Tux

I don't think anyone "deserves" to die (frankly I'm not sure anyone "deserves" anything in any rigorously determinable sense, except in that what is "deserved" can be a useful social construct for rewarding/punishing desirable/undesirable behaviors). Certainly I think that dishing out death based on what is "deserved" is a slippery slope (a position I would like to think I would maintain even if I was given custody of Hitler, but I'll make no promises to any time travelers out there). However, if they "need" to die in order to get the Russian army to leave Ukraine, then so be it.
Frankly I don't care if they die, desert, or surrender. But I want very badly for a critical mass of Russian soldiers to do one of those three things.

I haven't seen any content posted by Haiduk lately, I hope he is doing OK. His updates were most enlightening. 

The Russian sailors in the Pacific are probably secretly happy that the Turks closed off the Black Sea to the rest of the ships in the Russian navy.

Many pages past I saw comments about modern societies not prepared for high combat losses, and I would push back some. Many societies in history are not prepared for high losses, but can push through when the time comes.

United Kingdom lost only 85,000 war losses in 113 years of empire. Biggest loss is 22,000 in Cirmean War. Why would U.K. be prepared for for 900,000 deaths in World War 1? Is similar when look at U.S. why would nation be prepared for 1,00,000 losses in Civil War when before only maybe 100,000 losses in last 90 years?

I think some comments of people being prepared for losses leans too much on an idea of modern decadence, but I wonder if any British citizen would have been prepared in 1910 for the casualties rolls of 1916.
 
 

Agreed.  I really wish CM had an operational layer to plug this into.

Your definitions are categorically wrong.  A dictator with actual 95% support isn't a dictator but a phenomenally popular leader.  An autocrat maybe.   A Dictator in reality relies on brute force power to stay on top.  Pinochet, Kim Jong un, Robert Mugabe etc. State control of the media and education systems, full control of the state police and military institutions, judiciary etc ensures control.  
And what the heck is that "smoothie sipping leftist" comment?  I don't think you are finding in the US that the "smoothie sipping leftists" are Putin's main apologists.  Granted the left can have some annoying as hell pontificators, they however haven't been the ones most vocally decrying the US gov't support for Ukraine.  Who within the French political scene has been arguing against supporting Ukraine?  Same in most other western states.  Gimme a smoothie and arm the hell out of Ukraine. (actually,  i prefer coffee and wine).

Does it matter at this point?  Do you want them to give up and go home or don't you?
Your fever dream -- which I have a feeling long predates 2014 -- of the world somehow proscribing Russians from the human race as the Romans did the Sarmatii (unsuccessfully) isn't ever going to be a thing.
So you're going to need to find a way to live with Them afterwards.

This ... doesnt make a lot of sense. I mean, it's true, but only in a trivial sense. Why is a single source important at all, let alone being the /first/ thing you bring up? Given the plethora of proven, safe, and economical renewable generation sources available ... I'm truly at a loss as to what point you think you're making.
So you can't use solar in BC. Fine - use wind or tidal or geothermal or hydro. You cant use solar or hydro in Samoa - that's fine, use wind or tidal. Etc. The "lack" of a single solution is a strength, not a weakness.

"Russia isn't magic" is my new mantra.

Straying off topic here... As a (particle) physicist I hope (and I'm also quite convinced) that we are not going back to nuclear power. There is no CO2 coming out of the chimney but that's about the only positive thing I can think of. While nuclear power does not rely on fossile fuel in the sense that it doesn't consist of dead animals and plants it is also not regenerative and really doesn't grow on trees. It is really like with gas: yes, you can get the stuff from "friendly nations" like Canada and Australia but one of the biggest suppliers is Kazachstan. Mining the stuff is really nasty and then there is the problem of nuclear waste and not to mention the danger of accidents. Yes, there are ideas and concepts how to handle the latter two but they are more or less just that: ideas and concepts and by no means prooven. What's more, nuclear power is just not economically competitive.
No, I hope we neither go back to nuclear power nor rely on LNG for long - the only benefit of US LNG compared to Russian gas is that it's not Russian. What we really should do is invest massively in renewable energy sources and become independent, energy-wise.

This absolutely, various op eds are working hard to undermine the current US support for the war because of ...well reasons.  Mostly to do whatever damage they can to the current administration. 
Say what you want about the current occupant of the White House.  His handling of the Russian invasion of a European democracy and the unifying of NATO countries to oppose it has absolutely been spot on.  We all know with a certainty how this would have gone had the previous administration been in charge. 

Schneckenschreck

But Trent specifically mentions that Grey Eagle in relation to the Orlan-10, and how the US Army won’t have enough to fight the next war, when the two aren’t comparable in capabilities or roles. The Army wouldn’t be using it in situations where it stands to lose so many. This is what he posted:
“The US Army is too high on the price/capability curve versus modern air defenses & needs a drone 1/5 the cost, five times the numbers and about 70% the capability of a Grey Eagle”
That UAV literally exists. It is called the RQ-7 Shadow. 
So I understand your point, but we have to be careful when discussing future capability and force structure for future wars. The manufacturing capability and operational structure to produce and utilize thousands of cheap drone isn’t here yet. If we start re-designing our force structure and doctrine under the assumption that we will have these thousands of cheap drones, we are going to be in quite the predicament if the technology doesn’t exist when war comes. 
Prove to me the capability to manufacture, distribute, transport, operate and resupply thousands of cheap drones across a theater of operations. It doesn’t exist now, and I’m not saying it won’t in the future, but until that capability materializes we can’t claim that’s the future of warfare. We may never actually reach the point where it’s feasible. There’s costs associated with all this beyond physically making more UAVs. You can treat them like ammunition but they can’t just be loaded in a gun and fired. They can’t be stuck in a magazine in someone’s chest rig. We will need more pilots, more mechanics, more transport trucks, more launchers, more fuel trucks, more everything. Who runs all this? Is there now a UAV branch and do we expand the military with more personnel? That’s often times not financially feasible, so which branch foots the personnel bill? Infantryman? Tankers? Artilleryman? Logistics units? What does a UAV replace on a supply truck going to the front? Artillery ammo? Tank rounds? Food? Fuel? Medicine? What does a Switchblade replace in an infantryman’s rucksack? How many infantryman are now trying to control dozens of switchblades instead of pulling security?  What airfields are launching dozens of Grey Eagles and TB-2s? Do they have the capacity for all these new UAVs and are we now cutting spots for manned, high performance jets and their different capabilities? Do we now have to have construction units assigned that can build hasty UAV airfields? Where exactly can we afford to cut now that we have these drones? Those are decisions that can have profound effects on a militaries capabilities, so it’s hard to say that it’s the future of warfare when we haven’t even shown the capability to manufacture and support them in such large quantities. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but someone needs to show that it can be done before we start reorganizing our entire military and its doctrine to support them. Fielding drones in the thousands is asking for exactly that. 
 
 

We get The Times, both print and digital. Used to live in England so we still like keeping up. No less than 4 articles on Ukraine on the front page today. I don't see the duck story anywhere, but I'd say short of armageddon, there will still be a Sports page, no doubt, because the Premier League goes on, and silly local stories, while still posting the war headlines. 
Dave

[Looks out the window]
No commotion here. Just because some clickbait outlet has captured some pointless vox pop doesn't mean it's the primary concern for anyone other than that ranting, self-selected, self-appointed arbiter of importance. Any more than your outrage over someone's (probably temporarily misplaced) sense of proportion is more important than the existential struggle for the life of the rules-based international order that's going on in Ukraine. People can be concerned about more than one thing at a time, you know.

wait, Ukrainians aren't white anymore?  Gosh, I can't keep up.   First I find out the Irish, Italians, and Poles are now 'white', at least in the US, when they certainly weren't when they came to the US.  And now the Ukrainians aren't white anymore?  Does this White Club have any rules at all?  It's almost as if they are just making it up on the fly -- but that would be ridiculous, right?   I mean, if one's whole world view revolves around this I would expect their would be some scientifically solid basis, right?  I mean, who would just do this based on nothing?  That would be really stupid.

Jeremy Vine is a presenter who gets his ratings by inflaming contentious issues. His show should in no way be regarded as representing anything other than views cherry-picked to generate indignation, disgust, hatred and any other negative emotion that feeds his audience's atavistic needs.
Sure, the view that we have no business in Ukraine exists, but just because the show presents it emphatically does not mean that it is widely held.

Of course they "go along". Because propaganda isn't the reason anything happens. Propaganda simply gives convenient excuses for why something happens.
Russians can simply feel good about their crimes / inaction by just repeating things from TV that exonerate them. It's only how they truly think and act that counts.

The cat thought he had made a new friend for a moment.

Created for nazis?

Steve, I am beginning to think that the Russians have a better chance of getting over those bridges, than you have a chance of getting over the bridges 😄

Politico is also a notorious political gossip rag in the U.S so color me skeptical on anything they write. 
There was a slight worry Poland would get themselves condemned and isolated by the EU for defending and being alongside Orban and turning anti-democratic, but I'm hoping with Russia reminding Europe and Poland where to point the sword towards, Poland cools off and recognizes its place in the EU as part of a strong EE bloc is much better than trying to do whatever the hell its doing with its judiciary. 

A little skepticism about military spending is understandable after the last two wars. But it is worth remembering that Ukraine is fundamentally different from Afghanistan and Iraq. Those two wars had absolutely no influence on our security or our larger strategic interests. We lost Afghanistan just about as hard as it is possible to lose a war, and it ultimately meant nothing. Our position is not the slightest bit weaker for our defeat, which I think really drives home just how much wasted effort went into delaying it. Iraq we somehow managed to win, in the sense that the government we installed is still in place without our continued presence being needed to prop it up. But our position in the world is not the slightest bit stronger for that victory. The money, effort, and lives we poured into those wars really were completely wasted (and I really hope my words here are interpreted as more tragic than callous). So yeah, I get it. I understand feeling a bit jaded about any sort of military spending.
But, unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine is absolutely central to our security and our interests. The outcome of this war really will make a big difference to our security and position in the world. Every dime we put into aiding the Ukrainians goes directly to improving the security of our European allies and weakening one of our greatest and oldest adversaries. And frankly Ukraine will be cheaper overall than Iraq and Afghanistan (probably). We spent north of 2 trillion dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan (~2.5 trillion based on my crude google efforts, assuming the top results were correct). I think we should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, but I doubt it will take anything on the order of trillions of dollars to decisively beat Russia in Ukraine (Russia would have to sustain the fight for years for it to breach the trillions for us, and I don't think that's on the table for them). Although, I would still be in favor of helping Ukraine even if it turned out to be more expensive overall than Iraq and Afghanistan.
Granting that it may take a few hundred billion more to rebuild Ukraine after the war, and that might top a trillion overall when added to the wartime aid. But it would be money well spent. Not only is there the ethical side, where that money would go towards improving the lives of 40+ million people. But it would also be a huge benefit for us strategically, as we would almost certainly gain a longtime ally in Ukraine in just the part of the world where another ally could really matter. And because I have heard a million and a half people say that we shouldn't be engaged in nation building let me preempt any complaints that you may have on that front. This would be completely different from Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of nation building. In Iraq and Afghanistan we were trying to build up countries with populations that viewed us as invaders (because, let's be honest, that's exactly what we were). In Ukraine we would be giving the Ukrainian government the money to rebuild their own country after helping them to repel their invaders. So the local resistance to nation building that we encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan simply wouldn't be present in Ukraine.

I don't know, I think he was pretty questionable choice for that (and I don't just mean from his lack of credentials).
 

This way of thinking, which implies that peoples are a solid and unique group that must be treated and punished for their sins in a unique and total way, reminds me of something very ugly.
From there, it is a very short step. to suggest a "Final Solution" for the Russian people because all of them are guilty of being Russian.
For my part, I deeply detest the Russian government, but I pity the Russian people.