Kiev Is Burning

[ink]

1 minute ago, crazyinsane105 said:

I do find it a bit strange we have thousands of Abrams sitting in storage but we manage, after a year, to send 30. I’d expected to have seen hundreds sent at the very least..

There's probably nobody in the shipping industry close enough to the Administration to skim some of that good milky milk the government is throwing down.

Or am I too cynical 😈

[TrustMe]

44 minutes ago, RETAC21 said:

Just in, the US will buy 2 Argentinian Mi-171 and discount the money from the F-16 buy.

The cupboard is really bare.

Columbia has a number of Mi17's i'm not sure how many, they are US allied as well.

Edited December 11, 2023 by TrustMe

[Yama]

1 hour ago, RETAC21 said:

Just in, the US will buy 2 Argentinian Mi-171 and discount the money from the F-16 buy.

The cupboard is really bare.

Well...that's still progress. 

Maybe the next package will open the floodgates again, after all the compromise negotiations in Congress are finished?

[kokovi]

2 hours ago, seahawk said:

Obviously only Russia and the USA could simply move equipment within the country to meet CFE obligations.

Germany could have kept more equipment by an order of magnitude while still complying with the CFE treaty.

[Dark_Falcon]

12 hours ago, seahawk said:

But now it is eating up a large part of the budgets, for no results. The West can not afford to continue the support without wrecking the economy and their own military. The West has lost, Russian resilence has won.

The big-ticket spending items in the US budget are mandatory spending for Social Security and Medicare.  Foreign aid isn't a major cost-driver, but politicians focus on it because to bring up entitlement spending is to guarantee a massive political backlash.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Tertiary  related, but if I stick it elsewhere it will be ignored.

 

[crazyinsane105]

2 hours ago, Yama said:

Well...that's still progress. 

Maybe the next package will open the floodgates again, after all the compromise negotiations in Congress are finished?

Unsure if floodgates will be opened. War fatigue seems to be setting in to the general populace in the US as well. 

[glenn239]

6 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

The day I learned Putin Launched the Novichok attack on Salisbury, I said he was crazy enough to do anything. He was. He is. And frankly I don't think invoking cheese eating surrender monkey mode is going to save us.

I think what you are actually terrified of is that Putin will win the war and then not attack NATO.  

[glenn239]

6 hours ago, crazyinsane105 said:

One thing I will say about Russian military capabilities…for the amount of money they do put into it, they have more to show for it than most EU states. If it wasn’t for the US, I’d feel frightened for the EU

In Ukraine, I see plenty of evidence that both sides are feverishly training drone operators by the thousands and learning how to attack and defend against drones down to the squad level.  By the end of this war I wouldn't be surprised if the Russians have a thousand drone operators on the frontline at once.   Is NATO doing something to keep up with this? 

[glenn239]

5 hours ago, crazyinsane105 said:

I do find it a bit strange we have thousands of Abrams sitting in storage but we manage, after a year, to send 30. I’d expected to have seen hundreds sent at the very least..

On a hunch I did a google on spare parts and this popped up from the early 1990's,

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-96-100/html/GAOREPORTS-NSIAD-96-100.htm

Could the problem be lack of spares?

[Yama]

Meanwhile, modern equivalent of Otto Wille Kuusinen, scholar Johan Bäckman has been on Russian TV as a 'Finnish expert' and the stuff he spouts keeps getting crazier and crazier. Here's some samples:

1. Bäckman claims that the United States plans to establish secret biolaboratories in Finland.

2. Bäckman claims that the United States is the provocateur of the asylum seeker crisis on Finland's eastern border.

3. According to Bäckman, the reason for closing the eastern border is that Finland wants to make life difficult for Russians.

4. According to Bäckman, the United States makes all important decisions in Finland, which has become a NATO reservate.

5. Bäckman claims that Finland spreads Nazi ideology and swastika symbols are a frequent sight.

6. Bäckman claims that Finland is planning to return Karelia, which was lost in the wars...

7. ... and that the 'Greater FInland' project is openly run in Finland.

8. Bäckman claims that NATO is planning a Barbarossa 2.0 attack against Russia.

9. Bäckman claims that the West is plotting to shoot down a Finnish or Swedish passenger plane near Åland. After this, Russia could be blamed for the accident.

 

 

 

[seahawk]

9 hours ago, Dark_Falcon said:

The big-ticket spending items in the US budget are mandatory spending for Social Security and Medicare.  Foreign aid isn't a major cost-driver, but politicians focus on it because to bring up entitlement spending is to guarantee a massive political backlash.

Taking Medicare from Americans to finanace a pointless war in Europe, seems stupid.

10 hours ago, kokovi said:

Germany could have kept more equipment by an order of magnitude while still complying with the CFE treaty.

Germany as a country sucks badly when it comes to defence and everything else.

[Stuart Galbraith]

8 hours ago, glenn239 said:

I think what you are actually terrified of is that Putin will win the war and then not attack NATO.  

Right back at you Glenn. Have you ever stopped to reflect whether I might actually be right? Because, and I dont like blowing my own trumpet here, as far as thinking the worst of the Putin regime, Ive got a considerably higher rate of being right than you have over the past 9 years.

I said in 2018 after Salisbury, that a man capable of doing that, was capable of doing anything. Did you listen? No. Who was right?

[Perun]

9 hours ago, glenn239 said:

I think what you are actually terrified of is that Putin will win the war and then not attack NATO.  

🤣👍

[Stefan Kotsch]

1 hour ago, Perun said:

10 hours ago, glenn239 said:

I think what you are actually terrified of is that Putin will win the war and then not attack NATO.  

🤣👍

For the life of me, I can't see any sense behind Glenn's saying. Except sympathy for the communist KGB officer and contempt for the right to defend against the army of the communist KGB officer.

[Ssnake]

It didn't really take you two years to realize this, Stefan...?

[Stefan Kotsch]

It's actually a fruitless discussion. But every now and then you have to stink against it. 😎

[Stuart Galbraith]

One way or another, Glenns have been on this site for the past 25 years.  So, one way or another, you would would have thought I would have learned the lesson not to argue with them by now. But...

[ink]

Is there any news actually coming in from the war? Work has prevented me from keeping an eye on things, so I was just wondering if anything was happening.

Last I saw, the Russians were still attacking in the Avdiivka area, and there were announcements that attacks on the Ukrainian energy system were imminent.

[seahawk]

The actual news is happening in Washington, where the pro-Ukrainian regime leader is desperately begging for even more money, which the Republicans seem to have no intention of giving it to him. Can´t blame the guy, a fleet of yachts and mansions around the globe need money.

[MiGG0]

43 minutes ago, ink said:

Is there any news actually coming in from the war? Work has prevented me from keeping an eye on things, so I was just wondering if anything was happening.

Last I saw, the Russians were still attacking in the Avdiivka area, and there were announcements that attacks on the Ukrainian energy system were imminent.

Pretty much sitatuation is still same. RUS have advanced somewhat in different places and initiative is on their side at the moment, but nothing major has happened. Avdiivka seems to be new Bakhmut

[glenn239]

1 hour ago, ink said:

Is there any news actually coming in from the war? Work has prevented me from keeping an eye on things, so I was just wondering if anything was happening.

Increasing Russian offensive activity all along the front with signs of strain on Ukrainian frontline units and, by the way they are shifting units from sector to sector, indications of lack of reserves.  Some Ukrainian videos of successful FPV drone strikes and AT missile attacks, but those for artillery strikes and such seem to be getting rarer.  Daily briefs are showing Russian gains everywhere, but generally small, this field or that tree line type thing.   

Some videos lately of Ukrainian press gang tactics of forcefully rounding up new draftees to replace Ukrainian losses.  (In the one I just watched, a round up in a fitness club).  Indications of increasingly serious tensions inside the Ukrainian army and high command, (Zelensky). 

On the air war front, the Russians winter missile campaign against the Ukrainian power grid appears to have started, and reports that FAB strikes are touching the 100-per-day level, but with expectation that this might soon be much higher and with much heavier bombs - could they get to a thousand on a day?  

Overall, the trajectory is that the Ukrainian military position is deteriorating.  They appear to be running out of well trained troops, low on ammunition, and other than HIMARS and FPV strikes, the firepower war seems to be getting increasingly one-sided. 

Edited December 12, 2023 by glenn239

[futon]

Members of the 24th Mechanised Brigade named after King Danylo have regained control over a spoil tip within the settlement of Horlivka in Donetsk Oblast and raised the Ukrainian flag there.

...

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/12/12/7432721/index.amp

[Murph]

20 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

And they fought for months to not send those!

Rightly so, why are we sending anything to the Kleptocrats? Other than they keep paying off the Biden family.  Not our war.

[Roman Alymov]

8 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Right back at you Glenn. Have you ever stopped to reflect whether I might actually be right? Because, and I dont like blowing my own trumpet here, as far as thinking the worst of the Putin regime, Ive got a considerably higher rate of being right than you have over the past 9 years.

I said in 2018 after Salisbury, that a man capable of doing that, was capable of doing anything. Did you listen? No. Who was right?

Could you please give us your Putin and take our local one in exchange, please? It would be nice to have tough decision maker you describe replace weak comprador politician who is now openly admitting he was "led by his nose" for almost 10 years of begging the West to follow so called Minsk agreements we now know never were agreements - but just trick to better prepare war against Russia....