Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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Rather bizarre hearing from the Pentagon to rely less on drones, given how widely they use those themselves. Probably BS.
That’s tough
If it is true, it is likely to be taken out of context. It could simply mean that the U.S. thinks the UKR forces should use other methods as well instead of only one or two. It could also mean that they are concerned with how RA's jamming has become better, making the drones a bit less effective. There may be a lot of contexts that are missing out. Don't forget they see a lot more things there that we do here by following twitters or whatever.
In the article, the U.S. pushed UKR to concentrate on the South, which they appeared to do lately, and some progress has been made there. And they also think that UKR is wasting artillery fire in a Soviet-style tactic, etc. The U.S. may not be fighting there and probably does not have a lot of experience in this kind of war, but some outside advice is desperately needed for the UKR command.
Trump was Putin's biggest asset without Trump having any clue about it. A useful idiot is an understatement.
Biden shouldn't have honoured Trump's deal/surrender with the Taliban. It was a shit show and made the US look weak and out of control. Wouldn't surprise me if Putin saw what happened there and assumed the US would simply stand aside again if they marched into Ukraine.
Some legacy Trump left in just 4 years!
Thank you for sacrificing your life in the tens of thousands for Ukraine's 59th biggest city. Now we're erasing your very existence.
Wagner cemeteries are not destroyed but upgraded
It still looks like they transform personal graves into a mass grave and bury hundreds under the same concrete slab without giving relatives the chance to take them away to fufill their last wishes maybe. If that's what they call an upgrade, okay then.
I agree, it's an upgrade only if you don't treat Russians as free individuals. But at least the Russian state acknowledges this way that they died for Russia. Russia might indeed erase Wagner from history, but probably by removing references to Wagner during these works, but not by removing memories of the people that died.
I've only watched a few minutes of that. I'll try and watch the rest later. The approval ratings things is a load of bullocks though. Some randomly selected western leaders + Japan PM to compare to Putin. Even if you accept that Putin's ratings aren't massaged to feck, it means little in geopolitical terms. You could have an approval rating of zero and still order military action if you're commander in chief.
You'll struggle to find a British Prime Minister that could hold an approval rating of over 50% short of maybe Churchill and Attlee since universal suffrage was enacted. Didn't stop any of em from going to war when they wanted to though.
Did they?
I'd add that in almost every case countries going into war experience an increase in their leaders popularity, at the very least during the beginning. That holds true even for Bush in Iraq and Galtieri in the Falklands. The author could have spotted this easily since he also mentioned Zelensky's approval rating being even higher, but he chose not to do it. And this is without even considering the particular issues in Russia's "democracy".
Another lie easy to spot on the video was the stating that the West has been preaching doom for Putin's regime since pretty much the start of his tenure and specifically since the start of the war, when the overwhelming consensus among experts at that point was that Russia would win the war in weeks, maybe a couple months. And this is from the first 10 minutes of video.
As did Margaret Thatcher of course during and following the Falklands conflict. She went from the least popular PM on record to the most popular.
But for Tony Blair, the opposite happened.
I wonder why
Too bad those people are too illiterate to read John le Carré or Tom Clancy if they wanted something closer to how espionage in the real world works.
I didn't read the whole thing. So it may be out of context.
But they can hardly call any of UKR campaigns as well-mechanized. Even if they had the equipment to do it, they wouldn't be enough for multiple axes at once because there are five miles deep of obstacles and mines in most places.
There might be a way to send up to 100 more Leopard 1A5 MBT to Ukraine: https://flight.com.gr/arms-in-ukraine-greece-does-not-give-up-it-exchanges/
But the story that's unfolding here just shows what kind of a shitshow international arms deals can become:
- a decade ago Italy decommissioned their Leopard 1A5 and sold them to Swiss company RUAG
- nothing happened, the tanks are still in Italy
- Germany tried to buy them from RUAG to send them to Ukraine
- Swiss government refused permission due to its neutrality laws (remember we are talking about German built tanks that are currently stored in Italy and have never even been in Switzerland)
- Greece has a lot of active Leopard 1A5 and doesn’t want to give any of them away
- Germany now tries to broker a deal that Greece will give its tank to Ukraine and in turn Germany will buy and modernize the RUAG stock to send that to Greece (which should be allowed by Switzerland).
If that does even happen the end result would be the same, but heavily delayed, just so that Switzerland can pretend to be neutral.
But the story that's unfolding here just shows what kind of a shitshow international arms deals can become:
- a decade ago Italy decommissioned their Leopard 1A5 and sold them to Swiss company RUAG
- nothing happened, the tanks are still in Italy
- Germany tried to buy them from RUAG to send them to Ukraine
- Swiss government refused permission due to its neutrality laws (remember we are talking about German built tanks that are currently stored in Italy and have never even been in Switzerland)
- Greece has a lot of active Leopard 1A5 and doesn’t want to give any of them away
- Germany now tries to broker a deal that Greece will give its tank to Ukraine and in turn Germany will buy and modernize the RUAG stock to send that to Greece (which should be allowed by Switzerland).
If that does even happen the end result would be the same, but heavily delayed, just so that Switzerland can pretend to be neutral.
Switzerland is a shithole. Their neutrality serves only to assure every corrupt and criminal rich person on this earth that their money is safe in their country, so they don't stop bringing it in. I never understood why a small country in the middle of Europe is allowed to be the lair of the worst scum.
You kinda answered it. Rich people want a safe place for their money.
At least some measures are now implemented to reduce their influence, like Rheinmetall recently opening their new medium caliber ammunition production in Germany (so far they relied on one in Switzerland which has proved to be problematic)
Looks like the liberation has picked up a little bit of speed after overcoming the first heavily mined defense line.
Either absolutely useless "news" or useless officials.