NPR

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 11:02 pm Jesus, that last line sounds like the Orcs really have re-activated the punishment units to stop anyone engaging their brains, & retreating when faced with that or certain death.

Raggs wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 5:44 am

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 11:02 pm Jesus, that last line sounds like the Orcs really have re-activated the punishment units to stop anyone engaging their brains, & retreating when faced with that or certain death.

Special forces being used to kill there own rather than risked further by fighting Ukrainians.

Uncle fester wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 7:13 am

Raggs wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 5:44 am

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 11:02 pm Jesus, that last line sounds like the Orcs really have re-activated the punishment units to stop anyone engaging their brains, & retreating when faced with that or certain death.

Special forces being used to kill there own rather than risked further by fighting Ukrainians.

I interpreted that as "special unit" rather than real special forces.

fishfoodie wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 10:07 pm

Hellraiser wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 10:00 pm Seeing increasing speculation that the Ukrainian Hrim-2 ballistic missile system may have been used in the strike. A 500kg warhead with a range of 280km to 500km. It's not even supposed to be even close to coming into service, the first test launch was in 2019. But then again the Neptune wasn't supposed to be in service yet either.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that the Ukrainians have a ballistic missile that has the CEP, & ToT accuracy, that we saw there, with two simultaneous detonations on a relatively small target. No chance !

I'd find it much easier to believe in sabotage, or an outstanding SpecOps Operation.

The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, called outrageous the situation with the non-admission to the territory of the EU countries of Russians who need medical advice and services provided there:

Ovals wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:20 pm Signs of disenchantment with Zelensky........

https://www.newsweek.com/zelensky-narra ... on-1731875

Hellraiser wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:43 pm HARMs don't have the range or the payload to inflict the kind of damage done today. Plus they are specialist anti-radiation missiles anyway.

Ovals wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:20 pm Signs of disenchantment with Zelensky........

https://www.newsweek.com/zelensky-narra ... on-1731875

Blake wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:41 pm

Hellraiser wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:43 pm HARMs don't have the range or the payload to inflict the kind of damage done today. Plus they are specialist anti-radiation missiles anyway.

What do you make of the recovered fragments that indicated some HARM serial numbers?

Maybe the HARM missiles were used to neutralise the air defenses and pave the way for something like Hrim-2 to hit their target and not shot down?

Hellraiser wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 2:55 pm

tabascoboy wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 3:57 pm

Hellraiser wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 2:55 pm

I wonder if that can be verified, I suspect there will be people on the lookout for funeral and obit articles from all over Russia. And the ratio could be actually fewer pilots than civilian staff, but even so and with some aircraft losses on top it's a massive blow, whoever landed it

Hellraiser wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 2:57 pm

Blake wrote: ↑Wed Aug 10, 2022 1:41 pm

Hellraiser wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:43 pm HARMs don't have the range or the payload to inflict the kind of damage done today. Plus they are specialist anti-radiation missiles anyway.

What do you make of the recovered fragments that indicated some HARM serial numbers?

Maybe the HARM missiles were used to neutralise the air defenses and pave the way for something like Hrim-2 to hit their target and not shot down?

I think you've misunderstood me. That was exactly my point. HARMs were not used in the airbase strike, but they were used to knock out radar installations in the week leading up to it.

Uncle fester wrote: ↑Thu Aug 11, 2022 12:17 pm You should be tickled that the Russians see you as such a threat.

Russia takes ‘revenge’ for humiliating attack on Crimea military base by new mass arrests of Crimean Tatars

Russia is continuing to deny that the massive explosions at a Crimean military base at Saki that destroyed up to nine of its warplanes were caused by an attack. As the Institute for the Study of War noted, “the Kremlin has little incentive to blame Ukraine” since, by doing so, it will admit to serious weaknesses in Russia’s air-defence system. Instead, the Chair of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, Refat Chubarov, believes, Russia opted to avenge itself for the humiliation experienced by new mass arrests of Crimean Tatars on fabricated charges One of the motives for the armed searches and arrests of Crimean Tatars has, from the outset, been propaganda aimed at presenting the main indigenous people of Crimea, who do not conceal their strong identification with Ukraine, as a threat. The arrests are also known to bring bonuses or promotion to the FSB officers and may, therefore, have been planned, but the timing now might well be deliberate.

Armed and masked Russian enforcement officers burst into the homes of six Crimean Tatar civic activists from Dzhankoy and the Dzhankoy region of occupied Crimea at around 4 a.m. on 11 August. According to well-known lawyer Emil Kurbedinov, he was prevented from reaching the men’s homes as his mobile telephone connection had been cut. This, he notes, was a clearly targeted action, with the phones of several other lawyers also disconnected. “This is done so that the victims cannot contact their lawyers, and so that correspondents and others cannot gather, and take photos and videos of these lawless actions by the enforcement officers,” It is primarily publicity that the occupation authorities want to prevent, since the FSB always breach the law by preventing the lawyers from being present during such ‘searches’. One of the many reasons is that the officers often arrive with the so-called ‘prohibited’ religious literature that they then claim to have found.

The attempt to block publicity did not succeed, with civic journalists from the Crimean Solidarity human rights initiative, arriving at the home of one of the civic activists, Enver Krosh. The journalists began videoing the proceedings, with enforcement officers coming up to them and trying to stop them. One of the journalists, Alim Suleimanov, told Graty that the enforcement officers had tried to grab his phone by force and had very roughly demanded that he get into his car and stop filming. All of this is entirely illegal, but the enforcement officers in occupied Crimea believe, unfortunately with cause, that they can act like this with impunity.

The six now in custody and facing absurd charges and very long sentences include two men who have clearly been targeted for their civic journalism / activism.

https://khpg.org/en/1608811021

Putin’s war is economic suicide

Historians will write that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fatal miscalculation was his belief that Europe would cave if he invaded Ukraine because of its excessive dependence on Russian energy. But excessive dependence works both ways: Europe relied on Russian oil and gas, but Russia relied heavily on the European energy market.

Given this co-dependency, Putin would have been well-advised to postpone his predation against Ukraine and his customers in the West until he had secured equivalent energy markets in the East. But he did not. Worse, his weaponization of energy has forced Europeans to find new energy suppliers and fossil fuel replacements. Now they are signing long-term energy contracts, and Russia cannot replace these customers.

If Russia were a business, it would be headed for bankruptcy. For years, Moscow built pipelines to Europe (through Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Turkey and under the Black and Baltic Seas), but it has not built a single pipeline directly linking Russian oil or gas fields to China, the world’s biggest energy buyer and its avowed ally. Putin’s ballyhooed pronouncements before the war about massive Siberian pipelines to China are years away from completion. And post-war, such projects will be impossible, given Western sanctions and the mass exodus of oil and gas companies from Russia in protest. It was these foreign companies and their expertise that built Russia’s oil and gas sector which, in turn, financed its military buildup. Now their departure will not only strand Russian resources but impede development of Russia’s engine of economic growth indefinitely. To boot, China and others buy Russian energy but demand deep discounts because they can.

Putin is clueless when it comes to running an economy. Russia has more natural gas reserves than any other nation on Earth, some 19.9 percent of the total. But it has failed to capitalize on the liquified natural gas (LNG) revolution underway worldwide, which makes it possible to ship gas anywhere in the world. Gas liquefies if cooled to minus 162 degrees Celsius and its volume shrinks by 600 times into a non-toxic liquid that is easy to store and transport.

One LNG ship, more than three football fields long and carrying five cryogenic tanks, can deliver the equivalent of three days’ gas flow from Russia’s biggest gas pipeline. Currently, an estimated 657 of these tankers criss-cross the oceans constantly, and all oil and gas producing nations are quickly building plants to liquefy their gas and export terminals to re-gasify the LNG for customers around the world. But Russia is years behind the rest.

This year, the United States – with only 6.7 percent of the world’s gas reserves – became the world’s biggest LNG exporter, in part because of its stepped-up shipments to Europe since the war began. In fact, the United States has overtaken Russia in LNG shipments to China this year, with a market share of roughly 11 percent compared with Russia’s 6 percent. Australia, Qatar, Malaysia and Indonesia have captured the lion’s share of China’s LNG market.

Post-war Europe will transition away from Russian energy altogether because Putin’s blackmail and price shock gambits have created disastrous price hikes and inflation and ruined its reputation as a reliable supplier. European nations currently have 36 LNG ports, and increased their LNG uptake from other suppliers since the war began by 50 percent. Dozens more LNG terminals are under construction, and massive gas supply contracts have been signed by European nations, with Azerbaijan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia as well as with the United States, Australia, Qatar, Nigeria and Norway.

The European Commission recently embarked on an emergency plan to cut gas usage this winter by 15 percent and eventually to replace all Russian fossil fuels. Conservation and substitution measures are being rolled out and will curtail the use of gasoline, home heating, public transportation, street lighting, air conditioning and factory shifts. There will also be shelters made available to house residents in the event of gas curtailment by Russia, which has been threatened.

On the supply side, Germany is burning its own coal again, nuclear facilities in France and Germany will be brought out of mothballs or enlarged, and in a few years, LNG from the U.S., North Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East will permanently replace Russian gas.

Russia’s throttling back on gas volumes for the past year to jam up prices has provided it with additional cash flow during the war and bolstered the value of the ruble. But this benefit will be short-lived as Europe weans itself from Moscow’s fossil fuels and as punitive Western sanctions, combined with brain and capital drains, shred Russia’s economic future. More than 1,000 major Western corporations have shuttered operations there, Russian oligarchs have hidden assets and themselves abroad, and hundreds of thousands of young educated Russians, and an estimated 15,000 Russian millionaires, are expected to move offshore this year.

Bluntly speaking, Putin’s war is economic suicide. The late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) once slurred Russia as being merely a “gasoline station masquerading as a country,” but it’s worse than that now. Putin has driven away all the gas station’s customers and employees and will be completely out of business sooner than he imagines.

Diane Francis is a non-resident senior fellow in the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council. She is editor at large of National Post in Canada, a columnist for Kyiv Post and author of 10 books. She writes a twice-weekly newsletter about America on Substack.
https://thehill.com/opinion/internation ... c-suicide/

Hellraiser wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 11:36 am