Ukraine War: David And Goliath

[ThinkerX]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Putin recently flew to the UAE to try to shore up relations there, and intriguingly took Kadyrov with him.

Having failed to expel migrants passing through Russia into Finland and the Baltic States, Russia has started arresting them and pressing them into service in Ukraine. Efficient, I guess.

A 58-year-old Ukrainian sniper has reportedly broken the world record for the longest kill shot by hitting a Russian soldier at a distance of 3.8 kilometres. The Ukrainian sniper unit was engaging Russian targets clean on the other side of the Dnipro.

A Russian Su-24M over the Black Sea was shot down by a Patriot missile. Some Russian aircraft are having problems working out the maximum "safe range" they can operate from without being hit by Patriots (against which Russian flares and ECM seem mostly ineffective).

Saudi Arabia and several other members of OPEC+ have expressed annoyance at Russia's lack of transparency about is energy production sector. OPEC+ members are supposed to share data on production with one another so they can coordinate prices. It stops members cutting side-deals with other countries. There seems to be suspicion that Russia is producing more oil than it is saying and then selling the excess on the down-low to China and other countries, undercutting other members of the consortium.

Russian civilian aircraft failures this week.

1. A Boeing 777 suddenly developed an electrical fire that caused an immediate evacuation before takeoff from Moscow.
2. A Tu-204 cargo plane's engine burst into flames during takeoff from Ulan-Ude. The pilot managed to dump the fuel, extinguish the fire and land, but the engine was a write-off.
3. A passenger plane flying from Kazan to Moscow made an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. The stabilization system experienced a malfunction and the pilots had to manually fly the plane to an emergency touchdown.
4. An Aeroflot Airbus A321 made an emergency landing at Pulkovo Airport (St. Petersburg) after the cockpit air conditioning system failed.
5. A Boing 737 made an emergency landing at Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk after wheel pressure failures.
6. A plane taking off from Novosibrisk saw its autopilot and flaps fail simultaneously.
7. An Aeroflot Airbus A321 flying from St. Petersburg to Moscow made an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo due to an engine failure.
8. A Yamal airline Superjet 100 landed at Tyumen Roschchino Airport due to an unspecified technical malfunction.

A Russian military cargo plane also just straight-up exploded.

The head of the Polish National Security Bureau has issued a warning that Russia may be looking to launch an invasion of NATO's eastern flank in three years. Germany recently said it would take Russia between five and nine years to prepare an attack on eastern Europe, perhaps more if the war in Ukraine was dragged out. However, Poland and the Baltic States believe this is too optimistic. Putin may be looking to launch an invasion of the Baltic States and maybe Poland on his watch, and having just turned 71 he may be feeling time is not on his side for a longer timetable.

Will Russia even have  a significant domestic (or military) airline system after another year or two of this?

 

One of the things that hit my FB last week was a pic taken through the window of an airliner showing the wing, which appeared to be held together with duct tape. Such has happened with small private aircraft in the bush here in Alaska, but not on commercial craft. The comments mentioned many similar incidents with commercial Russian aircraft.

 

At this point, I am inclined to put this down as yet another indicator that Russia is being stressed to the point of partial internal collapse by the Ukraine war.

 

[Werthead]

One unconfirmed report that Russian launched a major assault on the northern axis around Avdiivka and was beaten back in a huge firefight with 18 tanks destroyed. Total Russian casualties in Ukraine apparently exceeded 1,100 in the last 24 hours. That could well be a record.

[Darzin]

6 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

 

One of the things that hit my FB last week was a pic taken through the window of an airliner showing the wing, which appeared to be held together with duct tape. Such has happened with small private aircraft in the bush here in Alaska, but not on commercial craft. The comments mentioned many similar incidents with commercial Russian aircraft.

 

If it's the pic I'm thinking of this is an AI created image and not real. The dude who made is was posting in the AI subreddit about how it went viral on facebook. 

Edited December 8, 2023 by Darzin

[ThinkerX]

2 hours ago, Darzin said:

If it's the pic I'm thinking of this an AI created image and not real. The dude who made is was posting in the AI subreddit about how it went viral on facebook. 

ah, another urban legend debunked. Still, that list and the incidents recounted in that FB thread do point to Russian aviation being in dire jeopardy. 

[Wilbur]

We need to load these up on ships headed to Ukraine.

WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated): "Ukrainians on the importance of Bradley M2A2." | nitter

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Wilbur said:

We need to load these up on ships headed to Ukraine.

WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated): "Ukrainians on the importance of Bradley M2A2." | nitter

There was a Russian armoured push on Stepove and a single Bradley completely stopped it with a single Bushmaster automatic cannon. The Russian armoured vehicles were chewed up and even the tanks took such damage they turned and ran (they were old AF models though). That thing has serious firepower. 

[Bironic]

Zelensky will visit the US on Tuesday, with meetings of joe biden, the senate and mike Johnson…

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Bironic

[ThinkerX]

1 minute ago, Bironic said:

Zelensky will visit the US on Tuesday, with meetings of joe biden, the senate and mike Johnson…

 

have to wonder if a few of the less stable members of the Freedom Caucus will manage something offensive and/or pro Putin.

[JGP]

2 hours ago, Bironic said:

Zelensky will visit the US on Tuesday, with meetings of joe biden, the senate and mike Johnson…

 

[sad laugh]

Political exigencies demanding Zelenskyy debase himself so… sweet tap dancing Christ. It’s patently ridiculous how often I’m surprised by the infant mind of Humanity.
 

Seriously getting sick of our shit.

 

 

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, JGP said:

[sad laugh]

Political exigencies demanding Zelenskyy debase himself so… sweet tap dancing Christ. It’s patently ridiculous how often I’m surprised by the infant mind of Humanity.
 

Seriously getting sick of our shit.

 

 

Stupidity is our defining characteristic as a species.

[Maithanet]

Whether it's pathetic or not, it is nonetheless a good thing that Mike Johnson is meeting with Zelensky.  The chances of getting a Ukraine funding bill for 2024 through congress definitely went up. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 hours ago, SeanF said:

Stupidity is our defining characteristic as a species.

I’m going to suggest that our ability interact as we are suggests otherwise… this doesn’t mean humanity isn’t stupid.  But that I don’t believe “stupidity” is our defining characteristic.

[Makk]

3 hours ago, Maithanet said:

Whether it's pathetic or not, it is nonetheless a good thing that Mike Johnson is meeting with Zelensky.  The chances of getting a Ukraine funding bill for 2024 through congress definitely went up. 

Zelensky has no chance of personally persuading Mike Johnson to do anything. I'm convinced the entire Republican party is pathetically adverse to doing anything for the right reasons. If Ukraine fails, or if the war merely drags on, they believe it is good for their chances against Biden and the election, and that is the only thing they care about. The people that need convincing are the voters, they are the ones that will influence the Republican party. The only thing I am hopeful of is a reduced assistance package that the Republicans see as something that will help Ukraine survive without actually being able to win.

South Korea however has actually been indirectly supplying Ukraine via the US. They gave the america 400,000 155 artillery shells this year to replenish their stocks so they could supply them to Ukraine. And the Russians are complaining that the North Korean shells are garbage, there were some clips showing them being taken apart with the Russian showing the uneven charge distribution.

https://x.com/Tendar/status/1733371358443151581?s=20

 

[Bironic]

Apparently alexei navalny has gone „missing“… 

[Wilbur]

1 hour ago, Bironic said:

Apparently alexei navalny has gone „missing“… 

Five dollars says he shows up, looking dazed and confused, in a trench near Avdiivka, wearing a tracksuit with running shoes and armed with a rusty AK-47 without ammo.

Seems like de rigueur activity for jailed Russians these days.

[Bironic]

On 12/11/2023 at 5:03 PM, Maithanet said:

Whether it's pathetic or not, it is nonetheless a good thing that Mike Johnson is meeting with Zelensky.  The chances of getting a Ukraine funding bill for 2024 through congress definitely went up. 

Joe Biden is using the presidential drawdown authority to give Ukraine another 200 million in aid. That’s good, but it’s probably also a hint that congress won’t pass Ukraine help anytime soon…

[Kalbear]

Ukrainian hackers destroyed Russia's tax databases:

https://kyivindependent.com/military-intelligence-hacks-russian-tax-authorities/

Not sure how long that'll keep 'em down, but this is the sort of thing as an IT person that i have absolute nightmares about. 

[horangi]

What do you want to bet that on reconstitution a number of oligarchs will have perfect tax payment history and due major refunds while the government will 'discover' that many Kremlin critics haven't paid taxes in decades.

[Martell Spy]

‘We’ll Be at Each Others’ Throats’: Fiona Hill on What Happens If Putin Wins
The veteran Russia watcher is deeply alarmed as Washington reaches an inflection point on the war in Ukraine.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/12/fiona-hill-ukraine-putin-00131285

Quote

 

What happens to the West if Putin wins?

We’ll be at each others’ throats. There’ll be no way in which this is going to turn out well. There’ll be a lot of frustration on the part of people who thought that this was the easier option when we reel from crisis to crisis. There’ll also be the shame, frankly, and the disgrace of having let the Ukrainians down. I think it would create a firestorm of recrimination. And it will also embolden so many other actors to take their own steps.

One key challenge is going to be the nuclear front. There’s several different ways in which we can look at the nuclear front. There’s the moral imperative. We pushed Ukraine to give up the nuclear weapons that it had inherited from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. And we gave assurances along with the United Kingdom, that Ukraine would not end up in the situation that it is in now. We guaranteed its territorial integrity and sovereignty and independence and also assured Ukraine that we would step up to help. This opens up a whole can of worms related first to the moral jeopardy of this, that we obviously don’t stick to our word.

But also in terms of nuclear weapons, we could face proliferation issues with Japan, South Korea, other countries — even NATO countries who currently see themselves covered under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. They will start to worry about how much we would actually support them when they needed it, and how vulnerable they are to pressure or attack by another nuclear power. Think about the dynamics between India and Pakistan, for example, or China and India, or China and South Korea and Japan; and the predicament of leaders in other countries who will be thinking right now that, “I’m going to be extremely vulnerable — so perhaps I should be getting my own nuclear weapon.” You’re hearing talk about this in Germany, for example. You hear it all the time in places like Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, we know that they have nuclear aspirations. So this opens up a whole set of different discussions.

So you’re concerned that if Putin wins and Ukraine is partitioned, that will set off a nuclear proliferation race.

There is a very good chance that it will, because it will open up the question — you had a country that gave up nuclear weapons, didn’t keep any at all, was given guarantees of its security, and then it got invaded and partitioned.

 

 

[Werthead]

This Russian pilot was lucky to be on the ball.