G.I. Joe

For the Russian Air Force to be chuffed that it can keep Ukraine from flying serious CAS over the Russian lines is the weakest flex in the history of mankind. The Russian Air Force has comprehensively failed to live up to even the lowest possible pre war expectations. Ukraine wasn't supposed HAVE an air force at the start of week 2, we are at about week ~62, and there are Ukrainian planes flying every day that the Russians have to respect and plan around. When Ukraine is flying forty or fifty F-16s I fully expect the Russian Air Force to park itself in Siberia and drink Vodka.

Nice mic drop.
Grandpa may forgot names of his children sometimes, but knows how to handle Soviets Russians.😎 With all various quirkiness and failures of his administration, Ukrainians are very lucky real Cold War Dinosaur and not some ex-bankster is running this business.*
*And please restrain from USA inter fighting, this was just to underline active role US took in this conflict.😉 He could give those fighters faster, though...
 

Joe Biden agrees with your assessment. 😁

Rare video of Strela-10 work. Two Russian UAVs were shot down
 

One of more unusual and interesting players in background of this conflict is Japan.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/2023/05/19/special-supplements/japan-offers-comprehensive-assistance-ukraine/
I read that Japanese PM just promised more direct military support in Hiroshima, too, in the form of combat vehicles and perosnnal eqiupment. There are rumours among some millexperts that Japanese are also very active in prividing signal and humint intelligence, but this will probably be widely only known years from now.  Several interviewed volunteers in Int. Legion mentioned that they were surprised to see not-small amount of Japan volunteers, too.

One of my more favoured aphorisms is "for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong."
Words to remember, words to live by. It's a complex old world out there, and dumbing it down doesn't help anyone.

Here is another: “full of sh#t and bad manners”.
You posted ignorant drivel, got called out, basically told the moderator to “shut up cause you can’t tell me what to do” like an over entitled millennial. And are now pushing post-truth fanboi lines like they are scripture.
Dunning-Kruger: “The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias[2]whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.”
I just posted a half dozen reasons why you foundational premise is weak, your original post has zero merit, and you come back with “college boy eh?”  
It is a big internet there are all sorts of sites that will appeal to where you are coming from - good ol folksie wisdom and hard workin practical experience that “tells it like it is” in simple easily digestible one liners that will make you feel all sorts of clever. They distill the complexity of human conflict to 140 characters and offer easy answers to this scary complex old world.  You can learn all about “Elitist this and globalist that” and will no doubt hear all sorts of down home simple solutions that are so obvious.
And then we here can muddle along as best we are able because clearly “we just don’t get it”.
 

 

Ok let’s play “How Many Reasons Why Russia May Open Up Negotiations That Are Not An Immediate Sign Of Defeat” - all the College Boys chime in.  I will start:
- Shifting the strategic narrative/reframe the war in an attempt to demonstrate that they are the reasonable ones and start down a road to victimology that may appeal to certain political parties in the west who have their heads in warm dark places while they listen to “experts” with big mics, empty heads and a serious lust for more money and power.
- To create uncertainty in the European alliance and NATO as some nations just want this to be over and renormalize. 
- A ploy to pull China into this in some sort diplomatic tag team. China enters the side of “Putin the Reasonable” and leverages it towards a win for them both.
- The Russians simply stall for time in a hope to slow down the UA in a hope for a battlefield reverse.
- To play up to a domestic audience, with never any real intention of ceasing the conflict.
- Because Putin is finished and we wind up negotiating with a bunch of separate goons, none of whom actually represent the Russian people.
- Putin is not finished but wants us to believe it and over reach.  Link to playing for time and dumber political machines moving into power.
- Random irrational objectives that we can only guess at.
Now just for you - go look up Dunning-Kruger and think about it for awhile. And did you just walk into Steve’s house and tell him to shut up and sit down?  Seriously, how does that get right on any political spectrum?  And we are at Ignore.

It occurs to me that if you can explain nuclear deterrence on an 8th grade level, you aren't explaining nuclear deterrence. 
The internet's full of dumb places. Let's not actually try to dumb this one down, eh?
 

I pretty strongly disagree with this. Russia doesn't have rule of law. It has what some like to call a rule-by-law state. What that means is that the law exists on the books but it is only selectively enforced. Anyone with krysha can ignore the law at will and at the upper levels competition virtually requires that one does. Conversely, the power structure...meaning Putin...can at any time decide to activate the law against those he wishes to destroy or punish. This is not an esoteric subject within Russia. Everybody knows it and must adhere to the system. Wagner's slightly nebulous status heretofore was not to fool Russians...it was aimed at providing convenient myopia to decision makers in the West.
In the context of Prigozhin, the situation is the reverse of your description above. The mercenaries under Prigozhin's wing can push back against  him...precisely because they all work for Putin and Prigozhin's perceived maneuvering isn't arm twisting Putin...it is to curry favor with him by balancing out the war primed influence of the MoD. Make no mistake...in every sense that matters, Putin is the Russian state and the Russian state owns Wagner. The day Prigozhin forgets that is the last day you will hear from him.
 

Speaking of China, Here is how Zelensky made it to Japan from the KSA.
Did not know Zelensky was travelling on a French Air Force plane, or as I should now say French Air and Space Force. 🙂

You realize that this sentiment is really the problem, right?  I mean there is nothing categorically wrong in what the ambassador said for an objective point of view.  Russia has not demonstrated that it will act in good faith during the conduct of this war - the systemic warcrimes are a big hint.  So it would be a very good idea to approach any peace negotiations very carefully.
You do not have to like someone nor agree with their politics, but that does not automatically mean everything they say is incorrect.  Statements or positions need to be weighed against the facts, not affiliations, no matter which end of the spectrum the come from.  
There are exceptions of course, for example if someone has demonstrated habitual lunacy or use of mis/dis-information, sure go ahead and burn them as a source, but the Ukrainian ambassador does not fall into that category as far as we know - unless you have proof beyond her possible post-secondary education?  You are burning her based in affiliation alone or at least it appears that way, and that is intellectually lazy to be blunt.
Finally this whole line of thinking is a significant fracture point that has, and will be exploited by all sorts of players.  It is in fact step 2 in the subversive warfare playbook - widen the fractures that were already there and make them unsealable; the death of compromise.  Step 3 is to harden elements from either side of the fracture into organized and connected collectives that are able to self perpetuate and metastasize - a carcinogenic operation. This is a long standing recipe on how to destroy a society from the inside out.
This is exactly the type of operations Russia did before 2014, and was attempting before this war started.  Every nation that borders Russia is combating this sort of influence.  And it will very likely be what Russia falls back on once this war is over - assuming there is a functioning Russia left.  China is also very good at this game, it is also out of their playbook, but they are much better at it.
So you do not have to agree with the current US president - and sure go ahead and insult him based on ageism. But it is hard to disagree with the results in Ukraine, so far.  This has been one helluva tough one to steer through from a strategic and political level.  And it has not been perfect.  But for navigation through the first real proxy war of the 21st century I gotta give it a B+ so far.
As to the rest of the politics, well you Americans can go argue that - preferably on another thread.

Maybe they still have not forgotten the times of 1940-1942 when Britain was in a comparable situation with the Nazis at their throat and dependant on help from across the pond. I guess they still today can relate to how it must have felt back then to how Ukraine must have felt since last year. I am glad that UK is like a rock in the waves and not faltering in its support.

Credit where credit is due, The Brits picked a side in February 2022, and have been utterly steadfast since. All the more impressive for having three prime Ministers in that time period.

Boom!
 

And what is the quality of those new systems?  Given shortages in tech supply within Russia these systems will likely have issues with guidance systems and flight controls.  They will be then plugged into a 3rd rate ISR architecture that is being eroded as well.  Which is plugged into a Command and Control system that was a mess to start with.
This is what it looks like when organized crime tries to fight a conventional war.  
We have been watching the one-way erosion of the RA for over a year now.  The symptoms of systemic failure are written on the walls, underlined and bolded.  I am getting a growing sense that the upcoming collapse may be spectacular.
All war is communication, and Russia has been sending out signals of failure since this thing began.  All war is violent, but it has to be effective violence.  Simply doing disconnected or ineffective violence only reinforces an opponents resolve because they get angry, not despondent. You never create a curve they feel they are falling behind.  Russia has been a testament to ineffective violence in this war - it has not been focused or connected, a flailing windmill of murder and rage that looks scary for the first few seconds and then everyone realizes it is in fact a seizure.
Russia has already lost this war, they likely already know it.  We have already won it, but some refuse to see it.  All that remains is how do we end it?

"Holy sh**, it's Vipers!"
(Couldn't resist the reference...)

So since Europe seems to finally understand that the way to make it stop is to win the bleeping war, can we go one more step and stand up the Flying Tigers part 2? F-16s flying CAS over Southern Ukraine by August would just the thing to finish off Russian morale once and for all.

Trofim Lysenko? (Who drew on Lamarck's theories, which were pre-Darwinian).

As we sit and wait for the Ukrainians to kick off their offensive, I am reminded of how Miyomoto Musashi handled a couple duels... he would arrive very late, letting his opponent stew and really mess with their heads.  Could this be what is happening here? I don't think you can discount it, the Russians have to be pissing themselves with anticipation right now.
Bil

The difference between these two images fills me with hope for the future of Ukraine after this war.

One estimate puts the cost of the strikes last night for Russia at $120,000,000.

They are not comparable. On paper Aegis is supposed to have far better performance. See the pic below. Patriot PAC3 is a terminal phase interceptor with very short window of opportunity to intercept SRBM and MRBM (see the blue dots there?), Patriot's speed is too low to work on an IRBM.

 
The yellow Aegis BMD line in the graphic seems to be representing RIM-161 SM3,  an Exo-atmospheric interceptor.
As you can see , the right end of the yellow line does not extend to the x-axis, because SM3 doesn’t work in Endo-atmospheric. That makes this graphic a little misleading as the SM2 and SM6, two Endo-atmospheric interceptors deal with terminal phase interception also belong to Aegis BMD. They have better performance compared to Patriot PAC3, although they will have trouble to deal with IRBM.
 
Put hypersonic weapon hypothesis, Kh-47 kinzhal is just an air launched Iskander SRBM with a limited maneuverability MaRV . It’s flight profile might be very similar to DF-21D and YJ-21 ASBM, but I guess DF-21D is the hardest to be intercepted due to its terminal speed. There is no way for Patriot PAC3 to intercept a DF-26B, an IRBM with anti-ship roles. That’s when you need SM3 to intercept before the RV from the IRBM dive into the terminal phase.
 
So far there is no indication that the HGV from DF-17 has the anti-ship capability. But due to the HGV’s flight profile, it will make the detection very very hard, and it is also operating on upper edge of the atmosphere so SM3 is useless in the face of this threat. Also due to its flight profile, HGV won’t have a great potential energy to convert into speed at terminal phase, so THAAD and SM6 should be able to intercept that but it is still too fast and maneuver for Patriot PAC3. We don’t have any open source to study on this, this is just my guess
 
Anyway, the key to successfully intercept a ballistic missile is not about the interceptor missile’s performance, its more about early warning, detection and classification.  There are some discussions on this topic in Matrix game forum CMO section, I can see if I can find the discussion.

Kalibres launched from the sea, first explosions in (over) Mykolaiv. Air raid alarm in Kyiv again. Hm... Will Russians repeat combined strike? Well, I go to sleep. Wish good hunting to our AD. 

It is. You can even see the round exiting off the top edge of the photo.
If I had to guess, given the platform, I would say that the multiple tracks are repeated occupation of a favoured firing position.
In a nearby hide the gun crew can safely bomb up, eat, maintain the vehicle and sleep while hidden under some trees or a bridge, waiting for the call "fire mission battery!" Then jump into the wagon, download the mission data, race out of the hide, screech to a halt in that paddock just far enough back from those trees that the rounds will clear them, final calcs and swing on to the target, conduct an MRSI then outta there within a couple of minutes, back to the same or a different hide and it's bomb up and nap time again, waiting to do it all again. By the looks of the tracks, they've done that cycle 5 or 6 times already.