Probus

Operation Interflex (the training of UA troops in UK) is ongoing. I am enrolled in the Norwegian Heimevernet (Territorial Defense) and we recently were offered to volunteer for participation in the operation. Currently the norwegian instructors are from the Rapid Response Force of Brigade North, but now they are asking for more instructors from the reserves. 
https://www.forsvaret.no/heimevernet/aktuelt/operasjon-interflex
There will be two contingents, one January-April 2023 and one April-July 2023. The norwegian instructors will get a three weeks refresher course in Norway before leaving for UK, but there are of course requirements that they posses the required qualifications.
The UA troops will get 5 weeks of intensive training. No details about how many troops are to be trained, but 10.000 were trained in the initial phase of 120 days. Hopefully a lot more can be trained now that the number of instructors will increase.
Edit: There are rumours of gross salaries of 120k NOK a month (11.4k USD), so the pay is really good. But there will be work around the clock with very little leave.

Many thanks. 
OPSEC is all very well and good, but you'd think they would make SOME kind of high level 'we must gird our loins' statement to the populace.  5 million under arms is of course well beyond what would be needed here.  I'm thinking more like 1/10th that number.
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https://jamestown.org/program/lessons-of-the-ukraine-war-thus-far/
This piece from late Sept is interesting, although like most think tank pieces it's very handwavy high level and doesn't give specific answers as to what they're doing NOW:
The idea of a peacetime small contract army was quite popular in Ukraine before 2022... Developments since the February 24 invasion have made clear that the peacetime strength of 215,000 troops in the Ukrainian Armed Forces was not enough...
In 2021, reform of the territorial defense forces (TDFs) was quite popular. This was done through institutionalization of a separate command chain responsible directly to the commander in chief, with each region having its own brigade [but] deployment of TDFs was [only] completed during the actual fighting. In the end, TDFs enabled the addition of approximately 200,000 troops to regular formations quickly.
Currently, Ukraine has a government-estimated 1 million men and women under arms that include the defense and security sectors....
Ukraine needs an enlarged peacetime contract army numbering approximately 300,000 to 350,000 men...it is telling that Poland decided to increase the strength of its armed forces from 143,000 to 300,000 in the next five years.
An increased number of regular contract troops demands an overhaul of the Ukrainian army’s command structure. One possible variant might be the creation of an intermediate level of command similar to the use of military districts during peacetime.
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https://harpers.org/archive/2022/07/searching-from-the-ukrainian-foreign-legion/
I also ran across this long form colour piece from July, relating the misadventures of the many Western volunteers who showed up in Ukraine in March and April.  Hemingway stuff.

Very nice!  Nice patina too.  I'm a collector, but most of my youngest coins are from the 5th century or earlier.  I do collect some Jetons from Europe.  Here is one of my favorites (one century earlier than yours):

Here's me farthing guv'...

I get some harkonen vibes from the new Russian commander 

Or all he really wants is sharks with freaking laser beams on their heads....

Tajikistan - Wikipedia
 
One of those interesting historical parallels.  
Russian troops were required to restore order during uprisings against the Khanate of Kokand between 1910 and 1913. Further violence occurred in July 1916 when demonstrators attacked Russian soldiers in Khujand over the threat of forced conscription during World War I.

It is interesting to see that the Russia thinking seems to be that mass still matters.  This is not the first time we have seen Russia tout mass as a key metric of the situation from the very beginning.  Yet repeatedly we have seen the UA with less mass achieve the greater result.  I think it is a fundamental flaw in the Russian theory of war and has driven so much of their thinking - “if only we could get more X, we could then win”.  This echoes WW1 thinking which took years and millions of lives to shift.  We shifted from mass to mobile mass to synchronized mobile mass, and now face smart synchronize dispersed mass.  This is a trend that an extra 300k troops will not solve. 

best fast summary of types of 155mm ammo.
AT mines:

I think this infographic (not mine) shows the effect a tactical nuke would have:

You can put steam in offline mode, then this won't happen.

But then you have to run in Steam. That prevents some usage scenarios such as having the game open on your desktop and your laptop at the same time.

That wasn't so hard, was it?  

Part of the reluctance for several people was the assumption that Russia always lies - and they said it was a truck bomb.  It's more helpful to think of their statements as Bull**** in the academic sense.  Statements that, while they may be true or false, are made without regard for truth but instead with an intended effect.
Regards why truck bomb vs. rail car, it's possible that this was a matter of various irons in the fire and opportunity.   Or it communicates that no-one in Russia is safe, regardless of whether or not they live by a rail line
And there's no reason to suspect a suicide bomber.  While it is possible, as sross112 says, that Ukraine could generate such, many suicide bombers are caught because of stress behaviours pre-detonation.  Hard enough to get a truck bomb setup in Russia without adding that layer.  GPS-triggered detonation would be more reliable and precise in any event.
 

In the category of "we are very lucky they are so F-ing stupid" (not a category designed to narrow things down, I admit) we have this:
Yes, those do appear to be ERA blocks attached to the cab of a truck.
Not entirely sure what he thinks it will do for him.

Misterious EUSV, being found on the shore near Sevastopol could be UKR experimental device: https://news.usni.org/2022/10/11/suspected-ukrainian-explosive-sea-drone-made-from-jet-ski-parts
One commentator suggested, this USV had a control via Starlink, but because Starlink is not working in Crimea and around, the vessel could lost control and throw ashore itself   

Allow me to edit: "I would cast Matthias Schoenaerts Gollum to play Putin in "The Death of Putin" . 

It might prove to be the wrong decision for him as well. If he mobilizes a bunch and they think they are being sent to Ukraine they might think they have a better chance against Luka and his Russian buddies than they do against the UA.

H.I. Sutton just dropped a new video. He didn't reference the Kerch bridge at all but he did recognize those mystery boats we have previously seen as "Explosive Uncrewed Surface Vessels"
Food for thought.
 

Guy on the left is obviously tyred..

Hi guys, I want to share this article here because I thought it was interesting and because it made me re-question my assumptions on the whole conflict. Luckily for me having re-questioned my assumptions I ended up exactly where I started - i.e. screw Vlad and this war only ends when the last Russian soldier leaves Ukraine including Crimea. So i do not endorse what the author of the piece says, in fact I disagree with it. And in a certain sense there is nothing new here, it is a rehash of the John Mearsheimer and George Kennan positions which have been previously dismantled on this forum.
So why do I post this article here? Because it is a good antidote to groupthink. And I think we need to avoid falling in to groupthink, to occasionally sit back and question fundamental assumptions on the conflict. So in essence the argument here is the old imperialist canard of Ukraine is in Russia's back yard, Russia is big and scary and should have influence over neighboring countries' security policies. Which is bull (in fact was the argument used by the British to occupy Ireland for so long). Other people call it "realpolitik".
Anyway, I found the article useful to read something from a totally different perspective from the news and opinion I have been consuming this past months and maybe others here will do the same.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/complications-of-the-ukraine-war/?utm_campaign=imprimis&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=229431640&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_La5DaB1fPX9KQZ2Xa_odqOP2-GTOG4C5jTw48oNLb3LFrSSJAF2bp1IyvbsGqbzqV3ERXryCpTN6YbUkdmIZ0mxt_Ag&utm_content=229431640&utm_source=hs_email
 
And while I'm here I want to give a little pitch for two books, one I finished last week and one I am currently reading.
The first is "Ukraine and Russia From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War" - this goes through the period 1991 to 2014 and basically shows how this conflict was all but inevitable from quite early, even 1993 or so. But it was a good refresher of the 2004 Orange Revolution, Maidan etc. which I remember but was still good to have the narrative told in one place.
https://www.amazon.com/Ukraine-Russia-Civilied-Divorce-Uncivil/dp/1108713955
 
The second is "Borderland A Journey Through the History of Ukraine" by Anna Reid. This one is a much lighter read. Kind of half travelogue and half history. Real bed-time reading. It was written in about 1995 when Ukraine was first emerging out of the USSR and then I think the author tacked on a chapter or two and re-did the introduction after 2014 to update it. I am about half-way through this book. It is very interesting on the 19th century background, influence of the Poles etc.
https://www.amazon.com/Borderland-Journey-Through-History-Ukraine/dp/0465055893
 
 
 

https://meduza.io/en/news/2022/10/12/russia-s-irrecoverable-losses-in-ukraine-more-than-90-000-troops-dead-disabled-or-awol
According to this source Russians lost 90 k irrecoverable lossess so far. Hard to tell how credible it is.
It's sophisticated action to ruin Ukrainian morale: imagine all those UA engineers spending hours in the dirt digging and masking minefields...while it was enough to just put them just like that for the same effect. Devastating.

Noting special, just a quick report with some nice close up vision
 

Ukraine's Plan to Win the War
I love the infographics channel, they break things down for the most common youtube user.  This was written and produced prior to putin's old man mobilization.