Putin's War

[Zorro]

A Times investigation based on interviews, intercepts, documents and secret battle plans shows how a “walk in the park” became a catastrophe for Russia.

They never had a chance.

Fumbling blindly through cratered farms, the troops from Russia’s 155th Naval Infantry Brigade had no maps, medical kits or working walkie-talkies, they said. Just a few weeks earlier, they had been factory workers and truck drivers, watching an endless showcase of supposed Russian military victories at home on state television before being drafted in September. One medic was a former barista who had never had any medical training.

Now, they were piled onto the tops of overcrowded armored vehicles, lumbering through fallow autumn fields with Kalashnikov rifles from half a century ago and virtually nothing to eat, they said. Russia had been at war most of the year, yet its army seemed less prepared than ever. In interviews, members of the brigade said some of them had barely fired a gun before and described having almost no bullets anyway, let alone air cover or artillery. But it didn’t frighten them too much, they said. They would never see combat, their commanders had promised.

Only when the shells began crashing around them, ripping their comrades to pieces, did they realize how badly they had been duped.

Flung to the ground, a drafted Russian soldier named Mikhail recalled opening his eyes to a shock: the shredded bodies of his comrades littering the field. Shrapnel had sliced open his belly, too. Desperate to escape, he said, he crawled to a thicket of trees and tried to dig a ditch with his hands.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/16/world/europe/russia-putin-war-failures-ukraine.html

[Pas-de-Calais]

1. Paywall

[Zorro]

3. So get a subscription

[BWdem4life]

4. Not all of us have the means

To get a subscription to every news / opinion provider we might wish to. Especially not when they make it recurring, so you would have to keep track of when you initially subscribed to each one and then cancel a year later before the new (usually much higher) charge puts you in the negative, generating god knows how many NSF fees and throwing your already precarious financial life into further disarray.

IOW, please stop blaming and shaming other DUers who may not have the same financial ability as yourself.

[Zorro]

5. Sorry to hear $1.50/week busts your budget

Guess the NYT should just drop the paywall and forego paying their reporters.

[BWdem4life]

6. $1.50/week lol

That's how they all put it. Why not mention that it's less than a quarter per day? Whatever you do, don't mention that it's paid in a larger recurring lump sum, which might be withdrawn at an inconvenient time and cause cascading bank fees for someone whose bank account already hovers near zero.

I would think someone on a progressive website would get this, but apparently you're a tough case, or just prefer not to get it.

I am not suggesting that NYT should drop the paywall and forgo paying their reporters. Neither, most likely, is the person who commented with the single word "paywall." I am only stating that I do not have a subscription and do not wish to add to the financial pressure upon myself by getting one. That's just me, personally. Occasionally, by mentioning this, someone kindly posts a non-paywalled link. Worth a shot.

[usonian]

7. Archived

https://archive.ph/aG34s

About paywalls.



When all factual information is behind paywalls, only lies and hate speech will be free.
It's not about the "prosperous" DU members. We are mostly privileged in some way, and don't forget it.

There are people who are scraping money, their only connection to the world, including jobs and help wanted, is an expensive phone (still less than a computer).