Tux

No, that is not right. Germany's deal with Russian gas started in 1958 when Germany started to deliver gas pipes to the Soviet Union.  The first gas came in 1975. The decision to close the nuclear plants came in 2011.
The big mistake of Merkels government was not to do anything about it after 2011.
The anti-nuclear movement in Germany was started by conservative citizens and was only later joined by pro-peace and environmental groups. But don't think those were some fringe groups - the movement had and has broad support in many different parts of the population.
Greenpeace had historically nothing to do with this, although it probably shared many of its goals and supporters.
Germany's reliance on Russian gas is a mixture of opportunity, greed & ignorance. Very simple. No need to drum up conspiracy theories.

Really specific complaints there.  I am pretty sure the UA has the whole "leg blowing off" part covered based on even a modest take on casualty figures.  I mean we could always push more indirect fire and, of course ammo.  Of course if the sole driving logic is "kill more Russians!  Damn the consequences!!" A combination of chemical weapons and a deep biostrike would pay fantastic dividends in that department - a little bit 'o' sarin at the front door, a dash of anthrax in the back.  
Here is a crazy idea, modern militaries have forgotten more ways to blow off legs and kill people than you can imagine; however, at some point they become totally counter-productive - like getting into a barfight and pulling out the other guys eye and eating it, it sounds cool and definitely has an effect but your friends are not going to share a cab ride home with you.
My point on AP landmines is pretty simple: the political cost will not be offset by the battlefield gains.  If you find that frustrating, well try fighting an insurgency with a hand and three fingers tied behind you back and come back to me.

Maybe Russia can send its two working T-14s to train with China.
(On a serious note, given the culture, I would not want to be a woman in Russian armed forces).

More so compared to that orange f'n blathering, BS spitting pumpkin that wants to get back in again. Surely my friends down south of me are not that dumb again? Good God I hope they aren't.🥺
Sorry, back to what really matters in the thread, Ukraine.

I will point out withdrawal where you are effectively abandoning thousands of people, and millions overall, there is no solution that you can salvage out a controlled, planned withdrawal that isn't effectively reinvading Afghanistan. How are you supposed to bolster a government that was collapsing that quickly in order to maintain evacuation routes? (A deal signed by Trump mind you) You can't, so you need to send in a significant force to secure the capital, except what about the rest of the major cities, now you have what, several tens of thousands of U.S personnel reinvading the major cities of Afghanistan? 
And obviously, you need to expand logistical footprint to ensure those thousands of U.S personnel are effectively supplied....
Afghanistan is surrounded by Iran on one side, Pakistan on the other, the central asian republics to the north, none of them have U.S bases to set up the logistics needed for U.S maintenance of long term presence in Afghanistan and i severely doubt any of them would be willing to allow it. 
Part of the deal was the withdrawal of U.S personnel, if the deal was violated, sure the U.S could relaunch air operations to reinforce the country but how would the U.S overfly these units? Pakistan? Sure, where did the Taliban leadership operate from until Kabul fell? Quetta. 
We all stare at Russia defending the west bank of the Dnieper, meanwhile we were trying to prop up a government that was land locked and surrounded by countries that are hostile to the U.S and would happily let the U.S burn itself forever in Afghanistan. 
No, i seriously doubt the evacuation could have turned into something of a "clean withdrawal", had we decided to "properly plan" it, all that would have resulted would be flooding it with thousands of troops against a insurgency about to achieve victory, I'm totally sure they would have sat down and let us retake their gains in the urban regions without a single American death....
In 2018, 70% of the country was already controlled or had active Taliban presence. 2015, nearing the end of the drawdown to about 15k NATO forces, this NYT article states that the UN considered half of the country's districts to have high or extreme violence threat levels, High or Extreme levels mean usual UN presence or movement is curtailed, half the country was off limits for the UN in 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-united-nations.html
Again, we absolutely tut tut at Russia thinking it could conquer a country of 44 million with only 200k troops, meanwhile you suggest keeping a country of 40 million under control with what? Only 10k-20k troops from collapse? Say only the urban areas, thats 10 million, not nearly enough either. 
Moving on from unrealistic notions, 
In a GUR controlled unit of the International Legion, serious allegations of abuse, violence, and failed leadership have arose, and this occurred despite higher levels of the Ukrainian government being informed. 
https://kyivindependent.com/investigations/suicide-missions-abuse-physical-threats-international-legion-fighters-speak-out-against-leaderships-misconduct
 

Uh yeah?
Sounds very much compos mentis to me? But hey, maybe the entire White House and political administration is in a conspiracy to hide that he has full-blown dementia and he's not really doing anything. Sure. And probably aliens are involved too.

The US didn’t have “proof” because that’s not the way it works. It had strong intelligence from many sources within the Russian military and government pointing in that direction while the shambolic nature of the preparation gave naysayers something to point to if they were so inclined. I get it…the Iraq War was just one of the times where the US pushed something that turned out to be wrong and it is reasonable for other nations to be skeptical. This was not one of those times. The troop deployments were there to see. The statements by the Russian government on where their thinking was vis a vis a continued Ukrainian state were clear. France and Germany simply didn’t want to believe it because they didn’t like what they were hearing. That’s ok too! But the Biden team got it right and deserve every bit of credit for how they prepped the diplomatic ground and provided (and continue to provide) materiel support.

In my experience big booms are not unlikely to turn into even much bigger booms.
I am totally amazed that bystanders keep filming those explosions at distances where I would be running my ass off to get away.
 
 

The new weapon...

Most of us only have two Steve, how many did you have? Or is that a hint that you're not the average guy 😉

I understand what you are trying to say here, but only a few having to fight is not a bad thing. I hope we can find other ways to make people appreciate the advantages of democracy and freedom.

When Hrim was initially showed on parade in 2018 (test model of launcher without the missile) it was introduced like "operative-tactical missile complex Hrim-2". 
Sapsan was other project of multirole launcher for ballistic and surface-air missiles with mortar type of start. Project was closed in 2012 by the decision of minister of defense Lebedev (citizen of Russia and Russian influence agent)
Hrim-2 is successor of Sapsan, which uses most of Sapsan's developments, but already with vertical start and for ballistic missile only. Maybe Hrim-2 is a name for Saudi Arabia (300 km) and improved complex for Ukraine with 500+ km range is Sapsan, let's see when it was introdiced officially like finished and adopted project
@MikeyD
Small phonetical lesson
Unlike in Russian, where the letter "Г" transmits only the voiced velar plosive [g] sound like in English "gain",  Ukrainian language has two sounds: " ґ " for voiced velar plosive [g] and "Г" for voiced glottal fricative [ɦ] (like in the English "home", but slightly closer to [g], then in English ).
Sound [ɦ] is common, in that time, when [g] is very rare and apperaed only in less than two dozens words. 
Until new rules of translitaration were introduced about 5 or more years ago, usually words with "г" letters transliterated through "g" letter on Russian language manner. And this practice was usual and for western media. So, because of this you can see "Grim-2" spelling, though according to new transliteration rules  "Hrim-2" is more correct.
But there is some confusions with pronunciation - theese new rules have struck on established speech habits. For example the word "hobbit" in Ukrainian spelled like "хоббіт", which corresponded to Russian pronunciation [khobbit], but now new spelling rules demand all foreign words on "h" letter to write through "г" letter -  "гоббіт" with pronunciation [ɦobbit]. But historically all foreign words with initial "h" letter always spelled and prononciated in Ukrianian with "kh" sound, because it more close to English "home", than to UKR variant of [ɦ], which I just can't transmit here
So, when I see the spelling like Hrim, my mind, habits and logic cry to me to read it like "khrim" 🙄

You, sir, are either taking the piss. Or you are badly in need of sleep. 😆
edit: and I'm beginning to drink a bit too much.

Anybody else playing the drinking game, "Have a drink every time Steve misspells the name of a weapons system"? 
I may need to go to the hospital soon 😆

Thank you. Just doing what I can. Would like to do more but I do not have the required contacts.

That is physically impossible. Utter BS.

I've pissed off birds before.
They not only bear a grudge, but manage to communicate it to all other members of the same species.  
Don't piss off birds.

Ok, so not only historically illiterate. Got it.

Sure, but duels aren't the /only/ crime in the modern world. There are many other things that can also land you in the big house.

My apologies. I assumed you were historically literate.  I was paraphrasing Churchill's quote about democracy to acknowledge that while there are problems with the the UN (and democracy) that it is still (like democracy) the best we've yet come up with.
Again, I apologise. I wont make that assumption again.

This is wronger than a wrong thing on the wrong day.

The UN is very much like democracy: it is absolutely the worst system except for all the other alternates we've tried.

Time to talk about what has happened in Pisky aka Pisky crisis. This is my personal opinion of what has happened there in the last few days.
General crisis of UKR Artillery
As we all know UKR artillery suffers from lack of soviet caliber ammo and tubes. However, it appears the problem has become worse recently (end of July), and RU started to notice it in different parts of the front. The situation could be especially hard at Donetsk direction due to alleged RU strikes of UKR warehouses a s@Haiduk told us. 
As I understand UKR Command tries to mitigate it by creating NATO caliber arty groups (Girkin talked about them few times). There are not a lot of them (maybe even 1). When this group is present UKR have either relative parity with RU offensive arty group or some superiority over RU defensive arty group.
Probably this is the reason we do not see serious UKR pushes and collapses of RU defenses so far. UKR arty group can suppress RU local defending arty, but it cannot CB large amount of arty RU can concentrate in one place. So, if there is major UKR push RU concentrate arty there and effectively stops everything.
Cause of the crisis in Pisky.
According to RU discussions UKR Command removed the arty group from Pisky around week ago. As I see it was calculated risk - they do not have enough groups, and this is supposedly the most heavily fortified portion of front (I have not seen fortifications/defense myself, cannot comment). RU banged their head at UKR defense here like 6 days and still did not penetrate it completely.
RU on other hand had a real crisis - the progress was negligible. Despite local penetration somewhere else they were stalled by critical Avdiyvka defenses and the only way to deal with them is to encircle Avdiyvka through Pisky and Vodiane (North of Pisky). The inaccurate and inflexible but heavy RU artillery hammer was dropping on Pisky.
As per previous experience UKR defenses could withstand significant RU battering and continue to fight. However, for this offensive RU had little know but very influential trump card - more widely available drone teams prepared by RU volunteer groups in previous months. They started to feed observation videos directly to arty observers allowing RU arty to discover and hammer even pinpoint UKR targets. The RU hammer became significantly more accurate (judging by RU standarts). 
Initial disposition
Let's look at what we know about initial disposition. 

Just to get a feel here is an old RU video of shootouts at Volvo center and Pisky. RU forward position with sniper and spotter looks like from trench in front of Volvo center and they shoot toward Cowshed.
And here is photo of Volvo-center from RU Drone operator/propagandists Tatarsky (who fought there in 2014-2015 and now again) on 3 of August.

 
And here is link to the video of him at Cowshed.
https://t.me/vladlentatarsky/15302
He says nothing important, just celebrating that the best Warrior Nation in the World managed to walk less than 700 meters in 8 years, 5 months and 6 days of new offensive against pig Untermensch. 
And this is the biggest issue of RU - despite all efforts RU could not capture and clear forward UKR position until the Crisis happened on 2 of August.
Pisky Crisis 1-2 August
For several days RU kept drones above Pisky and relentlessly hammered any movement on UKR positions. For the feel here is the sample video of that work. UKR Squad commander Sergey Gnezdilov commented that Pisky was receiving 6500 rounds per day from RU. UKR arty fire was weak. No CB. And only 120mm and 82mm tried to answer occasionally.  The only local UKR command could do was to hold the line patching it with fresh reinforcements.
On the 1-Aug while artillery kept UKR defenders in cover first RU assault groups managed to reach the outskirts of Pisky from the Airport direction. They overran a small UKR outpost taking half-dozen of UKR POW. Yet, it seems RU assault group was weak and preferred not to push forward into small arms fight with UKR defenders relying instead on artillery fire.  UKR defenders on other hand became too weak to dislodge it. UKR defense started to crack but still was holding.

Until 2-Aug. On 2-Aug probably after RU arty caught fresh UKR reinforcement and from 15 hloptcev 14 became casualties, morale cracked and UKR command started to lose control over forward positions.
We do not know what happened there (push from RU assault groups or too eager withdrawal). What we do know though is that UKR forces pulled back from Cowshed and the eastern part toward western part. RU immediately followed UKR on both sides of ponds.
However even this modest effort was too much for RU forces. Seems to be exhausted and weak after the previous 5 months fighting RU decided not to pursue UKR into UKR rear defensive zone and to dig in at the area reached by nightfall - Dam.  
The sudden loss of control caused Sergey Gnezdilov to write an emotional Facebook post describing difficult situation and heavy losses. Shock waves amplified by UKR volunteers reposts reach both UKR public and RU Nats. Word of imminent UKR defense collapse and RU breakthrough caused quite a stir everywhere. Yet, there was neither UKR collapse no RU breakthrough. 
Quiet Endgame 3-Aug
Unlike stormy UKR social networks situation in Pisky was relatively calm. RU was probing and hitting anything suspicious very hard at western part.  UKR side on other hand seems decided to withdraw toward Donetsk Ring Road and Bridge Republic positions. Also, according to Sergey Gnezdilov vague new post UKR command decided to return the arty group and RU became uninterested in further major pushes. 
It was all back to the old arty Ping Pong game. 
P.S. 4-Aug
According to latest RU Nats posts they moved on from Pisky toward new and exciting topics - China-US scandal, RU shelling Donetsks and murdering civilians while pretending UKR did it, and Glorious advance RU troops are making in the whole Donbass area. Fighting in Pisky became just another topic hinting that RU either took a pause or they are returning back to crawling pace.
We will know when the time comes.

Nice work. You've managed to combine a straw man with a false dilemma. Although a common double fallacy, this one is well executed. The judges have scored you a 3.5

I don't believe that's how they think.
Murdering people and the blatantly lying about it to your face is a show of power. They know it is ridiculous. They know you know. They know there's nothing you can do about it. They are laughing at you.
"Yes I murdered them for fun, and I won't even give you the satisfaction of admitting it - even we both know. What are you going to do about it? There is nothing you can do about it. This is me showing the world what I can get away with."
Same with MH17, same with bombing Odessa after pretending a deal, same with deliberately bombing hospitals and other despicable things.