Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
I don't know. When this eventually does end it will start by someone meeting with him. (And I'll be the first to admit that that's difficult to accept).
The tweet above is unavailable for me.
The tweet above is unavailable for me.
I think it will only end when Putin is either dead or forced to step down by his fellow gangsters.
Either of those would probably be preferable at this point (especially the former) but I have no clue how likely either really are. But yes, those are reasonable alternatives.
What I mean is that I'm now convinced that Putin is not remotely interested in peace or a deal, but will simply continue on and on, escalating and escalating until he literally runs out of military personnel that are either willing to fight or can be forced to fight.
To put it another way, I now think he's a man who is totally lost in delusions of grandeur and sees himself in historic terms as the new Tsar who will restore "Greater Russia".
Regarding that there is a great twitter thread here explaining the role of Belarus in this "Greater Russia" and how much power Lukashenko actually has over Putin:
Could Putin be so mad that his mobilization orders can extend to women, teenagers and the disabled as well? I hope we will never go into such insanity.
The last time a Russian Tsar attempted at showing strength in a war, it ended very badly twice for him and 12 years apart. While Putin has not met his own Tsushima (or his Waterloo if that's on land) yet, I say that is likely to happen in the next major battle if Ukraine plays their own chess pieces well and then pick the next main Russian force apart.
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More evidence of something wrong with Putin's health: watch his legs in this video and how they keep twitching.
I am not as good at pretending to be a body language expert online as I am at acting like a military historian, but his hand movements still look weird here and maybe even in the vid above of him walking up to the titanic table. Always clutching at the notebook or the table.
The BBC reports:
"UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will announce on Wednesday that Britain and other Western powers should give warplanes to Ukraine as part of their long-term military support.
In a speech in London, she’ll say the West should be ready to give the country its backing “for the long haul”.
Ukraine has repeatedly asked for combat aircraft, particularly Soviet-era fighters with which their pilots are familiar. Western allies have been reluctant to go that far for fear of provoking Russia.
But as Nato members step up their support for Ukraine with longer range weapons, Truss will say they should go even further.
The fate of Ukraine, she’ll say, “remains in the balance”. Western powers should be ready to support Ukraine “for the long haul”, digging deep in their inventories to give the country heavy weapons, tanks and, yes, airplanes ..."
"UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will announce on Wednesday that Britain and other Western powers should give warplanes to Ukraine as part of their long-term military support.
In a speech in London, she’ll say the West should be ready to give the country its backing “for the long haul”.
Ukraine has repeatedly asked for combat aircraft, particularly Soviet-era fighters with which their pilots are familiar. Western allies have been reluctant to go that far for fear of provoking Russia.
But as Nato members step up their support for Ukraine with longer range weapons, Truss will say they should go even further.
The fate of Ukraine, she’ll say, “remains in the balance”. Western powers should be ready to support Ukraine “for the long haul”, digging deep in their inventories to give the country heavy weapons, tanks and, yes, airplanes ..."
I reckon the Moldovans should drive up to the border with Romania and unload a few magazines into the ground on the Romanian side (after telling Romania of their cunning plan) and declare war on Romania. Obviously this would necessitate activation of Article V, and NATO could respond by "invading" Moldova and occupying it.
Sounds like another successful drone attack behind enemy lines.
These are the EU’s biggest importers of Russian gas in 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA).
Germany: 1.70 trillion cubic feet
Italy: 0.92 trillion cubic feet
France: 0.62 trillion cubic feet
Poland: 0.37 trillion cubic feet
These are the EU’s biggest importers of Russian gas in 2020, measured by overall percentage of Russian gas exports, the EIA reported.
Germany: 16 percent
Italy: 12 percent
France: 8 percent
Netherlands: 5 percent
Austria: 5 percent
Poland: 4 percent
Hungary: 3 percent
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibr...ntries-are-the-most-dependent-on-russian-gas/
If Germany, Italy, France, NL, Austria, Poland stop importing gas from Russia, then Russia loses 50% of their gas exports!!!
That's an economic catastrophe for Russia.
Increased nuclear power production can provide energy to help reduce gas demands.
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Might be, but the last attack on Belgorod was executed by attack helicopters
I’m getting pretty fed up of this now. I am fully cognisant of the risks and potential global impact of escalating this, but to my mind the time has come to enforce our way of life. Every minute this goes on, the more we embolden Russia and the more we give away and erode that ethos. Ukraine might not be in NATO but this is now beyond that fact. History has told us that people like Putin don’t settle for a bit. The more we don’t do enough, the more he feels he can do. It’s time to take another step in support in my view, and that’s at least more significant equipment provision and a no fly zone. As I said I’m fully aware of what that means, but it’s time.
A humiliated Putin lashing out is also a danger though. I don’t envy the decision makers in the West right now. The other thing is, it’s quite possible that the damage being done to the Russian army and economy is exactly what is stopping Putin going further. They don’t have the manpower or weapons to fight elsewhere. I do think that on the face of it Nato could be doing more but we have to be really careful not to make a misjudgement about how Russia might respond if we did.
Is it just me, or is the concept of a no fly zone just weird? You have to fight the enemy air force and the air defence of their army and potentially navy (effectively destroying it) to ensure that your fighter aircrafts can operate to enforce the no fly zone.
I just don't get it, doesn't it effectively mean "we fully participate in the war, but we just send our air force"?
Gazprom apparently stopped the supply of gas to Poland yesterday because of the refusal to pay in rubles.
The difference probably is that the dismantling of the SAM sites / ships would happen only after the first firing from such a site, not preemtively.
This post makes a lot more sense a week after the invasion. I wouldn't really describe the current course of the war as "emboldening Russia". Kyiv is not going to fall, and Ukraine is not going to be conquered. Geopolitically, Russia is a massive loser of this war. Obviously Ukraine is too (and most of all Ukrainain civilians).
Geopolitically Ukraine can be considered a winner in the long term because most major western powers fully united behind them and will help them in the rebuild, both civilian and military. While nato is still a stretch they might be able to accelerate their membership application for the EU - although they were not even close to that realistically, if the normal process was to be followed.
You would be putting your air forces into a country at their request. It would be up to the Russians if they decided to dare attack those forces.
Germany and France have also refused to pay in rubles, but Putin picked two smaller, former soviet block countries to see what the EU will do next.
That's more or less why there's not a no fly zone. Whoever put it in place (NATO most likely) would have to shoot down any Russian planes showing up which would be seen as NATO entering the war. What Russia's response would be is anyone's guess.
That's my understanding of it anyway.
Without the option to attack any of the European countries he's trying to divide them as much as he possibly can. He's been doing it for a long time and, sadly, been very successful at it.
I just hope the next generation of leaders deal with the idiocy of nuclear weapons. There's simply no reason to maintain these arsenals and it gives a single human being an absolutely insane amount of influence.
Putin without nukes is barely a threat, and presumably we'd never have gotten to this stage.
Putin without nukes is barely a threat, and presumably we'd never have gotten to this stage.
Aren't Germany sending tanks and training troops? So why are these clowns just threatening "Britain to be wiped off the map"
They think we are the most easily deterred? Who knows/cares, nothing they say should be taken seriously, or listened to at all for that matter.
I’d imagine that the media in a particular country focus mainly on threats to that country. We’ve already seen Russia cutting off gas supply to Poland and Bulgaria. It’s threatened to bring nuclear weapons close to the Baltic sea in response to Finland abs Sweden joining NATO. It’s trying to destabilise Moldova, and it’s definitely made threats against the US for providing weapons. By and large I think most of those threats are empty, but are designed to be quotable by the media of the affected country and hopefully (for the Russians) change opinions.
mad mad footage.
Type of stuff you'd read in a clancy Novel. I guess he wasnt far off.
Seems like at least US and Russia are maintaining communications on other issues:
In the NBC article posted earlier they talked about how they regularly move planes and AA installations around to avoid Russian attacks based on intel they get, sometimes at the last minute. It’s really impressive; I can’t imagine managing those logistics.
Russia are losing the war, they will collapse economically and never recover their military power during Putin's lifetime. So why escelate this now to a possible nuclear war?
Its really impressive isn’t it? And at a guess a level of intelligence/coordination that the Russians never believed could happen. Which might go some way to explaining why the Russians seemed to assume, but haven’t yet achieved, air supremacy
The delivery of 50 German Gepard SPAAG seems to make progress. An issue was that there isn't much of it's 35mm ammo in stock (keep in mind this is a decommissioned system, so the Bundeswehr had no reason to keep it). But it looks like Ukraine now has a deal with Brazil in place to deliver the necessary ammo.
https://www.businessinsider.de/poli...r-fuer-ukraine-mit-300-000-schuss-ausstatten/
What I am still missing in this story is how long it will take to train Ukrainians on this system, as it is notoriously complicated (which is part of the reason why it was decommissioned). But I guess this won't be officially announced and we might only get to know this when the first video appears of Russian helicopters getting destroyed by it.
https://www.businessinsider.de/poli...r-fuer-ukraine-mit-300-000-schuss-ausstatten/
What I am still missing in this story is how long it will take to train Ukrainians on this system, as it is notoriously complicated (which is part of the reason why it was decommissioned). But I guess this won't be officially announced and we might only get to know this when the first video appears of Russian helicopters getting destroyed by it.
Saw a piece on the brimstone & apparently it’s quite easy to rig it to be launched from a truck. Not sure if they are sending the specific anti ship version though.