Sanctions against Russia

[nomadpete]

Are the Ukrainians smart enough to stay outside Kherson? It would be a lot safer to surround the town (if the Russians leave), and simply offer free bottled water, food and candles to any civilians who come out and get it. Probably cheaper and a lot less risk than barging in to the city. It would win over the occupants.

[willedoo]

1 hour ago, nomadpete said:

Are the Ukrainians smart enough to stay outside Kherson? It would be a lot safer to surround the town (if the Russians leave), and simply offer free bottled water, food and candles to any civilians who come out and get it. Probably cheaper and a lot less risk than barging in to the city. It would win over the occupants.

It will be interesting to see what they do. You wouldn't think there would much sense in moving a large occupation force into the city with the Russian artillery just across the river. What the Russians will do is anyone's guess. Some reports are saying a lot of them have left the city, but the front lines are a long way from the city so there must still be a lot of Russian troops in the countryside of the west bank. Will they withdraw in a mad scramble or fight to the death or capture.

 

Once Ukraine controls the west bank the problem is how to advance from there. The Russians have Russian held ground behind them and can defend with a huge river as a barrier to the enemy advancing toward them. It won't be easy to move an army across a river that wide. There are very few bridges, all of which are out of action at the moment. Maybe they could drive another force south from Zaporizhzhia in a flanking action and force the Russians to pull back from the east bank near Kherson. That would give breathing space to allow the army at Kherson to cross the river. If that happened, Crimea would be very vulnerable. And Putler would be crapping himself.

[willedoo]

Some good news for Ukraine. Poland is going to help them adapt Ukrainian Su-24 bombers to carry the NATO Storm Shadow air launched cruise missile. The Storm Shadow has stealth characteristics and low radar signature and can fly high transonic  speeds at less than 100' altitude. It has inertial, GPS and digital terrain guidance systems with terminal guidance provided by infrared imaging. It can hit mobile targets at ranges of 560klm with a warhead of 450kg of C4 equivalent. It's just what Ukraine needs; look out Black Sea Fleet, they're coming to get you.

[facthunter]

Surely this whole fiasco cannot JUST keep on happening. Killing people and destroying everything is not the way to do things. Whatever Putins justifications He Kills his opponents Lies to all and sundry Threatens the whole world with annihilation and famine and steals from the People he RULES by foul means and rigged elections. Nev

[willedoo]

A lot see it as a last stand against Putin. If they don't chase him back to the 1991 boundaries and severely weaken his military, he or his successor will just come back when they've rebuilt their forces. If he has a win, it might encourage other bad actors in the world to do something similar. The way the war is progressing, his defeat is looking possible. The only thing that would prevent a defeat would be the West losing interest in supporting Ukraine.

 

There's some talk of elements in the U.S. Republican party saying they want to cease aid to Ukraine if they regain power. It makes you wonder where Ukraine would be now if Trump had won the last election.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Agree with the sentiment.. Even the ability for Putin to frame any sort of win by saving anything of what is left of his battered face will be simply kicking the can down the road. Funny, isnt it.. The Repuplicans are the inward facing, America first party but if they withdraw support, it will be the American second to Russia party. What on eath has happened over there?

 

[willedoo]

People have been having a good look at crashed Iranian drones in Ukraine  and finding plenty of Western components. In the  Mohajer-6 drone they've found Rotax engines, chips from Texas Instruments, targeting cameras from RunCam and FPGA's from XILINX, now part of AMD.

[willedoo]

It must be a big problem with sanctions. Third parties on-selling banned items and civilian use products being repurposed for military use. I read somewhere recently that Rotax is holding an inquiry to find out how their engines ended up in Iran.

[Jerry_Atrick]

I was lucky enough to be sitting next to a US lawyer on a flight back to London from the US. His job was to prosecute countries and companies who violated US sanctions by exporting US tech to banned countries and we had a very interesting conversation, which made the flight fly by. Needless to say, the US take very seriously such breaches. I would imagine there is also an EU sanction of exporting tech to Iran, so I imagine the EU will be equally concerned about how EU hardware ended up in Iranian drones, which will be why Rotax will be proactive in trying to work out how their stuff ended up in Iranian drones.

 

Come to think of it, we had a spate of Rotax thefts over the country and in Western Europe a little while ago. Most thought they were headed to Eastern Europe, but maybe they went further. I am not sire enough were stolen to create a flock of drones, but who knows?

[nomadpete]

Sharp-tailed sandpiper flies nearly 10,000km from Russia to outback Australia

Fearing conscription, thousands of these birds have escaped from Russia, but will we grant them refugee visas?

[onetrack]

It's alright, we'll give them temporary bridging visas, and they can go back when the war is over, and Putin has been "neutralised".

 

They'll have to be self-sufficient though, pull their weight in our (bird) society, and not impose any burden on our health system.

 

Possibly more importantly though - were they thoroughly screened by Border Force? I've watched some highly undesirable arrivals turn up at the airport counter, carrying some dreadful things.

[nomadpete]

If they flew QANTAS, all their luggage went someplace else.

[red750]

Things are disappearing in the Ukrainian city of Kherson at a rapid rate. Some are physical objects. Russian troops are taking away ambulances, tractors and stolen private cars. Cultural things are going too: archives, and paintings and sculptures from the art and local lore museums. Even the bones of Catherine the Great’s friend and lover, Grigory Potemkin, have been grubbed up from a crypt in St Catherine’s cathedral and spirited away.

 

Russian soldiers are ferrying this loot across the Dnieper river, to the left bank of the Kherson region. They have also been deporting local citizens under the guise of a humanitarian rescue mission. Others have refused to leave. A round-the-clock curfew has been introduced. Nobody knows how many of Kherson’s 300,000 pre-war inhabitants remain. According to relatives of those still there, the city is mostly empty, its ghostly fate likely to be decided over the next few weeks in a series of bloody battles.

 

Last Thursday, the Russian flag was taken down from Kherson’s neo-classical regional state administration building. The gesture prompted speculation that Moscow was about to abandon the city, which it seized in early March, paving the way for the Ukrainian army’s triumphant return. From a military perspective this would make sense, as the Russian contingent is effectively surrounded. At the same time it seems far-fetched Vladimir Putin and his generals would leave Kherson without a struggle.

[red750]

According to Russian media outlet Verstka, Ukrainian forces attacked the battalion of mobilized Russians, killing hundreds near Makiivka village in the embattled Luhansk Oblast on Nov. 2.

 

Verstka cited a Russian conscript who survived the attack.

 

The Russian battalion was formed out of conscripts from the Russian Voronezh region, Verstka reported.

According to the media outlet, the unit was supposed to stay 15 kilometers away from the front line but was deployed there without equipment on the night of Nov. 2. When Russian positions were shelled by Ukrainian artillery, Russian commanders fled from the position.

[red750]

Russian television host Vladimir Solovyov recently bragged about how Russian hypersonic missiles called Kinzhal are capable of hitting London in just 9 minutes if they were launched.

 

"Everybody there is getting hysterical today because it can get to London from Belarus in 9 minutes," Solovyov said in a segment on state-television that was posted with English subtitles to Twitter on Saturday by Julia Davis, a columnist at The Daily Beast and creator of the Russian Media Monitor.

 

The Kh-47M2 Kinzhal is a Russian nuclear-capable hypersonic aero-ballistic missile with a claimed range of 2,000 kilometers, according to the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

 

"The Killjoy missile also known as Kinzhal has a range of over 2,000 km and can reach a speed 12 times the speed of sound, 9 minutes and 'hello London!' or rather 'Hello and goodbye London!'" Solovyov added.

[willedoo]

There's been a lot of speculation about the Russian activity in and around Kherson city recently. Most of it centres around whether the Russians are preparing to defend the city, or whether they are giving the appearance of evacuation to lure the Ukrainians into a trap fighting for the city.

 

I wouldn't mind betting it's a third option - that everything they're doing is part of a plan to try to get as many forces across the river as they can without the Ukrainians wiping them out. A sizeable portion of Putin's remaining so called elite forces are on the west bank, so they probably don't want to lose them. Evacuating Russian troops across the Dnieper under fire might bring back some bad memories of the Russian river crossings at Stalingrad during WW2.

[nomadpete]

I still lean toward option four.....

Lure Ukrainians into the city then destroy the city with one tactical nuclear device.

 

The whole Russian military operation has shown no signs of remembering and avoiding any previous, historic battle losses.

[red750]

Murderers and drug traffickers will serve alongside Russian troops in the country’s war on Ukraine after Vladimir Putin signed a new law to conscript convicted criminals.

 

Under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, citizens with unexpunged or outstanding convictions for murder, robbery, larceny, drug trafficking and other serious crimes will be called up for military service, CNN reported.

 

The president’s move would mobilise hundreds of thousands of those sentenced to probation or who’ve recently been released from prison. However, Russia has drawn the line on criminals convicted of sex crimes against minors, treason, spying, terrorism and attempted assassination of a government official. Those who hijacked an aircraft, were caught carrying out extremist activity or were convicted for illegal handling of nuclear materials and radioactive substances will also be barred.

 

The decision appears at odds with an announcement made early last week that the Russian Ministry of Defense was halting all partial mobilisation activities after hitting its 300,000 personnel target for recruits. However, until President Putin signs that decree he has the right to keep recruiting more people into military conscription, CNN reported.

 

'Desperation has set in'

 

 

President Putin’s plan to conscript convicted criminals has been slammed as “one of many crazy and desperate measures he has taken”.

 

“Putin’s scraping the cannon fodder barrel,” one person wrote on Twitter. “It’s a sign of desperation,” said another. “The fact they have gone to conscription is poor enough, now this. Obviously Ukraine is doing very well.”

 

While others feared for those who would meet this new force of soldiers. “Regular people got mobilised and will serve alongside murderers,” someone wrote online. “Even for Russian soldiers this is appalling, let alone for the Ukrainian civilian population those get unleashed on.”

 

“Human life is worse than rubbish in Russia,” another added. “Russians don’t care whether conscripts are prisoners or normal civilians, sick or healthy and how many die, as long as they manage to advance 500 metres on the front in Ukraine.”

[willedoo]

[willedoo]

Someone made up this comparison photo. On the left is the commander of special forces in Belarus; on the right the commander of special forces in Ukraine. I know which one I'd put my money on. It reminds me of the old saying about cocky's hats: 'the bigger the brim, the bigger the overdraft'.

 

 

[onetrack]

And the other pithy comment, too - "All hat, no cattle".

[nomadpete]

16 hours ago, onetrack said:

And the other pithy comment, too - "All hat, no cattle".

Bob Katter?

[facthunter]

MAD as a HATTER.  Nev

[rgmwa]

If the Special Military Operation Fails and the surviving Russians go home with nothing to show for their efforts Putin will have a hard time surviving domestically. It’s in his interests to keep the war going no matter the cost to the country.

[facthunter]

In your Guts you know he's NUTS. He would take the whole world out with him if that was what it came to.   In the Manhattan Project the Yanks weren't sure they wouldn't start a  chain reaction that would end the world. Nev