riptides

Pontoon guy....

 
 

This is madness unleashed trying to track this offensive. For the Russians I imagine total chaos is looming any hour or day now. 
Reminds me of my ASL days...having unleashed my Crack troops only to have my friend slam his hands on the table...upsetting many counters and saying ...we can work with that.

Did we hear this before? Somewhere...?
 

The problem is that there are fewer washing machines when you go around a city 🤔

Guys, can we please all, collectively give @Grigb and @H1nd +1 for these super clear maps and twitter threads.
Grigb, I love how you sometimes do angled views, not just the classic and limited top-down. Highly informative.
Excellent work, sirs.

Yes. The original Planet of the Apes (1968) movie.

Interesting...Balakleya.
 

Interesting...Balakleya.
 

Some Ukrainian women are real bombshells...
 
 

Mikhail Gorbachev is dead. I remember seeing this from a distance...and simply not realizing what was happening because Soviet leaders simply didn't do crowds or personal popularity. It was refreshing and the relief one felt at the time in DC is hard to explain to those who don't remember the Ground Zero Cafe or dancing to Party at Ground Zero. 
I am quite sure this won't be an event of obvious consequence now but keep an eye on it later. It's the sort of thing that brings old allies together, that reminds the public that the end result of Gorbachev's very complicated legacy didn't need to be *this* (as in Putin's grim autarky).
 

Hi All,
Sorry for yet another thread sidetrack but to update re @Haiduk's laptop etc:
It's arrived here in Canada at long last. I'll post photos when my phone recharges.
The funds raised came to about $1700 so we've gotten a Laptop for Haiduk's wife and major pc part upgrades for his own PC. Those I will be buying today/tomorrow.
I'll be sending everything to Przemsyl in Poland, with a reliable family member who lives there, on this Monday coming, Aug 22nd.
They'll hand off to someone Haiduk sends to pick up during that week.
If the UKR Law is relaxed a bit then maybe he can pick it up in person, we'll see.
 
POSTSCRIPT
This process has been badly delayed on my end, due to a heavy couple of months for me, personally and work-wise. Especially the personal side. It's been...difficult...to focus outside the household for a while. But things have finally stabilised, the laptop is here beside me and the pc parts are a short walk away to buy, once Haiduk confirms his choices. Everything is moving forward again.
 

There is another possibility about Saki.
Do not laugh.
Maybe the Russians bombed their own base.
Old targeting data feed that was never updated A disgruntled base commander An accidental ordnance release from a base pilot A premeditated insider attack  
 

Birds aren't real.
https://birdsarentreal.com/
 

LOL! Genius!
 
 
 
 
 

Lol!  Talk about undeciding.  If this was a SOF Op it is worse news for the Russians as infiltration and sabotage does not have a range limit.  If true, or even suspected, this will tie the Russian security forces in knots for the rest of the war and likely beyond.
They are going to be wishing it was HIMARs.  If it was SOF, it will be one for the history books.

I am impressed, seriously impressed, with the strategic leadership of the UKR.
 

Now that is interesting.  I wonder what's up?  I wonder how much ammo RU forces have stockpiled?  And what is the rate of re-supply?  Once the rate-in is less than the rate-out, things are going to get interesting.  Hopefully RU will make the wise decision and try to mount an offensive out of this bridgehead.  Preferably planned at the very highest level of RU military decision making by Herr Putler himself.  🤪
If the bridgehead is compressed, the only bad news is that left bank RU arty will be in range of front lines.  
August is shaping up to be a very interesting month.
On the nuke plant subject:  I suspect if RU were to cause a radiation disaster, they would of course blame it on HIMARS.  And no one would believe that except Amnesty.  But this would be a massive escalation -- I think it would cause EU to become more aggressive, not less.  
RU handling this so stupidly, as I've mentioned before.  Instead of saying "this is internal civil war, stay out, we just want peace", they continually say "watch out, we're craaaaaazy, and you're all next!"

I would actually wear this one, although it should read: the 'birds' are in the pay of the bourgeoisie

Honorable mention (as it implies you're armed as well as crazy, as opposed to hipster ironic)

 

Birds aren't real.
https://birdsarentreal.com/
 

Birds aren't real.
https://birdsarentreal.com/
 

putin tries to bribe Battle Front designers to join their militia. 

This is a reset of the World Order. Things cannot be the same going forward with the current Russian regime EVER.
This is a war on democratic principles themselves.

All right guys, this is a post where I spill my guts in quite an emotional manner, please move along if your're not up for it.
I'll start with stating that I'm really fond of this community that I accidentally found thanks to @Der Zeitgeist. While we differ in perception of some minutiae of the events unraveling in front of us, we all seem to share the same view on whats right and moral in this context. And that is really a lot, more that I could expect from most of my average 'real', 'physical' acquaintances.
For my whole life, since I was an 8 years old kid listening to my grandpa's war tales, I was deeply interested in all things military related. It is easy to get a young boy interested  in this kind of stuff - the power, the agency, the feeling of purpose this provides is unmatched by anything else in the world. Of course  when you're still an adolescent, your understanding of what war/ armed conflict means cannot be deep enough. As I was entering my adulthood, even studying military history academically, I grew to hate the very notion of armed conflict and violence. I guess getting the real grasp of what war means to a regular person was too much to me at this point. I retained my interest, but didn't really pursue it apart from theoretical knowledge. Especially, I dodged the last years of draft i Poland - neither me, nor Polish civil society in general was really ready for it in early 2000's. I was living my life happily since then, like if "The End of History" was and undisputed fact of life.
And it really changed with the start of war in Ukraine. I could easily picture myself in the position of average Kyiv or Kharkiv citizen, a guy in his late 30s, with a reasonable career in IT, concentrated on making a living for his wife and young kids, who is suddenly confronted with the need to physically fight for all that is important for him. 
Of course, in this great community we mostly  concentrate of relatively coldly analysing what is going on, trying to get a grasp of events the way a historian narrates the Battle of Kursk - it is of course THE WAY to practically understand the events and be able to draw conclusions. That's how a commander should look at it, putting his feeling aside. This however isn't the only way to talk about war, especially it isn't the only "right" way to do so. 
On a personal or local society level, what this war is is the fight between right and wrong, between liberty and slavery, between good and evil. Of course, if you are a mature individual, you understand that the good and bad are very relative terms, and it's best to avoid such violent situations at all. Yet, it if comes to the conflict like this, for me the only true way to talk about the people on the very front line, in the trenches facing The Enemy, is poetry and epic prose. The cold analysis is of course important to practical understanding of the situation, yet it doesn't do justice to a person giving his or her life for a greater cause. Having said that, I run at a few videos kept very much in the spirit I outlined here:
A music video to Sabaton's 40:1 song, really fitting the evens of the first few weeks of war. We might've forget it already, but the first days were about the grassroots citizen resistance that in many cases stopped the orcs. Videos from February and March are really reminding of what it is all about:
Here's an Azov oath from 2015, it's as powerful as it gets:
And a subtitled Ukrainian anthem:
There's a conclusion to this rant - today I sent a letter to my local Territorial Defense brigade. They are overflowing with volunteers at the moment, but I'll should be able to join in the winter, early next year at the latest.
It's OK, I'll have the time to get used to morning jogs I guess.

Russia under the putin administration is not a regime you can do business with. That is crystal clear.