Moderating: Enough of the assassination sidebar. If it involves Putin or Zelenskyy it is one thing, but the rest of this has become a hijack.
Russia’s losses for 2025 are staggering. I don’t understand why the Russian people continue supporting the war.
I found an article about Ukraine’s F-16’s. They’re being used for missile interception.
2026 promises to be a year for Ukraine to really enhance its fighting capabilities
Taken together, Defense Express argues that these systems—fighters, AEW aircraft, missile shields, ballistic weapons, and cruise missiles—form an ecosystem rather than isolated upgrades. The combination would:
extend Ukraine’s air combat reach;
strengthen missile defense against ballistic threats;
enable sustained deep strikes at scale;
reduce dependence on single suppliers.
While not every platform is guaranteed, Defense Express concludes that even partial delivery would mark the most profound modernization of Ukraine’s air and strike forces since independence.
ISW is down today, Jan 2.
I tried early this morning and now late this evening.
403 forbidden
Did they get hacked or DNS attack?
It’s up for me.
Thanks for checking.
I did clear my Chrome cache. Oh well, maybe I can reach it tomorrow.
Coming back to this in light of today’s events in Caracas I posted this on another thread, but it also chimes with this idea:
I have never seen such a big font on top of the New York Times’ website:
U.S. CAPTURES MADURO, TRUMP SAYS
President Trump announced that U.S. forces had carried out “a large scale strike against Venezuela” and were flying President Nicolás Maduro and his wife out of the country. The Trump administration had been building pressure on Mr. Maduro for months.
I bet Putin knew. That is the reason he announced that Ukraine had bombed his residence. He thus legitimated trumps attack on Maduro in advance. And it gives him an excuse to keep on trying to kill or kidnap Zelensky.
Has anyone quoted the precedent of Noriega yet?
Meanwhile, as the world looks to Venezuela, someone has sabotaged Berlin’s electricity network, leaving around 45,000 households, 2,200 businesses, several hospitals and retirement homes in the dark until Thursday next week. The temperatures are below freezing, the distant heating does not work because the pumps are electric, mobile networks are down.
This is the second time this has happened recently. Last time it was in september. An “anarchist” group nobody had ever heard of claimed responsability then, but everybody thinks it was Russia.
Someone should Maduro Putin and his band of thugs. Delenda est Rossia!
The British and French peace keeping force agreement is in breaking news.
I wanted to ask why UN Peacekeepers aren’t mentioned any more? They were deployed several times in Eastern Europe.
They were all over the news in the 90’s. Where did they go?
A big part of that news was their utter failure to prevent ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. The whole concept of peacekeepers fails without the authorization to reign violence on violators of the peace
It’s hard to be taken seriously wearing White helmets and driving lightly-armored White trucks.
That was a problem in Black Hawk Down’s rescue mission. The borrowed UN personnel carriers took heavy fire.
Another problem is that both Russia and the U.S. are permanent members of the U.N. security council, so would be able to block any peacekeeping plan they didn’t agree with.
UN peacekeepers have a mandate to monitor ceasefires, but not one to join forces with the attacked party if the other party resumes hostilities. They typically are from the armed forces of countries perceived as not supporting either side in the underlying conflict.
Their utility as a buffer force is only with regard to rogue officers where their side’s leadership does not actually want war.
Thank you.
The UN Peacekeepers were often in the news. I never fully understood their mission.
Patroling and being visible helps deter isolated attacks. But, I see why they are useless if a large army starts an offensive.
Peace keepers aren’t combatants.
It also depends on the UN Security Council approving the set-up. Guess which permanent member of the UNSC has a veto in such matters…
Hence the “coalition of the willing” concept
As of today Russia has been fighting in Ukraine for a longer period of time than the USSR fought in the Great Patriotic War (June 22nd, 1941 to May 9th, 1945, 1,417 days).
Soviet forces reached Berlin (1,000 miles from Moscow) and took it in that time, while today’s Russian army “heroically” advanced 37 miles from Donetsk to Pokrovsk, with losses per square mile exceeding Stalin-era records.
So much winning. Evidently they took lessons from trump. The orotege has become the mentor.
Ukraine has developed its own ballistic missile.
Another one from Britain will add to Ukraine’s capabilities.
At the risk of making this US-political, which everything must be these days - if the D’s take both houses of Congress this upcoming midterms, could they pass some veto-proof legislation to help Ukraine? There are still a decent number of Republicans who could go along who’d enable Democrats to get to 2/3 majorities in both houses for Ukraine assistance to pass regardless of a Trump veto. The main problem is that Trump will still be commander in chief, and there isn’t really any recourse if he simply refuses to let the U.S. military ship armament to Ukraine even if Congress has legislated it.