Elerond

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/23/wagner-chief-accuses-russias-military-of-attack-and-says-evil-leadership-must-be-stopped Seem that Prigozhin's relationship with Kreml has cooled down

South Africa has never signed or ratified Vienna Convention

Poland that is constantly under threat of getting sanctions from EU, because they don't follow the rules?

I think currently it would be enough for Ukraine that NATO officially recognizes their application and invitation to participate in MAP (Membership Action Plan)

Kosovo refused to follow treaty they agreed with EU and USA and Serbia has signaled their interest of closer relationship so it is natural progress that happens in relationships between nations. Those that who benefit country's agenda are good guys and those that cause problems are bad guys

Europe has not been peaceful for 8000 years, even then it was probably because people had to travel several years in order to bash their neighbors heads. 1900s- there were two world wars, but it was conflict full century As we can see not many conflict free years there List does not have Conflicts involving European states that happened outside of European continent And current century is not any better

It is currently Hungarian forces turn Who have practiced civil and de-escalating tactics past 8 years on Hungarian borders from which this article gives an example https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/on-the-hungarian-border-no-refugee-escapes-violence/ and Hungarians are supported by Italians who also have practiced how to be human towards people when they have handled refugees coming from Africa with boats. Somehow these troops don't start to use different tactics when their command moves from their government to international organization where there is even less oversight.

Who among us has not at least once in their life done $3 billion dollar accounting mistake?

In my understanding they have two full patriot systems one from USA and one from Germany. Which both have control station, radar system, communication system, mobile energy plant and several 4/8/12/16 missile launchers that together form an artillery battery unit. Although media coverage about Ukraine's Patriots probably causes confusion as they are calling both artillery battery unit and single patriot launcher as patriot batteries in their reporting and it is often difficult to tell which they are referring to. That video that show air defense in Kyiv there were over 30 missiles/rockets launched by air defense from multiple locations and they seemed to be multiple different types based on how big light circle around them is and how fast they move. It is unlikely that they were all launched by patriot system, because launched happen in two short bursts which had only six minutes between them. I think it is unlikely that Ukraine has currently capacity to shoot over 30 patriot missiles in 7 minutes, because that would need quite lot launchers and both Germany and USA have usually gifted only couple systems at time when they send something to Ukraine. I also don't think that Germany or USA supplied Ukraine multiple different type patriot missiles for those few launchers they gave them. So I think most of the missiles seen on the video are probably from Ukraine's S300 or Bulk systems or from NASAMS systems that Norway gifted to Ukraine last year or from Crotale systems that France gifted Ukraine

Difficult to say as Erdogan has ruled Turkey for 20 years, so it is difficult to predict what opposition will do in case they get in power. But currently it looks like that Erdogan predictably will get keep his power and predictably all polls that before election said that opposition has lead were wrong. So it seems that Turkey continues to do what it has done past 20 years

Little correction, Saudi-Arabia bought 300 MIM-104E GEM-T (2018 upgrade version of PAC-2) Patriot missiles with 3 Billion and dollars (so only ~10 million dollars each ), deal included separate sale of THAAD missiles to UEA worth of 2.25 billion dollars. Single MIM-104E GEM-T is enough to shoot down any drone, ballistic/cruise missile, but problem is targeting. Saudi-Arabia uses their own variants of Patriot launchers and radars. If Saudi-Arabia needs to shoot multiple missiles to ensure interception, there is probably issues in how well their radars can identify targets and their trajectories and how fell their fire control coordinate launch to launcher in best position to intercept. Missiles' own guidance system can do only limited amount to redirect it if original targeting was wrong.

That seem bit expensive to shoot 16 missiles to intercept one, when you are paying 5 billion dollars for 300 missiles. Maybe Saudi's should upgrade their targeting systems.

As president they will call up council meetings and select most of the agenda that council will address in their meetings. And their job is to oversee any crisis and keep other council members up to date. So council will probably not even talk about the Ukraine's situation.

US constitution protects those rights as well as Russian's constitutions. as long as people in power are willing to abide their laws. There seem to appear more and more censorship laws all around US these days. And they don't target offensive speech or hate speech but educational speech. So US constitution seems to become more and more a paper that just promises rights and protections but is overruled by state governments left and right. And people's respect towards US supreme court also seems to be in heavy decline which does not bode well for constitutional protections. Legally Germany has constitution that offers some of best protections for people's rights as it forbids changing those rights, but does not prevent courts interpreting those rights as limited. But for example Germany is far ahead US when it comes to freedom of press, so there seems to be somethings that Germany's constitution (or culture) has succeed to protect better than US constitution.

Germany's constitution puts lots of limits for government and making amendments to it needs very unified Germany and it forbids amendments to basics rights, which are defined in eternity clause to make them 'eternal' German constitutional rights which can't be changed by democratic process

Not sure how much better pictures you get from high altitude balloon than satellite

He seem to want to annex parts or even whole Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia, remove political rights from Bosnians. He for example put ultimatum that Croatia will not support Finland's and Sweden's Nato membership if west does not support special rights for Bosnia and Herzegovina's Croats, although Croatian government just ignored his statements. So it should not be surprise that he has warm feelings to like minded leaders. Even though what is said is reported by our news they are mostly just ignored by people as president doesn't hold much of real power in Croatian . Prime minister leads the government, which holds power to do any meaningful decisions.

They use same facilities to refurbish than they use to build new ones. Refurbishing is faster, although that depends lots of how long vehicle has been in storage, but still they don't have known facilities even refurbish their stored vehicles in that speed.

Russia has not capacity to produce 170 tanks or 375 IFVs in 3 months. Russia's own estimate of their production capacity is 200-250 tanks in year, from which most are T-72 variables. Highest known number of produced tanks in Russia after year 1993 has been 175 in 2008, which was more than rest of the world combined in that year (most of them were produced to for other countries mainly India). Even though Russia has facilities to produce quite lot tanks in year, it is questioned if they have enough components to do them as their production lines have relied to Western especially German components. Soviet Union and Russia were able to produce 339 BMP-3s between 1987-1994 and Russia ,as far as is known, has not increased their BMP-3 production capacity. They also are capable to produce BMP-1 and BMP-2 variants but not so much that they could produce 375 IFVs in 3 months. Russia has produced ~900 self-propelled artilleries (889 2S19 Msta variants and 10-30 2S35 Koalitsiya-SV) between 1988 and now, so they probably can't make 200 of them in 3 months especially when 2S19 Msta are build on same facilities as T-72s causing need to decide which they will if they want to make both tanks and self-propelled artilleries APC is so general term that it is probably possible to produce 1000 vehicles that you could call APC in 3 months.

Swiss news paper speculated that reason behind Germany's reluctance is that Rheinmetall is updating their production facilities to produce their new Panther KF51, and their don't currently have capacity of replace tanks donated to Ukraine and they fear that they will lose European market to General Dynamics, which is probably reason why Germany wants US to donate their tanks too, so that General Dynamics needs to replace those first before they can start to poach Rheinmetall's customers.

Two members of Finland's parliament started to campaign for pan EU effort to give Leopard 2s to Ukraine in late last year and they were successful in their efforts to find allies all around and not least among German security policy pundits. But as giving Leopards to Ukraine needs permission from Germany and support from Krauss-Maffei, which has now lead to free Leopards campaign in Germany.

Interesting thing is that facial recognition tech they use was developed by group of Russian hackers that first used it to dox Russian porn actress in order to shame/black mail them, but now it is used to find people who were first gleeful when it was released. https://globalvoices.org/2016/04/22/facial-recognition-service-becomes-a-weapon-against-russian-porn-actresses/

My original point was that Ukraine's Orthodox announced calendar reform 24th of December of this year (according to Gregorian calendar), that they will switch to use Gregorian calendar (Of course full calendar reform probably will take sometime). So in future Russian orthodox church will be last major orthodox church that will use Julian calendar.

Do you mean Julian? Question does it matter if Russia does not have much of Ukrainian Orthodox, in case of thinking that "since they're Orthodox." is explanation for something when Orthodox churches have started to split which calendar they use? Orthodox like all Christians celebrate Christmas December 25th, but Orthodox churches didn't switch to use Gregorian calendar, when it was released probably because it was done by Catholic church. 25th of December by Julian calendar currently hits to January 7th in Gregorian calendar (date is slowly moving towards summer because Julian calendar does not have leap years to even out fact that Earth doe not go around the Sun in 365 days, but in 365.256 days).