I’ve seen the official line…but both connections….at the same time when they are in different locations. mighty unlucky that!
I'll be honest, after the sabotage of the Baltic pipeline, I'm somewhat sceptical that both Shetland connections were lost like that.
I’ve seen the official line…but both connections….at the same time when they are in different locations. mighty unlucky that!
I had the same thoughts.
Mr_Wallace's trip to 'merica. I was wondering if that is pipeline / cable related. It's been in international or NATO member waters. There are some serious secret issues - see the Swedes not wanting to tell the Germans something about it. I'm wondering if Russia may be missing a sub shortly.
US and Russian defence ministers have had their first direct call since May today...
Talking is better than not talking.
"we know it was you...."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/21/putin-has-found-new-weapon-mass-destruction/
If you stop the page loading then it'll let you read the whole thing.
I know it's the telegraph but it looks pretty likely they're going to blow the dam. They're going to kill 1000's of people in their occupied territories to try and slow down the Ukrainian advance even though they're supposedly 'Russian citizens'.
They're monsters.
"depriving the whole of southern Ukraine of its water supply".
Including Crimea. Draw your own conclusions.
Hope it will be like the bridge at Remagan. The Russian army will have mined the bridge with blocks of plastercine as someone in the supply chain sold all the plastic explosive to Belarus
Then when the plunger is pressed just the ignitors go pfft and tge sherman tanks can roll across unopposed
Im sorry but if the dam gets destroyed by Russian hands with a catastrophic loss of life Nato must step in. For far to long Putin has rattled and dodged his illigal occupation of soverign soil for his own ends.Its time the moral highground is taken, because if the Western world doesnt act fast everyones eyes will be looking to the South China seas very shortly.
Firstly thanks to all who have updated this thread- I’ve followed it for a long time without adding much to the discussion.
In response to the above- haven’t NATO made it clear that they will only become directly involved if Russia use chemical/bio/nuclear weapons? I agree blowing the dam would be a massive move, but it’s hard to see how NATO respond in a limited way?
If the US/UK/NATO members start firing missiles into Russia, or at Russian targets in Ukraine then that’s just going to give Vlad carte blanche to sling whatever munitions he has across Europe Willy nilly isn’t it?
I agree, it's gonna be either all in or carry on as we are
There's no way they'll cut off Crimeas water supply. That would be cataclysmic for Russia (well, the crimeans).
If Russia blows the dam with large loss of civilian life, NATO and allies can respond by providing longer range missiles, more main battle tanks, training on F16s and commitment to supply when training complete, night vision equipment etc. It's an effective response whilst still being like the USA in WW2 with lease lend. in WW2 until Pearl Harbour the USA was not a combatant but provided masses of aid.
I think blowing the dam is a way for Russia to avoid escalating to a nuke and therefore avoid the response from US/NATO.
If NATO does get involved, Russia can't even put up a good fight in Ukraine. How are they going to deal with fighting multiple countries?
If it ends up in a world war of NATO Vs Russia and its allies then NATO would wipe the floor with them as long as everyone stuck to conventional warfare.
Russia can only lose but they can cause a huge loss of life before they pack it in.
If you take nukes of the table completely, like they don't even exist, then this war wouldn't even have happened.
It's terrifying seeing Poland and Finland (amongst others) stocking up anti rad tablets.
The problem with Crimea is that while it's useful to Russia (they leased Sevastopol until 2042) it isn't essential.
It would be a massive symbolic loss of an illegally annexed region that has been held since 2014 and while Russia wouldn't want to destroy water supplies, they could. That would be desperate and would lead to a full retreat from Ukraine because they couldn't practically restore adequate water
Surovikin will withdraw to a defensive line in the Kherson Oblast that can be supplied/retreated from without needing to cross the Dnieper in the hope of defending Crimea and preserving what heavy kit he has left. The dam will be an overt threat to advancing Ukrainian troops
Throughout this war it's shown the world that the red army would not have been much of a match for Captain Mainwaring, but where is their navy particularly the missile subs?
The problem with Crimea is that while it’s useful to Russia (they leased Sevastopol until 2042) it isn’t essential.
If they want a serious navy then it is essential.
The problem with Crimea is that while it’s useful to Russia (they leased Sevastopol until 2042) it isn’t essential.
It's their prize possession on the Black Sea. If they hang onto it they have total control over the Ukraine coast and ports and access to the Med. If they lose Ukraine they lose Sevastopol too since Putin terminated the lease agreement following the 2014 annexation. They would need to move the Black Sea fleet to mainland Russia.
In response to the above- haven’t NATO made it clear that they will only become directly involved if Russia use chemical/bio/nuclear weapons? I agree blowing the dam would be a massive move, but it’s hard to see how NATO respond in a limited way?
I think NATO have made it clear that they aren't getting involved, but have left the question of WMDs ambiguous. This is deliberate, they have apparently been sending backchannel signals to Russia that using WMDs would be considered a serious violation, but they leave it up to the imagination what the actual response would be. My guess is that it would involve supply of modern air defense systems, plus permission for Ukraine to use longer range HIMARS rockets against military targets inside Russia, but the point of the ambiguity is that Russia is left uncertain.
As far as Crimea goes, the Sevastopol naval base is pretty much useless if Ukraine have long-range precision guided weapons based south of Odessa. If Ukraine can evict Russian forces from southern Ukraine, then the Sea of Azov will be within reach of Ukrainian missiles too, so Crimea will be very difficult to resupply by sea. Ukraine may decide not to actually invade it, just cut off the Russian military there from resupply and harass them with missile and special forces attacks until they either leave or are rendered ineffective. If the Russian civilians flee, then Ukraine may be able to organize a local "uprising" of Little Green Men who deny being Ukrainian military and then organize a referendum on whether Crimea should be Ukrainian or Russian. With the Russian sympathizers gone, only pro-Ukrainian voters will be left to vote.
If they want a serious navy then it is essential
There's the problem 🙂 The Black Sea fleet is minus one flagship after a taking on a nation not known for its naval prowess
It’s their prize possession on the Black Sea
It's President Putin's prize possession...
If they hang onto it they have total control over the Ukraine coast and ports and access to the Med.
And Ukraine has control of their water supply. The myth of Russian superiority is busted and the threat to Ukraine if Crimean taps were turned off has somewhat receded.
If they lose Ukraine they lose Sevastopol too since Putin terminated the lease agreement following the 2014 annexation. They would need to move the Black Sea fleet to mainland Russia
They have a Black Sea warm water port and naval base at Novorossiysk, 100 nautical miles (straight line) away, which was reopened after the Soviet Union fell apart. They lost Sevastopol to Ukraine, hence the lease, but it isn't essential and modern weapons make ships extremely vulnerable in enclosed spaces and can be launched from land, sea and sub-sea at targets hundreds of miles away at high subsonic/supersonic speeds.
Russia set its Med Squadron up in 2013, which chimes with the ongoing civil war in Syria, and is more about unnecessary expansionism than protecting Russia. Access to the Med is available from Novorossiysk as it would be from Sevastopol
President Zelenskiy's problems with Russian sympathisers are becoming visible and will continue long after the war is over
Vyacheslav Boguslaev, former MP, Hero of Ukraine and chief engineer of the Motor Sich company in Ukrainian-controlled Zaporizhzhia has been arrested. He's suspected of supplying aicraft parts to Russia
Vyacheslav Boguslaev, former MP,
Former Pro-Russian MP.
And another Russian jet crashes. Is there more to it, or par for the course and the current focus on Russia amplifies such occurrences?
My guess is that they've been cutting corners for decades on training and maintenance and now they aren't able to sustain the rate of combat operations, probably just old, badly maintained planes failing.
The French Foreign Minister in the tweet on the previous page. That's the lady that Nicola Sturgeon 'allegedly' has the super injunction in place about - they're lovers, fight in a famous Edinburgh hotel where the police were called etc etc.
Not wanting to hijack a really informative and interesting thread though 👍🏻
Why would you comment about Sturgeon in a thread about Ukraine? FYI super injunctions are not a thing in Scotland…
Fatmax must be a Russian agent spreading discontent and trying to take down the establishment from their secret base in Crimea
In one combination or another, these three super-states are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference. (2.9.22, Goldstein's Manifesto)
To save the googling, Orwell 1984, published 1949. I don’t understand the date in the above quote, presumably where it was copied from. (Edit, location in book reference I think?)
What? I really would prefer the subtitles to be wrong.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1584054018145685504?s=20&t=q0e7JbGJHh4hhmoJwzvunA
I don’t understand the date in the above quote, presumably where it was copied from
It's a book that's considered illegal for the characters to possess in the novel 1984. I guess that the date is when it was "written".
I've googled to get beyond the minute bit that I remember from school,
"However, even though Inner Party members have devoted their lives to establishing Oceania as the universal world power, they use doublethink also in connection with the war, knowing that it is necessary for the conflict to go on indefinitely to keep the structure of Oceanic society intact." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Oligarchical_Collectivism
To save the googling, Orwell 1984, published 1949.
I read pretty much everything Orwell wrote when I was young. I remember reading or hearing that he originally planned to call it 1948, not 1984. If you read it after reading his earlier stuff, you can see that he is basically describing the world of the late 1940s, especially from the perspective of the highly repressed middle class. Putin's Russia is pretty much exactly what Orwell was describing - everyone self-censors because it's impossible to tell reality from propaganda and questioning authority means risking everything you have.
Unfortunately, a lot of people who have never read Orwell use words like "Orwellian" and "doublethink" without actually understanding what they mean or what Orwell was actually trying to warn about.
It must be a strange head space to be in though. I mean if this was US aggression, he'd have no compunction in condemning it, and wouldn't ever think to use oblique quotes from Orwell to try to illustrate it. But here we are, a bizarre illusion must instead be conjured up to explain away Putin's war of aggression and territorial gain on another state.
What? I really would prefer the subtitles to be wrong.
Utterly horrific. Ordinary Russians are being fed a diet of this bile and hate every day, with no moderating voices in their media to counter it. It's no wonder their troops commit atrocities. Russia really is a reincarnation of Nazi Germany. Margarita Simonyan and RT is Goebbels' propaganda ministry. This depiction of a whole people as subhuman is straight out of the third reich playbook, except this time it's Ukrainians not Jews. Yeah I know, Godwin's law yada, yada. But in this case fully justified IMO.
Even if by some miracle there was a true democratic revolution in Russia and a free media, it would take decades to begin to cure the corrosive effects that years of this have had.
Subtitles are correct and he appears to have been fired for it
Suspicious drones around oil rigs and airports. Perhaps Russia playing more roulette with European energy supplies...
Yeah I know, Godwin’s law yada, yada. But in this case fully justified IMO.
Unfortunately it's looking like you might be. Those mass graves didn't dig themselves
That drown the children guy 👆 has been kicked off the show
BBC News - Krasovsky: Russia bans 'burn Ukrainian kids' TV presenter
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63378613
Both the UK and US have publicly re-established talks with Moscow in the last couple of days. The bottom line is that neither nuclear, chemical, biological nor dirty bomb plots appear to be any more than bombast
Utterly horrific. Ordinary Russians are being fed a diet of this bile and hate every day, with no moderating voices in their media to counter it.
A bit like the Russian equivalent of the Daily Express 😉
Bellingcat have outed the Russian missile targeting team.... which may prove to be uncomfortable for them. It also appeared on Twitter
Its a long and interesting read.
How things turn. Russia is now trying to recruit Afghanistan military (that admittedly got training from the west then hung out to dry when we left) to fight on its own behalf.
Interesting to see the implications of this, to all intents and purposes, there almost no more gas storage capacity available in Europe.
Interesting to see the implications of this, to all intents and purposes, there almost no more gas storage capacity available in Europe.
Already seeing the wholesale of price falling as demand is lowering due to the full storage, blunting one of Putin's economic weapons. If the US bring online the increased LNG export infrastructure in louisiana soon then Europe could be a lot more protected from the gas shenanigans. One wrinkle is OPEC+ have decided to reduce production to keep prices high. If either europe or asia has a cold winter (or both) then demand for LNG will spike up again, as will prices
Russia is in an argument with the UN over Russian drones that may or may not be from Iran...
The UN imposed conventional weapon sanctions on Iran as part of the ongoing 2015 nuclear agreement to and fro. The UN is going to Ukraine to examine the downed drones to see if Russia has ignored sanctions, which Russia and Iran both deny
Russia says that the UN doesn't have power to investigate, the UN have said that they can and do investigate such evidence.
I'm betting that an official Russian proposal to the UN would be either vetoed or voted against 🙂
Russia is getting serious in its defence of Kherson city and their volume of artillery fire has increased.
Rainfall has slowed the Ukrainian advance off-road, which is working in favour of Russian Forces, allowing RF to get their defences dug and resupply moving
Some context of Russian Forces during September https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-russia-base
see if Russia has ignored sanctions,
Very likely they have both ignored sanctions but both countries are not known for their position on the moral highground...
thols2
Very good. The official category of Nineteen Eighty Four is 'dystopian fiction', however, as you correctly state Orwell was simply describing what was happening at the time. It's the same as has been happening since, and is happening now. All that's changed is the technology and the amount of control.
'History' (his story) is a collection of hoaxes and half-truths designed to keep the ordinary people on the psychological plantation. This includes wars, and world events / crises. It is all part of the programming. The ordinary man or woman will dismiss anyone saying this as a lunatic / conspiracy theorist because they cannot conceptualise a higher force than 'guvmint'. Or if they can, they do not want to for the protection of their own ego investments.
The ordinary people will reject the truth and will fight you, violently even, to protect the false sense of reality they live in. Like Orwell wrote. They do not want to deal with the cold, harsh reality that is truth, they want 'ignorance is bliss'. The Matrix is relevant here.
@pk13 Source for that?
Widely reported, emphasis on "trying to recruit" without evidence of success. Reported to be Wagner PMC behind the recruitment attempt
The Drive / WarZone story on ex-Afghan SOF being recruited by Wagner/Russia
This is slightly chilling
They also told him about receiving offers to take “their families to other countries or Russia, just to keep them safe,” he said.
They do not want to deal with the cold, harsh reality that is truth
OR
You don't want to deal with the cold, harsh reality that is the truth, and you're creating elaborate fantasies to explain away the unbearable shitness of things.
Which is it?
I think the original Total Recall film is a better analogy here than the Matrix, because it's far more ambiguous. The Matrix makes all the value judgements for you and leaves you in no doubt as to how things should be.
Or don’t feed the troll, he’s trolling other threads too 🤷♂️
Seriously, how long can the Russian army go on like this before they collapse? Most of them will freeze to death once winter sets in properly.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1585587514383138817
Tyrant Putin currently making another of those West made me act speeches again.
It’s all our fault 🤷♂️🤦🏻♂️ Mearschmire will be lapping it up like a goood useful idiot 😵💫🤔
Meanwhile back in the real world, will the Russian army survive the winter? Collapse by February, or even earlier?
Its going to be a pretty brutal winter for ukraine too given they have had alot of their grid destroyed
molgrips
The truth is not ambiguous.
You can't handle the truth man you weren't there.
Is there likely to be a way to post a Xmas present to a Ukraine soldier? Rather than send a load of cards and be forced to buy some unwanted tat for my family i would rather some random guy in a trench gets a box with sox, haribo, a cigar, etc
Its going to be a pretty brutal winter for ukraine too given they have had alot of their grid destroyed
No doubt, but living in a house without electricity is an order of magnitude better than living in foxhole in the snow after your officers stole all your warm clothing to sell for profit, with no food or ammo, and with fires prohibited to stop Ukrainian drones spotting your position.
Old-fashioned leaflet drop needed now showing the 1/2 million pieces of Canadian winter kit donated to Ukraine earlier this month
Russia threatened action against civilian satellites again in the Thematic Discussion on Outer Space in the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, "Quasi-civilian infrastructure may become a legitimate target for
retaliation" page 2
While Russia has the capability to destroy satellites, it isn't clear how that can destroy 3000 Starlink satellites that can autonomously manoeuvre to avoid space debris
Old-fashioned leaflet drop needed now showing the 1/2 million pieces of Canadian winter kit donated to Ukraine earlier this month
Having had some military experience with kit issue, is that all left boots? 🙂
The ordinary man or woman will dismiss anyone saying this as a lunatic / conspiracy theorist because they cannot conceptualise a higher force than ‘guvmint’
Oh good, nothing gladdens the heart more on a wet 'n' windy Autumn morning than a bit of the ole' ultra right wing New World Order conspiracy bullshitter stirring the pot.
they cannot conceptualise a higher force than ‘guvmint’
🐍
molgrips
The truth is not ambiguous.
Aw, bless.
IEA has published their World Energy Outlook for 2022. (Paris based)
With the loss of its largest export market in Europe, Russia faces the prospect of a much-diminished role in international energy affairs. 2021 proves to be a high-water mark for Russian export flows. Its share of internationally traded gas, which stood at 30% in 2021, falls to 15% by 2030 in the STEPS and to 10% in the APS. Importers in China have been actively contracting for liquefied natural gas, and there is no room in China’s projected gas balance for another large-scale pipeline from Russia.
Found via this Fortune article
“The rupture has come with a speed that few imagined possible,” the IEA says in its 524-page report, which lays out three different scenarios for the decades ahead, depending on whether major countries stick to their green-energy commitments. “Russian fossil fuel exports [will] never return in any of the scenarios…to the levels seen in 2021,” it says.
https://fortune.com/2022/10/27/russia-oil-market-power-peaking-energy-iea/
(Ive definitely only scanned this 524 report, not read it front to back)
The Rough storage facility has been brought back online.
Wont make a huge difference tbf
Centrica, owner of British Gas, said that the partial reopening of Rough, 18 miles off the coast of Yorkshire, had boosted Britain’s gas storage capacity by 50 per cent, or 30 billion cubic feet. That is equivalent to about three days of average UK winter gas demand, taking Britain’s total storage capacity to nine days.Centrica conceded, however, that the site was “not a silver bullet for energy security” and could withdraw gas at a rate that would supply only about 1 per cent of UK demand on a very cold winter’s day.
Wont make a huge difference tbf
Because its only partially online. It could have made a rather bigger difference but Centrica had no real interest in it (after all higher prices == higher profits) and the tories declined to pay for it believing in the market knows best.
US DoD has made another weapons package announcement https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3203516/official-describes-dods-efforts-to-bolster-ukraines-defense/
It's mentioned in the same article that Spain and Germany will be providing HAWK and IRIS-T air defence systems as well, although these seem to be existing packages rather than new
Spain is currently training Ukrainian troops on the Aspide air defence system, the second training cadre start next week with the missile systems to follow
Ukraine reports shooting 300 Shahed-136 drones down since 13th Sept https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3602950-ukrainian-forces-down-over-300-shahed136-kamikaze-drones-since-sept-13.html
Two things have changed; there are fewer being launched, which suggests that Iran cannot get them out of the door fast enough, and Russia is launching them at night so that expensive and scarce radar-guided weapons are needed to down them
The UK's operation Orbital has been training Ukrainian forces here since 2015. That was superceded by Operation Interflex in July and training staff from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Lithuania, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand have all worked in the UK https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-and-france-at-odds-over-military-training-for-ukrainians/
Australian trainers will now be joining training in the UK for the next round in January, while the EU talks about forming a training mission...
Have we covered Sebastopol yet? Was going to surmise that yet more Russian servicemen were being careless with cigarettes. However the Rus have admitted an assault by both aerial and waterborne UVs, which they apparently fought off. There is one video doing the rounds of a helicopter blowing up something in the water, but there is also footage of some big explosions. Another dagger to the essentials for Putin methinks.
Meanwhile, things rumble on in Kherson. Matter of time until the UA reach the city itself. Not sure if Putin will stage an ‘event’ (be it nuclear, dam related, dirty bomb or poison), more likely destroy the city, sacrifice some cannon fodder to draw out the UA and retreat over the river.
Don’t think Putin is mad enough to escalate in that way. Actually don’t think he’s mad at all. A devious, murderous, sociopath who badly, badly miscalculated with his ‘special operation’, but not mad. So unlikely to cut his own throat. You see, I believe that he would lose the support of many of the power brokers in/around the Kremlin if they seriously thought he was headed in that direction. They’ve stayed loyal thus far through a combo of fear and that he’ll eventually sort this out. They’ve too much to lose if he goes mental. So he’s looking at massive repercussions both from NATO and from his own mob..
Meanwhile, things rumble on in Kherson. Matter of time until the UA reach the city itself
A couple of separate explosions were reported in Kherson:
RIA Novosti said, "Saboteurs attacked the district department of internal affairs in Kherson in order to seize weapons. They managed to fire from a grenade launcher."
There were reports of a large explosion at the local conscript training ground as well. The Russian official line was the controlled destruction of unexploded materiel
Too much to be explained away by a cigarette, missile? SF? Resistance?