Calamine Waffles

Anybody familiar with Russian demographics over the past 20 years should not be surprised by this.

Ukrainian defense outlet Defense Express on the artillery situation: https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/how_much_the_russian_artillery_outnumbers_ukraines_in_density_and_amount_of_systems-3260.html

The casualty count is definitely believable, though honestly they admitted about 3,000 dead after the first month, so 10,000 after over 3 months doesn't seem extraordinarily high by the standards of this war. It coincides with Zelensky's figure of 100 dead/day (we are now on day 109).

Alexey Khlopotov (a.k.a. Gur Khan, the Russian tank commentator) says that his blog has now been blocked in the Russian Federation https://gurkhan.blogspot.com/2022/06/gur-khan-attacks.html

Yeah, so Calibre Obscura sort of pointed this out (except re: Ukrainian claims of being outgunned)

Ukrainian street crossing procedure is interesting compared to the Russian one from Mariupol. At least they know what suppressive fire is, it seems.

It's been exported to Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, and I think you're going to find a lot more Thais and Indonesians who speak English than who speak French. Also pretty sure more Ukrainians speak English than French.

Yeah, they have a very selective memory of World War 2 where they "liberated" the Russo-Ukrainian populations in Poland in 1939 and stopped the Nazis in Finland in 1940...

https://gurkhan.blogspot.com/2022/06/blog-post_8.html

Yeah, I'm skeptical of Germany's ability to deliver. I'm from Malaysia, so we do use the PT-91M. Seems to be a good tank for what it is.

I don't think the US has the industrial capacity for the latest Abrams variants, though I guess they could send stuff out of deep storage. The Germans were apparently announcing that they would send Marders to Greece in exchange for Greece sending in their BMPs, but apparently that was made without consulting with the Greeks first.

The US and Britain are backfilling for Poland at least. Not sure what Germany is doing.

I highly doubt it. Maybe for a weaker round, but something like Stugna will punch through.

Ran out of the Relikt soft-case ERA, I guess.

So, the thing about Russia (and by extension pro-Russia proxies) is that they like to project their own thoughts and weaknesses onto NATO and the West, that the West is no different from them. So they do genuinely believe that the West is as corrupt as Russia is and that Western governments blatantly lie all the time too. That is why they so fervently believe NATO is a Western Warsaw Pact.

Belarus does collaborate with Russia on weapons and has been doing so since the fall of the Soviet Union. They even used to collaborate with Ukraine (the guidance system of the Skif/Stugna was originally made by Peleng in Belarus)

Of course. Belarus was a major manufacturer of certain automotive chassis during the Soviet era. The MAZ and MTZ plants in Minsk made things like the MAZ-543 (which you know better as the truck chassis that carries such famous things as the Elbrus (Scud-B) and the Smerch), the MAZ-537 heavy hauler normally used for tank transport, the MAZ-7910 (S-300), the MAZ-7917 (Topol), the MZKT-79221 (Topol-M), and the GM-355 tracked chassis (Tor).

The GM-352 chassis used by some earlier Tunguskas is made in Minsk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_chassis

Dobrev says they are already considering classifying information about Russian forex reserves, always a good sign.

Well, as far as the ones we've seen, it looks like they're on Renault Sherpas, which would indicate they are indeed the French service ones. I see, well, they have to deploy anyway to fire, so I don't think it makes that much of a difference.

Can it not be fired with the crew in the cabin?

As I recall, it has been reported that at least some of the CAESARs sent to Ukraine were originally meant for export.

His argument is also highly flawed historically because the last few times this happened in the 20th century, the Russians had significant external help from the West. In the build-up to World War I, after the humiliation of the Russo-Japanese War, the French invested heavily in Russia's arms industry and infrastructure (e.g. Schneider et cie. bought out the Putilov works, and French funding helped build the Trans-Siberian Railway). After the Russian Civil War, American technical expertise practically built the Soviet industrial base from the absolute ruins of the Civil War, and Lend-Lease gave the Soviet industry the critical life support that it needed post-Barbarossa to produce basic things like explosives. Otherwise the Soviets would have run out of shells sometime in 1942/43. Furthermore, the actual military material help (tanks, aircraft, etc.) was also significant and started arriving during the most critical phases of the Eastern Front. Who is going to do that after this war? China? They have no interest in rebuilding Russia, they just want it as a cheap oil and other resource extraction site. At best they want a Russia that can distract the Europeans.

Germany is a bit different because they went through the actual "de-Nazification", which Japan never really did. That's why they still have a fairly strong ultra-nationalist element in their politics. That's cute, but the British didn't occupy and subjugate France or Germany with anywhere near the same level of brutality that Japan did to Korea. Also, many of these wounds are still quite fresh in the region. You have a point re: Turkey and Greece, but Greece is a relatively minor partner in NATO. On the other hand, Japan and Korea would be two of the most important partners in any would-be Indo-Pacific Mutual Defence Bloc.