altipueri

A common western critique has been that Ukraine "needs to upscale".  Last summers offensive appeared to be penny-packeting - "why can't they get mech to work? Must be because they do not know how to do Bn level manoeuvre.  It is their Soviet tradition (which does not even make sense with respect to upscaling)"  
I am in the camp that after 2 years of war the UA knows how to fight this war better than we do.  It looks like they have picked their "upscaling" effort.

Some words about survivability of modern western armor. 
Other words of soldier of 47th mech.brigade: "If we didn't have it [western armor], our brigade would no longer exist"
47th brigade has most unpleasant and hard work - to gnaw through most dense defense lines, attracting the enemy on itself. Yes, they lost destroyed and damaged already many vehicles, but this brigade moves steady tree-liine for tree-line through totally mined fields and enemy artillery fire. Any other brigade on Soviet BMPs or even on M113 already would be lost own offensive capabilities. 
 

Game difficulty settings become the battlefield:  I want mine to be Recruit while forcing my opponent to play Veteran.

No idea why western press cares so much if he has cancer or whatever else at this point. With modern medicine (and he gets the absolute best of it) he can easily live for another 10 or even 20 years. So no illusions there.
Granted yet another reason I want putin to die is to see how those same journos, who repost news about putin having cancer monthly, will explain why nothing has changed after his death.

So argument by Exception rather than General rule ? Fine . That has happened once  in the last hundred years  in Australia and it happened with the co-operation of  many  interested parties in  Australia at the time - nothing at all to do with the Queen/Monarchy - and more to do with the Australian Senate   . No one has yet tried this in  NZ   - there was an incident in 1926  in Canada  which was controversial  but again   1 event in the last hundred years worthy of note .

No, it is not. Do not go there.

While the instruction to 'Russian warship' caught the hearts and emotions of the world, I do think "I need ammunition, not a ride" may be the defining statement of this entire war.
It hit the heart, it hit the head, it showed self-sacrifice, it demonstrated belief and it made it very very clear that Ukraine weren't going to roll over and surrender.

Russia is still far from collapsing. To pretend otherwise is just wishful thinking.

Brilliant idea! This thread the last couple of pages has been a bunch of boring back and forth about Afghanistan, etc., and then of course you had to get one more dig into Trump (sounding like a child at that), because hey, we're already off-topic, right?
And now I know why I spend less and less time in this topic.

The occupant of the Oval Office can't walk out of a room with assistance. Please stop pretending he even knows what's happening in Ukraine. He can't read a teleprompter properly, can't answer unscripted questions and keeps getting sent home to keep him out of the way.
If you want to thank the current US Government for their stance and actions on Ukraine, find the people making the decisions and telling Biden what to say, and thank them.
Sorry but the Afghan withdrawal was not controlled, was not properly planned, was not properly communicated to US allies and was as a result an unmitigated disaster. Yes, that failure absolutely did encourage Putin in thinking the US was weak and lacking in leadership, and yes, that has cost Ukraine dearly. A year later and the only winners are the US arms manufacturers, who got replace $80bn of equipment abandoned to terrorists, and as a result get massive sales to countries supporting Ukraine.
Biden? Does anybody anywhere on the planet seriously think he's currently compos mentis?

Unfortunately he flunked succession planning...

Elvis and I are pissed- that is a Flyers goalie, and we need all the help we can get.

So secret there is 20 minutes of video in the SUN......🙃

Which one's Pink?
Meanwhile, not to promote the video, but Task&Purpose has a video up saying how militarily vulnerable Estonia is.  Uhhhhhhh, that's part of NATO, Dude.  He has great videos on weapons but I am continually shocked at how utterly clueless he continues to be on anything above the most basic tactical level.  I bring this up because there's lots of this stuff on the interwebs and I am just not understanding how these folks don't seem to live in an evidence based reality.  Like "Russia could attack Poland!" -- with what?  Or the ongoing 'Great Russian Hordes' stuff.

Scroll up a couple pages and you'll see a video of Putin announcing that Russia is back in the empire business and plans to reabsorb all former Soviet slave nations. In that context how can anyone bash NATO?

On the contrary. NATO (including the US) is far too cautious and decent. We should be far more aggressive. The world would be a much better place for it. 

Okay I'll bite..... why?
second question.  Does Mrs Grammont know?

Isn't that what some eisenbahn engineers said back in, oh, about '42?  
Snarkiness aside, that means a tighter commercial tie to the rest of Europe and less of a tie to Russia. Long term thinking...

1.702 trillion USD (2021)
 
1.012 trillion USD (2021) For what it is worth. 21st century is going to be the Asian century. Europe is doing what it is doing best imploding once again. Russia GDP is below that of South Korea. 

You have a way with words sir... now I have to figure out how to expunge that image...     That blind goat gets around.
by the way, the sky is falling.

Second video is pretty good.. maybe at the end there, if the tank had used target light it would have had a better chance of suppressing that retreating SOF solder.    The Russian lack of infantry really hurts them in these types of engagements obviously... and that is something that is not going to be easy for them to address.

I think the diplomatic problem for Ukraine might be that the war seems to be going so well for them that people in EU stopped being afraid of the Russians. As they are pushed back, the feeling of crisis is passing, and EU politicians are no longer under pressure to do everything to help out.

Yup, I refer to him as the national rabble-rouser. Can be entertaining to listen to people complain about nothing but other than that I pay him little heed.
MMM

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.

I might be late with this picture, but I think that Putin will be very proud of receiving this price if Finland and Sweden (and maybe even Ukraine) become members of NATO. The question is where should he put it, in his office or in the main entrance?