Zoraptor

The MiG29 deal is now... off again.

While most armament supplies aren't considered a legitimate reason for retaliation flying combat aircraft into a war zone makes their base a legitimate target, because the presumption is that they're ready for combat* and constitute an imminent threat launched from another country. There have been a few examples where that's been ignored- eg the Korean War where a lot of nominally 'Korean' fighters based out of China with soviet pilots. The calculation would be that hitting a US base, in Germany, would be far more of an escalation than hitting a Polish base in Poland so would not be done. *for a non aircraft example, if Poland armed Ukrainians and sent them into Kaliningrad they could be bombed in Poland legitimately as Poland is acting as a base. If they were already in Kaliningrad but just got delivered weapons then Poland couldn't be bombed. Yeah, the US embassy in Ukraine also confirmed they exist(ed). The only argument is what their purpose was. The stated reasons seem... questionable, on both sides. That's not an abrogation on the Russian side, they followed the treaty as negotiated. A treaty isn't broken just because it isn't considered advantageous to the US any more. And unless I'm very much mistaken the US chose to defend, uh, North Dakota with its system, not Washington. They were originally allowed to defend Washington as well but both sides agreed to forgo the second site. ... "Article IV The limitations provided for in Article III shall not apply to ABM systems or their components used for development or testing, and located within current or additionally agreed test ranges. Each Party may have no more than a total of fifteen ABM launchers at test ranges. " "Article VII Subject to the provisions of this Treaty, modernization and replacement of ABM systems or their components may be carried out. "

MiG-29 is pretty useless for ground attack. Syria massively preferred ancient Su22/24 and MiG21/23 to using their MiG29s for ground attack and they had complete air superiority. They very occasionally used them for precision drops though- decapitating Ahrar ash Sham and Jaish al Islam's leadership most prominently. Ukraine also already has Mig29s so there's no improvement in strike range. Transfered to Rammstein, heh. They really are worried about the lot of them copping a nuke and think nuking a US base in Germany is an escalation too far. The tussle was more Russia <--> Ukraine over Sevastopol/ basing/ division of the Black Sea Fleet. In the end there wasn't much tussle for Crimea, as Crimea had no troops. Ukraine sent in ~50,000 extra troops in 1995 when it looked like Crimea might action things and when they expelled Meshkov. They also had troops deployed in 1992 when the "part of Ukraine" got inserted post facto in the Crimean constitution. The legal argument about Crimea acknowledging Ukrainian sovereignty may have been... arguable in 1992- though not without hypocrisy, if Ukrainian troops being present doesn't invalidate 1992 then Russian troops being present in 2014...- but Ukraine tore up that constitution in favour of one dictated from Kiev where the practical autonomy they got was... being called an autonomous republic, and that after a pretty extensive period of direct rule. They also specifically changed the constitution of Ukraine to prevent secession under any realistic circumstance as they'd need the majority approval of every oblast to secede. ... Not even the US made any claims about Russia abrogating ABM.

Kaliningrad is a very long way away from the most prominent NATO member though, and the one with by far the most nukes. It's also only in the middle of NATO because of... NATO expansion. Do we really need another example of "___ aggressively placed their country near western military bases"? If you are going to go for a strategic nuclear strike you want to hit everything with as little warning as possible and nothing trumps being close for that. Realistic scenario? You'd hope not. But then the US has quit pretty much every treaty designed to prevent that scenario. ABM. INF. Open Skies. They're doing a very good job of looking suspicious.

The Japanese have claimed the lower Kurils since the end of WW2. So there's no change there. They would have conceded the bigger two of them in 1956 in return for the two smaller ones, but the US said it would annex Okinawa if they did. So they didn't, and the claim has stood since then. iirc officially the US doesn't actually recognise anyone's authority over the lower two Kurils.

Anyone named V(itali) Gerasimov is going to be a great target for some propaganda since the Army Chief of Staff is V(aleri) Gerasimov. Especially when he's a army Chief of Staff- guess which one shows up in a search. Ultimately all the sources resolve to intercepts, from the Ukraine MoD. Which I believe still has that DCS footage up, and claimed as genuine. Guess it depends on whether he turns up on a video laughing at the rumours of his death like that Chechen general killed a week ago did. Probably not, since we're getting next to nothing from Russia officially. There are also consistent rumours about the new Iran deal/ JCPOA being signed imminently. Believe it when it happens, but the rumours are that it would be weaker towards Iran than the original JCPOA- which already had a lot of people complaining about it being too soft.

Maybe you'll get really lucky and there will be another Beslan or Moscow Theatre siege from the real Chechens? Let's not forget what the western approved/ sanitised Chechens actually stood for in cheerleading anything that might hurt Russia, hmm. (My personal favourite Chechen moment was notorious ISIS' 'Minister of Defence' Omar al-Shishani constantly being described as a Russian Chechen in the press, when he was from... Georgia. And not even a refugee, born and bred Georgian Chechen with no Russian connection at all) "Pics or it didn't happen" see also Ghost of Kiev or Marco Rubio's 2 Russian paratroop transport planes being shot down. Russia has the 4th most immigrants in the world. It also hadn't had declining population for a decade up to covid (and only very slight decline for the 5 years prior to that). Their population has been stable for almost all the 2000s Ukraine's population has declined at a pretty steady -0.5% practically since the USSR broke up. The only thing about it arguably declining more was its relative GDP. Quite apart from the proximity to two of the most strategically important Russian cities in Smolensk and Rostov that was especially true after the US reneged on INF. Ukraine would make a great base for some nuclear capable cruise missiles. (Yes reflexive knee jerkers, I know the US doesn't have any nuke cruise missiles and the warheads that were sitting in storage a decade+ after the INF was signed may have actually been disposed of at some point. I'm sure they're as unprepared for arming tomahawks with nukes as they were for having land based tomahawks after not having the missiles or software- per Aegis Ashore not violating INF in the first place, which it most definitely did- for... a whole week after leaving the agreement?)

Farscape was streaming on Prime when I had the sub for WoT/ The Expanse a couple of months ago. Couldn't be sure if it's the same for Europe/ Serbia though. I got a water damaged DVD set for next to nothing years ago, one of the best deals I've had.

The funny thing about Afghanistan and Iraq is all the people suddenly complaining about maps showing controlled areas and how Russia doesn't control the countryside. If you did similar for Iraq/ Afghanistan you'd have ended up with the majority of both countries outside western control, and heaps of people complaining that those didn't show reality. I don't disagree with the initial point, but it would be nice if there was some consistency and map makers didn't show huge tracts of land controlled in Afghanistan just because some Brits in a Defender toodled through a month earlier. IIRC it was Barclay de Tolly's plan though it was largely implemented by Kutuzov, and Borodino- 'the bloodiest single day battle in Europe', though it depends on how accurate casualty estimates in some of the ancient battles like Cannae are- was supposedly Alexander's idea. But yeah, Napoleon made it to Moscow with a great deal of trouble, and with only about a quarter of the troops he started off with. A lot of them weren't dead or deserters but left as garrisons and guards for the supply lines; but most of them ended up dead anyway. If Napoleon had one issue it was not learning from mistakes. He had the same strategic issue in Egypt, but got out and left Kléber (and blamed Brueys earlier) to take the blame there. He tried fording a flooding Danube after taking Vienna didn't trigger a surrender (same as taking Moscow didn't in 1812) and got beaten by the Austrians of all people when his pontoon bridge broke and he got stuck with only half his army. If the Austrians had been less Austrian he might have lost that war too. And he messed up Borodino the same way he messed up Waterloo 3 years later. Tannenburg was the first big battle on the eastern front, it set the tone more than decided things. It was typically Russian though, appoint two commanders who weren't exactly brilliant and hated each other in Samsonov and Rennenkampf then be surprised when they don't coordinate or help each other with both getting smacked up in succession. OTOH the Brusilov offensive in 1916 came very close to knocking Austria-Hungary out of the war completely. As much as the Soviets did badly in 1941 against the Germans they still inflicted more casualties in the first 6 weeks of Barbarossa than Germany had suffered in the near two years of war prior to that.

That could just be lack of targets. No point having 200 aircraft in the air at one time if they've nothing to do, and not as much point using aircraft when you've got huge amounts of artillery. That leaves combat patrols, interdiction and bombing fixed structures well behind the lines (or where extra ordnance size is needed). It may also be the effect of continued talk of a no fly zone or concern of a NATO first strike, ie keeping a force in reserve. I wouldn't think either of those would be a realistic option personally, but then me being wrong about something has no consequences- Ukraine getting a bunch of MiG-29s and wanting to be able to respond to them immediately with a lot of fresh aircraft is more realistic though. If there's one thing the Russians definitely are lacking it's loitering options, though the Ukrainians don't seem to have any left either. Bayraktars are not quite as useful when they can be shot down by a helicopter pilot using a handgun or flipped by the rotor wash. Nah, they can just drop interest rates again and print more money. What could possibly go wrong? Slightly OT for here but our PM- who gets paid more than Joe Biden and owns a 2 million dollar house- insists there's no cost of living crisis when most of the rest of the country got effectively a 5% pay cut last year and many a whole lot more. Sadly, the other lot would be even worse.

Yep, of all the flaws in nuTrek imo the biggest is the complete lack of memorable characters, even worse than the awful inconsistent plotting. At least people remember Neelix or Harry Kim, though they may wish they didn't. To be honest there's a pretty big lack of memerable characters too. Number of novel Discovery names I can remember after 3 seasons: Michael, Lorca, Tilly, Saru. I could probably remember the names of the engineer and his boyfriend, if put to the coals. Number of novel Picard names I can remember after 1 season: none. Number of random Blake's 7/ Farscape/ BSG/ old Trek/ random SW EU I browsed at the library/ computer game characters I can remember after 10+ years... multiple times more for each.

Last week it was Lavrov who was breaking ranks and Gerasimov who was going to be the scapegoat. Maybe not Pacific Ocean --> Grain of salt, but not too far off.

They've got a pretty good system for 'guiding' unguided bombs though, that's the vast majority of what was used in Syria. They're not as good as a fully GPS (Glonass) guided system- and aren't dynamic so cannot hit moving targets like laser/ optical guiding- but they also use fully dumb bombs, so they're massively cheaper and don't require fancy targeting on the plane either. Won't protect against any Buks/ Tors/ S2/300 etc that the Ukrainians may have left- or planes, which supposedly the Ukrainians had active yesterday- but they do allow flying above manpad ceiling.

Could have Vega graphics, game ain't exactly fun with that at the moment.

I'd argue as previous that the vast bulk of the 'indiscriminate' stuff would come from artillery rather than the air anyway. That was the case in Syria, the air stuff got more coverage for being dramatic. It would be difficult to prove but I'd suspect that bog standard mortars killed more civilians than air power there. They clearly have to do some low level attacks to hit moving targets and the like, but for a lot of stuff the difference between +/- 1m for a PGM and +/- 10 for a semi precision one is irrelevant. If nothing else you can't drop bombs of any type from a plane that has been shot down.

Most of the people who want a no fly zone know what it entails, they are just convinced that Russia will back down instead of, say, using tactical nukes on every nearby NATO airfield. Haven't even learned/ forgot the lesson of 9 days ago. Fortunately there are some more level heads on the military side who know exactly what it would entail. 5 hours for an evacuation of Mariupol was never going to be enough for everyone, but it can safely be assumed that it was intended to be the first rather than the only. Indeed, they might end up busing out the combatants too, though I wouldn't be relying on that. It's the dichotomy of propaganda- you're doing great, but, not so great you don't need more help. Funny thing is, Ukraine has been claiming that level of losses for Russia every single day, and managed to verify maybe one in ten up to now. Don't really know why the Russians aren't using their semi precision bombs rather than flying low enough for stingers to have an effect (exc Su25). That's the vast majority of what they did in Syria, and the rebels there had far less AA. Situation on the ground is a lot less rosy though. The US ambassador to the UN has Russian forces ~70km further into southern Ukraine than even the most pessimistic pro Ukraine map- further than some pro Russian ones- and they're outside Kiev on the eastern side now too, about 100km further on than maps show. Indeed, most of the pro Ukraine maps seem to be trying to build up their credentials by having advances already made marked as being planned advances, making them effectively a couple of days behind reality. Russians also turned up at Enerhodar when they were 'meant' to be ~50km away. Way too many optimistic prognostications based on maps that rely on 'confirmed' gains, which means only stuff Ukraine confirms- and sometimes not even that (eg Pologi, taken 5 days ago). Also, Ukraine takes control of Mykolaev, according to Ukrainian media. Didn't think there had been any suggestion they'd lost control of it.

Dunno, has he been begging to see footage of Ukrainians shooting up that 40 mile long convoy north of Kiev? That would seem to give the context of suggesting A-10s as whatever the Ukrainians have left doesn't seem to be doing that job*. Some people also seem to think they're indestructible so air superiority doesn't matter. *Indeed, we got just enough Bayraktar videos on day3-4 to get their enthusiasts enthusiastic, and- so far as I am aware- literally literally nothing since. That amounts to ~1/10 of a video per Bayraktar over ~8 days (or 1/3, for those definitely supplied by day 1).

I saw the Adventures of Brisco County Jr a few years ago and it held up really well for the most part. The sci fi elements were always a bit silly* but all the Bowler/ Socrates/ Brisco/ Dixie interactions were good as ever. As an aside, I'm not sure if we got the post orb episodes shown here first time around as I couldn't remember them at all. I actually checked if they'd made a 2nd season they were part of. *they at least made more sense than meteorites burning the gas off a gas giant though.

Looks like the Russians have captured Sumy, which would be the second 'oblast city' taken after Kherson (or fifth, if you count Simferopol (not technically an oblast city, but there is no Crimea city)/ Lugansk/ Donetsk). No official confirmation from anyone yet though. Ukrainians had better hope that their talk about coups and the like has a basis, or there's likely to be a lot more bad news for them over the next week. Probably an idea to put down some of the observations from the Russians tactics in Syria too- they're hardly revolutionary, and I wouldn't imply they are. But I have seen some vague attempts in the media to extrapolate tactics from Syria to Ukraine, but they all devolved into 'they just bombed the last bakery in Aleppo! and won completely incidentally to the baby killing and fluffy bunny eating' type stuff. This is post any 'try rushing the city centre to see if everyone surrenders' tactics. It's also more or less what happened in Kherson prior to it being taken. First step is to isolate the city. Done for all of Mariupol, Kharkov and Sumy (if not taken already). Pretty close to if not done for Chernigov/ Kiev/ Mykolaev. Once that's done you've capped the enemies' resources. Second step is to bring up artillery. If there's one thing Russia has massive amounts of it's artillery. They've also lost pretty much none of it so far. Third, provoke a response from the defenders That response is crucial, you want the enemy to counter attack and expose themselves. Because all their lovely dug in troops come out into the open and run straight into massed pre-sighted artillery. And in just about every conventional modern war the thing that kills the most soldiers is... artillery. You can repeat that as many times as you need, if the enemy is isolated they won't be getting resupplied, and won't get more men. It's a great way to reverse the tactical advantages of being on the defence. If they don't respond then, well, they've lost ground anyway and since they're isolated they can't keep losing it. Air power is mostly used for hard points and to defeat forces trying to break into the urban areas to relieve them. Move on to the next place you've isolated, and repeat. That's why I kind of cringe when I see Ukrainians celebrating their last successful counterattack and then counterattacking the same place again the next day after it's retaken for multiple days. That's exactly the pattern you got in Aleppo, and it was a losing pattern, not a winning one. Certainly got a lot of pro rebel twitter users excited then disappointed in 2016 though.

That would far more likely be caused directly by a hike in grain prices rather than indirectly by fertilisers. Russia is the biggest grain exporter in the world and Ukraine is pretty high on the list too, and the Arab Spring kicked off in part because of the failure of the grain harvest in Russia. Indeed, I don't think any African country is sanctioning Russia so they're far more likely to embargo western purchasers to force their producers to focus there. That frees up market in places that aren't sanctioning them, raises their exports and drops their enemies'. The irony is watching western 'experts' describe Russia as a glorified gas station because that's what they buy from her*. You can see a huge amount of concern from places like Egypt because they remember the last time the Russian harvest failed- 2010. Next year something happened there, slight disturbance known as the Arab Spring. *the double irony, Africa etc get absolutely screwed because Europe is only food independent (more or less) because of its immense agricultural subsidies, which Africa obviously cannot afford and the surpluses of which are often dumped in their markets, suppressing their agricultural sector and compete for exports with everyone else. It's also horrendously inefficient in terms of resources, hence meat and dairy imported from New Zealand the other side of the world having less carbon footprint. Same for the US, except they'd be food independent anyway and the subsidy target is industrial producers rather than mom and pops.

That's from a Reuters reporter, not a pro Russian source. The building has also variously been reported as being for admin, hence that caveat.

I wouldn't quite say complete fraud, but yes, just a tad overexaggerated. The reported fire was in a building outside the reactor grounds (though associated with the facility via training/ admin) according to the people running the place, let alone outside the reactor building(s) itself, and the plant is secure. That probably doesn't make quite as exciting a story nor earn as many clicks though. They're chunky reactors anyway and designed to survive a plane crashing into them- though they do lack the charm and unique personality of the classic RBMK design.

I don't think you can talk about Indian- or the whole sub continent- and their attitude without mentioning the African sized elephant in the room which is the Bangladeshi Independence War and the attempted US intervention. Hard to forget the US sending a Carrier Strike Group to intervene on Pakistan's behalf, nor them being shadowed by a Soviet response force to prevent them. Indeed, literally none of the participants in that war voted along with the west and the only two countries that did on the sub continent were Nepal and Bhutan, and they're of... modest importance to be fair. India remembers being a potential target for an intervention, Bangladesh remembers that the US would have preferred literal ongoing genocide and mass rape to them being free, and Pakistan remembers that the promised help didn't eventuate and they had an absolutely humiliating and total defeat. Even if you count Pakistan's two biggest non US supporters you still don't get a single for vote, since those were... China and Iran. The really funny thing being that for all his supposed nous and acumen Kissinger's great achievements were detente with now enemy China, and alienating India for a generation or more. China and Russia being a voting bloc is very much a construct of western politics and media, mostly so they can point when China doesn't vote alongside Russia. Which happened plenty of times over Syria, for example. China can do that though as they know Russia would veto. Now, try and imagine a scenario where China doesn't vote against Russia being removed from the UNSC, or doesn't veto a no fly zone or whatever. Yeah, not exactly likely. Everything is carefully crafted word wise with the specific aim of making sure that China doesn't vote against it- and that means that everything is a lot more wishy washy than the west would like.

Yeah exactly. Why not just agree to it a month, a year or 8 years ago? Would have saved a whole lot of deaths. And he's still going to have massive problems getting it past the people who would have probably outright murdered him if he tried who now think Ukraine is not just doing better than expected, but actually winning. I'd presume Ukraine would want something they weren't already getting, at least. A lot of the supply issues for Europe was Russia deciding only to pump the contracted amounts in at their end, and it mysteriously disappearing somewhere mysterious that no one knows where- it's a mystery, maybe it was aliens?- when it arrived at the other side of Ukraine. In a more pedantic objection: Russia only has ~80 years of proven reserves.

I'd be playing Elex 2 except it doesn't like Vega cards*. I can currently choose between endless soothing clouds, or frantic flickering shapes when trying dxvk. I did manage to pick up an arrow completely randomly at least, with that with the tech troubles I know it has to be a PB game even if I can't see it. *Shouldn't have complained about their weird tech specs all requiring RDNA cards, though apparently it runs fine on 4/500 series...