Pete Wenman

And to lighten the mood
 
 

And to lighten the mood
 
 

And to lighten the mood
 
 

And to lighten the mood
 
 

And to lighten the mood
 
 

And to lighten the mood
 
 

And to lighten the mood
 
 

And to lighten the mood
 
 

Brit AT weapons: 
 
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Ok, pre-Alpha disclaimer so details are subject to change but this is the first map in the Canadian campaign "On the Weser" - got big plans for this one. A Pete Wenman original:

Just southwest of a little town called Boffzen and south of Hoxter (From Google Earth):

Blow up of Canadian AO with rough zone of this map:

Quantity of UK armor, which bought three Ukrainian charity funds for donates

Now the problem with people constantly bringing writings of folks like Jefferson, Adams, Paine etc. is that they are only valid within American context. As much as I am fascinated by your Founding Fathers and their debates, please understand that around the globe they are not considered particulary relevant or inspiring political thinkers, nor is Declaration of Independence; at least not to the extent they are for Americans. Simply as that- American model of democracy, citizenship and political well-being is limited to US. Don't get me wrong, it's cool its there, USA is land of liberty, shield of freedom etc, but very few political entities (even most democratic ones) outside States were ever directly modelled by this system. Comparing it to political mentallity in Russia is material for a dark comedy in itself.
If you really need to support your claims, at least quote Monteskieu, Locke, Rousseau or Hegel- they did impacted political framework around the world in much more profound way. But of course none of them have anything to do with situation in Crimea either; it was simple, plain thugish land-grab by former imperial power modo mongolico.
Now extending your point, why not even Confederate States of America are  a thing anymore? They seem to enjoy rather popular acceptance. Except for slaves, of course.

So if I violently invade your house, kick you out, and when you try to get back, you get told "sorry, the people who live in the house decide", that is fine and dandy? Good to know, where do you live?
EDIT: the fact that the openly pro-Russia+pro-China commenter is actual Florida Man tickles my stereotyping brain in a funny way.

Milo Minderbinder must have gotten the contract for implementation.  
Everybody has a share.

Marshall's dubious claims very quickly became accepted opinio communis among historians of other periods, like Goldsworthy's Roman Army at War, without actualy checking credentials of it. One of prime examples of how not to apply historical analogies.
https://acoup.blog/2023/03/31/michael-taylor-on-john-keegans-the-face-of-battle-a-retrospective/
This war and ample visual evidence from actual combat perhaps finally put an end to those debates.

I think it is a whole lot like waiting for an op.  Sitting around and trying to fill the time as you sit on your ruck.  Weapons are spotless, you can see the map when you sleep and redraw it from memory.  Radios and gear have been checked twice.  Some guys play cards.  We played a game where we tried to figure out the order of who we would eat in the troop after a plane crash - Alive has just come out a few months before.  
So here we all are.  Waiting for the UA to cross the start line.  We have talked thru the scenarios.  Keep checking social media etc.  The kooks come round every now and again but even they don’t seem as into it.  We have kinda done German/Euro Bashing Day to death.  US Bashing Day isn’t even that fun - I mean we have to go back to freakin Guatemala in ‘54.
So, ya, it tracks that we drift OT.  So who do we eat first?

And in the Holy Fudge category of combat footage, we have a new king:
POV guy shows great personal courage, head is on a swivel. Top notch NCO-ing going on.

There is a lot I could say on this matter and maybe I will if it is tolerated. To develop one of your themes, the orchestrators of misinformation have recognised the basic fallibility of a democracy in that we count all the votes.  The "enemy" targets segments of voters who may just be enough to swing a few percent and make a majority.
In the Brexit case the Brexit campaign targeted, among others, the anti-immigrant voters.  A future candidate for Prime Minister even looked the electorate straight in the eye and asserted that 80 million Turks were on their way.  In such segments people have a strong pre-existing bias and can be persuaded to elevate the issue to the top of their list and vote according to their instincts. Predisposed to bias, people do not want to deal with the facts because everybody brings their own facts to the fight in a democracy and so facts are relatively less important than their feelings.
Sovereignty was another segment -- English Exceptionalism.  Spending money on the Health Service another.
At the back of this is the money and effort spent over decades to compromise key influencers such that they can be pressured to broadcast the party line at the appropriate moment.  I think we all have our suspicions about these individuals and I have seen the compromise tactic being operated most systematically in China, but Russia is notorious too.  In China and Russia in the 90s they tried to compromise everybody who went there - you never know when it might come in handy.  Of course the best influencer is someone who may actually, plausibly, believe what he or she says but let us not underestimate the amount of blackmail going on.  In London we also have hard evidence of money changing hands.
In the Ukraine situation the game changer for me was when Poland opened the borders for the Ukrainian children with their mothers and grandmothers.  The EU followed and suddenly the russians were on the back foot both militarily and morally.  They never expected to lose the lightening attack on Kiev and never expected Europe to take ALL the refugees.  The fact that the children and families are safe must be a decisive morale booster for those who stayed to fight.  But the narrative changed too: Ukraine was seen by the majority to be fighting a just war, and while russian propaganda still seeks to engage swing voters they have lost the information war with the majority.

So I really do not have a dog in this whole EU fight but what I am seeing on both sides of the discussion are classic symptoms of information operations.  Russia has not simply been “troll farming”, evidence points to a re-emergence of subversive warfare doctrines re-tooled for the 21st century.  This is basically a lot of effort aimed at finding and exploiting the fractures and divisions in a society, leveraging that to either create negative decision (undeciding things, like EU membership), null decision (paralysis by rendering something undecidable) or positive decision (reflexive control type stuff where decisions are made that are in the interest of the sponsor, not the targeted state).
The things to watch out for just unfolded in these last two pages.  Polarized information spheres - Cpl S is clearly in one where the narrative is the EU is ruling the UK like a monarch to the detriment of the “working man”.  While others are being given evidence the EU was beneficial etc.  in reality there is enough truth in both to sustain the spheres and keep them accelerating away from each other - we saw the exact same thing with NAFTA here in NA.  The actual truth is almost immaterial, and is usually pretty mundane - something which some have glanced off of.
And then there is the agency reflex - “well I was not influenced”. Well you probably were, how much and how far it influenced your decisions is variable and likely linked to how much you cared (although there is plenty of evidence of apathy reinforcement).  The reality is that if you were involved in a decisive issue you likely have been influenced to a degree.
Now how successful Russia has been is a major problem.  If they have not been the reflex will be to ignore and continue, which is good for the sponsor of the campaign.  Or if it is over subscribed it hijacks heathy discourse and makes a boogeyman where none exists, also good for the sponsor.
We have seen the results right here - sides yell at each other pretty much abandoning any and all facts.  Someone leaves in a huff, which is pretty much what subversive sponsors want because meaningful discourse and compromise do nothing for their effort.  Agency reflex/active denial and actual facts getting lost in the noise.
Finally, the other place to watch for these sorts of things is on issues that are not only highly divisive but hang in a fine balance.  Subversion rarely works in creating massive landslides, they are not designed to and the costs are too high.  On tight races where a few thousand votes can swing things (or conversely in an autocratic society, a few key decision making nodes) this is where subversive warfare really kicks in.
Now as to how well Russia influenced Brexit?  Who really knows.  We do know they were involved and put some effort as it is in their interests to split up the EU.  How successfully they pulled that off would take a lot of effort to figure out.  But in reality the fact that people are still divided and yelling past each other is a pretty good sign they are still getting something out of the whole affair.

General Zaluzhnyi personally awarded the soldier of 22nd mot.inf. battalion of 92nd mech.brigade Ruslan Zubarev ("Predator") for his epic fight. He received Golden Cross - honorable sign of Chief-in-Command. Also Zaluzhnyi gifted him with name weapon - AR-15 rifle. "Predator" said this was his dream to buy this rifle, but he couldn't do this, because according to the law it could be possibly only in 25 y.o., but he has 22 only.

Perfect. On the meeting of joint goup of military and industry officials, Mededeev reads letter-by-letter short memorandum of Stalin from 1941. At the end, he adds: "You know what happenned to those who didn't deliver promised results."
 
Traditional Muscovite way of motivating employees may soon come back in style. Because Fruity Thursdays became too much passe anyway.

Insight into the helicopter flights into the Azovstal plant last year - from the Times (paywall)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9cab48a4-c340-11ed-89bb-9ee8b04f3f4c?shareToken=485065bad0587c0638b43e5df3a6992e
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Insight into the helicopter flights into the Azovstal plant last year - from the Times (paywall)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9cab48a4-c340-11ed-89bb-9ee8b04f3f4c?shareToken=485065bad0587c0638b43e5df3a6992e
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Insight into the helicopter flights into the Azovstal plant last year - from the Times (paywall)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9cab48a4-c340-11ed-89bb-9ee8b04f3f4c?shareToken=485065bad0587c0638b43e5df3a6992e
P

Insight into the helicopter flights into the Azovstal plant last year - from the Times (paywall)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/9cab48a4-c340-11ed-89bb-9ee8b04f3f4c?shareToken=485065bad0587c0638b43e5df3a6992e
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