Yesterday I saw images of a Ukrainian family that was killed by a Russian missile/rocket attack. One image showed a family member carrying a cat. The image of the bodies showed a cat carrier. I can’t help windering what happened to the cat. 
Since this started I’ve looked at my cat peacefully sleeping next to me each night and wondered how other pets and wildlife are doing. They have no clue what’s going on.
Exactly. I think of pets when an owner dies – not necessarily in a war, but just in general. All they know is that their human is gone, and they don’t know why. Cats, particularly, are creatures of habit. It pains me when they are cast into unfamiliarity.
The date of withdrawl was not a mystery or a secret. It was known well in advance by all parties that US forces would be withdrawing in July 2021. There was no “sneaking out at night” and to claim that NATO had no idea what the plan was is revisionist and disingenuous.
Stop pretending that this invasion had anything to do with “Biden emboldening Russia” instead of the well-documented patterns of revanchist conquest and imperial aspiration that Putin has been displaying for a quarter century now.
So, Russia has responded by calling home all its planes, rental arrangements be damned. The airplane leasing companies are taking a bath as their assets are flying off to Russia. Aercap in Ireland, the company that has the most planes leased to Russian companies, has lost 25% of its market value.
It’s going to be chump change compared to the damage they’re economy is taking. they’re going to look like Venezuela in a few years if they don’t get their act together.
Russia invaded Crimea before Trump and Ukraine after Trump.
This seems likely to have long-term ramifications with regards to their ability to fly international routes.
I would think so. Along with the lack of trust it engenders with respect to the leasing arrangements, and the desire of the leasing companies to repossess as soon as a plane sets down in a country outsider of Russia or Belarus, the NP article also mentions the importance of detailed record-keeping of maintenance, to ensure certificates of airworthiness. I would geuss that sort of detailed record-keeping is going to suffer.
Why, it’s almost as if he didn’t need military force to achieve his goals when he had a stooge in the White House doing his job for him.
Sorry to interrupt guys, but can we please keep American party politics out of this thread?
This.
I find it sad when someone is so incredibly “party before country” that they actually go so far as to be a Putin apologist. But here we are.
They seem to be capturing a lot of Russians around Mykolayiv.
Latest UK Defence Intelligence update:
Moderating:
This is a breaking news thread in MPSIMS. Politics is not allowed in breaking news threads.
I realize that war is an extension of politics, and it’s hard to discuss a war without any hint of politics.
But this is not a thread about Trump. It is not a thread about Biden. Squabbles about internal US politics are not appropriate for this thread, and any further such discussion will be treated harshly by the mods. If anyone really wants to continue that digression, DM me and I’ll break out the relevant posts into their own thread. But do not mention it again in this thread.
This is a thread about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Please get back on topic.
With a further expanded article, CNN appears to be reporting that US officials view the proposed transfer of fighter jets to Ukraine to be excessively risky in terms of provoking a direct conflict with Russia. It took a while for the Pentagon press secretary to get to the real point, but eventually he said this:
The idea as laid out by Poland was too risky, Kirby said, as the US and NATO seek to avoid an outright conflict between the alliance and Russia.
“The prospect of fighter jets ‘at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America’ departing from a U.S./NATO base in Germany to fly into airspace that is contested with Russia over Ukraine raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance,” Kirby said.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/08/politics/poland-jets-ukraine-russia/index.html
In my view, Putin is going to escalate this conflict anyway as long as he has a reasonable hope of prevailing, and failing to supply the planes now is going to be another example of the West doing “too little, too late”. The only hope of a resolution to this mess that doesn’t involve the end of Ukraine as a nation sooner or later is for Putin to realize that he’s facing military catastrophe. Zelensky is asking for planes. Give him planes.
What did they expect from a country whose president stole a super bowl ring?
Of course you know. Have you never heard that the first casualty of war is the truth? It’s been like that since forever. Everybody overestimates their victories publicly and underestimates their losses publicly. It’s not just that there was never a 56 tank convoy. Then it was a 56 tank convoy full of special operation forces. Then it was an assassination attempt on the president that was stopped. Then there have been 20 attempts to kill the president. There’s a reason they are called war “stories.” Until the war ends and a neutral third party can confirm things we’ll never know any real numbers. If Russia succeeds, we will really never know what their real losses were.
Here is another example that was posted.
They reportedly need 50 buses to transport prisoners. That’s pushing 2000 prisoners, yet the only photo we have is of 10 prisoners and no buses. Holding that many prisoners requires a lot of guards. Where are all the videos that the guards took? This would be a huge public relations opportunity for the Ukrainians, they should be blasting video of this all around the world.
Thank you!
Canada has a hub in Germany, why don’t they do it? I’m pretty sure Germany has a base in Germany too. Everyone in NATO agrees the planes should go to Ukraine, sending them from Poland with Ukrainian pilots is the best way to do so. Playing a game of “who’s got the MiGs” is a pointless waste of time when everyone already knows they are coming from a NATO country. There is absolutely no plausible deniability here.
I had no idea that so many passenger craft were leased. I guess it doesn’t make the news as much as a company/country outright buying them.
If I’m not mistaken, most leased planes are older aircraft that the leasing companies buy second-hand from various airlines. It doesn’t make the news because they’re not new planes being delivered, they’re old planes changing hands.