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I remember hearing that joke for the first time in the Wire - though I imagine it's much older than that - it's a good one!

With mentioning that I fully support everything Bojan said above. The impossible has happened, two Serbs have agreed on something political. Up next: flying pigs and hell freezing over.

Still no shots fired. https://www.theguardian.com/global/2025/mar/15/serbians-stage-huge-protest-in-belgrade-against-their-president EDIT: although it should be mentioned that the govt. or loyalists aligned to them did use an LRAD against the crowd during a 15 mins of silence for the 15 victims of the incident at the railway station. https://x.com/alef_pendule/status/1900980300093468844?t=NT4miafT0egHhbbFTfXSeg&s=19

Can confirm, this is a fairly good summary.

More internal security forces armour (such as it is) heading for Belgrade for tomorrow's big protest: https://x.com/antibotter011/status/1900330207623438671?t=5EdfF22y_5iJcPsyUV85wA&s=19

Also, little update (that may or may not mean anything): Armoured vehicles (Lazar 3s, I think) have been spotted travelling from Loznica to Belgrade. Still no shots fired. But we're heading in a decidedly unfunny direction.

Yeah, he is losing it. His left hand has been seriously shaking during recent appearances on TV, and he is blurting out more and more unhinged statements. Btw, the name of the party dates back to it's split from the Serbian Radical Party in the mid-2000s and the "progressive" bit is about as misleading as the "socialist" part of the National Socialist Party. But in reality, they have no ideology, they'll just do or say whatever it takes so they can keep their corrupt networks.

Serbia continues to generate the only newsworthy content in the Balkans: https://apnews.com/article/serbia-protests-police-television-students-9007ee8fabade17ed1ba956e51be9c30 Since Western mass media, politicians and EU officials all appear to be pointedly ignoring what's happening in Serbia, by skimming through the above AP article, you'll be in the top 1% of the Western public in terms of how well-informed you are about Balkan news.

Honestly, you only have to study Mackinder for 15 minutes to see how dumb all that stuff is. But then, people who get excited about all that World Heartland bollocks haven't actually read anything about it or given it much serious thought.

Hard to take the sultan at face value at the best of times. They have their own relationship to Russia, which makes Turkey a tricky partner for Europe at the best of times. Relying on them for the bulk of a stabilising army seems... unwise at best. Indeed. But if the Europeans can't even agree on 10.000 troops in a discussion taking place before peacetalks even begin in earnest, then it really will be academic (for Ukraine at least). I imagine they'll be able to get their act together to defend an actual EU member state.

Well, with that in mind, it's worth me pointing out that the original plan for 38.000 NATO troops never materialised. The full contingent was never filled. So, is it more likely that 10.000 European troops becomes 100.000, or that it ends up at 8.500?

This is pathetic. When NATO went in to Kosovo, KFOR was slated yo number 38.000 NATO soldiers. To stabilise Kosovo against the Serbian army and any uprising of the Serbian population. Ukraine is tens of times the size of Kosovo, the Russian army, needless to say, is more powerful than the Serbian army ever was... You could probably drive around Ukraine for weeks in your tortoise T-80 without ever seeing 10.000 European soldiers. 100.000 wouldn't be enough.

Interesting! Thanks.

There are several training programmes. Though countries do seem keen on training them in Ukraine, rather than in the host country.

I don't think sending small teams of guys to pose as volunteers is a massive expenditure for any of the nations involved - and certainly not for China (the original subject of this conversation). Honestly, I wish the much decimated Serbian military would send people over to study what's going on. Strong disagree here, sorry Roman. The war and the kinds of fighting that "work" have changed so much and so many times since 2022 that you'd want someone to have "lived" all those different experiences. Not to mention that there's a limit to what you can learn from social media if tomorrow you are going to have to be in a forest, attacking an enemy position at night, with drone teams hoping to plug an old RPG warhead in your ass. I'm surprised to hear that. I'd expect the Poles and Balts, just for example, to be all ears.