dan/california

Russia's actual terms of trade with both countries must be worse than awful.

If they would try to mobilize them, their sources would soon collapse; trafficking channels in Middle East react immediatelly to every change in the matrix. Forced mobilization may be limited to long-time workers from Central Asia in Russia, not people who can afford to pay expensive all-inclusive trips with bikes. Long term thinking has not been Russia's strong suite.

I agree Russia will push this fairly hard. If nothing else is is good propaganda for Russian TV. The sting in the tail though, will be when this little campaign of aggravation has run its course. I fully expect all of these poor migrants to be forcibly mobilezed into the Russian army when they are no further use otherwise.

Someone in the Russian chain of command is more attached to what his maps say, than the guys at the front. If this was filmed before the big storm? Which seems likely, anybody on this sand bar froze solid when it hit.

The only thing you left out is that two years in this ammo problem is inexcusable. if we had panicked early we would be past this problem. People were so afraid of buying more ammo than necessary if the Russians folded. They totally failed to consider that the Russians might NOT fold.

The NYT has published a lot of complete bleep about this war, but it puts out something truly good every so often as well. This is one of the good ones.

The accuracy of the grenade drops against a moving vehicle is impressive.

I am not sure how much of the issue is simply not giving a bleep? And how much is the fact that if they send the body home they have to pay death benefits?

Another Perun, excellent as always. He gives something close to the highest possible rating to the Orlan 10 and thirty. They remain an unsolved and deadly problem. They also seem to be worth more or less copying....

The third bad assumption is that we can finely control the outcome of this war. At this level of societal commitment by both sides the odds of this thing winding down in a controlled manner seem to me to be a lot less than 100%. When the fault line slips on one side or the other it is rather difficult to predict how big the earthquake will be.

Even Trent gets it. Also a an interesting video, the driver floors it and might have survived the fuel burning off.

I don't think this is it, exactly. The strategy is to get Russia to realize it isn't a superpower anymore without tipping it into an infinitely worse replay of the disintegration of Yugoslavia. The problem is that there are two competing bad assumptions that underly this strategy. The first bad assumption, some portion of the foreign policy blob is still convinced, despite all the evidence, that Russia can be brought to a rational analysis of the costs of continuing this war vs any possible gain. This faction is stuck in their convictions because they are on some level correct. On any rational basis Russia spending far, far more in Ukraine than it could ever hope to recoup. The notable problem is that the Russians simply don't seem to care. Indeed the have gotten at least ten thousand of of their own soldiers killed and wounded outside of Aviidka in the last few weeks in a crazed performative demonstration that they don't care about rational cost/benefit analysis as most of the West understands it. I have been saying for months on end that rational autocrat would have declared victory and taken what he could get at the negotiating table at on May 1, 2022. Putin didn't do that, and has shown nothing but a determination to double down on an ever worse bet since. The second bad assumption is that the Russian regime is weaker than it appears, and that we can win this thing without the real commitments of new resources. That just doesn't appear to be the case at this time. The eighteen months that have been dithered away by this attack of wishful thinking may be VERY costly. The problem with supplying Ukraine enough artillery ammunition is not money, resources, or expertise. It has been, and continues to be, at least in to many places, the unwillingness to make a medium term commitment of a few billion dollars that might look extravagant if the Russian army suddenly does come apart at the seems. I would simply point out that that would be a truly wonderful problem to have.

Anybody know what was on the back of that thing?

I wonder if he has been "invited" to join a Storm Z unit?

Bad, if true.

Holy bleep that is intense. Glory to Ukraine!