fireship4

So we have writers at home adding nothing to the information they recieve, and reporters on the ground with no useful information in the pieces they send.  The answer seems to be 'journalism'.  You can make plenty out of decently sourced material, and find out a lot from direct access to a country or the right people, if your intention is to inform.
Confused business sense is obviously a driver behind many problems: 'paper 'x' already provides good analysis, we need to provide something different and eye-catching if we are going to get people switching subscriptions.'  And as always, stupid people.

So we have writers at home adding nothing to the information they recieve, and reporters on the ground with no useful information in the pieces they send.  The answer seems to be 'journalism'.  You can make plenty out of decently sourced material, and find out a lot from direct access to a country or the right people, if your intention is to inform.
Confused business sense is obviously a driver behind many problems: 'paper 'x' already provides good analysis, we need to provide something different and eye-catching if we are going to get people switching subscriptions.'  And as always, stupid people.

Droog, Where's My БМП?
 
 

@dan/california
Roderich Kiesewetter says, that Scholz wanting Ukraine to lose the war by not delivering what Ukrainians want and instead offer stuff that is nice to have, but wasn't asked for by Ukrainians. To emphasize his claim he mentions the Gepard SPAAG. The Ukrainians never had the Gepards's on their list. They asked for IFV's and Tanks. The Gepard offer was made by the industry and picked up by the politics. He also mentions that 100 Marder IFV's and 100 Leopard Tanks are ready for delivery by the industry and additional 30 Marders could come from the Bundeswehr. 
One of the other Guests, Carlo Masala, says that the SPD and Scholz tried to protract the delivery of heavy weapons in fear of nuclear escalation until they were forced to deliver something, cause the rest of the world was already delivering too. He also notes that a part of the German government is paralyzed by the threat of nuclear escalation. 
*edit
Basically there is that hazy mood throughout the show that parts of the current administration, Scholz and parts of the EU would go back to the pre war status with Russia as soon as possible and that this is the case for all the half assed proposals.
Also noteworthy is the contribution by Jan van Aken from the "Die Linke", a Left wing party that is mostly known for its pro Russian politics, who says all the sanctions don't work as well as they should and that they are bypassed regularly. He says that in order to show real support for Ukraine, the EU can and should do much more to get independent of Russian resource delivery.
Hope this helps.
 

Thanks for letting me know - my attempt at using links to dropbox image previews seems to have only shown up for me (a security feature I guess), direct links having unsuccessful.  I have uploaded them elsewhere and beg your collective indulgence (you'll bloody like it and say so) as I repost both parts below.  Mods feel free to delete my previous two posts (when has that ever happened).
 
"Looks like (before the thread hurtles past it) we are touching upon a fundamental of warfare: hills!  How should they be considered in modern war?  An amateur's thoughts:
They are hard to get up. You can see the surrounding land. You can be seen from the surrounding land. That's it.  That's all I can think of.  These broadly mean:
Being hard to get up makes them harder to take with infantry and vehicles, and easier to defend.  They are harder to supply and harder to place heavy weapons upon. Once under your control, you can use them (as in the past) to control the surrounding area, through spotting and direct fire. Every bastard in the area around you can see the hill.  And since the hill is always smaller than it's surroundings, all other things being equal, this means more people will be able to see and hit the hill than are able to see and hit from it. So we have some nuance.  You can say a drone with FLIR negates the benefits of a hill, but how many pairs of eyes are on the hill and how many are staring at the monitor?  Who or what are you going to put on the hill?  Who or what is in the surrounding area?  Anyway, having my mind on the subject led me to starting up Google Earth.  It's amazing what we can do at home with modern tools:"
 
"More Google Earth extravagance further to my previous post:"
"Alas the flight ends there.  I had in fact imported the whole BMU-E into Google Earth, about 180 images, and was positioning for a shot when the whole thing crashed, losing almost all the work I had done over the previous hours.  Bastard. 
I will do it again if I feel it serves enough purpose (I did wonder if it was worth it as I realised how long it was taking), and can perhaps provide for requests should the posts not prove instructional, time allowing."

If someone can point to a german transcript I can probably do it.  But I can't type fast enough in german to keep up, and don't have the on-the-fly skillz to just listen in german and spew english out my fingerz.  But here's my best shot at paraphrasing:  
The gist is that Kiesewetter thinks that Scholz and Macron are playing for time and hoping that rather than Ukraine winning, in the sense of Russia being driven out, possibly with regime change or shift of power in Russia, they're hoping that it will lead to a cease fire and withdrawal of Russian troops back behind the borders [I think he referred to January borders]. All that, despite having cover from the Bundestag - he says colleagues in the FDP, the Greens, and the Union [CDU/CSU] are all puzzled.  German industry has been prepared to start delivering and could have sent the first units already, and the numbers that they could send can make a difference for Ukraine.  He [Scholz] seems to have no empathy for the situation that the Ukrainians are in.  Kiesewetter does recognize that Germany does send defensive equipment, and civil supplies, preparation for dealing with war crimes, but not the equipment needed for Ukraine to defeat "this criminal regime".  The German guns are both enough quantity to make a difference, and would send a message to other european nations [subtext: France] to do more. "We all push the Chancellor and expect him to use the tailwind that the Bundestag is providing".  He says a few times that he has no idea why Scholz is being this way. 
Weisband replies that she doesn't know any better than anybody else what's inside Scholz's head and can't guess.  But she sees Scholz and Macron trying to isolate Germany and France.  She thinks that inside Ukraine people just assume those two are trying to isolate their countries (She's a German/Ukrainian dual citizen)
Kiesewetter is really harshing on Scholz, and Weisband is more resigned.
I'm happy to edit with any corrections that come along.

Thanks for letting me know - my attempt at using links to dropbox image previews seems to have only shown up for me (a security feature I guess), direct links having unsuccessful.  I have uploaded them elsewhere and beg your collective indulgence (you'll bloody like it and say so) as I repost both parts below.  Mods feel free to delete my previous two posts (when has that ever happened).
 
"Looks like (before the thread hurtles past it) we are touching upon a fundamental of warfare: hills!  How should they be considered in modern war?  An amateur's thoughts:
They are hard to get up. You can see the surrounding land. You can be seen from the surrounding land. That's it.  That's all I can think of.  These broadly mean:
Being hard to get up makes them harder to take with infantry and vehicles, and easier to defend.  They are harder to supply and harder to place heavy weapons upon. Once under your control, you can use them (as in the past) to control the surrounding area, through spotting and direct fire. Every bastard in the area around you can see the hill.  And since the hill is always smaller than it's surroundings, all other things being equal, this means more people will be able to see and hit the hill than are able to see and hit from it. So we have some nuance.  You can say a drone with FLIR negates the benefits of a hill, but how many pairs of eyes are on the hill and how many are staring at the monitor?  Who or what are you going to put on the hill?  Who or what is in the surrounding area?  Anyway, having my mind on the subject led me to starting up Google Earth.  It's amazing what we can do at home with modern tools:"
 
"More Google Earth extravagance further to my previous post:"
"Alas the flight ends there.  I had in fact imported the whole BMU-E into Google Earth, about 180 images, and was positioning for a shot when the whole thing crashed, losing almost all the work I had done over the previous hours.  Bastard. 
I will do it again if I feel it serves enough purpose (I did wonder if it was worth it as I realised how long it was taking), and can perhaps provide for requests should the posts not prove instructional, time allowing."

Thanks for letting me know - my attempt at using links to dropbox image previews seems to have only shown up for me (a security feature I guess), direct links having unsuccessful.  I have uploaded them elsewhere and beg your collective indulgence (you'll bloody like it and say so) as I repost both parts below.  Mods feel free to delete my previous two posts (when has that ever happened).
 
"Looks like (before the thread hurtles past it) we are touching upon a fundamental of warfare: hills!  How should they be considered in modern war?  An amateur's thoughts:
They are hard to get up. You can see the surrounding land. You can be seen from the surrounding land. That's it.  That's all I can think of.  These broadly mean:
Being hard to get up makes them harder to take with infantry and vehicles, and easier to defend.  They are harder to supply and harder to place heavy weapons upon. Once under your control, you can use them (as in the past) to control the surrounding area, through spotting and direct fire. Every bastard in the area around you can see the hill.  And since the hill is always smaller than it's surroundings, all other things being equal, this means more people will be able to see and hit the hill than are able to see and hit from it. So we have some nuance.  You can say a drone with FLIR negates the benefits of a hill, but how many pairs of eyes are on the hill and how many are staring at the monitor?  Who or what are you going to put on the hill?  Who or what is in the surrounding area?  Anyway, having my mind on the subject led me to starting up Google Earth.  It's amazing what we can do at home with modern tools:"
 
"More Google Earth extravagance further to my previous post:"
"Alas the flight ends there.  I had in fact imported the whole BMU-E into Google Earth, about 180 images, and was positioning for a shot when the whole thing crashed, losing almost all the work I had done over the previous hours.  Bastard. 
I will do it again if I feel it serves enough purpose (I did wonder if it was worth it as I realised how long it was taking), and can perhaps provide for requests should the posts not prove instructional, time allowing."

Thanks for letting me know - my attempt at using links to dropbox image previews seems to have only shown up for me (a security feature I guess), direct links having unsuccessful.  I have uploaded them elsewhere and beg your collective indulgence (you'll bloody like it and say so) as I repost both parts below.  Mods feel free to delete my previous two posts (when has that ever happened).
 
"Looks like (before the thread hurtles past it) we are touching upon a fundamental of warfare: hills!  How should they be considered in modern war?  An amateur's thoughts:
They are hard to get up. You can see the surrounding land. You can be seen from the surrounding land. That's it.  That's all I can think of.  These broadly mean:
Being hard to get up makes them harder to take with infantry and vehicles, and easier to defend.  They are harder to supply and harder to place heavy weapons upon. Once under your control, you can use them (as in the past) to control the surrounding area, through spotting and direct fire. Every bastard in the area around you can see the hill.  And since the hill is always smaller than it's surroundings, all other things being equal, this means more people will be able to see and hit the hill than are able to see and hit from it. So we have some nuance.  You can say a drone with FLIR negates the benefits of a hill, but how many pairs of eyes are on the hill and how many are staring at the monitor?  Who or what are you going to put on the hill?  Who or what is in the surrounding area?  Anyway, having my mind on the subject led me to starting up Google Earth.  It's amazing what we can do at home with modern tools:"
 
"More Google Earth extravagance further to my previous post:"
"Alas the flight ends there.  I had in fact imported the whole BMU-E into Google Earth, about 180 images, and was positioning for a shot when the whole thing crashed, losing almost all the work I had done over the previous hours.  Bastard. 
I will do it again if I feel it serves enough purpose (I did wonder if it was worth it as I realised how long it was taking), and can perhaps provide for requests should the posts not prove instructional, time allowing."

Thanks for letting me know - my attempt at using links to dropbox image previews seems to have only shown up for me (a security feature I guess), direct links having unsuccessful.  I have uploaded them elsewhere and beg your collective indulgence (you'll bloody like it and say so) as I repost both parts below.  Mods feel free to delete my previous two posts (when has that ever happened).
 
"Looks like (before the thread hurtles past it) we are touching upon a fundamental of warfare: hills!  How should they be considered in modern war?  An amateur's thoughts:
They are hard to get up. You can see the surrounding land. You can be seen from the surrounding land. That's it.  That's all I can think of.  These broadly mean:
Being hard to get up makes them harder to take with infantry and vehicles, and easier to defend.  They are harder to supply and harder to place heavy weapons upon. Once under your control, you can use them (as in the past) to control the surrounding area, through spotting and direct fire. Every bastard in the area around you can see the hill.  And since the hill is always smaller than it's surroundings, all other things being equal, this means more people will be able to see and hit the hill than are able to see and hit from it. So we have some nuance.  You can say a drone with FLIR negates the benefits of a hill, but how many pairs of eyes are on the hill and how many are staring at the monitor?  Who or what are you going to put on the hill?  Who or what is in the surrounding area?  Anyway, having my mind on the subject led me to starting up Google Earth.  It's amazing what we can do at home with modern tools:"
 
"More Google Earth extravagance further to my previous post:"
"Alas the flight ends there.  I had in fact imported the whole BMU-E into Google Earth, about 180 images, and was positioning for a shot when the whole thing crashed, losing almost all the work I had done over the previous hours.  Bastard. 
I will do it again if I feel it serves enough purpose (I did wonder if it was worth it as I realised how long it was taking), and can perhaps provide for requests should the posts not prove instructional, time allowing."

None of the images are displaying for me - I tried two different browsers.

More Google Earth extravagance further to my previous post:
Alas the flight ends there.  I had in fact imported the whole BMU-E into Google Earth, about 180 images, and was positioning for a shot when the whole thing crashed, losing almost all the work I had done over the previous hours.  Bastard. 
I will do it again if I feel it serves enough purpose (I did wonder if it was worth it as I realised how long it was taking), and can perhaps provide for requests should the posts not prove instructional, time allowing.

Many thanks, this series is very important reading.
This guy is a relative rarity; an educated Russian who volunteered for the colours. But I'm not sure whether this is his samizdat. or just another flavour of Strelkov.
Our division's zampolit once spoke to us after we refused to go into assaults.... He was confident we all came to fight in Ukraine for money, and that if any of us was making more than 120,000 rubles a month in Russia, then we wouldn't come here. What can be said about this?
But of course, the 'Banderites' are evil....
They also said that they saw how once our guys got captured and were walked across a field by the banderites. Ours decided to strike all of them with ATGMs - both ours and Ukrainians, just so ours wouldn't get captured and tortured. In my opinion that was the right thing to do, it's better to die instantly like that than be tortured for days in the hands of these inhumans. 
*****
'Happy men don't volunteer.'
 
Most of them were in their first good pair of boots. When the boots wore out, they'd be ready to listen.

More Google Earth extravagance further to my previous post:
Alas the flight ends there.  I had in fact imported the whole BMU-E into Google Earth, about 180 images, and was positioning for a shot when the whole thing crashed, losing almost all the work I had done over the previous hours.  Bastard. 
I will do it again if I feel it serves enough purpose (I did wonder if it was worth it as I realised how long it was taking), and can perhaps provide for requests should the posts not prove instructional, time allowing.

Second part of this important account from a Russian soldier is up:
 

In his most recent post (and posted on the previous page by another user), Kamil Galeev linked a video where one Mikhail Khordaryonok attends that Russian current affairs show: 'The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov', and makes a speech, interrupted every so often by the co-host and wife of the host Olga Skabeeva, who I demand from now on be referred to as 'Revanchist Rita' in reference to 'Bitchin' Betty', or 'Rita Repulsova' in reference to the Power Rangers.
In the thread Galeev notes that Kodaryonok wrote a report entitled 'The Forecasts of Bloodthirsty Pundits', on February 3rd which he considered very prescient, and called for it's translation.  That translation has been provided by one Dmitry Grozoubinksi:
https://nitter.net/DmitryOpines/status/1526477859799408640#m

Created for nazis?

Some of the conversation over the few pages have referenced the former Yugoslavia.  Which brings back... well, not so good memories.
I was a Canadian peacekeeper in Bosnia in latter half of '93.   During the Croatian offensive in the Medak in Sept of '93, I was with the 2 PPCLI when we went into the sh*tstorm to try to stop the ethnic cleansing going on.  The Croatian army attacked our unit during that operation, a thing that the Croatian government denies to this very day.  Despite us photographing the Croatian dead after the battle and collecting their ID, etc.    We had god damn evidence and to this day, the Croatian government position is that they never attacked us.
Part of our job, beside trying to keep the warring factions apart, was to document evidence of ethnic cleansing and I was in charge (I was an officer) of a evidence collection team.  So, literally thousands of photos, videos.  Transcripts of interviews with witnesses and victims.  Six months exposed to that living hell, day after f*n day....
So I had the evidence, because sometimes our official recording devices ran out film or tape and we used our personal recording devices to finish up at a site.
After I got out the military, I found myself sometimes on various military forms about games, such as this one.  Arma forums, military wargame forums... that sort of thing.  And as it happened, I ran into forum members from Croatia and Bosnia Serbs and we would get into it.
Universally, every Croatian or Bosnian Serb forum poster denied what happened there.  And I was called a liar on many occasions for telling them them the truth of that war as I was there and they weren't.  And I have evidence to back up my claims.  No one believed me and if I offered visual proof, they didn't want to see it or they disclaimed it as fake.
I remember a particular Bosnian Serb who was not in the war but we got deep into the weeds discussing what happened during that war.  Deny, deny, deny.  It never happened.  Until videos that the Bosnian Serbs took of them killing civilians and dumping them in mass graves what was recorded by the very soldiers who committed the atrocities surfaced and made it onto their local media and they couldn't deny it any longer.  Those videos were part of the process besides sanctions that resulted in some notable Bosnia Serb / Serbian leaders being turned over to the ICC for prosecution for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  After the revelation came out, this individual on that forum who I had spent hours engaging with about the culpability of Serbs in the atrocities simply ignored me from that point onwards.  I will never know why.... was it that he discovered that I was right all a long and he was wrong and he was ashamed (as he would have been) or he simply wanted to hang onto his delusion of what narrative he wanted to believe was true and he knew that I would keep chipping away.   
Denial is a powerful thing.   I don't understand why it has such power but it does.  People can dismiss an outright objective reality because to accept the truth is to undermine what they think reality is or should be.   I don't get it and is beyond madding to see the denials in the face of objective reality happen over and over.
Sigh.   I don't know why the hell I rambled on with this.  Maybe it was a story I need to tell to remain sane in light of the same brutality I witnessed back in Bosnia happening in Ukraine now.  Or maybe I still am the greater fool for believing my experiences in Bosnia can be an object lesson to others about holding onto a narrative that is personally comfortable but runs counter to all the real evidence to the contrary.   DMS, I am looking at you....
The truth will come out after all this is over.  At least, I hope it does.  The truth of this war needs to be told and codified so generations that follow can know what really happend.
Now at the end of this and reviewing it, I feel that I should have deleted this or apologize for it.  
I am hitting post. It is my truth.  Let people accept it and learn something from it or ignore it.  I needed to say this for a long time.   
 
 

Created for nazis?

Created for nazis?

Created for nazis?

Created for nazis?

Created for nazis?

It may be old news by now, but someone made the effort to simulate the sinking of the Moskva in Command: Modern Operations:
https://weaponsrelease.com/2022/04/18/simulating-the-sinking-of-the-moska/

More footage of the Donbas river crossing site: