ep was very good bc its so hard to keep up on this conflict. Although if Ukraine has a right to defend itself, let's see them defend themselves then! lolz

kel

you can do it from your phone but it has to be from a browser i think and not the patreon app

king_von_diesel

An honest man will tell you that Ukraine is full of nazis. A realistic man will tell you that the far right leader that has most won through all of this is Putin.

Joe Schmoe

I guess I just noticed. Maybe it was extra extra this time haha

.

This is an incredibly simplistic view of the war and what’s going on. No one here likes Putin but they understand the context and Putin standing up against NATO. He is another neoliberal that was allowed to happen because of US imperialism that grew out of capitalist encirclement and the Soviet Unions own internal problems that led to its collapse. This is the same guy who asked to join NATO and the EU earnestly. He is nothing really different than our own U.S./EU oligarchs but that state was threatened and ostracized by the same people who allowed his rise to power through Yeltsin. There is just no illusions around what “democracy” means in Russia. Highly recommend listening to Radio War Nerds episodes on Yeltsin and the fall of the Soviet Union.

George Gallowgay

I subbed and then quickly unsubbed to this “radio war nred” . I dropped him because of his uncritical conversations with anti Palestinian commentators. Let’s just say the past few months of news have vindicated my choice to purge my feed of this stupid mother fucker

.

What? They are pro Palestine and give historical eps on Hamas and other axis of resistance forces. At least you have a beautiful accent George Gallowgay that makes me feel like that macgruber scene 😘 https://youtu.be/ZHCd8doza2M?si=CGlecFB7e78LkfX4

Remy

Like a year and a half ago, I was sitting next to Sen. Mark Warner (Dem chair of Intelligence Committee) at a restaurant, and he was talking to some British asshole. The guy asks Warner where he gets his best information from, and Warner says Bellingcat is the main news site he checks every day. So good to know high level Dems are constantly cooking their brains in that slop

eduard karpoev

I'm Russian, and self I'm not self loathing obviously biased. However very intresting to hear this perspective but I do disagree with some stuff

John Mitchell

I wuz surprised to hear Will remark on the benefit for Russia to test their weapons against Best Western's tech. Pretty cool to have the hospitality sector moving into the military contractor space. "We'll turn your lights off for ya."

gatito

your retardation made me feel sorry for you and your condition, can’t really speak to any trauma tho haha

gatito

2/5 people in this thread are severely mentally unwell

gatito

bros nafoposting stipend got cut 💀

gatito

listen to the episode and decide for yourself lmfao

Frank Lee Dontcare

Awh new to politics? Welcome. We all start somewhere.

Frank Lee Dontcare

Question is: What cause/society would you risk your life for?

DK

Guys, he said the retard word! How cool and based! Fucking chud.

Ian H

⬆️ Guy in 1423 seeing "St. Peter Healing a Cripple and the Raising of Tabitha"

etienne

if you came away with the impression they and their guests are anti palestinian I can only say you're a moron and thank you for purging yourself out of the community

Peter Pork

Said the uncritical stupid mother fucker

Frank Lee Dontcare

What everyone else said, plus, you're ascribing imperialism to Russias actions and aspirations without cause.

Francisco Rodriguez Rascon

Some time I would also love to see frequent War Nerd guests go on Chapo. Like imagine what it would have been to have Annibale and Matt Christman together in one episode.

George Gallowgay

Specifically, it was the hosts’ msnbc level of analysis when they had Joshua landis on to talk about how amazing it was that Israel leveled city blocks to kill nasrallah. If I want to listen to an Ivy League spook give some cia talking point I’ll just turn on the tv. They did not seem to understand who their guest was or what he was saying.

etienne

yeah I know you were talking about this episode

George Gallowgay

I just didn’t know it was that kind of show (uncritically parroting Zionist/state dept talking points). If that’s what you’re into you could save $5 a month by just watching Maddow.

king_von_diesel

We live in a world where Victor Orban is the voice of reason. How the hell did we let this happen

xasquim

You sound like a massive loser

xasquim

No one cares lib

xasquim

Lmfao how TF do you people even find your way here? R worded beyond belief

Adam

We have all kinds of equipment ready to go in Afghanistan.

Noctor

Adding a degree of nuance I’d point out NATO is a military alliance and such alliances need a villain to oppose that justifies the size of military preparedness. If every country was in NATO, what good would article 5 be? But also NATO is really only a military alliance secondarily to the purpose of MIC revenue: the interoperability clause means guaranteed revenue for mostly western MIC (and India). And it’s great bc even in peace time forces need to train together and bullets and bombs are single use disposables.

GWAR-a-Lago

honestly kind of shocked he failed to clarify that

Jackm

That was a painful episode to listen to, for sure. And for me it was prefaced by countless occasions of listening to the hosts (the War Nerd himself, in particular) being incapable of mentioning Hezbollah without singing its praises. If that episode were to give me my first impression of the podcast I probably would've unsubscribed, too. But for the podcast and its audience I felt it was more of a reckoning—with a point of view, and with possible reality which if we're being honest is difficult to assess from over here. Yes, it needs to be foregrounded that Israel gained next to no ground in Lebanon, but where would Hezbollah be if Nasrallah were still with us? It's a despicable world we live in that accepts the way Israel conducted its war against Hezbollah, accepts genocide. But it's a despicable world we live in. If you want to hear how Israel is collapsing, or playing right into Hezbollah's hand at every turn, you can tune in to Scott Ritter or some other Judge Nap guests (*Respect, btw) I'm fairly aligned with RWN ideologically. Sometimes I disagree ideologically, sometimes it's analytical. It's healthy. They do have some screamer guests, like Aris on Ukraine, whom I only had to hear the first time. Let me know when Maddow gives you a detailed overview of conflicts you barely knew were happening in regions you've never heard of, followed by periodic updates, or a multi-part interview with a //deep// political insider breaking down several decades of recent Italian history so thoroughly you feel embarrassed for any other podcast that ever says "Gladio" or "Years of Lead."

Jackm

...Or, in an extremely timely fashion, Maddow brings on a Danish shipping container expert to discuss the history and strategic importance and game theoretical forecast of what happens next to Greenland. Or when she dedicates (at least) one whole episode to Hezbollah and what's made it such an effective organization. I try not to listen to anything uncritically. RWN can rub me the wrong way like anything else. But I wouldn't stan like this for another podcast: on balance it's the most engaging education I pay for monthly among 4-5 generally info-centric podcasts, and if/when the going gets tougher I suspect it'll be the last I unsubscribe from. Chapo will probably have me locked in for another year.

George Gallowgay

Jackm - you are correct and I appreciate this reply. I totally thought that might have been the case— that on that particular episode they were perhaps over correcting by letting the guest just say whatever. I just don’t think that’s acceptable.

Jackm

Fair enough!

Jackm

Love this comment after reading it appear a second without bothering to figure out or caring who it's meant for

Jackm

The ToI article says Israel has been supportive of Ukraine, only they've "drawn the line" at sending weapons. You think all those civilians are going to kill /themselves/?

gatito

it ain’t that deep bro, i’m gonna keep calling anyone who refers to another race of humans as “orks” a retard, sorry or whatever

Lars Sund

Hi, long time / last time listener here. Just going to say that your overall perspectives on the Ukraine conflict, and this episode in particular, is what caused me to pull the plug on my subscription to chapo. "Europe must be suicidal [for wanting to support Ukraine]" and other shallow statements in this episode just really got me to understand that you guys don't really have anything but sarcasm at the expense of others to offer anymore. We need more than that in Europe right now, as do you in America. Thanks for the laughs over the years, but this is where I get off!