Holien

Result of Russian attacks of Kupiansk direction. 79 bodies on relatively small area.
I doubt this is Syn'kivka, as write the author, because this is a sector of 14th brigade
Another video of the same unit - they captured almost full squad of Russians in their trench
 

This video is a part of "Ukrainska pravda" article about first operations of naval drones. Alas in didn't translted to English as whole, only as shortened atricles, so briefly:
1. First strike on Russian ships in the sea not far from Sevastopol should be conducten in the night from 16th on 17th September 2022. Five drones with 108 kg HE onbaoard each, despite large waves could approach to Sevastopol. Russian flagman frigade "Admiral Makarov" was spotted as main target. 70 km was left to the traget. But... Elon Musk turned off Starlink and UKR drones have lost control. Minister of digital transformation Fedorov (one of initiator of drone program), who was present in situation room tried to communicate with Musk, but he didn't want to listen. Attempts to convince him through US military channels also failed. Operation was foiled, Russian ships after this could launch missiles futher. By the way, by statistic, less then 50 % of Kalibrs were intercepted. Only two UKR drones could return to base. Other either sunk or self-exploded because of waves hit, being uncontroled. One of them was washed ashore near Sevastopol several days ago, so that was first unplanned ("thanks" to Musk) appearance or UKR naval drones on public.
2. Afer this incident with Musk, developers team researched returned drones and made many improves in construction. Gradually drones got three independent communication systems to avoid losing of control. 
So next attack was in the night from 28th to 29th of October. Four drones sailed to Sevastopol harbor, three prepared to attack Russian ships on the roadstead. Three drones attacked "Admiral Makarov" again, but only one could breack throug the waves and hit the ship in the stern part. Frigade lost speed in half and turned to harbor. In that time three other drones sneak to Streletskaya Bay, but was shelled by Russian coastal assets.
Fortunately almost near the entrance to the bay the minesweeper "Ivan Golubets" has stood and she got own 108 kh HE - explosion damaged trilling compartment. Other drones in this moment struck oil terminal. 
Damaged Russian frigade sailed to Streletskaya Bay too - Russian artillery from the coast mistakingly shelled the ship and frigade also returned fire.
In this khaos, two drones, which coouldn't approach to frigade in first attack followed them and could sneak to the bay. Russians turned on all own EW assets, so GPS signal was lost, reserve communication was partially supreswed too, but allowed to control drones by TV channel. Vice-admiral Neyizhpapa, who served long time in Sevastopol and knew all bays, personally sat in drone operator chair - first drone was directed on second frigade "Admiral Essen" but hit the point between her and ASW frigade "Ladnyi", slightly damaged both (in the artcile claimed the drone was directed between two ships, but likely unstable control caused dron missed and hit a pier between ships)  
3. After this attack, new drone "SeaBaby" was designed. Unlaike "Maliuk" with 108 kg of HE, It could carry 850 kg of HE (now it equipped also with thermobaric launchers). Also this drone got new comm system with 300 000 $ cost and was build from radio-transparent materials. Also unlike "Maliuk", developed in coperation with SBU and private companies, "SeaBaby" was designed and built exclisivley by own SBU engineers and IT team. Exactly "SeaBaby" drones hit Kerch bridge at the second time on 17th of July 2023.
The team, developed "Maliuk", after SBU decisiosn to develop own drone by own team signed agreement with GUR (Intelligence Service Directorate) and soon "Magura" drone project has appeared - these drones are under Budanov's hand. In September 2023 "Magura" in first time damaged Russian patrol ship "Sergey Kotov", though damages weren't heavy. Also claimed "SeaBaby" and "Magura" struck several other Russian ships and auxiliary vessels, but damages also weren't critical or weren't confirmed. 
4. In July 2023 Russia broken "grain agreenment" and became strike on UKR ports and elevators. Their patrol ships threatened to intercept any cargo vesels, sailing from UKR ports. Zelenskiy on Stavka meeting demanded to force Russian ships get away from western part of Black Sea. Was made a decision to show Russians theuir fleet will be vulnerable even in Novorossiysk, their second base. Cooperated operation was planned by Zaluzhnyi, Maliuk (SBU chief), Budanov (GUR chief), Neyizhpapa (Naval forces chief), Oleshchuk (Air Forces chief). So, ib the night on 4th August 2023 new  fastest drone "Mamai" went to sea. "Mamai" has lighter warhead than "SeaBaby" - 450 kg, but this is fastst drone, it can sail with a speed 110 km/h. On the way operators had many temptatins to hit tankers, carring Russian oil, but command prohibited atatck any civil vessel in neutral waters, even Russian. At last "Mamai" encountered LLS "Olenegorskiy gorniak" and successfully struckj it on the roadstead of Novorossiysk. In the article no mentions about other destroyed target - likely there were two drones, because off-shore oil terminal was hit too. On the next day other "Mamai" damaged Russian tanker "Sig", suppliying Russian miliyry. These attcks gradually forced Russians to minimaze own presence in western part of the sea and this allowed Ukraine to avoid new blocade. Reasons for Russia was not so military, but economical - after these atatcks insurance companies and freight companies have been rising own prices, so to calm situation and prices Russia was forced to withdraw. 
By the way western partners were very dissatisfied with these attcks on Novortossiysk and Kerch strait - UKR leadership got many suggestions "do not do this anymore" - Novorossiysk is a huge hub for Kazakhstan and "grey" Russian oil, which go to markets, bypassing sanctions as other brands or for delution of brands. With one hand we help Ukraine, with other hand we buy an oil in Russia, supporting their capability to wage a war. Damned real politic. Even recent scandal that Pentagon bought Russian oil only confirms this.
So, if you ask why Ukraine don't hit seriously Russiaon oil export infrastructre, adress this question to Washington.         
 
 
 

You do see your own inconsistencies, right?  You call out another poster for being reductionist and oversimplifying, yet you do exactly the same thing if it supports your own position.  This paragraph right here is such a collection of gross oversimplification and inconsistencies that is beggars imagination.
You are comparing pre-1949 war to post.  Total wars to limited military interventions.  These are no where near in the same context or even legal frameworks.  It is like you are referencing history as a large single data point instead of a vast collection of different ones.
Disproportionate civilian casualties do not automatically de-legitimize warfare.  Even the LOAC (which everyone one the pro-Israel side appears all to ready to simply ignore) allows for collateral damage.  A disproportionate number of unlawful civilian casualties - beyond military necessity or as a direct result of policies that increase human suffering or death in an enemy population can de-legitimize a party within conflict incredibly fast.  
“Hamas committed atrocity ergo we can toss out LOAC” is not only immoral it is also incredibly shortsighted - as I have pointed out on numerous occasions.  Yet some cling onto their WW2 history books like they are gospel on how wars ought to be fought.  We created the LOAC because of those wars…in spite of them.  The fire bombings, Rape of Nanjing, nuclear holocausts, Jewish holocaust and various horrors of every shape and kind.  These are why we decided what was “legitimate” in the first place after 1949.
The calculus of “this many beheaded Jewish babies equals that many Palestinian babies” is perverse.  The answer is “none of them”.  Just because Hamas went illegal does not justify in any way shape or form, Israel doing the same thing.  By this sort of logic and tossing out the rules, one could make a coherent case that 9/11 was justified on the part of Islam for all those disproportionate civilian casualties in the Gulf War.
I can only go by what I can see and right now the IDF do not look or smell righteous.  They look and smell out of control.  Which makes them morally equal to Hamas.  How is that going to make anything better?
I do agree that this entire thread is growing tiresome and we simply are not going to agree.  But let’s be frank and let me ask the real question.  How much of this is western biased and good old fashion racism against Arabs for all the trouble and pain we have gone through in that region?  We were well programmed to hate Arabs in Hollywood and not so subtle machinations of western Christianity over the last 20 years.  And now that something looking a lot like ethnic cleansing of a pseudo Arab state (or whatever) is happening people are tying narratives in knots trying to somehow justify Israel’s actions….because you are really ok with that?
 

Would you care to list those occasions? As in, when were the Palestinians offered a sovereign state with no Israeli roads bisecting their country or control over their airspace and frontiers? It'll be really hard because it never happened.
The Palestinian expectation of a state in the West Bank and Gaza is itself a massive compromise accepting a state on 22% of the land of historic Palestine. Would Israel accept Egyptian control over its borders? Nope!
It's so bizarre to me, because you have an immensely powerful country occupying and settling a neighbouring region and the reaction is that the oppressed people in that region have no acceptable political position except for submission. Oppressed people will fight back. Of anyone, Jewish people should know that people really don't like being ghettoized and oppressed.
I don't even really know what this means. Of course, some terrible things happened on October 7th. Others atrocities, such as the beheaded babies or the baby baked in an oven, are completely fictitious, just like the babies thrown out of incubators story was used to justify the first Iraq War. Meanwhile babies did actually die in incubators in the Al-Shifa hospital and no one cared. Most people killed on October 7th were likely shot, others were killed in the crossfire and others were accidentally killed by the IDF. There seems to be this fetishization of extreme violence, as if people's deaths count more if there's some element of spectacular and personal cruelty to them. I don't doubt that some people did die that way, but I also don't doubt that a far larger number of Palestinians have died in utterly unspeakable ways in the weeks that followed. 
Look, of course, there is dehumanization and demonization on both sides, but it's absolutely absurd to simply ignore that the same thing happens on the Israeli side as well. There's literally an Israeli Telegram channel of Israelis mocking Palestinian suffering and deaths. It is a political situation that breeds dehumanization of the other side.
And the scale of violence being unleashed on Gaza is simply barbaric. It is indiscriminate collective punishment.
If someone wants to transform the nuclear power with a massive conventional military lavishly subsidized by American taxpayers into a country that feels it is not acceptable to kill 11,000 children in pursuit of unclear military objectives, then be my guest. The First Oslo Accord was a mutual recognition of Israel and Palestine, so at least some Palestinians have recognized Israel's right to exist since the early 1990s. Hamas has signaled it would be willing to accept the 1967 borders, but since there have been no meaningful negotiations for decades, it's purely speculative if they would actually follow through. But again, the logic here is very odd: Israel will continue an illegal occupation and continue illegally building settlements until the Palestinians do what exactly?
Israel couldn't care less about international law. It has flagrantly committed war crime after war crime in Gaza. Al-Shifa hospital was just a vile display of deliberately destroying a medical facility to show off a room and a toilet. The destruction of an impoverished enclave's entire medical system is unjustifiable. The mass settlement of civilians on territory occupied by a military is also a war crime.
Again, there's extremism on both sides that manifests itself in horrible ways, but Israel is the overwhelming power in the conflict. That's the difference. What else but vile cruelty and dehumanization of the other could justify things like Israeli soldiers shooting a disabled Palestinian man for the crime of carrying lollipops? Reports of Israeli bulldozers burying people alive at the Kamal Adwan Hospital are simply horrifying. And the list goes on and on and on. What possible military or security goal is being served here?
Western political thinking can be extremist and people are so blinded by ideology that they can't even see it. What was the American invasion of Iraq but an extremist movement launched by fundamentalists? The Jewish fundamentalists in Netanyahu's government, like Smotrich and Ben-Givr, are no different than Islamic fundamentalists (the bad kind, the ones that buy lots of American and British weapons are fine).
Literally today, Smotrich said “To have security, we must control the territory. In order to control the territory militarily for a long time, we need a civilian presence.” They're planning to resettle Israelis in Gaza, it's like pouring fuel on the fire.

Ah, so that is what happened?  I guess from that particular layman’s perspective the trajectory of the RA does appear upwards.  They sucked in the initial invasion and have been sucking less and less up through the summer offensive.
The problem with a layman’s assessment is that it ignores the deeper causal issues.  So here is a quick  and dirty professional assessment:
- Russian operational and strategic quality has been a factor in this war but it is secondary.
- The primary factor driving outcomes is fundamental shifts in the character of warfare in the modern age.  Primarily the fact that evidence is becoming nearly insurmountable that we have shifted from offensive primacy through concentrated mass to defensive primacy through denial.
- At Kyiv in Feb of ‘22, the RA had massive mass superiority against an opponent who had not even time to dig in.  RUSI reports show upwards of 12:1 concentrations of RA spearheads to local UA defence, which was largely distributed.  Even accounting for Russian failings, those sort of mass ratios should have blown through whatever defence the UA could mount..and initially it did.
- And then friction kicked in.  Modern warfare, enabled by ubiquitous C4ISR, PGM and deep strike has created friction pressures that in effect break mass.  The ability to project and sustain it in particular.  This combined with a baffling Air Denial dynamic essentially broke the traditional mass concentration ratios.  The UA’s ability to deny air superiority with disparate and ad hoc capability plugged into another ad hoc C4ISR architecture will be studied for decades.  These conditions ensured that however the RA sucked, they had no offsets in the one strength they did have - overwhelming force advantages.
- The northern axis collapsed when the RA was unable to sustain itself.  Russia may suck but no modern army on the planet is built to have its entire LOC infrastructure lit up from space and hit with precision artillery and ATGMs at the ranges experienced.  The fact that the RA undersubscribed the logistic requirement is a combination of sucking and warfare changing.
- Kharkiv was very similar.  The RA was over extended…by emerging modern standard.  They experience corrosive warfare at is zenith as HIMARs got into the game and essentially broke what was left of a logistical system built for another era…Jan ‘22.  The operational collapse at Kharkiv is one for the history books.  How it was established and conducted points to new forms of tactical manoeuvre and exploitation.
- Kherson was a collapse before a full collapse.  In this Russia did learn (after two failures) what collapse was starting to look like.  The pull out may have proceeded in good order but it was also a major operational failure.  Why?  Because of what did not happen (something layman also are prone to miss).  The RA should have been able to turn Kherson into a reverse Mariupol and break the UA on a grinding urban fight.  But they could not…because they were collapsing.  And they still could not establish operational conditions to do otherwise.
- The RA now is benefiting from the shift in character of warfare…not sucking less.  The one thing they did right was put in minefields everywhere.  This multiplied the friction of modern systems dramatically.  To the point that UA mass…wait for it….did not work as it was supposed to.
The RA of today is a shadow of its former self.  Beyond the body count, the high end operational enablers have seen significant attrition.  They are able to hold on and will continue to make tactical offensive just to make a point but they are in no shape for major operational offensive action in their current state.  They are not sucking less, they are better suited to fight in line with what war has become.  Unless the UA buckles and walks away, the RA is able to hold on (maybe) but will take a decade to rebuild itself back to where it was in Feb ‘22.
So “Russia Sux” is only half the story and not even the most important half.   Warfare has fundamentally changed and both sides are grappling with that is why any predictions on what will happen are nearly useless at this point.
But hey we are just guys in a bar talking….

They really aren't.  They want you all to believe they are getting stronger but that is simply not true.  Now whether they get weak enough to buckle under the limited pressure the UA can project is another story.  As to "pie in the sky"...why does everyone seem to forget the RA collapsed operationally 3 times in this war?  Now strategic collapse is debatable but setting up another operational one is by no means a pipe dream.

Why not? There are 700,000 Israeli citizens living there permanently and Palestinian controlled-areas are incredibly fragmented by Israeli military control. Smotrich has been upfront about his desire to annex the West Bank. Again, 82% of the West Bank is under Israeli civil or military control. It's effectively permanent occupation.
This is remarkably similar to the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa. They are areas with limited self-governance and few features of a nation-state beyond that. Control over borders and external affairs is a basic marker of a sovereign nation-state.
Netanyahu's entire career has been predicated on the basis that security could be maintained without a political solution. Plainly, this backfired spectacularly. The problem for the Palestinians is nothing has worked. Violence didn't work, non-violence didn't work, diplomacy didn't work. For many, there is no acceptable political position for the Palestinians to hold except for submission. This is why slogans like "Free Palestine" are interpreted as threats. No one felt the same way about "Free South Africa" unless they supported apartheid. Equally, the Likud Party and Benjamin Netanyahu's son can use the phrase "From the River to the Sea" without any sanction while Israel also exercises sovereignty from the river to the sea, but no way can a Palestinian say such thing.

Look at the Palestinian Authority for example. It recognizes Israel's right to exist, rejects armed struggle and largely cooperates with the Israelis. And the situation just gets worse and worse in virtually every respect and they are actively undermined by Netanyahu's successive governments.
But the inverse is untrue? Palestinians are supposed to sit quietly and take any violence directed against them without reacting? The violence directed towards Gaza is wildly disproportionate. At last count, 316 children in Gaza have been killed for every child killed on October 7th. I've never seen anything like this. It's collective punishment of a civilian population trapped in a tiny enclave with no clear military goals, not to mention no intention of getting the Israeli hostages back alive.
Where are Israel's borders then? It controls the external borders of both the West Bank and Gaza. What other secular democracy controls neighbouring lands through military governance or blockade, settles its own citizens there (it is a war crime to settle civilian populations in areas under military occupation), controls nearly the entirety of their external affairs and subjects them to constant and demeaning military checkpoints and control over their movement?
If Israel was just a secular democracy for everyone living within its borders, then the West Bank and Gaza would be part of it and the people who live there would be citizens instead of subjects under Israeli sovereignty. It is a one-state solution that happens to be quite miserable for about 5.5 million of its inhabitants.
I'd be pretty pissed too if someone stole my land and pushed me off it, but what evidence is there that he Palestinians were particularly violent towards Israel in the 1950s for instance? There may have been some armed groups, but the PLO isn't founded until 1964. There are no meaningful attacks on Israel during this time. Why isn't Israel depicted and antagonistic and violent when it joined France and Britain to attack the nationalist government of Egypt in 1956 following the nationalization of the Suez Canal (a perfectly reasonable thing to belong to the people of Egypt)? 
What state in Gaza? What state has its borders entirely controlled by another country? How do you have a successful state in that context? Gaza was not an attempt at statehood. Israel essentially just thought they could wall off the enclave in perpetuity and nothing bad would happen. 
Did they? Are you confusing the pre-Israel Palestinian Muslim majority with Europeans? What pogroms were there in Ottoman Palestine? There's a reason why Zionism is initially a European movement, namely European anti-Semitism. Again, this is not to say there was no discrimination or violence against Jews in the Arab world or the Ottoman Empire (Jews both sought refuge in the Muslim world and were expelled from other parts of it depending on the time and place), but from all accounts Palestine was a religiously tolerant part of the Ottoman Empire.
Palestinians opposed the Zionist movement because it aimed to create a state at their expense and pushed most of them off the land where they had lived for centuries, often with Jewish and Christian neighbours. During the Arab Revolt of the late 1930s, about 500 Jews were killed in Palestine with about ten times the number of Palestinian Arabs being killed. Both Palestinians and Jews conducted massacres of civilians, but there is no attempted genocide of any sort on either side. The British were by far the most violent force in Palestine at the time. Israel is ethnically cleansed of the majority of its Arab population, but again, there is no intention to kill them all.
In the current context, the Christian minority in the West Bank and Gaza is also accepted as an integral part of Palestinian society. The only people persecuting Christians are the IDF, such as when they killed an elderly woman and her daughter when they were trying to use the toilet and shot seven more people sheltering in a Gazan Church on December 16.
There's this bizarre sense that the Palestinians are inherently anti-Semitic and care about nothing else, so that if the country subjecting them to military occupation or blockade was Christian or Muslim, they would be content to just continue being oppressed. Would they cheer if Christians bulldozed their olive groves and destroyed their communities? Of course not. The Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto didn't hate and resist the Germans because they were German, it was because the Germans were trying to kill them all.
The King of Jordan was assassinated in 1951, decades before most Palestinians were even born. No one ascribes collective responsibility to the Israelis for someone like Baruch Goldstein. The Palestinians I have met are just like anyone else I've met. They're just normal people who want to live a normal life. Why not associate the Palestinians with someone like Edward Said, one of the finest literary critics and essayists of the 20th century? Usually because one person doesn't adequately represent millions of people.
Both Palestinians and Israelis have committed horrible acts, but the overwhelming balance of power tilts in Israel's favour. It's a bizarre logic at play for the Palestinians, unless you meet some unspecified expectations, we'll keep occupying you and expanding settlements on your land. But even if you do hold up your end of the bargain, the same thing will happen anyways! 
They did? There are 2.1 million Palestinians in Jordan as one example. The Palestinians have enjoyed varying levels of support from Arab countries, and sometimes have simply been ignored, exploited for political gain, or forgotten. While some groups of Palestinians, namely the PLO, have been expelled from Arab countries, there's been no wholesale expulsion of them as being some sort of inherently violent barbarians. Again, they're normal people who want to live normal lives with the understandable desire to have a sovereign state instead of a permanent occupation.

The New York Times ran a piece about what went wrong with the IDF response on October 7th. The article doesn't reveal any surprises, but it does confirm the early picture and and add detail.
Here is a non-paywall gift link: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/world/middleeast/israeli-military-hamas-failures.html?unlocked_article_code=1.J00.nIkS.Ht8N0K3C2OiF&smid=url-share
This quote sums up the situation:
That might be the most damming point, but it is not news. The particulars about what happened are more telling. Take the case of Maglan, a deep reconnaissance unit. Its soldiers got their information from a civilian monitoring the news, social media, and chats:
Other key points:
The Israeli government intended that civilian volunteer units would protect kibbutzim and small towns near the Gaza border, holding off attackers until IDF soldiers arrived. These units were underequipped and undertrained, and many were unable to retrieve weapons from armories after the coordinators who held the keys to armories were killed. The quick-response force is commandos, maybe a company or two, intended to act quickly against small bands of hostage-takers. The IDF main force along the Gaza border was 3 infantry battalions and a tank battalion. About half of the soldiers were away on leave because of the holidays. Forces were much reduced from their recent strength. One infantry battalion was withdrawn after the completion of the border wall; two commando companies were moved to the West Bank just days before the attack. Units in the area started pulling their leadership back from leave, early that morning, because of unsettling indications that Hamas was about to do something, but those units let their personnel stay in bed. A base at Re’im hosted the Gaza Division's headquarters, and the headquarters for the brigades covering the northern and southern areas. Hamas attacked the base, and the entire IDF command structure for the area went off the air, fighting to survive. An early assessment held that there 200 terrorists had stormed into Israel, when the real number was more like 2,000. Soldiers underestimated the need for firepower and headed south with light weapons and limited ammunition. The article notes, a few times, that Israelis were outgunned. There doesn't seem to have been any kind of sustainment effort, of course, and tank crews ran out of ammunition. The Israeli system relies on mobilizing reservists. That takes time. A reserve major is quoted as saying that his unit planned and rehearsed for deployments with 24 hours' notice. Much of the Israeli response was ad hoc, with soldiers coordinating on social media, through messaging apps and phone calls, and by watching the news. (This type of emergent, self-organized response would be celebrated in some circles but not, I suppose, for a major military force.) Hamas terrorists took up blocking positions on the highways east of the border towns, halting IDF reinforcements.  

What?! A cursory review of modern urban battles shows nowhere near the numbers you are tossing around:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mosul_(2016–2017)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_Fallujah
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1994–1995)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sarajevo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Huế
At 1:5 Gaza is running a far more indiscriminate operation than any of these fights (the freakin Battle of Hue no less).
Hell, horror shows like Stalingrad were not anywhere near the ratios you are tossing around:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Stalingrad. That is approx 40k civilian dead to nearly 2 million military dead.
Leningrad - a hellish siege of a city filled with civilians:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad
The German Army waged that one at about 3:1 and if you count the Russian combatants it goes to nearly 1:1
In fact the only modern battle that comes close to the IDF ratios is this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Mariupol
Which puts them in the same camp as the Russian Army - world renown for waging humanitarian warfare.
For a western modern military a 1:5 ratio of combatant to civilian deaths is an unmitigated disaster!
You have got one thing right…this will serve as a “role model” in the history books.  Right along side the Fall of Carthage.

Which "politically savvy Chinese expats" would it be who think this?
I can't say I have a great insight into the political class of China, but I did live there for several years so I can share my experience talking to younger people, both blue collar and white collar types. The_Capt's implication that China intends for Russia to become its hat the same way that that Canada is America's hat feels like a more accurate take to me.
Russians do get a special level of respect in China that other foreigners do not - in fact it was often the first question out of people's mouths when I showed up in their small town or industrial suburb speaking Chinese: "are you Russian?" The stereotype is perhaps that Russian people are the only white foreigners who can both speak decent Chinese and also might have business to do in low class areas. Russians are trusted. Americans are not.
But every Chinese person I spoke to on the topic was also was critical of Russian politics, and saw the fall of USSR as a cautionary tale. This is one of the reasons why "... with Chinese characteristics" is still a major political buzzword. Middle class Chinese who drink the party kool-aid read Animal Farm or watch Chernobyl and see these as indictments of political structures that failed because they weren't imbued with "Chinese characteristics". Working class Chinese just know that that their great party leaders have special wisdom that former Russian leaders did not, which is why China is number 1, and why Russians today all come to China to work or study and make a better life for themselves.
It's certainly possible that people were just trying to say what they thought I wanted to hear - something that happens a lot in China - but the comments seemed fairly consistent. I think perhaps it is wishful thinking from Russian nationalists and western fascists that the current Chinese leadership secretly idolizes Putin.
Recently on this thread people were talking about what a split Russia could look like, and if there had been any historical precedent. It got me thinking about conversations I had with soft critics of the party and they'd often ask me "but what other alternative do we have?" And I'd say maybe China is too big and diverse to have a centralized government, maybe it it would do better if the geographic region we now call China were in fact managed as several smaller states, each with political structures and leaders who understood the local issues better. Just a tip: never say this to a Chinese person unless you want to get into a long discussion about Warring States period, Warlord Era, and why history has apparently proven that the only way there can ever be peace and prosperity in the region is under centralized leadership. It's the party line, but it's how people think, and it informs their views on Russia too.

Belgorod is not "tiny". This is oblast administrative center with 330 000 of population. The city has five machine-building factories, most of them also have orders from MoD. Not saying now this is important railway hub and location of AD assets, attacking Kharkiv as well as place of many military units around

Oh ya, the US is shaking so hard in its boots that Congress is galvanized...wait a minute....no they are not.  We just spent a page or two on how Russia may 1) fall apart gracefully like a dying swan and land gently in the arms of China or 2) fall apart fast like a flaming swan and land in a smoking heap into the arms of China or 3) Explode all over the place and leave little nuclear swanling bits for us to deal with.
None of this is "Oh dear, Russia rising."  No, that would have happened if Russia had taken Ukraine in two weeks and stared us down across the border to Poland.  Then the argument would have been whether or not to support a Ukrainian insurgency - but according to you Ukrainian will is so weak there would have been no point.
Instead we got this sh#tshow.  Russia is still big enough and irrational enough to cause a lot of @sspain, particularly as a strategic spoiler.  However, an invasion of a NATO state is not a realistic scenario right now, perhaps in an alternate timeline.  Russia does not have either the economic nor military means to take on an opponent 10 times larger than itself.  Hell it could not take on an opponent 1/4 the size of itself.
I am really not sure what game you are trying to play here but it wont work.  We support Ukraine because it is the right thing to do and aligns with our larger interest.  If Ukraine totally falls apart as you continue to argue, then we will deal with it.  We dropped an Iron Curtain before, we can do it again.  We got Sweden and Finland out of the deal, and Russia is a broken sword for a while yet - even with turncoat Ukrainians you describe [note: after Bucha and the other horrors, I would bet a whole lot against Ukraine cozying up to Russia for about a century or more...if ever].

There isn't really another parallel to the West Bank. Is there another region that is being actively colonized by an occupying power? Maybe Western Sahara? The US never attempted to settle its citizens en masse in the countries it invaded. What country is the West Bank part of exactly then? It's not Palestine. Israel has unilaterally adopted a one-state solution that is extremely unjust for about 5.5 million of its inhabitants. The West Bank and Gaza lack many features of a sovereign country and those aspects are unilaterally exercised by Israel. If Gaza was part of a sovereign state, the Israeli blockade of the enclave would be considered a clear act of war.
Bezalel Smotrich has been quite open about his intention to formally annex the West Bank as well. Netanyahu has never wanted peace or a two-state solution and just boasted about being proud of obstructing that option. The considerable and continuing expansion of settlements and Israeli control of the West Bank has seriously undermined any prospect of a viable nation existing there.
Has Hamas wanted peace? It's hard to say. They have indicated a willingness to accept the 1967 borders and expressed interest in forming a unity government with Fatah. Would they have actually followed through if they were included in negotiations? Maybe, maybe not. We'll never know. There is a tendency to cast Hamas as some sort of nihilistic, Salafist movement like ISIS, but it is a nationalist movement with clear political goals dedicated to the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. 
Fatah has largely kept up their end of the bargain and what happened? Things just got worse and worse. Violent and non-violent means didn't do a thing to improve the situation.
I have found Tareq Baconi to be the most insightful writer on the history of Hamas:  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-tareq-baconi.html
Why is the same right not afforded to Palestinians and why is there an assumption that the safety of Jewish Israelis is predicated on the oppression of Palestinians? Israel should have a vested interest in ensuring Palestinians have access to a prosperous and free future. Instead, Netanyahu's successive governments have deliberately undermined the Palestinian Authority in part by supporting Hamas to divide and delegitimize the Palestinians and effectively pursued a policy of economic de-development in Gaza and in the West Bank to a lesser extent. You have what is essentially a giant open air prison with virtually no economic opportunity and people act surprised when something bad happens (leaving aside the abundantly clear evidence that Hamas was preparing for an attack that was ignored by flagrantly incompetent intelligence officers). It was never sustainable.
Again, Israel is a state to promote the interests of a particular ethno-religious group with many institutions of a secular democracy within its 1967 borders. I think raises two questions: is this a worthwhile trade-off when compared to a secular democracy for all its citizens within the area where it exercises sovereignty? Even if the answer is yes, to me this is a question worth asking and answering honestly. And, could its political structure be arranged in a way that maintains the character of a Jewish state within the 1967 borders and provides for a dramatically better life for the Palestinians? Here, the answer is unquestionably yes.
Are there other countries that exercise sovereignty over neighbouring regions through permanent military occupation coupled with the mass settlement of civilians or through a blockade? That's the difference. The West Bank and Gaza are de-facto part of Israel. 82% of the West Bank is under some form of Israeli control with some limited self-governance in the other 18%. How is that not effectively part of Israel?
What exactly was the Palestinian "war of extermination" against the Jews in 1948? They barely had any sort of organized paramilitary force and really only the Jordanians had any sort of remotely competent military among the Arab countries. The disorganized Arab armies did attempt to stop the establishment of the State of Israel, but it was not a Palestinian-led war. With British support to varying degrees, the Israelis were better equipped (still scrappy by today's standards), better led and better organized force than the Arab armies (largely belonging to newly established countries), which is why they won.
The establishment of Israel as a Jewish state happened and it's not going to be reversed. Israel has arguably not faced an existential threat since the early 1970s, although its nuclear status would have likely protected it against any truly existential threat during the Yom Kippur War. It's a nuclear power with a massive conventional military. It will keep existing and doing whatever its current corrupt leadership wants to do in the West Bank and Gaza, but this approach never really worked except for settlers and opportunistic right-wing politicians, and it backfired spectacularly on October 7th.
It boggles my mind that Netanyahu and Smotrich, who supported Hamas as a means of dividing and discrediting the Palestinians, are still in office and trusted to make decisions. Netanyahu is obviously prolonging the war to save his own skin, which is quite possibly the most vile display of self-interest I have ever seen.
The difference is that the Palestinians still live on that land. They were just pushed into a tiny corner of it in Gaza and to a lesser extent in the West Bank, along with the Palestinians who live in Israel proper. Israel is obviously willing to spend tens upon tens of billions of dollars destroying Gaza, an enclave with a GDP per capita that is approximately 60 times lower than Israel. The key problem is that there has never been any meaningful negotiation on the subject and sometimes situations without precedent will require solutions without precedent. Certainly it would be a lot better if Israel had helped Palestinians become a prosperous nation. People with a viable future and a job don't tend to resort to terrorism. This to me is the fundamental problem, as Israeli politics have shifted further and further to the right, it has largely lost the ability to imagine or articulate anything beyond a worsened status quo.
Sort of. Israel extended the right to vote to Arabs living in the pre-1967 borders in the first elections, but they were under martial law until 1966 and did not enjoy the same rights to land ownership as Israeli Jews (and still don't). Again, no contention that non-Jewish citizens of Israel within its 1967 borders do enjoy comparable rights in theory to Jewish citizens of Israel, although informal and formal forms of discrimination and segregation are widespread. My point is that Palestinians under Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza lack any such rights and live in a sort of perpetual limbo with little hope for the future. 
It's obviously an imperfect example, but at least Canada has begun to accept that it was founded on the dispossession and attempted destruction of its First Nations. For the most part, Israel society has done no such thing and in fact goes so far to actively penalize any memorialization of the Nakba. Some supporters of Israel even claim that the Palestinians don't even exist. It's an especially strange belief when you consider that Jews under Ottoman rule for example were Palestinians, as well as being Ottomans. Nations are imagined communities, time to get to imagining them differently.

I do actually. Thanks for posting this. Good to actually get some numbers.
Very roughly because the chart is actually quite hard to read and the dates don't precisely match but:
1. 11/09/22 -> 29/12/2022 => 719 missiles fired, 452 intercepted, interception percentage = ~62%
2. 06/09/23 -> 29/12/2023 => 301 missiles fired, 218 intercepted, interception percentage = ~72%
So a clear reduction in missiles fired (42% of last years number)and an increase in the interception percentage over very nearly the same period of time. 
NB: Chart does not include Shaheds

Naturally. I would be in favour of some joint action sea-air with Finland and Balts to make life in Kaliningrad...harder, there would probably be some non-military ways to do it. But it's pointless anyway, since Kremlin does not care about its own citizens there or anywhere else, except several districts of Moscow itself.
There was already Russian KH-55 discovered several months after its fall, anyway.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/military-object-found-polish-forest-was-russian-missile-media-2023-05-10/
There are some new developments lately in EW/ radar front here that are difficult to explain (perhaps themselves effect of captured muscovite elecronic devices), my vote  it could be connected to it. Overall, the incident is small one, compared to what is happening in Ukraine.
If anybody likes statistics:
And these actions would be... War with Russia? No, thanks, we have bad experiences here in the past of charging alone in helpless wars. NATO-level decisions; period. And if you mean about AA assets that even America can't provide, we would gladly accept some from AFU, if not the fact they are engaged in real war.

Except it has the opposite effect in DC. The emails going to recalcitrant Republicans in the House this morning (from their own party in the Senate) are videos of the apartment strikes saying "See what happens when we don't act?". 

The take you aren't likely to read today is that this is a strategically useless waste of carefully husbanded Russian military resources that will harden the average Ukrainians will and make aid more likely because Putin has no other response available to redress his Black Sea losses.
There is already a reaction in DC. Putin's policy has always been to use escalate to gain advantage and he still doesn't realize that it hasn't worked for him in Ukraine. Mark this down as yet another idiotic waste of Russian military power. 
 
 

In general, in my opinion, missile attacks on Ukrainian cities today play a negative role for the Russians. Russia today is conducting one of the most successful information and psychological campaigns against the Ukrainian state. The Kremlin has successfully undermined Ukrainians' faith in its leadership and is quite successful in countering the mobilization of Ukrainians, pitting them against military officials.
However, massive attacks on rear cities reduce the effectiveness of these informational and psychological actions, returning Ukrainians to reality and indicating who their true enemy is.

All media has always been biased. There's nothing wrong with a particular point of view informing journalism as long as you're not pretending otherwise. Much better to be upfront about it and take biases into consideration instead of pretending to be "Fair and Balanced."

I'm not sure about Meteor, since that is pretty much state of the art, but Ukraine should already have piles of AMRAAM because they are used in NASAMS - the whole point of NASAMS is "let's build ground based air defense system that uses NATO air-to-air missiles to simplify the supply chain", and that is why it was given to Ukraine as well, since NATO was literally running out of surface to air missiles.
Ukraine could mount some of the on F-16 for sure.
But I feel Patriot is better for "sniping" airplanes because it doesn't really lock things until the last possible moment (according to this explanatory video anyway) so it's like "all is fine, all is fine, oh no, boom" (this is very technical description, I know).
 
Ukraine also promised that if Russia tries hitting energy infrastructure again, they will retaliate by attacking oil and gas, which is the only way how Russia stays afloat financially. Now normally I would say Russians are too dumb to be convinced by something like this, but it is possible it worked.
If they are just stockpiling for a one or two big strikes so they can say "we can do this whole winter, surrender" that would of course backfire hilariously if as a response half their refineries will go boom.

Not beng facetious, but deploying a Patriot battery south and away from defending cities would not be a solo event, right? It would be a strategic decision and part of a much bigger shift in operations. Preceded by smaller related and varied ops and enabling much larger ones once in place? Like, say, the quiet, staged deployment of F16s? 
Doesnt that fit the observed pace, pattern and results table of the UKR operations along Black Sea Coast and Kherson in AO? 
Pushing the patriots south is not just shifting an AD capability - it implies leaving somewhere else undefended, so doing so must be worth it. 
Defending a critical national-level economic asset would fit that bill nicely. A blocked sea-borne grain export is a state viability disaster. 
So the creation and protection of a viable grain corridor is arguably Ukraine's greatest strategic victory of 2024. 
It guarantees a serious portion of state income, improves geopolitical credibility and signals theatre level military capability. Russia tried to prevent it and failed completely. Ukraine won the economic breathing space to live another year. 
This idea suggests that Crimea/Kerch bridge has been a red herring all year, in a way. The southern AA/AD campaign, multi domain and all, has really just been about one thing: "the economy, stupid." 
It helps explain the low use of scalps etc, ie husbanding them in case of a determined Russian push against the grain corridor.
Next year, I suspect, will be really about the relentless murder of the Russian BSF and isolation of Crimea. 

I've been thinking about the Storm Shadow/SCALP attack on the ship in Feodosia. That is right on the edge of Storm Shadow/SCALP's range which means that the SU24 either went over the Black Sea or very near to Russian controlled air space in order to deliver those weapons. Either way, normally that would put them at risk of Russian fighters and the Ukrainians don't have enough SU24s to take many risks. And they need those SU24s.
However, with the downing of 5 Russian jets (from whatever source), the Russian have to pull back before they work out what the hell happened, thus creating gaps. 
So, for me, this a planned operation. First shoot down the Russian fighters and then exploit those gaps created with a Storm Shadow/SCALP attack as part of the same operation. I can't see it being an opportunistic attack. The timescales are too tight. 
Secondly, it creates a dilemma for the VVS. Do they go back to employing their fighters the same way prior to the shooting down and risk further losses. Or do they protect the fighters but leave themselves open to further Strom Shadow/SCALP attacks? 
 

Short answer is “Chain of Command”.  It would start with who had what authorities and who granted those authorities.  Politicians are famous for trying to push any and all illegal activities onto the military.  It is rare for political level prosecution to occur, but it does happen (eg Yugoslavia).  So in the case of the IDF the first question will be: what were the Rules of Engagement?  Who developed them?  Who authorized them?  If the ROEs were weak or outright illegal then responsibility will be much higher and wider.
Next is how were those ROEs interpreted?  So targeting in the modern era is pretty complex.  Rarely is a Bn CO given authority to call in airstrikes, especially in a counter-insurgency type scenario with this many civilians around.  It would be held at the formation or operational level.  The tactical unit can call for fire but the collateral estimates and authority is normally held at a higher level.  The Bn is responsible for its own organic fires, which are substantial and making responsible requests for support.  However, final release for aircraft would be held higher, unless that aircraft was actually directly attached to that tactical unit…again rare.
So for an individual incident, say a soldier shooting a civilian.  An investigation would include all the background ROEs and authorities, and then would look at the context of the situation.  What was happening on the ground?  Was this an isolated incident or did this unit interpret the ROEs more loosely than others?  As the incident widens, so does the investigation.  An airstrike is going to be formation level or higher.
In the case of the IDF right now, based on the levels of destruction and frequency of reports, I would expect an international investigation.  The main reason is that parts of Gaza look like free-fire zones right now.  These are areas of basically weapons free ROEs.  Airstrikes are levelling neighbourhoods and hitting all sorts of questionable targets.  This would suggest a sanctioning of illegal ROEs coming from near the top…possibly all the way up.  This speaks to more than a few units getting out of hand, it may speak to a systemic and deliberate violation of the LOAC in both the IDF and political level.  That is The Hauge type stuff.
It speaks to this.  There is a military solution - clean out Gaza and ensure the Palestinians never come back.  If one were to pursue it, the overall results would not look all that different from what we are seeing - deliberate systemic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza with intent to ensure the place is uninhabitable.  This is a form of ethnic cleansing and has been practiced elsewhere, we have precedent.  And frankly Israel appears to be pursuing this strategy.  Unlike individuals, states are not afforded the right to presumed innocence, particularly in wartime.  Based on the levels of widespread destruction there is enough here to raise more than a few red flags.

Despite next LLS lose, Russian BSF keeps capabilities to substitute with these ships probable destruction of Kerch bridge
Here is list of LLSs in Black Sea on 24th Feb 2022:
BSF 197th landing ships brigade:
Pr. 1171 (NATO Alligator-class) "Saratov"  - destroyed by Tockha-U hit                    
Pr.1171 "Nikolay Philchenkov"
Pr.1171 "Orsk"
Pr.775 (NATO Ropuha-class) "Tsezar Kunnikov" - was damaged, cought fire in March 2022 in Berdiansk. Likeley repaired
Pr.775 "Yamal"
Pr.775 "Azov"
Pr. 775 "Novocherkassk" - was slightly damaged in March 2022 in Berdiansk. Now destroyed by Storm Shadow hit
 
LLSs deployed to Black Sea from other Russian fleets on the eve of war and given under BSF command:
 
Northern Fleet:
Pr.11711 (NATO Ivan Gren-class) "Pyotr Morgunov"
Pr.775 "Georgiy Pobyedonosets"
Pr.775 "Olenegorskiy gorniak" - damaged by naval drones attack. Under repair
 
Baltic fleet:
Pr.775 "Minsk" - badly damaged by Storm Shadow strike. Probably can't be repaired
Pr.775 "Korolyov"
Pr.775 "Kaliningrad"
 
So there were 7 "native" BSF ships + 6 attached. Now from these 13, 10 still remain in service (actually 9, because one under repair)