Desertor

but comrade look at the bright side.  With traffic now restricted our limited supply of artillery rounds will last longer!

Are they saying that the "last two points" that could have taken 30 minutes to traverse but took 6 hours are the ones from Midnight to almost 6 am?  I think there's a very simple explanation for that that doesn't require the driver to be connected to any conspiracy.

'Tis but a scratch....
 
 

My solar array just went live yesterday... woot!  Love watching that meter run in reverse and with that let's go back to Ukraine and not US energy politics.

I have learnt more about boots/socks in cold weather than I thought possible - but great tips when I venture out for coffee in -50C weather again.  
What could be interesting is if Russia does pick up NATO gear in Afghanistan. CMBS would need to add the Humvee in Russian colours.
I have read a lot of western kit was left in Afghanistan.  Is there really anything of value that the Russians could use? body armour? boots? bridging equipment? This could be the first war where both combatants started with Soviet gear and ended up both fighting with NATO gear.

Good point. 
Regarding that “warning” though, why not always appending a similar labeling for links to any conservative sites that might also have headlines with political slants. Or maybe better to simply drop the whole political labeling thing and assumptions about tender feelings among the huge population here. Because the emphasis simply underscores the politics, not the information itself.

Lest anyone forget, the indigenous people of the Americas are still dealing with the forced migrations and "reservations" they were moved to.  As recently as 1976 the US was still doing forced sterilization of native women according to our own General Accounting Office.
Government admits forced sterilization of Indian Women - Timeline - Native Voices (nih.gov)
 In Vietnam we dumped chemical defoliants resulting in a vast unknown quantity of birth defects in the Vietnamese and our own troops.
Barbarity is not unique to Russia.  Humanity's track record for treating each other humanely is spotty at best.

Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).

Russia owns the pipeline, or at least has full scale technical access to it. They could easily have inserted a maintenance pig into the line with the requisute quantiy of explosives on board and sent it downstream until just outside national territory. Piece of the proverbial cake.

For God's sake. His country is under attack. His people are dying. Use the ignore function or shut up. All of you.

Thank you 
Some folk do appreciate you know what...
😉
 

Maybe we can start a different thread, something like "all the bad things US is doing & has done".  That's fine, I'm US and we've done some despicable things.  And we've done a huge amount of good.  Go ahead and criticize all day -- in that thread.   Heck, let's start w Nicaraugua, 1926.  
And maybe start another thread "let's bitch about Stolz & Germany".  Lots of valid point to be made there.
If we could do these two threads it would really clean up this thread which has been the go-to for many people on what is happening in the war.  I want to be diligent in this forum and not post w/o having read everyone's earlier posts.  But this thread is getting polluted w endless speculation and bitching about things over which we have no control.  

are you neglecting your new bride?  Shame on you.

We are about to see this on the scale of battalions rather than platoons. The Russians are going to put hundreds of mobiks at a time in places they should not be, with orders they cannot possibly fulfill. The one that don't surrender or rout in time are going to get chopped to dog meat. The AFU has a very great deal to be angry about. They have very disciplined about the entire surrender/prisoner process. BUT if a bunch of drunk Russian mobiks are caught dead to rights and don't give up when given the chance, The AFU is going joyfully FFE by entire artillery battalions before they ask the bleeding remnants if they would like to reconsider.
 
Edit: And they should, because making Russian mobiks more scared of the Ukrainians than they are of their own officers is how to win this war.

Regarding persistence and volume of communication, Russian TV is basically fox news on every channel, all day. every day. The sheer volume of crap being shoveled down peoples throats is beyond astounding. 
 
Does anyone have book recommendations on missile guidance, radar, and electronic warfare? This war has convinced me I don't know enough about it. Those commenters who wish to inform me I don't know enough about anything, well I am open to other book recommendations as well.
Our biggest problem in the info war is the sheer volume the other side puts out. Even more so in Russian and languages not commonly spoken in NATO. Our GREAT advantage is summed up by a movie quote " If you stop telling lies about me, I will stop telling the truth about you". The Russians really are utter B$$$####ds. They really do treat the parts of Ukraine they occupy like a disorganized concentration camp. They would/have treat/treated anybody else they have/would like to conquer the same way.  That is why the places that have had the misfortune of having the Russians around provide %220 to Ukraine.
See the book recommendations I posted last night. The most powerful thing about teaching things though interesting fiction is that it will be retained. I don't think this can overemphasized. It can be really hard to do to order, but when it works it the results are orders of magnitude greater than any other way. A person could make the same argument for games that teach the correct lessons, anybody know of one of those?

It's already in our family coat of arms. A t-shirt would make it cheap. 

Yeah they made a complete turnaround within 100 years. From A7V in 1918 to Leopard II A7V in 2019 😅

ouch!  
“Russian diplomats flee almost as aptly as Russian soldiers,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said when he spoke after Lavrov’s departure.

This one I am gonna have to say no way on.  Armed insurrection against their own government eliminates their right to expect the same freedoms enjoyed by other Ukrainian citizens.  They have crossed the line to sedition and criminal acts. How the Ukrainian gov't deals with this is their decision but I don't see an argument that these folks can just lay down their arms and immediately have all the same rights as the people who paid such an awful price for this war.

So you won't be applying for that passport?  there is a $25 cancellation fee... payable in beer.

This is a good thread 
I was going to summarize it but to be honest it deserves a full read. It's about many of the implications of the mobilisation which I hadn't even considered, and then touches on battlefield nuclear weapon usage briefly at the end. 

Ok, so let's try and have an actual conversation about all this.  Why not?  It is "forbidden discussions" week on the thread while we wait for the UA to reload.
First, lets put the emotion to one side for a moment - we saw how well that worked last time - and try to arrive at common ground.  I am not going to comment on forum policy or poor BFCElvis' endless and thankless work in trying to keep this place from become another internet cesspool - if you have a problem with forum policy, or felt you have been wronged in some way, take it up with him and BFC.
So what to do about Russia?  Russians everywhere?  They started a land war in Europe and they are supporting it, to some extent, for 6 months while their military is, in part, committing what is pretty much confirmed as systemic war crimes.
So how will justice be served in the prosecution of this war?  How will the offenders be made to pay so that it serves as an example to those that would re-offend?
Legally.  
The whole point of this war, and one of the big reasons why we care so much is that this is not just an unjustified invasion of Ukraine, it is an attack on the entire rules based international order.  In 1949, we all sat down, even Russia within the USSR, and said that this sort of action was illegal.  Its premise and definitely in its prosecution, by Russia, have been illegal within international law and the Law of Armed Conflict.  Russia's position, beyond some very weak tea technical arguments - SMO, has been - "ya, so what are you going to do about it...we are Russia and have nukes?"
That will not stand.  It cannot stand.  It threatens the entire scheme at its heart.  That scheme, btw, pays for our lifestyles and guarantors the stability and security we need to thrive, get richer and fatter, and have the freedom to yell at each other over all sorts of stuff.
So how will we put Russia back in the box?  Well first steps are to ensure it gets the spanking it so much deserves on the battlefield.  The next step, and it is very important, is to prosecute those responsible in Russia for this atrocity, within the frameworks of the law.
"Oh but the law is so "woke", we need to get medieval here to send a real message!"
1.  Shh, grown ups talking.
2.  If we step outside the legal framework, the one we built, we will break it ourselves, which in many ways is worse.
Don't believe me, well we have a convenient historical example - Iraq 2003. 
And before anyone freaks out, let me start by saying that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is not anywhere near what is happening in Ukraine.  The legal justification for that war was "thin" but it adhered to the rules far closer than what we are seeing today.  It was unsanctioned by UN, the evidence for the whole thing turned out to be incorrect; however, the US made a case for self-defence against a known international offender, one who had not only invaded another country but also threatened "the great Satan" repeatedly.  Further the US prosecuted that war under the LOAC.
However the repurcutions of that action, one the edge of legality in some places are still being felt today.  In Putin's last speech he references "terror/terrorism" 5 times as as a justification for this war.  The lesson here is that if we fracture to system of order, very bad things start to happen.
So we will hold Russia accountable.  We will demand reparations for lifting sanctions.  We will demand the turning over of war criminals for prosecution.  We will employ national security mechanisms to find and arrest anyone who supported Russia's war outside of the laws of whatever country they are in.  And we will do so within the defined limitations of the law.
Anything beyond that is a revenge fantasy that serves no real purpose in discussing this war.  Now are we able to continue on in peace and harmony?

Hopefully he is already dead and that’s why the speech has been delayed (forever)

Hopefully he is already dead and that’s why the speech has been delayed (forever)

Well, I guess we know who is getting mobilized first.