Machor
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Posts posted by Machor
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FancyCat already posted a tweet linking to this, but I think it's worth posting more detail: The Bellingcat report on the latest Russian torture/murder videos is out. I'll quote the introduction as a summary; TL;DR:
1. The primary suspect is a Siberian ethnic minority fighting alongside Chechens.
2. It looks like the Russians considered charging him, but changed their mind and claimed that it was Ukrainian soldiers who tortured and murdered the Ukrainian victim.
Tracking the Faceless Killers who Mutilated and Executed a Ukrainian POW
QuoteOn July 28, a series of horrifying videos circulated on pro-Russian social media which depicted an act of sexual violence and execution of what appeared to be a Ukrainian prisoner of war. Bellingcat has not linked to these videos due to their extremely graphic nature.
The three videos (hereafter ‘the violent videos’) were initially posted on a Russian telegram channel whose name translates as ‘Cargo 200, death to Ukrainians’, which extolls casualties among Ukrainian armed forces. The videos were subsequently reposted on the popular Rosich Telegram channel run by a nationalist Russian mercenary group.
The videos were initially celebrated by the channel administrators and most of the commenting users, until several hours later they were suddenly disowned by the same as “likely forgeries”, allegedly planted in the pro-Russian channels by agents of Ukraine aiming to discredit the Russian army.
A description of the act in the videos, which each show a part of the same sequence of events, follows in the closed drop-down box below.
The footage shows a soldier approaching a figure wearing Ukrainian military fatigues and the blue and yellow patches worn by Ukrainian servicemen. The identity of the victim, whose face cannot be seen clearly in the videos, remains unknown.
In the first video, two accomplices were seen restraining the man while the cameraman and a man in a cowboy hat looked on.
In the second video, the presumed Russian soldier in the cowboy hat then castrates the captive, who is mocked by the group of soldiers watching.
In a third video, the captive is executed with a gunshot to the head, presumably by the soldier in the cowboy hat.
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Bellingcat’s investigation into visual clues in the videos using the available open source evidence corroborates the authenticity of the three violent videos and indicates that fighters from ‘Akhmat’, a Chechen paramilitary formation serving with the Russian armed forces in Ukraine, were present at the scene of the murder.
The link to ‘Akhmat’ was uncovered while investigating a man who appeared in multiple news broadcasts about the group who wore the same distinctive hat, bracelet and military fatigues as seen worn by one individual in the mutilation video. Several visual clues in these news broadcasts also suggested that they could have been filmed near, and in the same time frame, as the murder videos, including one filmed at the same location in July of this year.
The identity of the individual who wears the cowboy hat in the videos of the ‘Akhmat’ fighters is known to Bellingcat. However, Bellingcat has obscured his image and name as while there are numerous commonalities, the face of the alleged perpetrator cannot be clearly seen in the videos of the act itself.
Bellingcat contacted this individual to offer him a right of reply. In a conversation with reporters, he acknowledged that he had been deployed to Ukraine as a member of the ‘Akhmat’ group, and that he was “the man in the cowboy hat” seen in the news broadcasts. While he denied that he appeared in the mutilation and execution videos, he did confirm that he had been detained and questioned by the Russian security services over the footage, who had told him that it actually depicted Ukrainian soldiers mutilating one of their own comrades.
And a new atrocity:
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The BBC reporting from the heart of 'Mother Russia' (though actually very close to Estonia and Latvia) - don't hold your breath for a popular uprising, but mobilization is also not likely:
Reality of Ukraine war hidden from Fortress Russia
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62331061
Quote...
But what of the Russian public? More than five months on, do Russians believe their president took the right decision?
In the big cities, such as Moscow and St Petersburg, it's not uncommon to hear people criticise the Kremlin's "special operation".
But I'm a long way from the capital after a nine-hour drive north-west of Moscow.
I leave the village and head to the regional capital, Pskov. As I drive past a military base, the slogan on the poster outside catches my eye: "The borders of Russia never end!"
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In town, at a rundown Soviet era sports stadium, they're re-enacting a battle from World War Two.
People posing as Russian partisans are involved in a shoot-out with a group dressed as German Nazis. A mock-up of a Russian village is in flames.
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"My youngest child says that Russians always win. That Russia will always be victorious. I hope that's true," says one of the spectators, Tatyana. "The past teaches us that people gave their lives so that we could live. That's why we must support our soldiers now."
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I continue my journey through Pskov region and drive to Novorzhev. Russia may be an energy superpower, but this town has no gas supply - it's still being built.
To heat their homes, many people here burn firewood. One apartment block I visit has no running water. The residents bring it in buckets from a well.
At the local market, I meet senior citizen Natalya Sergeyevna.
More than two decades of Vladimir Putin in power have not given her a comfortable retirement. To supplement her pension, Natalya sells everything she grows at home: from blackberries to potted plants.
At the age of 84, Natalya still toils in the garden, planting and harvesting potatoes to raise extra cash. She doesn't blame her president, though.
"I like Putin and what he's doing," she tells me. "I feel sorry for him. He gets no rest. As for America and all those other troublemakers, they just want to break Russia into parts. They don't understand that they mustn't try to humiliate us."
I have heard the criticisms Natalya makes about Ukraine, the US and the West many times before on Russian TV. It's hardly surprising.
In Russia, television remains the key tool for shaping public opinion. And since the Kremlin controls TV, it pretty much controls the narrative and the messaging in the country. Especially since independent media in Russia have been silenced.
The result: the Russian public is receiving a highly filtered, distorted picture of what is happening in Ukraine. But state propaganda doesn't work in isolation.
Like Natalya Sergeyevna's garden, which produces a wealth of berries, fruits and vegetables, in Russia there is a fertile soil for the idea of Russia as an empire, a superpower, dictating to its neighbours and taking on the West.
The Kremlin knows that its messaging will strike a chord with many here. But striking a chord is one thing. Persuading Russians to join the fight in Ukraine is quite another.
"I support the special military operation. So many of our lads have been killed," says an 18-year-old student in Novorzhev. "If I'm called up, I'll go and fight. But I don't want to sign up."
"It's our duty to fight, if we're enlisted," another student, Konstantin, tells me. "Otherwise I won't go near there. Not for money, not for anything. Family's more important."
The Kremlin may dominate the information landscape. But there are limits to its powers of persuasion.
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Excellent reporting by the BBC's former Russia correspondent Sarah Rainsford, who was kicked out of Russia before the war; I will quote only the introduction, a part about possible crimes against humanity, and the conclusion, but highly recommend reading the whole article - it should be accessible to all without a paywall unless if you're in Russia:
Ukraine's shadow army resisting Russian occupation
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62333795
QuoteAs Ukraine's military steps up its strikes on Kherson, hinting at a new offensive to recapture the region, there is another force working alongside. They are Ukraine's shadow army, a network of agents and informers who operate behind enemy lines.
Our journey to meet the resistance fighters takes us through a landscape of sunflower yellow and sky blue to Mykolaiv. The first major town on Ukrainian-controlled territory west of Kherson, it has become the partisans' headquarters on the southern front.
Driving through military checkpoints, we pass giant billboards showing a faceless, hooded figure alongside a warning: "Kherson: The partisans see everything." The image is designed to make the region's Russian occupiers nervous and boost the morale of those trapped under their rule.
"The resistance is not one group, it's total resistance," the man standing in front of me insists, his voice slightly muffled by a black mask he's pulled up from his neck so I can't see his face as we film him, in a room I can't describe so that neither can be found.
I'll call him Sasha.
Shortly before this war, Ukraine bolstered its Special Forces in part to build and manage a resistance movement. It even published a PDF booklet on how to be a good partisan, with instructions on such subversive acts as slashing the tyres of the occupier, adding sugar to petrol tanks or refusing to follow orders at work. "Be grumpy," is one suggestion.
But Sasha's team of informers have a more active role: tracking Russian troop movements inside Kherson.
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We can't travel into Kherson now it's occupied, but the mood in this crowd reveals plenty about life there. Even on Ukrainian-controlled soil, people are wary of what they say. "Will the Russians see this?" some of the new arrivals want to know before I film or even record them speaking. Others shake their heads as I approach, and turn away from my microphone.
"It's tough there, the Russians are everywhere," Alexandra tells me, bouncing baby Nastya on her knee in the back of a car. Inside the aid tent an older woman is standing with two carrier bags at her feet looking lost and lonely. Struggling with tears, Svitlana tells me she's fled Kherson because her nerves are in shreds but her husband has refused to come with her. "He said he's waiting for the Ukrainian army to come and liberate us," she says.
As night begins to fall, and more vehicles pull in, a man admits that his own family are running from more than the missiles. "We know people are disappearing, it's true," he tells me, without giving his name. "In Kherson, you don't go out in the evening."
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Sasha believes many of those who have remained in the city are ready to stay and fight; those I've spoken to say support for Russian rule is minimal and the searches, detentions and beatings in recent months have shrunk that still further.
"When the army starts to invade, then people will be ready and will help," Sasha says.
After his own brutal experience in Russian custody, Oleh is already back on the southern front to fight for his hometown, alongside Ukraine's partisan army.
"They can take the land, but they can't take the people," is how he puts it. "The Russians will never be safe in Kherson, because the people didn't want them there. They don't like them. They won't accept them."
"A resistance poster reads: Zaporizhzhia, land of death to the occupiers:"
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11 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
Corporate leadership has decided that chess metaphors are no longer appropriate
Everything has its time and place...
You know what that move Russia made towards Kyiv in the beginning of the war was?
Putin's Gambit - where you screw up, then say it's all part of the 'plan'.
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1 hour ago, Harmon Rabb said:
Thank you for bringing this to light and posting a warning.
I'm not going to watch it but I believe the video is exactly how you describe it.
57 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:I am going to opt out on seeing these videos.
Posting this as a warning to those who may want to watch the videos:
The video that Haiduk linked to shows the mutilated body of a Ukrainian soldier. I at least hope that he was already dead before this barbaric act was carried out.
Before I ran into the castration video on Twitter, I had thankfully read warnings from people who had watched it about how traumatizing it was, and I stopped watching it after two seconds - it is extremely disturbing!
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6 hours ago, poesel said:
It's rather the other way round: in chess, you hit as hard as possible. There are only two parties - a zero-sum game. Your win is the loss of the other.
I would like to make a correction to the widespread misuse of chess as a metaphor, but not for pedantic reasons - I think it's something worth keeping in mind when playing CM or any other tactical wargame:
Most chess games between grandmasters end in a draw. You do not win at chess by outsmarting your opponent; you win by waiting for him or her to make a mistake, and capitalizing on it. If neither player makes a mistake - and grandmasters rarely make mistakes - the game ends in a draw.
From Wikipedia:
"In chess games played at the top level, a draw is the most common outcome of a game: of around 22,000 games published in The Week in Chess played between 1999 and 2002 by players with a FIDE Elo rating of 2500 or above, 55 percent were draws. According to chess analyst Jeff Sonas, although an upward draw rate trend can be observed in general master-level play since the beginning of the 20th century, it is currently "holding pretty steady around 50%, and is only increasing at a very slow rate". Draw rate of elite grandmasters, rated more than 2750 Elo, is, however, significantly higher, surpassing 70% in 2017 and 2018.
In top-level correspondence chess under ICCF, where computer assistance is allowed, the draw rate is much higher than in the over-the-board chess: of 1512 games played in the World Championship finals and the Candidates' sections between 2010 and 2013, 82.3% ended in a draw. Since that time, draw rate in top-level correspondence play has been rising steadily, reaching 97% in 2019."
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Good reporting from the front by the BBC - @Taranis will like this:
Ukraine war: West's modern weapons halt Russia's advance in Donbas
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62317366
Quote...
But in the corner of a wheat field outside Donetsk, the commander of a Ukrainian artillery unit who asked to be known only by his first name, Dmitro, was adamant. "They're not firing as often. The rate of artillery fire [from Russian forces] has dropped by half. Maybe even more, maybe by two-thirds," he said, patting the side of a large green vehicle beside him.
The vehicle - a self-propelled artillery piece with a huge barrel pointing south towards Russian-held territory - is a French manufactured Caesar, one of the growing number of sophisticated Western weapons that can now be spotted moving along country lanes throughout Donbas. Dmitro, and many others here, believe they are helping to turn the tide against Russia.
With a deafening blast, the Caesar fired the first of three shells at what Dmitro said was a Russian infantry unit and several artillery pieces 27km (16 miles) away.
"We're much more accurate now. And we can hit them much further away," he said, with a grin. Within a minute, the artillery team had fired two more shells, and the vehicle was already moving away, fast, before Russian artillery had a chance to track its position and return fire.
And support for my observation on the previous page of the thread that Ukraine is closing the 'artillery gap':
Quote...
"Listen to that silence," said Yuri Bereza, a bearded 52-year-old commanding a volunteer unit tasked with defending Slovyansk. For well over an hour one recent morning, on a visit to a network of defensive trenches east of the city, not a single explosion could be heard.
"That's all because of the artillery you've given us - because of its accuracy," said Bereza. "Before, Russia had 50 gun barrels for every one we had. Now it's more like five to one. Their advantage is now insignificant. You could call it parity."
But Bereza, like Dmitro, emphasised that Ukraine needed far more Western weaponry in order to launch an effective counter-offensive.
"They can't beat us, and we can't beat them here. We need more equipment, especially armour, tanks, aviation. Without these things there will be enormous loss of life. That's the way Russia is used to waging war. They throw lives away," said Bereza.
"Ideally, we'd like three times as many [Western weapons] as they've already sent us. And quickly," confirmed Dmitro.
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Helpful infographics from Volodymyr Dacenko (https://twitter.com/Volodymyr_D_/status/1551964492606709767?cxt=HHwWjoC93ffe14krAAAA )
According to the current balance of power infographic, Ukraine seems to be closing the 'artillery gap' - but ATACMS should have been arriving yesterday; any number of crappy old APCs would also be appreciated:
And another one on Ukraine's AFV numbers at the start, losses, and replacements:
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3 hours ago, LuckyDog said:
I don't think that video is legit - the camera person seems to be standing where any return fire would come, and they are sheltering behind what looks like plywood. Or maybe they really are that inept!
@dan/california @danfrodo @panzermartin
The bearded 40+ guy yells "Allahu Akbar" before starting to shoot - I'm assuming they're Kadyrovites.
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6 hours ago, Billy Ringo said:
I think it would be naive to assume Russian and Saudi interests would not quietly and monetarily support....Russian and Saudi interests in other countries.
I don't want to take the thread OT either, so leaving this here without comment - as factual as it gets:
F1 driver says 'what happens in Alberta is a crime,' feels responsibility to speak about climate change
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/sebastian-vettel-oilsands-alberta-climate-change-1.6493309
"Sebastian Vettel arrived at the Montreal Grand Prix wearing his thoughts about climate change on his T-shirt.
The Formula One star from Germany arrived at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in a T-shirt with "Stop Mining Tar Sands," and "Canada's Climate Crime" under the picture of a pipeline. He's wearing a helmet with the same slogan this weekend.
"I think what happens in Alberta is a crime because you chop down a lot of trees and you basically destroy the place just to extract oil and the manner of doing it with the tarsands, oilsands mining, is horrible for nature," Vettel said, when asked about the T-shirt at a news conference Friday.
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His team Aston Martin is sponsored by Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil giant Aramco."
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I guess it had become unavoidable at this point:
Russia to pull out of International Space Station
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62308069
"Russia says it will withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS) after 2024 and build its own station instead."
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The Czechs are learning lessons from the Ukrainians:
Czech police add Ferrari taken from criminals to fleet
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62295674
"Police in the Czech Republic have unveiled the latest addition to their fleet of cars - a Ferrari capable of speeds up to 326km/h (202mph).
Police said the car had been confiscated from criminals."
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23 minutes ago, akd said:
They fire at 30 degree angle up typically, which is not much different than ground MLRS for a typical mission. I don't think this is a factor at all.
What is your take on the video that is in my second past post that I linked to? - Those Ukrainian Mi-8s seem to be firing almost vertically for a reason. (A less interesting explanation would be that they were loitering too close to their target when they were called in.)
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2 hours ago, Letter from Prague said:
Is the flying MLRS actually effective? I can imagine Russians doing it because someone said "do something!" and this is something that can be done with minimal risk. But Ukrainians don't seem to be the type for that, so is it actually good for something?
Judge for yourself - I think, yes, and that seemed to be the consensus here when I posted this, as well as with the comments on Twitter:
There's also this unique advantage that you can fire the rockets at a very high angle, to overcome deep trenches:
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Ukrainians doing flying MLRS with Czech Mi-24V. When they're flying this low, I feel the need to think in terms of a medium other than 'air' and 'ground' (like 'Eskimos have 50 words for snow' blah blah); reminds me of the special 'nap-of-the-earth' rules in Avalon Hill's MBT and IDF:
And an interesting find: It turns out this 'flying MLRS' was discussed in an NVA Mi-24 manual, so it's not an exotic maneuver that Russians came up with in Syria and Ukrainians copied from them in this war - by extension, former WP Mi-24 pilots should know about it:
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8 hours ago, Grigb said:
RU mil historian on the current issues of VDV
Summary - RU military finally discovered that their ideas for VDV use are wrong. Parachuting into a combat zone from a transport plane is suicidal. VDV light armor is too light to survive on the modern battlefield.
This was precisely what Panzerkrautswerfer argued at length on this forum several years ago - and against a VDV veteran; I feel privileged to have followed their debate back then.
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Dropping by with Coke & Stripper news:
Ukraine war: Russian investigator says 92 Ukrainians charged
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62287502
QuoteMoscow has charged 92 members of the Ukrainian armed forces with crimes against humanity, the head of Russia's investigative committee has said.
Alexander Bastrykin told government news site Rossiiskaya Gazeta that more than 1,300 criminal investigations had been launched.
He also proposed an international tribunal backed by countries including Bolivia, Iran and Syria.
Some 96 people, including 51 armed forces commanders, are wanted, he said.
The Ukrainians were involved in "crimes against the peace and security of humanity", he told the newspaper.
...
The Kremlin denies all war crimes, or that it has been targeting civilians. It has regularly blamed Ukraine for shelling its own infrastructure and killing its own civilians - accusations which have been widely dismissed by international leaders.
Mr Bastrykin accused the West of openly sponsoring "Ukrainian nationalism" so a UN-backed trial "is extremely doubtful".
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Mr Bastrykin instead proposed an international tribunal should be set up with countries that have "an independent position on the Ukrainian issue" - in particular Syria, Iran and Bolivia.
Along with hundreds of Ukrainian military and political targets, he said investigations are underway into Ukrainian health ministry employees who he accused, without providing evidence, of developing weapons of mass destruction.
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12 hours ago, Grigb said:
But the most mental case happened with RU legendary leader of legendary group DDT. During live concert in Ufa Yuri Shevchuk said: "Motherland, [my] friends, is not the president's ass, which you have to slabber and kiss all the time. The motherland is a beggar grandmother at the train station selling potatoes. This is the motherland" Immediately after the concert he was questioned and a case against him was started.
Shevchuk's "Умирали пацаны" - "The boys were dying" was the first song that I thought about when this war started, and one would understand why by looking at the lyrics; but first, the song itself:
Shevchuk wrote this song after visiting the front during the First Chechen War, and here he's singing it to footage he himself shot in Chechnya:
My attempt at a translation:
Quote"The boys were dying"
The boys were dying, terribly
The boys were dying, for nothing
And not every one of them was handsome
And not all of them were tall
But when they looked at me
Those human eyes covered with dust
Not like birds, and not like lambs
They warmed me like people
And I sang them Rock-n-Roll songs
Told them: It's all gonna be OK
And I yelled: We're all in this together
But it all sounded like a load of BS
The closer they are to death, the purer are people
The farther to the rear, the fatter are the generals
Here I saw, what may happen
With Moscow, Ukraine, the Urals
18 years - that ain't much
When you're wandering along the Tverskaya and broke
And it's quite something, when your heart has stopped beating
And your country gives you: a plastic wreath
The country sings them Rock-n-Roll songs
Tells them: It's all gonna be OK
The country yells: We're all in this together
But it sounds like a load of BS
The boys were dying, terribly
The boys were dying, for nothing
And not every one of them was handsome
And not all of them were tall
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7 hours ago, Billy Ringo said:
And...will be shocked if Erdogan aligns himself and Turkey more closely with Putin and Russia. Talk about joining a losing battle
6 hours ago, rocketman said:I worry that Erdogan will use any dissent among members as fodder for his own agenda of obstructing Sweden’s bid.
Anything that Erdoğan does or doesn't do from now on leads back to this:
He can no longer win an election without going full Lukashenko. If he loses, he goes to jail.
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Let's not take this to the toxic depths of US domestic politics, but focus on the article's argument: Ukraine's strategy, like that of Russia, is also constrained by politics, in this case the dynamics of US domestic politics [I have no idea why acronyms haven't been capitalized.]:
Is America growing weary of the long war in Ukraine?
Quote...
But nearly six months into the fight, with the prospect of a long war to come, even Mr Biden’s closest allies are asking whether America might soon tire of the burden. The president is more unpopular even than Donald Trump was at this point in his presidency. Inflation and high fuel prices are weakening Americans’ spending power. And Republicans are set to make important gains in mid-term elections in November: they are expected to take control of the House of Representatives and possibly also the Senate.
Chris Coons, a Democratic senator and close ally of Mr Biden’s—sometimes called the president’s “shadow secretary of state”—recently wrote a commentary praising nato’s show of unity at its summit in Madrid last month. It added: “I am concerned about the commitment of the American people and its elected leaders to stay the course as the invasion grinds on.” Vladimir Putin, Russia’s leader, “is counting on the West losing focus”, he told The Economist on July 14th.
The aid for Ukraine is intended to last until the end of the fiscal year on September 30th, but nobody is quite sure when the money will run out. Few in Congress think another large package for Ukraine can be passed before the mid-terms, and many say it could remain difficult thereafter. “It will be an uphill battle,” says a Republican Senate staffer. “The sales pitch from the last time is not good enough now, because the war has fundamentally changed and the domestic situation at home is different.”
Given the country’s acute polarisation, it is perhaps no surprise that Republicans should be sceptical of a proxy war conducted by a Democratic administration. Fewer Americans overall are prepared to pay an economic price for supporting Ukraine than were at the onset of war in March. But a recent poll for the University of Maryland finds that the gap between Democrats and Republicans is widening, too. Among Democrats, 78% would accept costlier fuel and 72% would bear more inflation to help Ukraine; among Republicans only 44% and 39% respectively would do so.
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Mr Trump still holds much of his party in thrall. He denounced the last aid package for Ukraine, saying: “The Democrats are sending another $40bn to Ukraine, yet America’s parents are struggling to even feed their children.” His base could be energised if, in the coming weeks, he announces his intention to run for president again in 2024. Meanwhile, unexpected trouble has come from Victoria Spartz, a Ukrainian-born Republican in the House who had once urged Mr Biden to act more decisively in Ukraine, but has recently taken to accusing some of Mr Zelensky’s aides of corruption.
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A second factor is the extent to which allies are willing to keep helping Ukraine confront Russia. “How much are our European partners doing? That’s literally the first question I get,” says Mr Coons. For most Americans, he notes, Ukraine is “half a world away”. European countries are closer to Russia’s military threat, and also more vulnerable to the danger of escalation, the loss of Russian energy supplies and the outflow of refugees.
Perhaps the biggest consideration is the third factor: progress on the battlefield. If the Biden administration can show that Ukraine is gaining ground, rather than being bogged down in another “forever war”, support for the country will be easier to rally. But a protracted conflict looks all too likely. Ukraine has had success of late in using American-supplied himars, a guided-missile launcher, to strike at command posts and ammunition dumps behind Russia’s front lines. But Ukrainian forces are still heavily outgunned and on the defensive, if not still retreating.
Mr Biden’s aim in the war is unclear. His administration has stopped talking about helping Ukraine to “win”, and instead speaks of preventing it from being defeated. It is delivering himars in small packages of four launchers at a time. (It claims it needs time to train Ukrainian forces.) But Mr Biden’s main concern is to avoid a direct conflict between nato and a nuclear-armed Russia. America has demanded assurances that the 84km-range gmlrs munitions provided with himars will not be fired at Russian territory; it has so far refused to provide the atacms munition which has a range of about 300km.
To some the war is unwinnable. They say the Biden administration should make haste to find a diplomatic deal. But for Ukraine’s supporters, whether Democratic or Republican, the answer is for Mr Biden to hurry up and win: give Ukraine more military help, do it faster and accept more risk. Mr Edelman has this warning for the Biden team: “If they think stalemate is the answer, or even if they are not intentionally playing for a stalemate, they’re going to lose on the battlefield, and they’re going to lose the battle for public opinion at home.”
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15 minutes ago, Huba said:
I'm listening to a weekly podcast by a Polish journalist, and he made an interesting suggestion about the potential transfer of American planes. He claims that given that there wasn't enough time to really re-train UA pilots, the only way to get them the F16 (and even more so F-15C) would be to have them flown by American pilots of UA ancestry, who speak the language and who would got handed Ukrainian passports. Probably finding enough such men among present and retired USAF pilots shouldn't be that hard.
This sounds perfectly logical to me, but what do people from the other side of the pond think? Any obvious reasons why it wouldn't be possible?
FWIW:
QuoteFor many years, the Soviet Union never acknowledged and actively denied that its pilots flew in Korea during the Korean War and only China and North Korea took responsibility for Korean war operations. After the end of the Cold War, Soviet pilots who participated in the conflict began to reveal their role. Books by Chinese, Russian and ex-Soviet authors, such as Zhang Xiaoming, Leonid Krylov, Yuriy Tepsurkaev and Igor Seydov revealed details of the actual pilots and operations. From the beginning, Soviet pilots were ordered to avoid flying over areas in which they might be captured, which would indicate that the Soviet Union was an active combatant in the war. Soviet aircraft were adorned with North Korean or Chinese markings and pilots wore either North Korean uniforms or civilian clothes to disguise their origins. For radio communication, they were given cards with common Korean words for various flying terms spelled out phonetically in Cyrillic characters. These subterfuges did not long survive the stresses of air-to-air combat, however, when pilots often resorted inadvertently to their first language. Nevertheless, UN forces widely suspected the participation of Soviet aircrews, and intercepted radio traffic appeared to include combat pilots speaking Russian. In addition, USAF pilots claimed to recognize techniques and tactics specific to Soviet pilots, whom they referred to as "honchos" (from Japanese/Chinese terms meaning "squad leader").
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RE: Mini and Micro UAV Defence
Turkey is fielding a native system named 'Şahin' (falcon) based on the Mk 19 - while they're too broke to field other systems they've advertised in numbers, I do expect this one will be prioritized for Syria and Northern Iraq:
It fires airburst grenades:
Aselsan develops Atom 40 mm high-velocity air bursting munition (HV ABM)
I remember @LongLeftFlank asking about using 40mm against drones.
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I can chime in with something interesting I learned from the History Channel's 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima documentary: At the time, there were physicists who thought that nuclear weapons were a pipe dream, and Japan's top physicist was among them. The day after Hiroshima, he was flown there to observe the aftermath from the air, and his immediate reaction was something like: "So, they made it." Of course, this need not have been deduced from analyzing the blast damage; it would have been the only explanation for how a single bomb could cause so much damage be it through the blast or fires.
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Grigb posted about this three pages ago, and now it's official:
Russia's McDonald's replacement runs low on fries
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62103506
QuoteSome restaurants in the newly opened "Tasty and that's it" fast food chain, which replaced McDonald's in Russia, will temporarily stop serving fries, according to Russian media.
A shortage of the correct variety of potatoes means diners will have to find a different side dish to accompany their burgers and nuggets.
The company says it expects to have fries back on the menu by autumn.
...
But a month after opening, one of the key items on the menu is in short supply. "Rustic potatoes" - a thicker-cut version of the traditional French fry - may also be unavailable.
In a statement to Russian news agency Tass, the company explained that 2021 yielded a poor harvest for the variety of potato needed to make fries.
It said that the company generally tried to source potatoes from Russian producers, but that it had also become impossible to import potatoes from markets that could offer a temporary replacement to the domestic crop.
...
However, in a statement on Telegram titled "There are potatoes - and that's it", Russia's agriculture ministry sought to play down any concerns over a potato shortage.
"The Russian market is fully supplied with potatoes, including processed ones. In addition, crops from the new harvest are already arriving, which rules out the possibility of a shortage," the ministry said.
[The coke was good & the stripper was hot.]
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Russia's force projection in the Caucasus is down to nil: