I've begun a Substack like a fucking idiot. Please subscribe and comment, criticise, and ridicule mercilessly.
This first post began as a diatribe against a war with Hezbollah but transformed into a pessimistic and optimistic scenario if it happens.
"US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment."
2 unidentified European countries, with US backing, are reportedly set to purchase hundreds of old Merkava II and III tanks from Israel.
I have a notion about where these tanks might end up, or at least where the tanks they'll be replacing will end up.
At least 100 incredibly cheap ($1000-$5000) Australian drones made of cardboard+rubber bands are being delivered to Ukraine every month.
Designed to be totally expendable, some have completed 60 flights and drop bombs, deliver supplies, or conduct recon.
Mother of God!
I thought it was just a slip of the tongue when Pentagon press secretary said "Shia-backed militias" instead of "
#Iran
-backed militias."
Nope: It is now US administration policy to no longer mention the word "Iran" in relation to IRGC Iraqi Shia militias.
Russian Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, has said Moscow has sent a diplomatic note to Washington demanding the US stop sending military aid to Ukraine.
This myth that the Afghan security forces didn't fight at all needs to die a painful death.
As of April they were taking 30-50, sometimes more, casualties a day, fighting with no logistical support or backup until they ran out of food and ammo.
CENTCOM's Gen. McKenzie: US has stopped closely monitoring
#Taliban
attacks because they're not targeting US/Coalition forces, but that
#Afghanistan
's security forces are taking casualties at the rate of "30 to 50 [killed] a day, sometimes more".
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
You're telling me
@MarkHamill
just became a
@U24_gov_ua
drone ambassador and then suddenly this happens?
Here's the footage of what actually happened to the Kerch bridge.
@flattop100
@dhmontgomery
Yes, and we should obviously be doing exponentially more than we are, but this piece is addressing a very specific talking point being levelled domestically in the US.
2 unidentified European countries, with US backing, are reportedly set to purchase hundreds of old Merkava II and III tanks from Israel.
I have a notion about where these tanks might end up, or at least where the tanks they'll be replacing will end up.
Mother of God!
I thought it was just a slip of the tongue when Pentagon press secretary said "Shia-backed militias" instead of "
#Iran
-backed militias."
Nope: It is now US administration policy to no longer mention the word "Iran" in relation to IRGC Iraqi Shia militias.
Indonesia mobilizes army and deploys multiple ships and aircraft to counter repeated Chinese invasion of its EEZ.
China not backing down, deploying armed vessels to back up its bullshit claims on Indonesian sovereignty. No possibility of deescalation.
Meet absolute gigachad General Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, the 48-year-old commander in chief of Ukraine's Armed Forces, who has helped purge it of its Soviet ways and structure and turn it into an agile, adaptable NATO-style force capable of defeating Russia.
Another excellent
@JRewinski
broadcast covering
#NAFO
(from ~7:23):
"No longer able to pronounce nonsense... the Russians evidently became furious about the whole thing."
Experts once upon a time: "Russia has a formidable air force, electronic warfare capability, and advanced air defense systems."
Ukraine: *flies ridiculously slow-moving drone 150km into Russia and blows up oil refinery*
Strelkov just reposted this dooming message on his Telegram channel: "I am very afraid of the consequences...when [Russians] will finally realize...that [Russia] has no allies and no friends. And that no one will lend her a helping hand and support."
“The NLAWs you have given us are the best...Without them we wouldn’t be taking out so many Russian tanks. We knew from the beginning that Britain was a very ancient and important nation. Now we know it’s a country that stands by its word.”
Pentagon:
▶️Russia still experiencing food and fuel challenges, including at sea
▶️Russian soldiers suffering frostbite due to lack of cold-weather gear
▶️Severe C2 issues: "Without communications, it's hard to, again, get things like logistics and sustainment moving."
Andriy Zahorodniuk: With the additional British and American supplies,
#Ukraine
now has more anti-tank missiles than
#Russia
has operational main battle tanks in its military.
That time when the Taliban negotiators in Doha decided that praising Hitler's friendship during WWII would win over a German diplomat involved in the abortive talks (From Steve Coll's "Directorate S").
Budanov claims Ukraine has been behind several assassinations/attempts inside Russia: “We’ve already successfully targeted quite a few people. There have been well-publicized cases everyone knows about.”
.
@RadioFreeTom
: "It will likely be a long time before we find out if our justice system is capable of holding a former president to account. But if these charges were leveled against any other American citizen, they would be, in Bill Barr’s words, toast."
Strelkov: "The winter-spring joint campaign of the RF Armed Forces and 'Wagner' to exterminate our infantry at the Donetsk sector of the front ended successfully."
This is really not a reassuring answer from the State Department on the Special Immigrant Visa program for
#Afghans
that helped the US.
There are at least 18,000. If they're not out before the last US soldier withdraws (July), we've as good as murdered them.
Strelkov viciously attacks Russian support for Assad, saying they gave hundreds of irreplacable vehicles and systems as well as ammo to Assad and took horrendous casualties in exchange for nothing, also mocking Wagner over the Americans fucking them hard in Khasham:
Alexander Kots:
▶️Lyman encircled, Yampil abandoned, Drobysheve falling
▶️Ukrainian sabotage-reconnaissance groups active along supply road to Svatove, parts of which under AFU artillery control
▶️Russia inexplicably wasting missiles and drones elsewhere.
Ukraine is one of the most mined countries in the world due to Russia's invasion.
Please consider contributing to or at least spreading the word about
@tipofthespear42
's Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal Group.
Donation options:
Alive day! SEPT 12 2010 I stepped on my IED that almost took my life. Today I'm using that experience and pain to launch Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal Group. Thank you for all the support and please keep spreading the word. (Warning Graphic Content)
.
@RadioFreeTom
: "We must not forget that the Russian military is murdering Ukrainian civilians as the price of Moscow’s self-induced humiliation—and that Russia must pay a price for these atrocities."
Zelensky: "We are defending the right to live...so that Russia doesn't choose what we should do and how I'm exercising my rights. That right was given to me by God and my parents."
That time when the Taliban negotiators in Doha decided that praising Hitler's friendship during WWII would win over a German diplomat involved in the abortive talks (From Steve Coll's "Directorate S").
Pentagon: "There were three PLA Navy ships in the vicinity. However, they did not respond. Supposedly, those ships are there as part of a counter-piracy mission, but they did not respond."
Ah, China 🤡
@RadioFreeTom
: "It’s hard to find the right balance between vigilance and alarm, between scorn and flippancy...We’ve never had an American political scene so thoroughly infested with kooks, conspiracists, and would-be traitors."
.
@RadioFreeTom
: "Such behavior is un-American, and every supporter of American democracy should respond with the self-assured contempt that free people must bestow on the aspiring authoritarians among us."
The failure rate of semiconductors shipped from China to Russia has increased by 1,900 percent in recent months, according to Russian national business daily Kommersant.
Watch this great 2-minute segment with
@VanSenate
in Ukraine describing how the scores of Bushmasters Australia sent have saved Ukrainian lives.
Australia is also sending ~300 Aussie-designed loitering munitions, currently being tested in Poland.
.
@davidfrum
: "As the Ukrainians began to win, all the rest of us...began to consider that maybe...our ideals were not so out-of-date...Maybe the people the Ukrainians needed us to be, maybe those were the people we could be again."
Hamas fighters likely fired North Korean weapons during their Oct. 7 assault on Israel, a militant video and weapons seized by Israel show, despite Pyongyang’s denials that it sells arms to the militant group.
@DanLamothe
Please tell whoever is responsible to redo this headline to something like "Russia continues to demand total capitulation, rendering negotiations impossible".
The both-sidesism here is repulsive to the point of outright disinformation.
.
@RadioFreeTom
: "The war in Ukraine is the final shovel of dirt on the grave of any optimism about the world order that was born with the fall of Soviet Communism. Now we are faced with the long grind of defeating Moscow’s armies."
British POW John Harding, captured in Mariupol: "If I'd known how we'd be treated before we surrendered, I would've stayed and set up a sniper's nest and just tried to take a few of them out before I got killed."
.
@JRewinski
: "For Russia, being humiliated on the Kharkiv front is bad enough, but losing their own hybrid warfare game to a cartoon dog collective, and a grassroots one at that, is just too much."
Another excellent
@JRewinski
broadcast covering
#NAFO
(from ~7:23):
"No longer able to pronounce nonsense... the Russians evidently became furious about the whole thing."
For those interested in an alternate donation method, you can get any personalized message scrawled on the side of a 152mm shell fired at the Russians for a donation of $40, all of which goes towards equipping Ukrainian units:
Russian commentators are very scared of a collapse in this area and an offensive towards Volnovakha and Mariupol via Vuhledar.
Strelkov says if the offensive is launched, the front will melt like Kharkiv and Ukraine will quickly retake the area.
A grim message from Strelkov on reports of Ukraine concentrating forces in the Vuhledar direction, warning they could get to the Sea of Azov (and Volnovakha and Mariupol) and the front could collapse as in Kharkiv.
Nobody is "bragging" about anything and MREs are not "junk".
What's "utterly shameful" is this brain-damaged professor whining about the delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.
Civilians in the Crimean village of Mizhvodne report hearing explosions. A large plume of black smoke is visible in images posted on social networks. According to the EMERCOM "dry grass caught fire at about one o'clock in the afternoon."
People really shouldn't have died on this hill.
Shifa absolutely was a Hamas command centre, above and below, and they were siphoning off power from the hospital to run the ventilation and electricity.
.
@ChrisO_wiki
is doing a tremendous public service translating the accounts of Russian soldiers that fought in Ukraine, and in the process corroborating my initial impression that Russia doesn't actually *have* a cohesive military in any relevant sense of the word.
I understand the major teething issues in the early days trying to coordinate an invasion this large, but this is something else. It's like Russia doesn't have a single military, but hundreds of militias just doing their own thing. Can't make head or tail of it.
A large explosion has been reported in Russian occupied Nova Kakhovka. This area has been shelled heavily in recent weeks as it contains 1 of 2 bridges that Russian forces can use to move across the Dnipro river.
Iran delivering drones to Russia could ultimately be the undoing of its drone program, as now the US and its allies may focus far more attention to export control loopholes like the one below: