Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

The Firestarter said:
Patriot's true effectiveness remains somewhat of a mistery. Maybe the very last iteration is capable , but the Saudis cant seem to cope with the Houthi missiles. Either way isnt THAAD better? As for combat tested systems Iron Dome has to be the best one, it can even shoot down artillery I believe.
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Patriot was designed to intercept airplanes. PAC-3, the latest iteration, has some changes to make it more capable of intercepting missiles.

I though Saudi bought THAAD in 2017. https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/defence-notes/saudis-gain-more-thaad-support/
 
The BBC reports:

"Ukraine says Russian forces who occupied the former Chernobyl nuclear plant stole radioactive substances from research laboratories that could potentially kill them.

Ukraine's State Agency for Managing the Exclusion Zone said on Facebook that Russian troops entered a storage area of the Ecocentre research base and stole 133 highly radioactive substances.

"Even a small part of this activity is deadly if handled unprofessionally," the agency said, adding "the location of the stolen substances is currently unknown."

The BBC has not been able to confirm this independently.

Earlier this week Ukraine's energy minister German Gulashchenko said Russian soldiers exposed themselves to a "shocking" amount of nuclear radiation, saying some of them may have less than a year to live.

"They dug bare soil contaminated with radiation, collected radioactive sand in bags for fortification, breathed this dust," Gulashchenko said on Facebook on Friday after visiting the exclusion zone.

The BBC's Yogita Limaye was among the first journalists to look inside the former nuclear power plant since the Russians left - you can read her report here."
 
The Firestarter said:
I know, it was more of sidebar comment on what system can shoot down missiles. If Israelis suddenly change their mind its going to be a game changer but in the long run since that system is also very complex.
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Yes, it would also require a good bit of logistics to get it there as well as a good bit of training. I believe the Iron Dome transfer was originally floated before the war broke out, too, but was obviously rejected.

The definite best bet for Ukraine is for as many of the S-300 type systems available to be sent there, as they’re capable systems and, most importantly, can be fielded by Ukraine immediately.
 
MadMike said:
Patriot was designed to intercept airplanes. PAC-3, the latest iteration, has some changes to make it more capable of intercepting missiles.

I though Saudi bought THAAD in 2017. https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/defence-notes/saudis-gain-more-thaad-support/
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Yes they’re supposed to be used in tandem with one another.
The Firestarter said:
Maybe the initial design was AA but even as early as Desert Storm they were trying to shoot scuds with it.
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Yes. It is meant to target ballistic missiles as they descend into lower altitudes on their target.

Either way, the Patriot / THAAD systems would require such a high level of time spent training that they’re a moot point with regards to present day Ukraine.
 
GlastonSpur said:
The BBC reports:

"Ukraine says Russian forces who occupied the former Chernobyl nuclear plant stole radioactive substances from research laboratories that could potentially kill them.

Ukraine's State Agency for Managing the Exclusion Zone said on Facebook that Russian troops entered a storage area of the Ecocentre research base and stole 133 highly radioactive substances.

"Even a small part of this activity is deadly if handled unprofessionally," the agency said, adding "the location of the stolen substances is currently unknown."

The BBC has not been able to confirm this independently.

Earlier this week Ukraine's energy minister German Gulashchenko said Russian soldiers exposed themselves to a "shocking" amount of nuclear radiation, saying some of them may have less than a year to live.

"They dug bare soil contaminated with radiation, collected radioactive sand in bags for fortification, breathed this dust," Gulashchenko said on Facebook on Friday after visiting the exclusion zone.

The BBC's Yogita Limaye was among the first journalists to look inside the former nuclear power plant since the Russians left - you can read her report here."
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Russia’s Army: The Keystone Cops of Warfare
 
Dr. Dwayne said:
The gravy seals could probably take them at this point.
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Not sure if these guys would fight for the side you are implying...

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The BBC reports:

"Satellite imagery firm Maxar Technologies has shared pictures of what it says is a large Russian military convoy, located east of Kharkiv.

The images, taken on 8 April, show hundreds of armoured vehicles trucks with towed artillery, and other military vehicles - stretching for at least eight miles (12km) and moving south through the Ukrainian town of Velykyi Burluk.

In a tweet, military analyst George Barrow - with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) - said the convoy was likely heading south to the city of Izyum.

The BBC has not been able to independently verify this claim.

Russian forces seized the town of Izyum last week and have been using it as a staging ground for an apparent drive toward Slovyansk, a town critical to Moscow’s objective of capturing all of eastern Ukraine.

Russian forces have recently seized the strategic town of Izyum and used it as a staging post to attack Slovyansk, to the south.

The ISW says if Ukraine holds on to Slovyansk, Russia's campaign to seize the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk "will likely fail".
 
MadMike said:
Again, can you list some sources please.

The UK is not a mass producer of refined oil. We do the refining ourselves and import mostly crude. Belarus and the Netherlands are nowhere near the biggest sources.

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You can see them on this website
https://oec.world/en/profile/country/gbr

The above is for crude oil $14.8bn
For refined it's a little lower at $10.5bn but as you see Russia is now no.1 actually, with NL clear no.2 and Belarus around the same as Saudi, USA and Belgium. Furthermore guess who are the two main suppliers to Belgium.

You should know by now that if the UK government give out information, they're almost certainly trying to mislead you.
 
VorZakone said:
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For the 2000th year in a row Christianity takes home the awards for:

"Best Actor in Hypocrisy (pretending the religion matches the tenets category)"
"Best Enabler/Cause of Genocide/Mass Death"

Disgusting but all too predictable.
 
MadMike said:
Germany is getting a lot of flack in this thread some deserved and some less so.

Anyway, Merkel's strategy wrt to Russia has been to foster peace via building financial interdependence. That she thought would be a deterrent to aggression and would also open Russia more to Europe. The idea being that long term peace needed a friendly to Europe Russia. In principle it doesn't seem crazy. They potentially also wanted to dangle the carrot of EU membership to promote democracy, human rights and rule of law in Russia.

At the same time they were securing their industry with cheap Russian gas. So two birds with one stone. Yes, it has proven a bad strategy in hindsight but you know what they say, hindsight's always 20/20. Putin has become increasingly bitter, resentful and revanchist with age. Would keeping Russia at an arms length have been better? Maybe, perhaps. It might have brought things to a head sooner too.

Germany has had a very welcoming stance to immigrants and refugees post-war. They invited literally millions to help rebuild the country and they took a million Syrian refugees when it wasn't even their responsibility. This openness to Ukrainians is not new or unprecedented.
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Do you think that in 1999 Putin was a nice guy?

During the second Chechen war, Putin completely destroyed a city.

"In 2003, the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999–2000)

Do you think that the whole German government did not know that Putin had killed, poisoned and jailed all the opposition in Russia? They did not know that Putin was a former KGB agent and created a police state? The Germans did not know that with their money they were funding a mafia of oligarchs headed by Putin? They did not know what Putin did in Syria?
 
MadMike said:
Germany is getting a lot of flack in this thread some deserved and some less so.

Anyway, Merkel's strategy wrt to Russia has been to foster peace via building financial interdependence. That she thought would be a deterrent to aggression and would also open Russia more to Europe. The idea being that long term peace needed a friendly to Europe Russia. In principle it doesn't seem crazy. They potentially also wanted to dangle the carrot of EU membership to promote democracy, human rights and rule of law in Russia.

At the same time they were securing their industry with cheap Russian gas. So two birds with one stone. Yes, it has proven a bad strategy in hindsight but you know what they say, hindsight's always 20/20. Putin has become increasingly bitter, resentful and revanchist with age. Would keeping Russia at an arms length have been better? Maybe, perhaps. It might have brought things to a head sooner too.

Germany has had a very welcoming stance to immigrants and refugees post-war. They invited literally millions to help rebuild the country and they took a million Syrian refugees when it wasn't even their responsibility. This openness to Ukrainians is not new or unprecedented.
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frostbite said:
Do you think that in 1999 Putin was a nice guy?

During the second Chechen war, Putin completely destroyed a city.

"In 2003, the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999–2000)

Do you think that the whole German government did not know that Putin had killed, poisoned and jailed all the opposition in Russia? They did not know that Putin was a former KGB agent and created a police state? The Germans did not know that with their money they were funding a mafia of oligarchs headed by Putin? They did not know what Putin did in Syria?
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This and also the occupation of 2008 Georgia and I mean 2014 events in Ukraine doesn’t need any introduction. All the funding of far right and other extreme types in Europe/US to create havoc and the network of thousands of agents across Europe disguised as diplomats. After 2014 there could be no excuses not to diversify their energy sources, this is the result of monumental stupidity/corruption. Ffs just last year they (together with Belarus) have fabricated (the mastermind behind this has already done it to Finland just few years ago and successfully gained what they wanted) illegal migration in a most dehumanizing way possible in a bid to destabilize Lithuania/Poland and the EU by an extension. He was always pure evil/psychopath and they knew it perfectly well.
 
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frostbite said:
Do you think that in 1999 Putin was a nice guy?

During the second Chechen war, Putin completely destroyed a city.

"In 2003, the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grozny_(1999–2000)

Do you think that the whole German government did not know that Putin had killed, poisoned and jailed all the opposition in Russia? They did not know that Putin was a former KGB agent and created a police state? The Germans did not know that with their money they were funding a mafia of oligarchs headed by Putin? They did not know what Putin did in Syria?
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I hope you're keeping the same energy for the UK government.
 
Rajma said:

Good move to prevent the last argument against providing more advanced weapons for Ukraine.
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Hm... I am not sure if you really can say "Lithuania will train Ukrainians". They are talking about organising training, and announce that in a shared press conference with a US general present. There are a lot of different NATO troops in Lithuania (mission "Enhanced Forward Presence") for a long time now, so I would interpret this as basically "every NATO member state that will deliver modern weapons will train Ukrainians on NATO bases in Lithuania".

The Lithuanians themselves don't even have a lot of stuff they could train the Ukrainians on, so them acting on their own wouldn't make much sense.
 
stefan92 said:
Hm... I am not sure if you really can say "Lithuania will train Ukrainians". They are talking about organising training, and announce that in a shared press conference with a US general present. There are a lot of different NATO troops in Lithuania (mission "Enhanced Forward Presence") for a long time now, so I would interpret this as basically "every NATO member state that will deliver modern weapons will train Ukrainians on NATO bases in Lithuania".

The Lithuanians themselves don't even have a lot of stuff they could train the Ukrainians on, so them acting on their own wouldn't make much sense.
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Yeah, you’re right this will be done together with the US and other Nato personnel.
 
And by the way, as there was a lot of talk about Germany here: The NATO Battle Group Lithuania is led by the German Bundeswehr, current commander is Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant Colonel) Daniel Andrä.
 
stefan92 said:
Hm... I am not sure if you really can say "Lithuania will train Ukrainians". They are talking about organising training, and announce that in a shared press conference with a US general present. There are a lot of different NATO troops in Lithuania (mission "Enhanced Forward Presence") for a long time now, so I would interpret this as basically "every NATO member state that will deliver modern weapons will train Ukrainians on NATO bases in Lithuania".

The Lithuanians themselves don't even have a lot of stuff they could train the Ukrainians on, so them acting on their own wouldn't make much sense.
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Almost certainly.
 
christy87 said:
When did the Z become V
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They had five signs, each designated for their own axis, dont remember which one stood for what or why Z picked up as their nazi symbol over others, but if I'd guess the V sign in video means they're the troops that attacked from Belarus and are relocating to east now.
 
The BBC earlier reported on an 8 mile-long column of Russian vehicles east of Kharkiv (see post #26,935). Well, maybe (?) this is what happened to them ...

 
The argument for increased integration and trust with Putin should certainly have failed following 2008 and 2014.
 
The Austrian leader, after visiting Zelenskyy in Kyiv this weekend, is now headed to see Putin in Moscow tomorrow. This feels like quite the naive move that Russia can spin. German-language media has not taken kindly to it on the whole.

 
TMDaines said:
The Austrian leader, after visiting Zelenskyy in Kyiv this weekend, is now headed to see Putin in Moscow tomorrow. This feels like quite the naive move that Russia can spin. German-language media has not taken kindly to it on the whole.

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Another Macron type clown? The kunt said Ukraine has no right to exist. What diplomacy do you expect to achieve here...
 
The Firestarter said:
Another Macron type clown? The kunt said Ukraine has no right to exist. What diplomacy do you expect to achieve here...
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It’s one thing to keep dialogue open; it is another entirely to give Putin the PR of having a European leader visit him.
 
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