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Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Propaganda war, Russians say Moskva is being tugged to safety. You take your pick, ammunition fire/missile attack...... safe/sunk.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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It's now clear that the Moskva has sunk and the other Russian ships in the area are now taking prophylactic manoeuvres to avoid being hit by incoming missiles. This doesn't mean that the Moskva was hit by a missile, it simply means that in light of the sinking, Russian captains are wisely not believing the narrative from either side. You can't be too careful.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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On board the Moscva was a Christian relic, a small piece of the True Cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified, it had been given to Vice Admiral Igor Osipov, the commander of the Black Sea fleet, and was stored in the cruiser's chapel. It's unclear if the relic was safely evacuated along with the crew.

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Grant



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First direct evidence that in today’s warfare large ships are a complete waste of money
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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No, relics of the True Cross are a waste of money.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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It's difficult to know on the basis of one cruiser, whether larger battleships are a total wate of money, in theory they had the ability to shoot down incoming missiles. The speculation is that the crew were diverted by a drone and missed the Neptune attack, but a lot is explained away by drones isn't it? It certainly doesn't help when the captain is sailing predictable courses.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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The Falklands was the last major naval engagement (he says wildly not having checked). The Atlantic Conveyor showed the perils of putting too many eggs in large baskets. Though the carriers survived.

Being small is no defence against incoming missiles. It turned out -- a lesson repeated with the Twin Towers -- that it was unused fuel in the missile that did the terminal damage, not the shock of impact or the exploding warhead. If you think about it, though no-one had or has, this is predictable because warships have been designed since the sixteenth century to cope with hard explodey things coming at them but not wet flammable things being deposited inside them.

But I agree, Britain putting all its maritime eggs into two carriers can be seen as the mistake everyone said it was at the time. Oddly, nobody has ever taken up my suggestion that literal aircraft carriers should be built i.e. ships that can deliver aircraft to airfields in theatre. No flight deck. No survivability. No navy as a matter of fact. So it is not odd nobody has taken up the suggestion. It would never get through anybody's Joint Chiefs.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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In general terms I can't see why Russia really needed all these ships, they really need more trained manpower, in crews or on the ground, but given the choice of a flashy new bit of tech, or training 1000 Alexanders, Ivans, Andreis etc, your Admirals or Generals will always go for the sparkly stuff.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Up to a point, Lord Gort. As I pointed out in the Unreliable History armed forces love sparkly stuff but not sharp end stuff e.g. during the war to end the First World War, the Yanks built the best submarines in the world but didn't bother testing the torpedoes. Result: the Pacific War did not end in 1942. I mention this because of Putin threatening the Third World War. Not a single nuclear missile has ever been tested.
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Mick Harper
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The controversy about what caused the sinking of the Moskva continues on its bewildering way. Ships sink because of internal ammunition explosions about one per blue moon. So when it happens in a war against opponents armed with shore-to-ship missiles and you've parked a ship just offshore it's probably best to assume it wasn't an internal ammunition explosion.

The last time this happened to a flagship was the USS Maine parked in Havana harbour in 1898. Not having shore-to-ship carry-on missiles it was unfair to blame the Spaniards for blowing up the Maine. More likely an internal ammunition explosion. But what the hell, as President William McPutin said at the time, let's have a war anyway.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Not sure that BJ policy of leaving Western Europe to join Eastern Europe is going to work.
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Mick Harper
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Kirsty Wark is the pits as an interviewer. Newsnight scored quite a coup getting a Putin trusty to talk about the prospects of the Azov Brigade holed up in the Mariupol steelworks. They are refusing to surrender for fear of something worse. It was Kirsty's job to find out what that worse was. She spends most of the interview allowing the Russkie apologist to slide off various hooks because he is allowed to rant on about Nazis and the Second World War. Belatedly, our Kirst gets round to 2014 when two hundred Azovians surrendered on the promise of fair treatment and were promptly shot.

He admits it! Sort of. Kirsty allows it to slide. They finally get round to what Putin intends to do with them this time. The hood starts to say with some relish what it's going to be but La Wark cuts him off with a great show of impatient irritability, "I'm afraid that's all the time we've got." The very words the Azov Brigade are saying to one another, holed up in Mariupol.
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Grant



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The Ukrainians still fighting are not regular squaddies. They are all Azov “Nazis”. Not real Nazis of course, but Putin shorthand for the soldiers who killed thousands of Russians in the last decade. The Russians aren’t very forgiving of the enemy.

It reminds me of Sergeant Major Williams in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum: “Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.”
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Mick Harper
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To be fair to the Russians (!) they are real Nazis. In the sense that, say, Combat 18 here in Britain were Nazis. If you are going to commemorate Adolf Hitler's name (A = first letter of the alphabet, H is the eighth) or in the Azov case adopt an obvious swastika-derived emblem, then you consider yourselves Nazis. Who are we or the Russians to disagree? Still entitled to a fair trial before being shot though.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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I wonder if all these ultra nationalistic Russian folks, both before and since 2014, that have signed up to fight for New Russia, that think Putin is weak, and have pushed for secession of the Donbas, like Jews, homosexuals or Roma? They can't be Nazis because they don't have the insigna, presumably they don't like dressing in Brown or Black?
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