Sounds like Russia has hit Kyiv again.
Missiles target central Kyiv
Putin has pulled a 67 year old general out of retirement who is as wide as he is tall.
He makes Hermann Göring look thin.
Only 20 stone? I would have guessed closer to 30.
I wonder if he feels like a big target?
If Russia’s true aim (at the moment) is to take all the big cities in the Donbass and then announce victory then it certainly could be.
There’s a psychologic difference between contested and “contested”.
So long as the war is actively continuing, with true fighting going on and front lines wiggling around, international support for Ukraine is going to continue both in terms of helping them to fight and helping them, diplomatically, to push Russia to accept less than they want.
Once you get to a point, though, where Russia has called the war “done”, built walls, schools are operating, and normal people are living in those territories and happily calling themselves Russians then, whether or not Ukraine considers that to be contested territory, the international community is going to start leaning towards fait accompli and pushing Ukraine to quit while they’re ahead and to choose peace.
They need to keep it an active, bloody, and murderous war or else all of the universe is going to move against them for daring to be upset that a large, hostile force stole from them and murdered their people.
If they don’t choose to take back Sievierodonetsk, it will only be because they’ve chosen another major city to target for a take back - one which is more certain to keep it an active war. They might, for example, choose Mariupol, to break the land corridor to Crimea. Russia can’t let that happen. Or (less likely) they might try to take a Russian city.
We’ll have to see.
Yeah, 20 stone is 280 pounds and he looks a lot fatter than that. I hope his mobility scooter looks like a tank.
Given what the Ukrainians have done to Russian armor, this would not be a good thing for the general.
Gotta say, putting someone who looks like that in charge of the Special Forces has a certain hint of trolling the Special Forces over how agile and fast they have proven themselves.
Then again, that source is the Daily Star…
Yes, I’d like to see confirmation from another source…,
Well, if he meets the fate of most Russian generals sent to the front lines, I hope there are some Oompa Loompas on hand to sing a song.
He’s going to show up on satellite photos - perhaps seismic readings when he walks.
‘He was so big, he had to be buried in a piano case!’
(That was from a commercial in the '70s, I think maybe for a Time-Life series of books.)
I’m not getting the connection…
It’s not much of a connection, other than 2-XL had a Guinness Book cartridge that had the same phrase in it, and it stuck in my head.
Not in a piano case, but in a specially made coffin said to be the size of a piano case.
Robert Esrl Hughes :
This is apparently changing.
Not long range but 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles have been supplied so far. They have been successful against helicopters, drones, and low flying aircraft. Useless against fast cruise missiles or high altitude aircraft. Ukraine has some systems [Buks and S-300] for the higher altitudes.
Slovakia is supplying additional S-300 systems.
Germany will supply IRIS-T systems.
US to supply NASAMS to Ukraine - ground launched version of AIM-120 missile.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/26/politics/us-missile-defense-system-ukraine-coming-announcement/index.html
Can someone explain this to me? I read the WaPo article, which basically said that Russia had the money, but the isolation from international banking due to sanctions et al. meant that there was no way to get the money to the creditors, so default. But to me that seems tantamount to the creditors’ refusing payment, which doesn’t seem like it should be a default default. Plus, when they missed the payment deadline in late May, nobody mentioned it, but only waited until the one-month grace period had expired.
There’s a lot I don’t understand about banking, international banking, and international banking among nations, but any clarification of the significance of this story would be welcome.
First a disclaimer – this is all AIUI. My understanding is:
The debt contract doesn’t just stipulate the amount, but also the terms – in particular the currency that must be used to pay the debt. Many of Russia’s debts must be repaid in USD or euros.
Because of the sanctions on Russia, they have limited access to their existing USD and euros holdings. They also have limited options for converting other currencies into USD and euros. As a result, they are having trouble getting enough of the appropriate currencies.
Russia has said that the default is not their fault because their USD holdings are frozen. The Biden admin’s response is that Russia has incoming debt payments (money owed to Russia) in USD that they could use. The goal here is to ‘use up’ the incoming USD so that they can’t be used for the war effort.
Russia also has a conflicting goal of trying to keep the Ruble stable so they did demand some of the debts to be paid to them to be in Rubles instead of USD or euros. Europe refused on some debts and agreed on others. I’m not sure how much of either.
In late May there was a lot of news about Russia missing the debt payments, but it was all tempered by the fact that they still had a grace period to pay before officially defaulting. They did pay some of their debts before the grace period expired, but this is the first one that they failed to repay.