Russia invades Ukraine {2022-02-24} (Part 2)

What would an ‘abandoned’ tank be? One would think it quickly would either be recovered by the owning side and repaired if need be, or captured by the other side. Whichever scenario it seems a temporary status.

Non-salvageable?

Which would be the equivalent of destroyed.

Given that Oryx is based entirely on video evidence, if the video shows a tank abandoned and not destroyed, then it will go into the database as abandoned even if it is subsequently destroyed/captured/recovered. Although, they do go to some effort to find subsequent videos showing the ultimate fate of such vehicles.

Well, I’m pleasantly surprised. There’s support for Ukraine and NATO.

Guardian live feed. I didn’t want to mess with their formatting to condense the quote.

Major cyberattack reportedly carried out

I wonder if/how this attack will affect Gazproms customer base. Certainly it might cause international customers to look elsewhere for their gas. I like this attack. It damages Russia’s few remaining sources of income without any physical damage and at relatively low cost to Ukraine.

I wonder how vulnerable Russia’s electrical transmission infrastructure is to cyberattacks like this. Given how relentlessly Russia’s been attacking Ukraine’s power service, it seems an appropriate response.

I thought Medvedev is now considered an attention-grabbing irrelevance these days?

Dmitry Medvedev is one of the highest ranking politicians in Russia. His mouth has strings attached to it. If he said anything that Putin doesn’t like then it’s a short trip off a tall building.

I would add that Trump’s response was political theater. He’s just reminding Putin that any US submarine with ICBM’s can hit Russia from anywhere on the planet. A single one of those subs can carry 20 Trident II nuclear missiles which can carry between 4 and 20 warheads each. so on the low end that’s 80 nuclear weapons per sub.

Summary

And Trump is considered one of the easiest morons to rile up.

Moderating:
This remains a breaking-news thread. Keep blatant political jabs like this out of it please. Very likely to start a hijack. I hid it for you.

I think it is useful to see Dmitry Medvedev’s role as similar to that of a Vice President in the American system. ie an attack dog that can say the things the current leader can’t or doesn’t want to say, but also politically completely irrelevant with almost no real power, so you don’t have to worry he is serious about using nukes.

Monday’s White House meeting will include a large gathering of European Leaders. That should preclude any attempts to force Russia’s terms onto Volodymyr Zelensky.

I’m relieved Volodymyr Zelensky isn’t attending this meeting alone. He was treated very badly in February.

I find it very interesting that so many European leaders are traveling to Washington on short notice. This WH meeting must be very important and high stakes.

BBC live feed

Boy, talk about optimism, or maybe hope, overriding experience.

I suspect a lot of it is “we’ve got to at least try.” Expectations are another matter.

Though whether the group of them together can bring any leverage to bear that Trump’s capable of recognizing, they’d know better than I do.