beautifulthailand99

With all due respect, a fellow poster mentioned foreign mercenaries, and it sparked a memory about one aspect of that, and I crafted a response with appropriate well sourced evidence.

It would appear they are being used as expensive artillery deep behind the front lines. If this war has taught us anything, big ticket pieces like tanks and boats are sitting ducks in the drone age and can be taken down by cheap tech that is a mere fraction of their price and defeated by mud, minefields and extensive use of shovels. And this has been a huge bugbear for Ukraine, you can't just dump your ageing inventory of old equipment from hither and thither direct into a front line. The complications and complexities of a menagerie of tech is a nightmare to understand and maintain (just the absence of Cyrillic labels is a start), and Ukrainians have complained that many were faulty on arrival. Bore diameters between kit whilst seemingly the same has proved problematic, as has the quality and variants of fuel. The M1 Abrams for instance needs jet fuel 500 gallons for 350 miles of operation. So that alone needs its own tanker fleet able to support them. The F16s if they eventually arrive will need pristine runways as the slightest debris can jam the engines and cause malfunction, and any bases will be sitting targets for Kinzhals. Now western intelligence know all of this and when you couple in the acute conscription problem and lack of air defence (it's suggested that the recent loss of Patriots is the fact that Ukraine has moved them nearer to the front line to try and deflect the relentless FAB glide bombs assault on the front lines and by so doing is depleting critical air defence in Kyiv and other key sites). With drones, both sides see pretty much everything that is going on. There is no longer any place to hide. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/29778 https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/02/17/after-two-years-of-war-ukraine-still-has-a-thousand-tanks/?sh=510e304b2cd8 https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-f-16-fighter-jets-war-russia-base-runway/ “If you ever walked up and put your hands on a MiG-29 at an air show and then walked right over and put your hands on an F-16, you can feel just from the outside how the F-16 is highly engineered. It is a prima donna, and it is very sensitive and needs high maintenance,” said Richter, who used the call sign T-Bone. The Soviet planes are more “rough and tumble” and can fly off poorly maintained airfields, and need less maintenance. In a different situation, Ukraine would build modern bases and runways to host the jets, but that's not possible during the war.

There was even a much vaunted Mozart Group battalion of foreign mercenaries as a counterpoint to Wagner that had much publicity until it fell apart with infighting and alleged corruption. The western press was full of puff pieces about their competencies and the difference they would make. In January 2023, the Mozart Group became defunct after running out of funds. In its final months, it was faced with defections, infighting, financial issues and a legal dispute between the Mozart Group's two co-founders.[1] Soldiers of the Mozart Group were also known to gravitate towards Kyiv’s strip clubs and bars when they were off duty.[12] Serious allegations, arose accusing Milburn of making derogatory comments about Ukraine’s leadership while “significantly intoxicated,” letting his dog urinate in a borrowed apartment, diverting company funds and other financial malfeasance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_Group https://archive.is/E0Aap

You've nailed it I think that was the plan if they can't have their land back they will curse future generations of Israel to perpetual paranoia in their refuge and in the rubble of Gaza and a newly emerging multipolar world with a declining US Hamas 2 will arise intent on the same revenge as their martyrs from this.

Your hit and run trolling is a thing but as for facts there was so little that even with my specs on I still can't see a thing.

It's several hundred kms let's not exagerrate for effect and besides which a zillion is a made up word. Your knives probably need sharpening.

Gosh he wrote that a real mask off moment saying the quiet part out loud.

Oh that will explain all the Gazan children dying then. Silly me I thought it was the huge megatonnages of bombs dropped on the most densely populated enclave on earth. Thanks for the education Brian. Much appreciated.

The terrorists had go-pro bodycams and that footage has now leaked to the internet - truly horrific stuff.

Macron is having his De Gaulle moment posturing as an outlier for reluctant NATO boots on the ground. I'd wager a lot that it won't add too much beyond the NATO operatives that are already in country training and helping to manage the war from close up. It will fail not only because it is very ill-judged, but because no-one else who is significant will join him in marching towards the guns. Harold Wilson has the wisdom to stay out of the Vietnam War realizing it wasn't in our interests and his wisdom turned pout to be well judged. If Macron has a moment he may want to study his antecedent Napoleon re Russia, it never ends well. If body bags start coming home and the cost of living crisis warms up, the Faragist populist front will soar and it has no appetite for war with Russia.

The Ukrainians are trolling saying that Putin was behind the attack. There were some knee-jerk responses from Moscow suggesting a Ukrainian connection. Dmitry Medvedev, the former president and now one of the most toxic and outspoken of Russian commentators, warned that “if it is established that these are terrorists affiliated with the Kyiv regime” then they must be “ruthlessly exterminated”. Likewise, a spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence called the attack a “deliberate provocation by Putin’s special services”. https://archive.is/gcZ6t

I concede that point it was idle musing of work in progress, and your points are correct and well-made. If we wanted to make a chain of connection, the CIA funded and supported the Mujahedin and Bin Laden in the war against the Russians in Afghanistan and ISIS was born in the chaos of the US war in Iraq -second iteration. The blowback from that mistake continues to this day.

I will ignore personal abuse, I'm a realist not a propagandist for any side and have no time for Putin - whilst he may have stabilized Russia from the chaos post Gorbachev, he has spent any credit he may have with foreign adventurism. That said, to a degree he is a rational player and over decades the US empire has sought to destabilize and interfere in their backyard and has some responsibility for the instability we now have. There are many inconvenient truths about the reality of the war in Ukraine, the main one being they are losing and increasingly without future guarantees of money and material, which are drying up. As I've pointed out before, I study a wide array of news sources and direct feeds from sites such as Reddit and X and only quote and link from the most authoritative western sources and news sites. I haven't watched RT for many a long month now, it's junk. The key question now is if Ukraine can't win and the cavalry ain't coming to rescue them against a much bigger adversary, then it's probably time to sue for peace and stop the slaughter. I also remember the western propaganda narratives that were pushed, Putin is dying, he will be replaced in a coup, the Russians are running out of arms and are using shovel instead (they were building the Surovkin line which successfully repelled the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Washing machines were a meme for a while and toilets (they use them in their dugouts) - a lot of their dugouts have power and extensive embellishment in terms of field hospitals, kitchens and the like. And their extensive use of convicts is something that Ukrainians has now embarked on, and much of the wunderwaffe that was touted with winning the war like Challengers, Abrams and Leopards and proved to be a nightmare to maintain, easily cooked off by cheap drones and ineffective for the most part in combat. F16s will probably go the same way if they ever arrive, that is - with an even more devilish maintenance requirements. The Russian economy had far from tanked, sanctions haven't worked, and they have successfully restarted their military industrial complex and consolidated supply chains with Iran and North Korea. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now 43 they have burnt through the best and brightest of their youth. But if you want to cheerlead cost free from the safety of your oriental perch and try to stymie informed debate, be my guest. The average cost to each European currently stands at £3500 extra on direct costs of living caused by the war whilst I imagine in Thailand you are getting subsided hydrocarbons courtesy of your host who's happy to buy from Russia no questions asked. If you don't like my posts, could I suggest you put me on ignore. Oh, and finally it looks like the Russian asset Trump is coming, probably the biggest ace they have up their sleeve. As the war in Ukraine approaches its second anniversary, the majority of troops holding back President Putin’s invading army are middle-aged men whose diminished physical capacities are complicating Kyiv’s military planning. “The average age of a soldier in my battalion is 45,” said Dmytro Berlym, a commander with Ukraine’s 32nd brigade, speaking near Kupiansk, a besieged town near the border with Russia. “At that age, it’s hard to fulfil tasks. For some, even carrying ammunition and body armour to the frontline positions is tough.” There was no influx of younger soldiers to shoulder the burden, and those doing the fighting kept dying, he added. “People are running out and the quality of reinforcements is getting lower and lower each time.” https://archive.is/1W4Nt

As the fictional Don Corleone said, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” has never rung truer.

Your right, it was an idle musing. The Reddits are full of telegram posts of the terrorists being arrested and subjected to a healthy dose of Russian rough justice. The speed at which they got them and the wealth of CCTV that is being shared suggests they got the right guys.

You do amuse me, but I avoid trolling - it's disruptive for healthy debate and makes for tedious work for mods to clean up.

I have a nuanced commentary based on initial first stabs at the truth and a healthy dose of scepticism as to what is being told to me. As Jeremy Paxman once said "Why is this lying b@stard lying to me?" If you are reading Alex Jones for whatever reasons I suggest you don't.

But selectively quoted with my usual insightful narrative - but well spotted nevertheless.

https://www.ft.com/content/98f15b60-bc4d-4d3c-9e57-cbdde122ac0c Biden is worried about feeding the Trump monster - higher oil prices feed into that. If energy prices go up in any meaningful way, he loses in November. Then Trump is at the helm and Ukraine is toast. It's the Republicans withholding aid, not Biden. So there isn't any doublespeak with the 'US' telling Ukraine it can't have more aid and at the same time telling them what they can bomb. Can't Kyiv just stop blasting energy infrastructure until after November? If Biden wins re-election, Ukraine is more likely to receive additional military support. At which point, they can bomb whatever they like. The US has urged Ukraine to halt attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure, warning that the drone strikes risk driving up global oil prices and provoking retaliation, according to three people familiar with the discussions.The repeated warnings from Washington were delivered to senior officials at Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, and its military intelligence directorate, known as the GUR, the people told the Financial Times. One person said that the White House had grown increasingly frustrated by brazen Ukrainian drone attacks that have struck oil refineries, terminals, depots and storage facilities across western Russia, hurting its oil production capacity. https://archive.is/OTRef

Thanks, I shall copy over my post.

https://www.ft.com/content/98f15b60-bc4d-4d3c-9e57-cbdde122ac0c Biden is worried about feeding the Trump monster - higher oil prices feed into that. The US has urged Ukraine to halt attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure, warning that the drone strikes risk driving up global oil prices and provoking retaliation, according to three people familiar with the discussions.The repeated warnings from Washington were delivered to senior officials at Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU, and its military intelligence directorate, known as the GUR, the people told the Financial Times. One person said that the White House had grown increasingly frustrated by brazen Ukrainian drone attacks that have struck oil refineries, terminals, depots and storage facilities across western Russia, hurting its oil production capacity. https://archive.is/OTRef

Call me a cynic but since Russia has had an increasing alliance with Islamic Iran and has just 'won' the election on a stability ticket (I know that's doing a lot of heavy lifting there!) who stands to gain from such an attack - Occam's razor says US/Ukraine. It wouldn't even have to be a direct connection, either - there were certainly murky alliances of conveniences in the Syrian civil war and ISIS was fighting the Assad regime along with other western proxies.Or it might just be what it looks like, some homegrown ISIS variant that will inevitably be ruthlessly crushed.

The truth is had he taken the ride Ukraine would be back to its median norm of a peace, oligarchic control of the commanding heights of the economy and some anonymous moustachioed leader in place who knew to bow to Putin and wash his hands before doing with his fingers crossed. Thailand's wartime leader General Phibun surrendered to the Japanese within 1 day of being invaded and saved the country from great destruction had he resisted. I'd say he called it right. It's the equivalent of Khrushchev backing down with nukes in Cuba when he knew he was beat and this was America's backyard sovereign state or no.

The writing is on the wall. Israel will get the future it deserves. There is still a narrow path out of the hellscape of Gaza. A temporary ceasefire and hostage release could cause a change of Israel’s government; the rump of Hamas fighters in south Gaza could be contained or fade away; and from the rubble, talks on a two-state solution could begin, underwritten by America and its Gulf allies. It is just as likely, however, that ceasefire talks will fail. That could leave Israel locked in the bleakest trajectory of its 75-year existence, featuring endless occupation, hard-right politics and isolation. Today many Israelis are in denial about this, but a political reckoning will come eventually. It will determine not only the fate of Palestinians, but also whether Israel thrives in the next 75 years. Israel’s trajectory will intensify its ethno-nationalist politics and pose legal threats to the economy. As estrangement from the West deepens, so deterrence may weaken. Firms could be blacklisted. Bosses could move high-tech businesses abroad or, if they are reservists, be arrested there. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/03/21/at-a-moment-of-military-might-israel-looks-deeply-vulnerable https://archive.is/EsctK

The excellent Simon Jenkins is a brave outlier amongst the cacophonous criers for endless war, which at this sad stage is looking like an endless slaughter of ageing Ukrainian conscripts being bombarded by megatonnes of glide bombs with barely any air defence whilst Zelenskiy screams for help which isn't coming. Future historians will underline both our collective betrayal and disastrous missteps with regard to Ukraine. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/22/putin-dictator-tyrant-criticism-regime Nato’s escalation of its logistical aid to Ukraine into an all-out economic war on the Russian people enabled Putin to construct an anti-west coalition. It now extends from China and India to embrace a stage army of authoritarians across the globe. This economic war has clearly been counter-productive. The Economist reports this week that the sanctions have in fact “juiced the [Russian] economy”. Russian GDP growth of approximately 3 % in real terms last year outstripped Britain’s. Western policy is actively helping Putin retain power. As the historian of modern Russia Mark Galeotti points out, Putin’s defiance of his western critics has entrenched his “shabby police state”, possibly for his lifetime. We can hurl abuse at him, as we can at Xi, Modi and the rest. It may make us feel better. And perhaps we should, not least on moral grounds: these are not regimes we would cast as admirable. But let’s be realistic. There is not the slightest evidence that in doing so we are making the world a safer place for democracy; probably the reverse. And the much anticipated Western tanks have been mostly ineffective. If the west lacks the collective will to support with money, matériel and sacrifice the continuing war with Ukraine, it would be better to broker a messy peace than this senseless WW1 type slaughter which clearly now Ukraine can no longer win. Big-Ticket, Expensive, Heavily Armored NATO Tanks Mostly Overweight Duds in the Russo-Ukrainian War Considering how much kerchief-twisting there was about it in the first place, and how they are doing in the war right now, handing over top-end NATO tanks to Ukraine doesn’t look like a great idea. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/29778