The change in Europe’s attitude is refreshing. I remember Chancellor Merkel’s chummy relationship with Putin. Europe was becoming dependent on Russian natural gas. It’s disturbing the EU didn’t realize the monster that they were dealing with.
Link ‘No turning back’: how the Ukraine war has profoundly changed the EU | European Union | The Guardian
Ukrainian tank commander driving a captured Russian T72 tank calls the Russian tank factory to complain about the shitty design.
The manufacture laughed and hung up when the commander said it was a captured tank and he is Ukrainian. How could the guy not recognize a Ukrainian dialect? Or does Russia have too many Donbas conscripts now?
I’m genuinely ignorant in languages. Are the accents very similar or dissimilar?
It’s entirely possible the tank commander grew up speaking both languages and speaks both without a notable accent. Or perhaps he’s a Ukrainian whose first language is Russian and whose family spoke with a Russian accent so that’s the one he has. There are a number of possibilities.
But for humorous chutzpah you just can’t beat it. Ukrainians are definitely winning the personality war overall.
And that’s how it begins.
The U.S. says it doesn’t have much money left for Ukraine at the current time, and given the looming government shutdown, it raises questions about how much more will be sent in the future.
Russia’s fleet in the Black Sea is in trouble. Ukrainians are actively pushing them out of Sevastopol.. If the Ukrainians can pull it off, this is a huge blow to Russian operations in the Crimea.
I’m seeing the dominoes… Once the Black Sea fleet is gone, the Crimean bridge is easy pickings, and the land connection is also already seriously threatened by Ukraine. Once both connections to Russia are gone, Crimea has to return to Ukrainian hands quickly.
This is incredibly upsetting:
Not least because the head of the company sounds like a towering piece of racist shit.
I received a national alert test on my phone along with all the TV stations. I wonder if that’s in response to the Russian version.
High Five!!! Free ammo courtesy of the Ayatollah. 
It’s fitting since they’re supplying drones to Russia.
Link US supplies Ukraine with a million rounds of ammunition seized from Iran | Ukraine | The Guardian
Slovakia has indicated that they’re growing cold to sending Ukraine any more military equipment. I think “war fatigue” is going to start kicking in more and more and I hope Zelenskyy has a good plan for the day the shipments stop arriving.
And Russia is building another naval base on the Black Sea. Hopefully it won’t play a factor in the war.
Each of these countries, including the US, has to begin thinking about the scenario where Ukraine finishes losing and now these other countries are on the front lines of an emboldened Russia.
It will take decades plural of production to replace what has been consumed in not even 2 years of combat. And to the degree the former Warsaw Pact countries have donated originally Soviet or Russian equipment, that will have to be replaced with Western equipment. Leading to greatly increased purchase and operating costs per gizmo, plus all the costs of re-training users and maintainers, developing indigenous repair depots, buying tools, stocking parts, etc.
The longer this goes on and the lower the stocks of neighboring countries (and the USA) gets the more they have to decide which future they’re protecting against. It’s easy to say “Better to have Ukraine stop the Russians sooner so we don’t have to on / within our own borders using our own people.” It’s more difficult to say “… And so we will denude ourselves of our own defense capability and bet it all on Ukraine succeeding.”
Regardless of any individual country’s public’s willingness to fund Ukraine, or that of the West as a collective, the practical realities of the long, slow pitifully inadequate weapons and munitions manufacturing pipeline in the West is biting some now and will bite far harder in the very foreseeable future.
You do realise the Russians are losing equipment and manpower too?
What’s the +blue numbers? At first I thought “units captured by Ukraine”, but I’m pretty sure they captured more than 12 tanks from Russian forces.
It’s the number added to the running total in the last day.
Those are the numbers released daily by the Ukrainian MoD, and while they do seem to be an accurate compilation of what the MoD thinks they’ve destroyed (unlike Russian numbers which often appear to be complete fantasy), they are nonetheless official state propaganda and should be viewed with some level of skepticism.
Or the usual exaggerations from over-enthusiastic battle reports.
Yes of course. It is a race to the bottom of the stocks for both sides. The Russians are reconstituting some production capacity on a decently expedited basis so far since teh West is not yet willing to stop the flow of money into Russia.
The Chinese are manufacturing stuff at a breakneck pace for their own modernization and use, and as best we here in public know little to none of their stocks have been diverted to Russia. Yet.
NK’s non-trivial arsenal is apparently starting to be tapped too.
The West is vastly larger & richer as an economic system. The race between the two war production systems, when measured in terms of units, not dollars vs rubles is far far more even. And the West is hobbled by very slow ramp-ups.