Medium Ukraine (Politics)

[Wile E. Coyote]

Why doesnt Vlad sack Gerasimov?

Its a bit like persevering with Steve McLaren for 4 years.

[Mick Harper]

The paltriness of the Moscow Victory Parade, and the fact it appeared to go ahead only after Zelensky's 'permission', has gone down very badly in Russia according to the comments of normally loyal Russians, high and low. Putin has placed himself in a very dangerous petard-hoisting position given the importance he attaches to these sorts of things.

Is it the end? Is it the beginning of the end? Is it all just the usual western enthusiasm for seeing signs of the end where no signs exist? I can't say, they all seem true to me.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Life is full of good and bad moments. But in general, are you happy or not?

According to the index Russians are still 52% happy .

Historically Ivans are a happy people.

The only gloom is they are now a bit less happy than at any time in the last 15 years.....

[Mick Harper]

It's an odd metric. Only Nepal has a ministry for the measurement and propagation of its citizens' happiness. AE probably ordains that every country ought to have one. Maybe it should be the only ministry.

Denmark usually comes top of the international listings. It's got everything! Including 'in moderation'. But Russia suggests that happiness may not consist of being happy but being happy to survive in the country you're living in.

Though speaking as a top AE-ist myself, I can say without equivocation that Britain is the happiest country of all, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. So that settles it.

[Mick Harper]

Russian males of military age are being offered a novel form of prisoner's dilemma. The authorities have let it be known that if they don't get enough volunteers (at a million roubles a thow) they will have to go for a general mobilisation (at zero roubles a throw).

Hence each individual has to work out whether it is better to volunteer now or get conscripted later. It would be best of all if a sufficient number of his citizen-comrades choose the former so he won't have to do anything at all.

[Mick Harper]

A bizarre sequence of events even by Russo-Ukraine standards:

1. Ukraine destroys a tower block in Luhansk
2. A dozen people are reported to have been killed
3. The Russians call this a war crime and vow vengeance
4. The Ukrainians deny they target civilians but acknowledge they attack tower blocks being used by Russian military and intelligence personnel
5. The Russians use a super-new hypersonic missile to destroy a tower block in Kyiv and claims retribution has been successfully achieved.

Sounds routine enough, what's bizarre about it?

6. Luhansk is legally in Ukraine so Ukraine can destroy its own property without committing a war crime
7. Russia has been targeting civilians throughout the war, Ukraine has not
8. Even if the tower block was in civilian use, it would be at worst a mistake, not a war crime
9. Russia has been silent on whether its military and intelligence personnel were in the tower block
10 The Russian attack on the Kyiv tower block killed one person so it has used up a scarce multi-million pound weapon in deliberately killing one civilian Ukrainian and called this a military success rather than what it was--an ineffectual war crime.

[Wile E. Coyote]

We are going to see more of these incidents.

The Russians are having to turn all of these annexed areas into giant military zones. This entails the hospitals, turning into war hospitals, student accommodation into barracks, priority given to the army for fuel and water, many zones within these areas are now for exclusive military use (no civilians). Normal civilian life and tourism are increasingly things of the past.

The Ukranians now have mid range drones that are constantly buzzing these areas, looking for military targets, mainly Russian lodgistics but sometimes just trying to trigger expensive air defence systems.

Remember the Azov regiment, they are now back in Mariupol, but in the skys, controlling the drones that are attacking the Russians......

The Pearl of the Black sea, is now full of closed beaches, guarded by military fortifications, tourism even by official acccounts is down from the pre war 9 million to 5 million annually. It looks empty from the few Russian videos posted. Its becoming a giant military base.

The Russians are slowly losing control of the Black sea and air to drones. Ukraine wont be able to invade, but with its technical edge in mid rage drones, will be able to eventually establish fire control over the land routes and sea routes in.

At that point Vladdy the Bunkered would be wise to negotiate. Or maybe temporarily withdraw from Crimea, freeing up the massive military resources now parked there, and then launching a massive new attack in the Donbas......they could model this on their Great Patriot War against the Nazis....first take Donbas only then retake Crimea. I will ping an email to Vladdy.......

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

I was watching a piece about how the Russian Far East is being steadily denuded of people--not least because of the Ukraine War--when I saw, over the shoulder of the reporter, an official sign pointing the direction to various local amenities. It used symbols save only for WC in large capital letters.

I have spent many hours trying to account for this. Can anyone assist and put me out of my misery?

[Mick Harper]

Balance of Power

The Ukraine War moved up the news order yesterday as Iranian peace talks stalled and Putin launched his biggest ever aerial assault on Kyiv.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Russia cannot afford to lose too much ground, given that after a couple of years of inevitable advance etc, they only actually got 7 miles past Bakhmut.

They could in a worst case scenario be back to defending Bakhmut soon.

[Mick Harper]

And this is why we're increasing defence spending from less than two per cent to more than four per cent. Madness.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

It would have been madness except they are not battleships. Trump referred to them as that out of ignorance and nobody dared to contradict him.

This all reminds me of the last time the British lined up their battleships, at the Spithead Review of 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria's sixtieth jubilee. It was going so well until the bloke who had invented the steam turbine but couldn't get the Admiralty interested in it, gatecrashed the party and started steaming up and down the rows of ships because nobody could catch him.

As one admiral didn't say to another, "Put a torpedo on one of those things and it means the end of the battleship."

[Mick Harper]

Good grief, when will they ever learn. We get phalanxes of talking heads screaming fire and brimstone be visited... on whom?... for what?

* A Russian drone has hit a Romanian block of flats. Two people are slightly injured.
* The block of flats is a few miles away from a main NATO distribution base in western Ukraine.
* Drones take unpredictable paths after they are shot down by defending forces.
* Drones can go a few miles astray of their intended target for technical reasons.
* Nobody in a NATO country has been killed by, hardly any NATO countries have been hit by, a Russian drone despite millions of them being fired on trajectories that might mean they could hit a NATO country.

Ah, but we do enjoy a bit of hysteria on a Friday night.