kanisatha

Re. the competence of the Russian army, it's always hilarious that some people in this forum are so wound up in their ideology that they cannot even recognize humor and sarcasm in a post.

Yup. We can now add Bucha to the annals of the Russian army's most glorious "battles." A month?! You are being incredibly generous. Right now, if Russia's nukes were somehow taken away from them, Russia would cease to exist as a state because every single one of their neighbors would be able to carve out for themselves as much of Russian territory as they want. Heck the Finnish army could easily double their country's size!

Interesting new base builder game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1284190/The_Planet_Crafter/

More and more observers inside and outside Ukraine are beginning to say what happened in Bucha was not the actions of rogue soldiers or even a rogue unit of the Russian military, but rather the deliberate and premeditated actions of the Russian military based on orders that any Ukrainians who did not warmly embrace the Russian troops were "dirt" that needed to be "cleansed." https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-waged-deliberate-campaign-commit-atrocities-bucha-blinken-2022-04-05/

This is an astute observation. For a very long time now, I've been arguing that if China wants to invade and/or occupy any territory from other states, the most logical territory to seize is the Russian far east. But now they don't have to, because they can just buy it all, and probably dirt-cheap too.

I've been reading about this new AAM black program too. From what little info is avilable it looks incredible. An F-15EX will apparently be able to carry at least 12 and possibly 16. And the budget shows 2026 being the last year AIM-120D's will be bought, so this new AAM is entering full-rate production very soon.

China's lessons from Russia's Ukraine invasion: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/04/what-lessons-china-taking-ukraine-war/363915/

This article provides the gritty, horrific details of what the Russian rabble did to civilians in Bucha, directly from the words of the people who got to witness these things being done to their loved ones: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/russia-bucha-killings-war-crimes-genocide/629470/?utm_source=feed

Yeah this is the fundamental difference here: anecdotal versus systematic crimes. In any war situation some individual soldiers will end up doing bad or criminal things. But that is a far cry from a situation where the government of a state involved in a war, as a matter of its official military policy and doctrine, deliberately and systematically commits horrific war crimes and atrocities. This is what Russia is doing in Ukraine. And it is documented fact.

And then there's this, which also came up as a story back in late February, and has been rumoured for some time. This may or may not be true, but is certainly very interesting to me: https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/03/putin-is-using-body-double-to-avoid-assassination-attempt-16396461/

Finland in NATO may get fast-tracked (as I predicted may happen): https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/finnish-president-says-nato-referendum-no-longer-necessary/ https://www.airforcemag.com/finland-reassesses-nato-entry-in-wake-of-russia-ukraine-conflict/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/why-putin-faces-more-nato-arctic-after-ukraine-invasion-2022-04-04/

I'm sure there must be some 'let's play' videos out there you could check out.

Here's more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/02/ukrainian-children-used-as-human-shields-near-kyiv-say-witness-reports Here's hoping someday soon we can identify these war criminals by name and face.

Yes exactly. Yesterday Reuters went to these villages and towns and took photos of everything, not just for news purposes but also for war crimes prosecutions. HRW, AI, and the ICC prosecutor's office are also on the ground documenting everything. The photos will tear your heart in two. Children burned to death in their mothers' arms. Young men and boys tied up and shot and buried in shallow mass graves, their hands and feet poking out of the earth. Bodies everywhere. And many bodies, along with streets, homes, and debris, boobytrapped with mines and bombs. In village after village after village. In Bucha alone 300 murdered civilians currently identified with more to come. These are not professional soldiers. These are cowardly psychopath rabble in uniform, the kind that would be groveling for their lives on their knees if they're ever confronted by NATO forces. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/03/ukraine-apparent-war-crimes-russia-controlled-areas

Nice! And even in their denials, the Ukrainians should use the exact same words and phrasing the Russians use when they deny responsibility for attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets.

But the bottom line still remains, if it is the case that the Ukrainians did it, so what? Russia can attack and systematically destroy Ukraine, but Ukraine is not allowed to strike back at Russian territory?

All I can say is they have thus far been very aggressive in fixing bugs and issues with the game since release, and they have said a roadmap for feature updates is coming soon.

Here's my prediction for what comes in the next few weeks: referenda expressing the "popular" "democratic" will of the people will be conducted in Luhansk and Donetsk declaring their wish to join Russia by over 90% margins. Then Russia will pass laws to absorb these areas into Russia, and then declare their "special military operation" is actually about defending their territory and people from a vicious and unprovoked invasion by evil nazi Ukrainian aggressors. And, after this, similar referenda are coming in Russian-occupied parts of Georgia and Moldova too. And in those cases, a pretext may also be created for full invasions, Ukraine-style, to absorb the whole states into Russia, calculating that global costs (sanctions and condemnations) cannot get any worse so may as well reap as much benefit as possible.

Sounds great. But doesn't look like it is/will be available on Steam. Please do educate me on this if I'm wrong.

Titanium, Nickel, and some other such materials, plus food and fertilizer.

Yup. Was defeated 2 yes and 13 abstain. Then the France-Mexico alternative very explicitly labeling the humanitarian crisis the direct result of Russia's invasion passed in the GA with 140 yes votes.

The Russia-China meeting declaring a "new" world order is utterly hilarious. The two ministers with a straight face try to tell the world their new world order is about respecting the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states and "democratic relations" between states. Hahaha. What a joke. Apparently these principles only apply to states named Russia and China and *not* to states named Ukraine.

This is a very good point. Even in China, there are rules that the government has to follow, and even changing the rules has to be done through a well-established process involving many people beyond just the president. By contrast in Russia today, Putin is essentially ruling by fiat. Anything and everything can be changed, and changed in any way no matter how crazy or illogical, just by Putin alone deciding to change it. The Duma is completely a rubber stamp. So yeah similar to North Korea; also somewhat similar to Qaddafi's regime in Libya (which political science scholars never were able to classify as belonging to any category of regime type because it was essentially one man, who was not a king, arbitrarily deciding everything with no rules or processes).

Yup. And in this case they even actually crossed into Swedish airspace for a couple of minutes before being intercepted the Gripens. Initially the Swedes were very emphatic that the aircraft had deliberately crossed into their airspace, but now the government is walking that back, saying it's possible they "strayed." Also, for several months now there have been rumors from the Elmendorf wing F-22 pilots, posting anonymously, that Tu-22M bombers they've been intercepting off of Alaska have been carrying live nuclear missiles. The Air Force has "no comment."

Clearly a message to Sweden about even flirting with the idea of joining NATO. They of course knew the Flygvapnet would intercept.