chris talpas

Why the reluctance on Zelensky’s part to admit it was an accident and move on? No one is blaming Ukraine, but continuing to say it isn’t theirs is doing them no favours.

I think history will reflect favourably on Biden. He has effectively lead the western response and the sharing of intelligence on Russian intentions prior to the Feb invasion blunted any surprise. The courage and determination of the Ukrainian people have been an inspiration. They have earned their place in the drivers seat of their self determination. Zelensky, at least to this external observer, has been a great leader. He has been relentless in his pleas for support to the world. He is held in high regard amongst the public.

As much as I rejoice in the battlefield success that Ukraine is having, I am dismayed at the success Russia has achieved in destroying Ukrainian power generation in the last 10 days or so. 40% I last saw. There are the obvious references to the cold in terms of impact, but modern life disappears without electricity. No running water, no refrigeration, no industry or commerce. Communication infrastructure is rendered useless as well.

As a Canadian, I feel the same way about the US.

Fanciful speculation: Putin seeing that things are looking less likely to end well for himself, quietly transfers a portion of his personal wealth to China. During his visit with Xi, he decides he enjoys China so much that he will stay there and step down pre-emptively thus vastly improving his life expectancy. I would imagine other Russian operatives would be reluctant to mess with him in China. China benefits internationally from assisting in regime change that offers a pathway to de-escalation.

Not to derail the thread … if we want to decarbonize the energy grid, which global warming is driving us in that direction, then taking existing nuclear offline is not going to help us get there.

On the GRU front, I too was thinking they could have their hand in it. Who has more incentive to end this sooner than the army which is being systematically ground down? Quis bono? Who benefits i agree the military and its dirty tricks dept are likely culprits I agree this is a message to the nationalists from the army to tone down those drumbeats for escalation?

Steve, you really need to give us a way to give you likes. Thanks for bringing a smile to my face. Thanks as well for all the commentary and analysis. This has been a go to thread for intelligent discourse on the course of this war from a military and larger perspective. This thread should be preserved for posterity. I could see it being a primary source for future scholars detailing how the conflict was analyzed along with predictors of outcomes within the open source community. It would interesting to compare this group with the professional analysts. I don’t know if all of this (including links twitter, News sites, etc) can be backed up? The eventually thousands of pages that is this thread, could provide a unique window into the insights that were developed over the course of the conflict. I think it can also provide a contextual record of how successfully Ukraine has managed the information war. They have been masterful on so many levels: diplomatic, social media, news media, to name some. Example: Releasing the Snake Island commemorative stamp featuring the finger to the Moskva. Later that day sinking that ship. While the sinking was probably almost too good to be true, I am glad good fortune was with Ukraine that day.

Actually that and the HARM armed Migs is starting to look a good SEAD tag team especially if the A10 is armed with JASSM standoff missiles as well

Some good analysis of the state of the central Asian republics in light of the Ukraine war

With it already rigged for demolition, would that make it easier to destroy by setting off sympathetic detonations?

Hopefully those turbines Canada was returning can be recalled.

Not to take this thread on too far a tangent, but here is a short video giving the current state of the art in machine coding. Also an interesting channel on AI development in general

Thanks for checking Steve and sharing the video. Much appreciated. Will see tomorrow if the problem is with my iPad when I retry with PC.

Anyone else having problems with loading page 1019? Other pages load fine but this one either hangs loading or gives a getpage error. A shame since judging by the following pages that is where the big kaboom is initially reported

And just a wee bit deeper than that river too.

Could be interesting to see how well the Russians execute an opposed amphibious operation

Center for Strategic & International Studies follow up session on assessing Russia’s performance.

Impressive looking photo which was shared by LLF on the previous page: Not sure how wise it is to bunch all of this valuable equipment up? Looks like a juicy target for Russian aviation or missile strike.

Silencing or at least severely attriting Russian artillery is key. Other armoured vehicles can be dealt with via atgms. Hope the additional longer ranged western weapon systems can make the difference.

Another good video from 'Good Times Bad Times'. Lots of info covered in this thread but also adds some additional geopolitical analysis. Also has a bit of footage of the Polish T72s

Wondering if the Neptune missiles might have set off some of the SS-N-12 Sandbox missiles? Always seemed like a risky weapon design from a damage resistance perspective.

Thanks for sharing that Steve! I'm in tears listening to it. The Scottish accent adds so much!

Eerie how the mind sees patterns that are so fitting. The tank turret looking like a skull is quite striking. I could see a scaled version of this becoming some goth jewelry pendant.

It really is an amazing piece of software. Fun to explore the world and as you indicated it gives a very realistic depiction of the earth. Seeing the terrain really helps in understanding how the battlefield will be impacted by it.