Russian Troop Movements Reported Near Ukraine

[Grownup_Rafbrat]

Some steel cable strung across between tall objects would be nice.

Don't they have wire cutters fitted?

 

[Effendi]

A sobering opinion piece by Edward Luce from the FT's newsletter:

The west is failing to quarantine Russia​

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

www.ft.com

I would argue that such an analysis (which I am mostly in agreement with) points to the necessity of a much speedier and decisive Ukrainian victory than seems to be on the cards with current policies being applied.

This in turn requires a far greater commitment to, and investment in, Ukrainian victory than the half-hearted support that is evident now. If this does not happen, then the collective "West" is just stoking up much greater problems for the future.

Good article.

We know that greater problems will follow, it is the politicians playing their duplicitous and bet hedging games who are the problem.

 

[Effendi]

Don't they have wire cutters fitted?

Helicopter hitting a couple of thousand kg breaking strain cable at 150mph will suffer badly. When younger I expected aircraft to be quite robust beasts, then I wandered around RNAY Wroughton where at the back end they had a stack of old aircraft parts. Quite flimsy in reality.


I've just had one of those lightbulb moments: Why not put up small tethered weather balloons with cable strung between them. Just like the old barrage balloons over London.

 

[Old Cloud Puncher]

Hahaah great article, but of course it's all political prevarication
That €100 billion is a snip in the ocean as to the money they saved by not putting in 2% of GD and you have to think the issues with Marders, Gepards Leos are more related to a German Bromance (At the elite level) with Russia and Putin. They really don't give a shit and hide behind RealPolitic.. If you dropped a Pfennig in front of Merkel you'd be in real risk of bumming her because she'd stop to pick it up.

Sholz's aid said at the start of the week, Ukraine needs to get over all this and Germany going back to doing business with Russia! (Paraphrasing)

I listened in on a very interesting energy crisis talk yesterday whereby the speaker was saying Germany's love of Russian energy was putting Europe in danger, and powering down their Nuc power stations could be giving 10% very quickly but constitute a real threat to lives come winter. They are all in good condition and not so far they can't be switched back on.

It's not the 1st time German foreign and internal policy screws everyone around them since the 90's though

Indeed, but the €100bn has all been spent on solar powered vegan sandals for differently gendered single parents so it can't be got back. Merkel has truly shafted the military because not just machinery has gone to the scrapyard but the whole structure behind it. It is going to take a long time to rebuild the expertise and skills base that she destroyed, and if it came to 'hey boys, hey' I could see a German soldier having to fill in a H&S Risk Assessment before he stuck his bayonet in a Russian in case someone got hurt. Add in their complete reliance on sucking on the Nordstream tit and you have the perfect client state.

At base level I think most Germans are very onside with Ukraine and those who remember their military service when Germany had proper armed forces weep into their beer and very quietly hum Der Panzerlied to themselves, but they have been driven into a mindset of not saying anything in case they upset someone and their Equalities. Hopefully there will be a bit of an awakening, not so much 'Deutschland Erwache' as 'Come on Deutschland pull your socks up, you can do better than this.'

The problem as ever is politicians but if they see the way the wind is blowing they might begin to get a grip. FFS, even the Green Party is in favour of sending weapons to Ukraine!

 

[Old Cloud Puncher]

I think that you may be referring to a song "Chervona Kalyna"

Eta: Oh, it was "Sokoły" after all. Never mind, the above was worth a repost.

Bloody hayfever.

 

[Old Cloud Puncher]

Belarus getting more involved ?.

Moscow to send Belarus nuclear-capable missiles within months

Russia will deliver missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to Belarus in the coming months, President Vladimir Putin said Saturday as he received Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. Read about…

www.france24.com

So who fired? Belarus army under direction / coercion from Moscow or Russian forces in Belarus?

If the latter, did Belarus even know?

 

[whitecity]

As regards Sevastopol, I believe that it can be argued that Moscow's actions in illegally occupying and annexing Crimea using Sevastopol as a base violated the bilateral agreement.

I see that as a great argument when discussing the borders of Ukraine after the war is won. Sorry, Sevastopol basing rights lost by default. Next.

Same with Ukraine's right to hold nuclear weapons.

While as regards the Kerch Bridge, why would at least the Crimean side not be a legitimate target?

I think it's a simple political call. Let's do NOTHING that brings into question our claim of simply defending ourselves and doing NOTHING offensive against Russia itself. Nothing provocative. Period.

Yes, it makes the military task more tricky, but....

Judgement call for Kyiv to make.

 

[AfghanAndy]

I really wish UK Gov would produce stuff like that, to counter the Leftwaffe's constant dripping. It's xlnt.

The U.K. can’t do stuff like that at the moment.

U.K. politics has a new dimension. As well as left wing and right wing, we’ve got pro EU axis. Be they left or right wing.

At the moment you have the left wing will never say anything positive about the U.K. the pro EU right wing can’t say anything positive so that leaves one group left who if they do say anything will be shouted down for being far right wing nationalists.

I do however like the way that the Ukrainian's are able to send out messages like that and because of the situation the usual subjects have to bite their tongue.

It’s always amazed me how self deprecating we are in the U.K. for all of the claims of intellect and self awareness the usual suspects are, they’ve always seemed to not pick up on the fact that brand U.K. is strong abroad and our recent actions have reinforced it.

I posted a link to to a DW news section in English with a female German journalist criticising the German government emphasising it was the western Allies of WW2 who once again are making the sacrifices to do the right thing.

As you’ll see in our own media reporting. Ukraine is way down on the list of stories. They’re more focused on trivia.

I often wonder what the media coverage was like in 37 to 40. Did they ignore the obvious threat? Or focus on trivia that was of no importance then and has even been forgotten by history?

 

[NSP]

With the exception of, there aren't thousands of Russians waiting in line to fight in Donbass..
Handing out Bolt action Nagants isn't a good recruiting technique!
Russia is starting to run out of troops,
What's the count now 100,000 dead & wounded?

It's when the recruits start texting home to say that they are being handed Nagants at one to every other man, with the blokes in between are getting a single clip of rounds, that the Russian populace might start to smell a rat.

 

[whitecity]

Would that actually be some more corpses found in nearby shallow graves, in Polish uniforms from 1939, with their hands tied behind their backs and bullet holes in the back of the skull?

I understand a lot of Poles are part of the international volunteer contingent holding out in Severodonetsk.

Their contribution has been immense and 80 demonstrates just how immense.

 

[Condottiere]

Bloody hayfever.

Good, innit!

 

[AfghanAndy]

A sobering opinion piece by Edward Luce from the FT's newsletter:

The west is failing to quarantine Russia​

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

www.ft.com

I would argue that such an analysis (which I am mostly in agreement with) points to the necessity of a much speedier and decisive Ukrainian victory than seems to be on the cards with current policies being applied.

This in turn requires a far greater commitment to, and investment in, Ukrainian victory than the half-hearted support that is evident now. If this does not happen, then the collective "West" is just stoking up much greater problems for the future.

It’s difficult to contain Russia from the wests perspective. There’s only about 40
Odd countries doing anything about Russia. So the best that can happen is support Ukraine with whatever we can do.

Economically, the best we can do is throw a temporary spanner in the works with the Russian economy which hurt both Russia and the west for a period of time until everybody re-adjusts supply chains. Western countries will start purchasing raw materials from elsewhere and russia will gain new customers as non western country’s who want to keep out take advantage of Russian discounts.

We may be able to impact sanctions longer term by continuing to withhold western specific things such as banking facilities and high technology, but neither of those are absolutely required by countries like Russia. They’ve run their economy as a barter economy in the recent past, and they don’t necessarily need sick hi tech solutions as they can throw manpower at most problems without caring about casualties.

I think the west in many cases is quite Naive in many cases. Comfortable western democracies think that sanctions can overcome most issues. I’d argue that sanctions have rarely worked in autocratic country’s that don’t share our same belief principals.

I think we’ve hoped that sanctions will cripple Russia and forgotten to take into account that Russians culturally distrust the west, don’t understand democracy and we’ll be up in arms when they can’t buy the latest iPhone, forgetting that there’s huge amounts of iPhone competitors who provide a substitute product and want to increase their market share. Wonderful if your competitor stops selling those products.

Sanctions against Russia could possibly work, but only if coordinated on a global scale. Difficult if the UN can’t pass those sanctions because the perpetrator is a permanent member of the UNSC, and I’d hazard a guess will be paying off leaders of other corrupt countries to vote against any anti Russian sanctions in the UN. It’s a bit like relying on trial by jury when it’s ok for the defendant to threaten, intimidate or bribe members of the Jury and there’s no legal recourse.

Because we believe in the rule of law, we’ve relied too heavily on it, shied away from providing massive armed support for the Ukrainians for fear of escalating things.

We now seem to be in a position that Russia is sacrificing pro Russian separatists in the Ukraine and is now looking at trying to sacrifice Belarusian personnel. Almost certainly in order to drain western resources because we’ve planned for any conflict to either consist of a knock out blow or being delay with by mediators.

 

[Panic-in-Detroit]

I am not convinced that there is a great imperative to strike into Russia and Belarus at the moment.

Re the ammo being moved from Belarus, much better to track it, and then hit it when it crosses into Ukraine.

If NATO is going to up the ante, it would be better to develop a strategy to open up the Black Sea/Odessa to international shipping.

 

[Cloth bomber]

The “right “of uninterrupted sea passage to collect grain by third party countrys ( after the mine lanes have been swept with UN backing) and with robust naval escorts to said ships would both help to dent Putins famine blackmail ploy and paint the horde in a very bad light if they attempted an interdiction.
what’s not to like?

 

[FEASG]

Three more of the same then, but we will see.

Three key members of Putin's inner circle that could oust him - 'hammer to the head'

 

[Listy]

Some steel cable strung across between tall objects would be nice.

What ever happened to barrage balloon's? It strikes me (geddit?) that these would be great for stopping cruise missiles.
Cheap too.

 

[Yokel]

18 Patrol Boats Sent to Ukraine Set for River Duty, Says Pentagon - USNI News

The 18 patrol boats being sent to Ukraine as part of additional aid announced Thursday will be used to monitor and protect Ukraine’s rivers, a senior defense official told reporters Friday.

The United States will be sending two small unit riverine crafts that are 35 feet long, six maritime combat crafts that are 40 feet long and 10 medium force protection patrol boats that are 34 feet long, the senior defense official said.

It is unclear of where the in the inventory the boats are coming from, although because they are authorized through the presidential drawdown, they must come from existing Department of Defense supply.

The Navy referred a question about the patrol boats coming from the sea service to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which declined to comment further beyond the morning briefing.

 

[ChunderBunny]

"Lawmakers proposed sending five littoral combat ships to Ukraine, but the country rejected the idea"

Interesting that the US considered that.

 

[HectortheInspector]

"Lawmakers proposed sending five littoral combat ships to Ukraine, but the country rejected the idea"

Interesting that the US considered that.

The US can't wait to get rid of them.
They are turkeys. Very expensive turkeys.

Navy Chief Wants To Sell-Off Doomed Littoral Combat Ships To Allies

The Freedom class's limited combat utility, high running costs, and design problems could deter potential buyers of the second-hand ships.

www.thedrive.com

 

[ChunderBunny]

Limited capability? High running costs? Design problems? I'm surprised the MOD hasn't snapped them up.