dan/california

The Azeris are better. That will be the epitaph of the Russian army when this is all over.

The cycle of barbarity is spooling up. We really need to tell the Russians they are done, with cruise missiles if necessary. before this thing goes the rest of the way ugly. I have this vision of Ukrainian girls blowing themselves up at Russian checkpoints that I SO want to keep confined to my nightmares.

Because that will convince everybody that things are going well...

I think right now one NATO overflight would send the whole army running, or surrendering in mass. Deploy one sensor fused munition, and they wouldn't stop running this side of the Urals.

The Russian Parliament past some absurd act/law that banned reporting about Ukraine. They couldn't do a better job of demonstrating they had a disaster in progress if the only thing on the TV was a Ukrainian news feed.

If Putin is deposed his successors will withdraw/surrender instantly. There are two reasons for this. The whole point would be to get the sanctions lifted, and they would be far more interested fighting to control Russia than Ukraine at that point.

Oh dear, is Baneman ok?

Actual evidence says no. Courtesy of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Going to be truly fascinating to see who suddenly goes broke.

CMBS has repeatedly made me think I am the worst company commander on earth. It turns out i am not even competitively bad.

Demand for the logistics module is going to be impressive after this.

We need to start moving weapons to Belarussian resistance, 4/5 of the country hates him. They shouldn't be that hard to find.

I mean how in the BLEEP do abandon a functional sam system with missiles in the tubes. It is incomprehensible for anything you can call an army with a straight face.

The Russians have never tried this somewhere the other side had near infinite supply of top grade missiles. It increases their casualty rates by orders of magnitude, and then in creases them again when their infantry just won't get out their tracks and soldier like they mean it. I am sure they have SOME functional units. If they had enough of them they would be in Kyiv, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I don't think the Russians can keep this up for six more days, much less weeks. There is a point of epic failure that is just unrecoverable. And high level AA assets being abandoned in a field to be set on fire by peasants with a can of gas and a match is pretty close to that point.

I am speculating here based on the tiniest slivers of information, but I think the some combination of the Poles, and the CIA, have been helping the Ukrainians get ready for this for a LONG time. I have a lot of almost completely speculative thoughts the Poles have done even more than that. The truly remarkable part is that they kept the Ukrainians from tipping their hand. I mean Steve saw it, but he is better than half the worlds intelligence agencies, More like 3/4s actually

Ukraines president is single most prominent heroic figure in at least 50 years. Ukraine is going to be in the EU the day the shooting stops. By acclimation, since their own votews won't let the politicians do anything else, French, German, Danish doesn't matter. They are all just thankful he can't run for their jobs

No one thinks that anymore....

Just a high grade air defense asset set on fire with a match and liter of gas. Putin is failing on a world historical level.

If the worst thing the Ukrainians are doing to Russian prisoners is telling them what to say on a call to their mothers, they are saints as well as being at least as brave as the Spartans.

I have a new summary of this war. Putin decided to cure his impotence problem by sticking his bleep in a meat grinder.

I am over reading this photo, but based on the body language, the guy with his hand one of the one kids shoulder almost looks like he is trying to comfort the him. The Russian conscripts are in such bad shape that Ukrainian soldiers feel bad for them?!

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/01/world/ukraine-russia-war#some-russian-troops-are-surrendering-or-sabotaging-vehicles-rather-than-fight-a-pentagon-official-says One flick of NATOs finger and this army blows away in the wind. A demonstrative over flight might do it Putin has managed the worst military disaster Since Napoleon failed in exactly the same spot, near as makes no matter. And Napoleon's army fought a lot better than Putin's is now. Just epic.

Our politics are spectacularly screwed up, but you also have to realize the lag time on both the U.S. publics absorption of what is happening, and the polls themselves. The latter can take a week to run. It is going to be a month before any real assessment can be made of the political effects

This is the absolute military fundamental at the moment, most of the Russian's stuff just doesn't seem to work. Their missiles don't work, their logistics don't work, and their morale and effectiveness rivals that of the Romanians on the Eastern Front in WW2, or the Italians in North Africa. Just epic institutional failure all the way up and down.