Ukrainian sentiment towards the west and Zelensky is not universally supportive as assumed on this thread

Almost certainly correct, no society is a monolith but there’s a vast gulf between a few dissenting voices and Ukraine as a whole throwing in the towel.

The Russian public have relativity little to lose if their soldiers retreat, wounded National pride being the main thing.

The Ukrainian public have EVERYTHING to lose if they give up, from their independence, to their future prosperity, to their actual Children!

Even if you see everything through a lens of pure cynical self-interest the rationale for resisting Russia every step of the way is pretty solid.

DT bearings and seals are designed to work under load from a tightened up axle or QR so sometimes they can feel quite draggy in your hand but then run smoothly once they’re in the bike.

Do they feel better in the bike?

I ran my EXC 1200’s for 3 years and sold them with the original bearings still in them, the guy I sold them to has done a Scottish winter on them and hasn’t changed them yet.

I’d be having a word with the shop you bought them from.

Spurred on by Biden’s Chips act, Intel are also dropping some serious money on the next generation of lithographic tech coming out of the Netherlands and setting up to manufacture in the US.

It won’t be online for at least a few years yet but if (big IF!) it works as planned it could mark a huge shift in the balance of global power in the Semi-conductor space.

Fair play to blokeuptheroad for putting their hand up and deleting rather than doubling down.

pretty obvious that the hardline military escalation approach will only lead us in one direction.

And it’s also pretty obvious where rolling over for Putin’s whims would have left us.

The right point was always somewhere in the middle, where exactly..?  History will be the judge but I don’t envy those having to make the hard decisions

Not all of them entirely see it that way compared to Afghanistan. If you see the ukraine war as a just one, returning territory that is rightfully russian then you might be more willing to suffer for it.

Gorbachev was much, much weaker than Putin is now.

Both true, which is why this time it will take far greater losses than the Afghan Mujahideen were able to inflict, they managed to create roughly 79,000 Russian casualties over a decade, the Ukrainians are causing many many times that and also managing to intrude into Russia proper.

The forces in both directions are therefore considerably greater this time around so whilst you could argue Russia is more motivated with a more popular leader this time, the costs in Blood and Treasure are also exponentially higher. The Mathematics are grim but they always are.

And, to address the ‘war mongering’ discussion above, the reason I take such a keen interest in this is that I have an academic background in geopolitics, this is the most pivotal armed conflict of my Adult life and I have a son who I dearly want to prevent being sent into the trenches of Eastern Poland in a few years time when an unbowed  Putin decides to have another go.

The best way to prevent WWIII (at least in the short-medium term) is stopping Russian expansionism dead in its tracks in Ukraine.

They lost 9M soldiers in WW2 so they have a fair way to go.

That was a genuine fight for survival against a full scale invasion at a time when it was the entire USSR and not just the Russians and their population was both younger and larger than it is now.

Since it was an expeditionary operation outside Russia’s borders I feel a better analogy would be Afghanistan where roughly (estimates vary wildly)  26,000 dead and 53,000 wounded was enough to send them packing.

The key tipping point in 1989 was when the Elites in Moscow and St Petersburg started to see the war as futile and their enemy as implacable.

We could yet get to this point with current conflict and since the intensity is so much higher we should logically get there a fair bit quicker.

For me a huge inflection point will be if Harris wins in November, thereby assuring at least another 4 years of US support.  I feel more and more that Putin has bet the house on a 2nd Trump term.

Looking very capable there, how are you getting on with the mullet hardtail arrangement?

the first assassination attempt was just cheap amateur dramatics.

That’s what THEY want you to think

It looks like the man arrested for planning to assassinate Trump yesterday was a Pro-Ukraine activist.

I have zero clue how this plays out but Ukraine and Trump’s determination to sell them out is now surely going to be a major point of discussion in the US election, at least over the next week.

Do like the look of those Gretshy
Hollow or semi-hollow bodies, don’t think I’ll ever consume enough neat bourbon to actually own one though.

Either Tankie or just a terminal case of whataboutery.

The big moral difference here is that if the Russians stop fighting, that’s the end of the war, if the Ukranians stop fighting, that’s the end of Ukraine.

Pokrovsk, on the other hand, isn’t strategic

Not in terms of Russia taking it will end the war but it certainly will great assist Russia’s further advances, Iwould certainly argue that it’s fall would be  significant.

Perun has his usual measured take on it.

We use a mesh system, the Fibre Optic cable comes in on 1st floor at the front of the house so we have a Mesh repeater downstairs to boost it at the back of the house and now it reaches all the way into the garden.

You can daisy chain them together if required and devices seem to switch between them pretty seamlessly, unlike old school extender systems.

Oh, yeah, a bit leftfield but this is incredible and just builds and builds as it goes along.

It’s very old upload so the video quality is a bit meh but the sound is solid.

Whilst I’m very happy to bang the ‘rah-rah go Ukraine’ drum on here, It should be noted that Russia doesn’t need to take Pokrovsk, just get its artillery close enough so that it can safely batter the rail junction there into dust.

Fully taking the actual town would be a nice little propaganda coup for the Kremlin so I’m sure they’ll try but the main objective of screwing up Ukraine’s rail logistics does not require it.

It also shoud be noted that estimates for recent Russian Casualties in the Pokrovsk salient are now well into 5 figures, a year or so ago I commented on here that one way Ukraine wins this is by fighting another 10-20 Bakhmut’s where they just bleed Russian attackers white, well they just put another brick in that wall.

Pokrovsk may be more strategically significant than Bakhmut but here Ukraine is killing huge numbers of contract soldiers rather than Wagner convicts, that is going to only ratchet up discontent back home.

Too many to really count but I’m really enjoying this:

and this

During the pandemic, when live music was basically not a thing, these 2 hit me really hard because of the audience participation and the sheer joy in the room, I missed gigs so badly..

Not 100% but I think the rims on the ebike wheels are the same as others in the DT Swiss range

This is not correct I’m afraid, the DT E-bike (or Hybrid as the Euros call them) rims have thicker spoke beds to give them a longer fatigue life as the sustained high torques E-bikes generate tend to fatigue rims faster around the spoke holes which leads to cracking and eventually the nipples pulling through the rim.

If you’re a radical gnar fiend who smashes their rims to bits long before they get the chance to fatigue there’s little benefit to getting the Ebike versions, just get the FR’s or EX’s.

If you actually intend to keep and use the rims for a long period of time and want long-term reliability, get the E.bike versions.

Hope that makes sense.

Had my godson staying with us, I was administering breakfast and had the option between skimmed and whole milk.

Me “So, do to want Blue Cow milk or Red Cow milk on your Weetabix?”

Him: *Stunned befuddlement*

Me: “Are you O.K. there?”

Him (very quietly and nervously) “Ummm I’m not sure, all the cows near us are black and white”

Bless his little cotton socks

Anker, Belkin and UGreen are all decent and have a UK presence with a degree of aftersales care and a brand to protect.

The Ikea ones are very good for the money but as far as I know they don’t do a higher wattage one that’ll power/charge a USB-C laptop so I just bought a UGreen Nexode for travelling.

Was lucky enough to catch Fugazi and Black Sabbath before it was too late but yeah an ‘in their prime’ Queen or LED Zeppelin would be incredible, I tried to get tickets for the mothership tour, no chance.

I was due to see Rage Against The Machine in 2020… well that didn’t happen for obvious reasons.

Those would probably be my 3

Both my nippers are in Fist gloves now, huge range of kids options and the quality is bang on.

This.

I wouldn’t buy an Eeb unless there was local support you really don’t want to be posting one.

It’s certainly one of the most likely outcomes and one of the better ones for Ukraine and ‘The West’ in general although the disintegration of the Russian federation would obviously bring up it’s own problems in due course.

It’s also one of the few proven ways to get Russia to stop it and bugger off, see Afghanistan for details.

Agreed, there’s a whole shadow government ready to go the minute Lukashenko’s goons are out of the way.

They even have a degree of democratic legitimacy as Tsikhanouskaya is widely believed to have won the 2020 election.

Poland and the Baltics will be absolutely salivating at the prospect of  re-orientating Belarus towards ‘the West’ and I’m sure they’ll be doing things behind the scenes to put a few thumbs on the scale.

It’s almost worth somebody quietly offering Lukashenko safe passage with his loot just to get him gone peacefully and quickly, hugely unsatisfying though that would be considering what he’s inflicted upon his own people. but..  if it helps screw Putin harder and faster… bigger fish and all that.

Is he loading a private jet with family and wealth to head off somewhere?

As one of the tinniest and pottiest of Tin Pot dictators I’d bet he’s had that sucker loaded, fueled and sat in a hanger ready to roll for good time now, esp after he only clung on by the skin of his teeth in 2021.

Dubai here we come.

They seem like they’re over-priced under-designed blocky lumps of metal in garish colours for retro-grumblers.

 

 

This will happen, they’re having to learn on the job at breakneck speed with of one the world’s largest militaries acvtively hunting them and them in particular.

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors

+1!

And Thundercats of course.

The fact he was wearing a Balaclava shows that he knows damn well he shouldn’t be there.

The strangeness seems to be that you seem to have encountered the .000001% of masked up moto-scrotes who are in anyway concerned for their fellow humans. He may be new to the ‘culture’ and not quite able to summon the attitude yet.

The ones I’ve encountered would have just shoved her into the canal without batting an eyelid.

Yet another reason for the West to take the brakes off Ukraine’s use of Western Systems.

Belarus’s military is small and their equipment isn’t the best but they kept Lukashenko in power in 2020.

Only just and with help from Putin, 4 years later the sanctions will have taken their toll and that help from the East will be far less forthcoming.

A fresh insurrection will be very very hard for Lukashenko to keep a lid on, especially as most of Belarus’s neighbours will be rooting for it to succeed.

If it’s a G 1800 then yes it will be a 11-speed Road HG freehub.

Belarus won’t invade Ukraine.

I agree that it’s unlikely, for the reasons I listed above, but they don’t actually need to invade to hurt Ukraine’s war efforts.

One of the key reasons Ukraine’s Kursk offensive (it still blows my mind that, almost 3 weeks in and Ukraine is still holding Russian soil) is such a headache for Putin is that suddenly a huge swathe of the border that up until now he’d been able to leave lightly defended and garrisoned now needs a massive increase in troop numbers and defensive infrastructure.

My strong impression is that the main logic of the recent sabre rattling from Belarus is to try and give Ukraine the same dilemma and force them to divert resources from other areas to reinforce to the Belarusian border, after all, whilst Belarusian troops have not moved into Ukraine, the Russians were certainly free to move through there in 2022.

I’m hopping that Budanov has made it clear to Lukashenko’s goons that if one single platoon steps over the boarder he’s sending all the battle-hardened Belarussian volunteer units currently fighting for Ukraine back home with a load of spare weapons and instruction manuals.

Vive La Revolution!

We all knew this was coming, the Tories knew for almost 3 years that they were heading for likely electoral oblivion so all long-term thinking went out the window as they tried to cling onto power and worry about the mess after the election. There were plenty of quotes from anonymous civil servants in the last year along the lines of “They’re just smashing things up now.”

Also, the worse that people think the situation is now, the lower expectations will be and the more credit Starmer and Reeves will get assuming the economy and public sector haven’t completely collapsed by the time the next GE roll around.

So it’s both at least somewhat true and politically advantageous, which means we’ll be hearing this line regularly for the foreseeable.

Plus of course there are many in Belarus who would happily tip over the current delightful leadership…

Very much so, and the entire reason why Belasrus wasn’t involved from the start, the minute any large proportion of Lukashenko’s thugs leave the country to help in Ukraine sales of lamposts and rope will go through the roof.

I almost hope Belarus does get involved, OSINT assesments seem to rate Belkarus’s military as one of the most corrupt and incompetent out there so they’re unlikely to give Ukraine too much bother and the very likely ousting of a key Putin sock-puppet right on the NATO/Russia border would be a serious strategic gain in the long run.

It’s not like Putin has any spare people he can send to help prop up Lukashenko like he did in 2020-21.

What size tyres are you looking to run?

Assuing 35ish commuting tyres DT Swiss HU 1900’s are there if you want truly monstrously tough but they’re designed for laden E-bike trekking so are probably overkill.

However, all their gravel wheels are rated to 130 KG as well.

Yup, they’re hitting air bases right up by the Russia/Finland border now.

Ukraine is actively going after anything involved in delivering those damn glide bombs that have been so devastating to Ukraine over the last 12 months.

One of the advantages of the Kursk offensive is that it’s probably allowed Ukriane to move one of their Patriot systems up to where it can reach deep into Russia.

The high number of Airframes Russia has lost in the last 10 days strongly suggests this, even if Ukraine would never confirm or deny it… obviously.

Dunno, very much depends on.the kid,.where they’re going and how they’re keeping tabs on them.

At age 15 I was a 6 foot lump and if I’d had the sense of a loaf of sourdough I’d have probably been fine.

It’s very borderline though.