How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[DesertFox]

Just now, akd said:

Or better yet, move them.

If I were the ukrainians I would prefer that 

[Aragorn2002]

6 minutes ago, sburke said:

this is a better indicator.  When both parties are pushing to get an aid package there as fast as possible you can stop worrying about polls. 

Democrats, Republicans begin to rally around large Ukraine aid package (msn.com)

Thank you. Yes, that's more like it. Let's hope it will arrive on time. 

[Commanderski]

Unless there were more tanks on the other side of the building I'd be leaving rather quickly.

[sburke]

5 minutes ago, Holien said:

Not all Americans (or all people) I am sorry to say...

This filmed at a party conference event a couple of days ago in Florida as the war rages...

I guess this is the other side of the balanced coin?

 

There are always going to be whackos in any country.  that particular conference is run by a rabid white nationalist and the participation there by two republicans has drawn a response form the republican leadership in congress so I wouldn't put too much on that.  As Mitt Romney said in response to that event. "we have morons on our team".

[Aragorn2002]

11 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I'm sorry if my comment came across wrong.

What happened was that I tried to keep up with the news while at work, and I read something about the Russians warning about striking a particular spot. Didn't check where it was, since I don't know any landmarks in Kyiv. But just noted there had been a warning against something they called "the 72nd Main Center for Information and Psychological Operations". I thought this warning hopefully would mean no civilian casualties.

Then when the tower and nearby area was hit, I assumed this must be the spot they warned about. I'm not trying to excuse the Russian army in any way.

Needless to say, Bulletpoint. 

[DesertFox]

If this isn´t thermobaric I dont know what it is...

 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2022 by DesertFox

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, Aragorn2002 said:

Well, that's a start, although I would have expected a higher percentage than 74%. The rest of that poll is downright worrying me.

Our politics are spectacularly screwed up, but you also have to realize the lag time on both the U.S. publics absorption of what is happening, and the polls themselves. The latter can take a week to run. It is going to be a month before any real assessment can be made of the political effects

[Aragorn2002]

I don't know about you guys but the past days have played havoc upon my blood pressure. Never forget this, people, never forgive this.

[Bulletpoint]

5 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

If this isn´t thermobaric I dont know what it is...

 

 

I'm no expert, but my guess would be a fuel tank at the airbase was hit. As I understand it, thermobaric weapons work by extremely rapid combustion of a fuel mist, casuing a shock wave but not producing a long-lasting fireball like that.

[Aragorn2002]

2 minutes ago, dan/california said:

Our politics are spectacularly screwed up, but you also have to realize the lag time on both the U.S. publics absorption of what is happening, and the polls themselves. The latter can take a week to run. It is going to be a month before any real assessment can be made of the political effects

Good to know and encouraging. 

[DesertFox]

Just now, Bulletpoint said:

I'm no expert, but my guess would be a fuel tank at the airbase was hit. As I understand it, thermobaric weapons work by extremely rapid combustion of a fuel mist, casuing a shock wave but not producing a long-lasting fireball like that.

I edited my post above with a 2nd vid of the same explosion. You see the blast wave clearer there.

[BeondTheGrave]

In deference to Elvis I modify my statement to say '**** Nazis.' 

Edited March 1, 2022 by BeondTheGrave

[Seedorf81]

17 minutes ago, Commanderski said:

Unless there were more tanks on the other side of the building I'd be leaving rather quickly.

From the perspective of the tank crew, a man scurrying behind windows and pointing a camera straight at them, looks frightfully similar to a man with a RPG..

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, Cobetco said:

74% of people is a big deal the other 24% probably are not reading the news, and don't know what is happening.

Yes, and I can tell you from personal experience there is a mindset that answers NO to pretty much every question.

Every year our municipality has to go through the formal process of accepting funds from our state government.  It might sound stupid, but it is a sound legal principle that completes a contract.  The money is routine and part of a formula for sharing sales tax revenue.

Yet every year about 20-30% vote NO on accepting the money!  IT IS OUR MONEY BY LAW!!!!  No strings attached either.  They also vote NO on raising taxes, critical infrastructure spending, funding the police and fire departments, etc.  At least they are consistent

My point here is that anytime you see a poll number in the US that is over about 70%, you should view it as "near unanimous agreement by people who aren't morons".

Steve

[billbindc]

13 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Great to see you again, or somefink   You know we hired one of your kind.  More inexplicably, we hired one who is real life friends with Peng.  Crazy stuff, right?

In the spirit of old, I will address you in the manner to which you had become accustomed to.  Don't thank me yet!

There are two ways to think through the "Putin has lost it" theory.  One is that he's nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake.  Or fruitier.  Either way, cake.

The second is that something changed in his mental state to have him significantly alter his sense of risk and reduce his forward thinking vision from decades to years.  Age might have something to do with that last bit.  This means he is still "sane" by most technical definitions, but not really the same as he once was.

I believe the latter is the case, not the former.  To elaborate, I'm reposting something I wrote earlier today elsewhere with slight edits so I don't violate forum rules (in real life I swear like a drunken sailor who just ran out of pocket money by the time I got to the brothel):

 

Here's how I look at this crisis.

I'm a huge fan of Putin's work.  OK, fan isn't the correct word... intellectual admirer of how he gets what he wants despite all of the factors lined up against him.  IMHO he is probably the most brilliant authoritarian figure in modern history.  He has played to his strengths and shielded his weaknesses like nobody else I can think of that has ever accumulated that much power.  Others aspire to be like him, but he's the one setting the standard they wish to achieve.  As a historian type who has studied this for nearly 30 years, I have huge respect for what he's done.  That doesn't mean I like the guy or wish him a long and prosperous life (though at stealing $100 Billion for himself, he nailed part of this already).

This time around he did the thing he has never done before.  He came up with a concept that was inherently unworkable, then devised a plan that looked good only because it got the fundamentals so wrong.  That's difference number one.

Difference number two is he pursued a plan that had very little wiggle room for error.  That's not like him.  He has always built "slop" into his plans so that if something went wrong he could switch to something else and still hope to achieve his goals.  He also devised these things to be flexibly applied.  Something really wrong could get a really big swing in action, something a little wrong could be kept with a minor adjustment.

Difference number three is that he has always shown a real knack for doing something nefarious right up to the line of things going badly, put a couple of toes over the line to see how it goes, then either steps over or steps back depending on the feedback from his action.  This time he has things structured that he has to keep moving forward no matter how far over the line he gets.

So we have here a bad combination of things; epic miscalculated and calibrated Plan A, very little room for sufficiently practical or flexible backup plans, and seemingly no inclination to back off to preserve gains and try again another day.

Therefore, he is pretty much hemmed in at this point without good options.  That is a new thing for Putin and it introduces the possibility that something serious has changed in how he approaches the same things he's always wanted -> Empire and everything that goes with it.

Steve

Note: The Peter Principle applies to dictatorial sociopaths as much as it does to that dude down  the hall from your office.

Edited March 1, 2022 by billbindc

[Battlefront.com]

3 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

From the perspective of the tank crew, a man scurrying behind windows and pointing a camera straight at them, looks frightfully similar to a man with a RPG..

My thoughts exactly.  And I also agree with the poster that I'd not be hanging around waiting for the autoloader to do its thing!

Steve

[BFCElvis]

In the past hour.....hour and half...a bunch of you have strayed into politics outside the invasion. My kneejerk reaction was to give a handful of you vacations but I've decided to give a friendly reminder instead. 

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Note: The Peter Principle applies to dictatorial sociopaths as much as it does to that dude the hall from your office.

Yup!  And this is something that soldiers point out about their Generals all the time

Steve

[dan/california]

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/01/world/ukraine-russia-war#some-russian-troops-are-surrendering-or-sabotaging-vehicles-rather-than-fight-a-pentagon-official-says

One flick of NATOs finger and this army blows away in the wind. A demonstrative over flight might do it Putin has managed the worst military disaster Since Napoleon failed in exactly the same spot, near as makes no matter. And Napoleon's army fought a lot better than Putin's is now. Just epic.

[BeondTheGrave]

In deference to Elvis I retract my statement 

Edited March 1, 2022 by BeondTheGrave

[kraze]

35 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I'm sorry if my comment came across wrong.

What happened was that I tried to keep up with the news while at work, and I read something about the Russians warning about striking a particular spot. Didn't check where it was, since I don't know any landmarks in Kyiv. But just noted there had been a warning against something they called "the 72nd Main Center for Information and Psychological Operations". I thought this warning hopefully would mean no civilian casualties.

Then when the tower and nearby area was hit, I assumed this must be the spot they warned about. I'm not trying to excuse the Russian army in any way.

Yeah it's all fine. I'm obviously being agitated.

That '72' thing is actually in Brovary, not even Kyiv.

[billbindc]

3 hours ago, Sarjen said:

I still cant get my mind straight to get a reason why Putin began the war now.

Nordstream2 was built and ready to transfer in short notice natural gas to Germany and the EU. Europe ignored for too long the consequences a possible cessation of all Russian natural gas transit through Ukraine to the EU would cause. Both in social as well as technical terms it would have heavily affected Ukraine. The upkeep for the pipeline in Ukraine is high and could have become financially unviable to operate once Russia would have ceased all gas transit. The pipeline is vital to Ukraine's chemical and heavy industry. And for Russia the geo-economic leverage the Ukraine had over them through its control of a share of Russian gas exports would have been gone. A subversion of the economic and social life of the  brother nation may, in fact, be a main function of the entire logistically and economically, in fact, unnecessary Nordstream2 project.

So why by all means did Putin rush to the war? And with a bad start too? Why did he not wait a bit longer for the economic downfall of Ukraine. Why didn't he use the normal way of subterfuge and propaganda to get a more cheap victory?

I think one partial answer to this question is that the capabilities of the Ukrainian army were clearly expanding in ways that Russia we now know, wasn't really equipped to handle. There are something like 20 Bayraktar's available for use. They've been doing serious damage. Absent this war, there would have been 100+. Gerasimov saw what happened btw Armenia/Azerbaijan as clearly as everyone else did. The Ukrainian missile program was also on the cusp of expansion and increased capability. We've already seen what regular and irregular Ukrainian infantry can do. Certainly a big factor was that if they didn't go now, they were going to be clearly unable to in a couple of years.

[Haiduk]

Reportedly a fragment of Russian jet, downed today over Kharkiv. Light blue color is typical to Su-34, but let's see...

[billbindc]

3 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup!  And this is something that soldiers point out about their Generals all the time

Steve

My favorite Matt Gallagher line (author of "Kaboom!" inter alia): "Lieutenant Colonels...what are they for?"

[BeondTheGrave]

Can we pump the gas the other way, turn it in to some kind of flame projection device. Some kind of werffer for flammen? 

Just kidding, mostly.