Sanctions against Russia

[facthunter]

Fancy the IDEA of Putins aid working to get Trump elected. Who would have though such a thing? Putin thought all his Christmasses had come at once when he met Trump.  Nev

[nomadpete]

I am a bit concerned by Putin's chef publicly admitting ownership of Wagners mercenary army. It shows a shift in Putin's inner circle? Especially the comment elsewhere that he is laying groundwork for 'life after Putin'. It wouldn't bode well if he replaced Putin, as he is possibly more ruthless

[willedoo]

The loudest of the talking heads positioning themselves have been Prigozhin and Chechnya's Kadyrov. But whoever replaces Putin, it won't be some squeaky clean, toothpaste ad poster boy. Not in Russia.

[rgmwa]

Putin will be alert to any jockeying for position going on and it may result in a few more unfortunate accident reports if he feels threatened.

[rgmwa]

5 hours ago, facthunter said:

Fancy the IDEA of Putins aid working to get Trump elected. Who would have though such a thing? Putin thought all his Christmasses had come at once when he met Trump.  Nev

Putin’s expression when Trump stood next to him and said he believed him over his own intelligence services was worth watching. Putin couldn’t believe what he was hearing and couldn’t wipe the grin off his face. 

Edited October 23, 2022 by rgmwa

[onetrack]

On a par with G.W. Bush saying Putin was an upstanding leader, and one that he could trust.

 

Bush quote after Putin meeting - "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue".

 

Within 5 years, Bush had totally reversed his ideas of "a man he could trust", and called him a "Tsar", and described their talks as, "it's like arguing with an 8th grader who has his facts wrong".

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/why-putin-plays-our-presidents-for-fools/461055/

 

 

 

Edited October 23, 2022 by onetrack

[willedoo]

Here's some interesting helmet cam footage of a Russian Su-25 pilot ejecting. It looks like he's been hit with a MANPADS and is heading to friendlier ground when the aircraft pitches up, then starts to roll inverted to starboard as the pilot ejects.

 

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1584128393510952960

 

[willedoo]

Some more screen grabs from the above video. In the first photo, you can see the ejection seat head box with the parachute shrouds coming out. The head box sits at the top of the seat and doubles as headrest and parachute container. An explosive charge separates it from the seat.

 

Second photo shows the parachute risers, shrouds, and the canopy starting to fill. The orange risers identify it as a PSU-36 Series 2 parachute. To the left are the two small seat drogue chutes. The Russian seats are stabilised by dual spinning drogues that telescopically deploy from cylinders at the top of the seat.

 

Third photo is the downed chute and a very downed Su-25 in the background.

 

In the last photo, the orange pointy thing is the inflatable radio set that deploys with the dinghy while the pilot is still in the air. Towards the end of the video, you can hear the pilot talking on his hand held radio. The inflatable radio set is packed in the survival pack inside the seat base while flying, but in a combat situation, they normally wear a combat survival vest, and would carry a second radio in the vest. The vest carries the more important items that would also be in the survival pack, eg: signal mirror, compass, knife, matches, basic first aid kit and a pistol with spare magazines. Most pilots would also carry a couple of flares in the vest as well.

 

The older style survival vests had an inbuilt holster for a 9mm Makarov, but the newer vests have a bigger holster capacity. I noticed that in Syria, the pilots were carrying the much larger Stechkin pistol which fitted ok.

 

[willedoo]

While on the subject of ejections, someone got a photo of one of the parachutes with the Su-34 that hit a building recently.

 

[willedoo]

Putler is not having much luck with his aeroplanes. A Su-30 has crashed into an apartment block in Irkutsk in Siberia. Irkutsk is where they make the Su-30, so it makes you wonder if it was a test flight gone wrong. Both pilots were killed.

 

https://twitter.com/WarInUkraineYet/status/1584177509918089217

[Jerry_Atrick]

Looks like a Ukranian symptahiser somewhere on the production line. Let's find someone and make them a scapegoat...

 

Seriously, feel for the pilots - yeah they may be Russian, but it's not a great way to go.

 

Re Prigozhin and Kadyrov - they (well not them specifically, but the liklihood of the type of person to take over from Putin) are the reason why I have been a bit more hawkish with respect to eht conflict and inflciting damage on Russian soil, if not breaching the border. If Russians felt a direct impact, it may weaken the resolve of the people to deny or acqueisce to the issues in Russia and spark a call for change from withing. Of course, it would get bloody - a regime like Russia's is not going to back down peacefully.. but with Russian personnel lined up, who aren't vodka craving drunks (Leonid Breshnev), there may well be a chance for transforming the culture with locals at the helm.

 

Maybe too wishful thinking, but the fellas that are likely to replace a dislodged Putinb (however that dislodgment happens), are not likely to back down, and with a better grip, may turn  it against Ukraine, and ultimately us.

 

[nomadpete]

Putin is a danger, but It's a case of being careful what we wish for.

 

Prigozhin and Kadyrov are more dangerous/ruthless than Putin. Then there always going to be other radical powerful people that have so far kept below radar,  hankering to make a name for themselves if/when Putin goes. Real revolution in Russia is very unlikely, so we are left with some unpalatable possibilities in our near future.

At present all we can do is wait and see.

[kgwilson]

9 hours ago, willedoo said:

Here's some interesting helmet cam footage of a Russian Su-25 pilot ejecting. It looks like he's been hit with a MANPADS and is heading to friendlier ground when the aircraft pitches up, then starts to roll inverted to starboard as the pilot ejects.

 

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1584128393510952960

 

Wow, that was only 10 seconds from the time the missile hit to the time the ejected pilot hit the ground. It demonstrates how effective ejection systems are these days at vey low level.

[facthunter]

Why would you think any takeover of Putin would be ORDERLY or like some Government in Exile?  None of the "heavies" could trust anybody. Nev

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, kgwilson said:

Wow, that was only 10 seconds from the time the missile hit to the time the ejected pilot hit the ground. It demonstrates how effective ejection systems are these days at vey low level.

He did well to get out of that one ok. The explosion is not a missile but the ejection seat guns and rocket pack firing. I estimated it at about ten seconds from initiating ejection to landing. I went through that part frame by frame and it looked like his canopy had filled after around four to five seconds. His descent under a full canopy was no more than four to five seconds, so he would have  effectively parachuted with a full canopy from less than 100'. It's a 28' round chute, so would slow things down fairly quickly. The minimum safe ejection height for a Su-25 fully inverted is 150 metres.

 

It's a zero/zero seat (zero altitude, zero ground speed) and if ejecting stationary at ground level, the Russian seat rockets will take the pilot up to around 300' before separating from the seat. In this case, it looks like he went out sideways. It looks to me that with the top section of the vertical stabiliser gone, an engine fire and other possible damage, he has been struggling to hold it in level flight with stick and rudder input. I'm guessing when he's let go of the controls to pull the ejection handle, the uncontrolled aircraft has pitched up and rolled by it's own doing.

 

The modern seats are all good, with many arguing that the Russian K-36D seats are world's best. They have a really good survivability record, good enough that the Americans once considered using a variant in their F-22. During the mid 90's, Russia and the U.S. jointly ran the K-36D Ejection Seat Foreign Comparative Testing Programme for about four years to test it's suitability. They wanted a lighter version and a prototype was built, but the programme was eventually disbanded. Most likely politics killed it off. The American seats were to be built by a Russian/British joint venture.

 

One feature of the Russian seat wasn't liked by the Americans, and that is it's lack of rearward visibility. It's not a problem for Russian pilots as their planes don't generally have good rear vision anyway due to fuselage and canopy design, so they rely on mirrors a lot. The American pilots apparently like to be able to look around and 'check their six' as they call it. In this photo of a K-36, you can see the head box is large and bulky, and either side of the head box are the cylinders containing the telescopic drogues which is quite an impairment to rear vision.

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

Well, the stakes seem to be getting higher. Apparently Shoigu has called defence ministers in Europe claiming Ukraine is about to use a dirty bomb - false flag setting again: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63369175

 

It is no doubt a sign that Putin is embattled, but Shoigu is also probably even more embattled, given the progress of the military under his command.

[willedoo]

Sounds like they're up to their old tricks again. Shoigu has rung the U.S. defence secretary a few times as well.

 

If Putin doesn't go nuclear, his only chance is to break the resolve of the western nations supporting Ukraine. Hopefully they all understand that. Now is the time to throttle on, not off.

[willedoo]

I'd be interested to hear some opinions on western support. I get a bit frustrated that the U.S. still hasn't supplied the ATACMS which would be a game changer. Well, at least they haven't officially supplied them. If they have done an under the counter deal, it would be strictly controlled by the U.S.

 

It's easy to think that the U.S. is playing with the Ukrainians, but maybe they're very cleverly pacing things. With winter coming on, the Americans might think a major escalation now would be biting off more than the Ukrainians can chew. They still have to rest and rotate troops, resupply equipment and not outpace their logistics. In other words, stick to achieving the achievable.

 

There's also increasing speculation that a Republican win in the U.S. would see a drop off in support for Ukraine.

[facthunter]

Who would know what the Republicans would do? Trump has  all but destroyed them.  Nev

[onetrack]

One would hope that Liz Cheney and her band of "true" Republican followers - who are all appalled at Trumps behaviour and destructiveness - will generate enough dissent to ensure that Trump doesn't get re-elected. There's also a fair-sized group of lawmakers who have yet to judge Trump on his various shenanigans.

 

The latest Trump shenanigan that I saw Cheneys committee had uncovered, involved Trump making sure all his Secret Service people stayed at his Trump hotel - at $1185 a night - thus ripping off U.S. taxpayers. The going rate allowance for Secret Service accommodation was around $200-$300 a night. And Eric Trump repeatedly claimed the Trump Hotel group only charged the Secret Service people, "like, $50 a night". What a bunch of thieving scumbags.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Yes, and pressure is mounting to press charges on that one, as welll as to see if they can recover the excess cash from the businesses, is what I have read and seen.

[nomadpete]

But after the Republicans control the senate, do you think they will allow justice to continue along this path?

[Jerry_Atrick]

The Jan 6 investigation will stop dead in its tracks, but the committee have already dislosed most of the evidence to the DoJ, which appears pretty incriminating.

 

The Federal  DoJ will take direction from the federal District Attorney, which is a presidential appointment, so the senate can't control that. Each state's DA controls that states prosesuction authority.

 

If Trump declares himself a candidate, he will be able to defer any prosecutions as they tend not to go for them when they are running to remove accusations of bias.

[willedoo]

The Ukrainians have a good point in saying they should not have to beg for Western support, but are owed it. In 1994, they were the world's third biggest nuclear power, and in the interests of world peace, destroyed their nuclear force and joined the non-proliferation treaty in return for a security guarantee signed by Russia, the U.S. and the U.K.. It's no wonder they feel a bit ripped off.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Termintor is now involved: