OT subject but worth a main-stream read- OT News Feeds...

nolaegghead

lousubcap said:

A good read:
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2022/05/what-russias-invasion-ukraine-means-middle-east/367418/

Good article.  I plugged it into a text to voice reader and ate a giant sandwich.

lousubcap

Friday's Russia-Ukraine update: (things go pretty quiet on weekends)

"Russian-backed separatists claim to have taken control of the city of Lyman in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. In a Telegram post, the armed forces of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic says 220 settlements are now under their control. Lyman is on the road to the Ukrainian city of Slovyansk - which is a key Russian target as Moscow tries to take full control of the Donbas. BBC Newsreports. 

Russian forces are continuing to carve out incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, fighting to take hamlets and villages and shelling cities from afar. The diminishing scale of the fighting has generated anxiety among some Western allies that the war could reach an extended impasse with severe economic consequences. However, U.S. defense officials have pushed back against calling the state of the battle in the Donbas a stalemate, saying there remains fierce, active fighting by Russian troops and stiff Ukrainian resistance, if on a diminishing scale. Victoria Kim reports for the New York Times. 

Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba,  pleaded with Western nations yesterday to provide Kyiv with heavy weapons to enable it to push Russian forces back. “We need heavy weapons. The only position where Russia is better than us it’s the amount of heavy weapons they have. Without artillery, without multiple launch rocket systems we won’t be able to push them back,” he said in a video posted on Twitter. AP reports. 

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been processed through a series of Russian "filtration camps" in Eastern Ukraine and sent into Russia as part of a systemized program of forced removal, according to four sources familiar with the latest Western intelligence. This estimate is far higher than U.S. officials have publicly disclosed and forms a key element of Russia’s effort to cement political control over occupied areas -  in part by eliminating Ukrainians believed to be sympathetic to Kyiv and in part by diminishing the Ukrainian national identity through depopulation. Katie Bo Lillis, Kylie Atwood and Natasha Bertrand report for CNN. "

Legume

lousubcap said:

Friday's Russia-Ukraine update: (things go pretty quiet on weekends)

"Russian-backed separatists claim to have taken control of the city of Lyman in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. In a Telegram post, the armed forces of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic says 220 settlements are now under their control. Lyman is on the road to the Ukrainian city of Slovyansk - which is a key Russian target as Moscow tries to take full control of the Donbas. BBC Newsreports. 

Russian forces are continuing to carve out incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, fighting to take hamlets and villages and shelling cities from afar. The diminishing scale of the fighting has generated anxiety among some Western allies that the war could reach an extended impasse with severe economic consequences. However, U.S. defense officials have pushed back against calling the state of the battle in the Donbas a stalemate, saying there remains fierce, active fighting by Russian troops and stiff Ukrainian resistance, if on a diminishing scale. Victoria Kim reports for the New York Times. 

Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba,  pleaded with Western nations yesterday to provide Kyiv with heavy weapons to enable it to push Russian forces back. “We need heavy weapons. The only position where Russia is better than us it’s the amount of heavy weapons they have. Without artillery, without multiple launch rocket systems we won’t be able to push them back,” he said in a video posted on Twitter. AP reports. 

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been processed through a series of Russian "filtration camps" in Eastern Ukraine and sent into Russia as part of a systemized program of forced removal, according to four sources familiar with the latest Western intelligence. This estimate is far higher than U.S. officials have publicly disclosed and forms a key element of Russia’s effort to cement political control over occupied areas -  in part by eliminating Ukrainians believed to be sympathetic to Kyiv and in part by diminishing the Ukrainian national identity through depopulation. Katie Bo Lillis, Kylie Atwood and Natasha Bertrand report for CNN. "

I read this last bit yesterday and it was the single most horrifying thing to me.

lousubcap

Here is another good read gearing up for National Brisket Day on Saturday and Memorial Day Monday;

"Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

 May 26, 2022

NATO Got Lucky

Aside from concerns that NATO might get sucked into a World War III with Russia, the war in Ukraine has been seen as a triumph for the Western military alliance. In the face of Russian aggression, NATO has found new unity, energy, and purpose.
 
Or not, Adam Tooze argues in a New Statesman cover essay, suggesting this has been a close call, more than anything else.
  
Nearly everyone expected Russia to rout Ukraine, and had that happened, where would NATO be left? Learning that its presence in Europe and friendship with Ukraine served no deterrent purpose, Tooze argues.

 

Which suggests NATO still needs to think creatively about its goals, just as French President Emmanuel Macron urged in 2019 when he warned of the alliance’s “brain death.” Tooze identifies several NATO dilemmas, including: “If America succeeds in its more or less open strategy of bleeding Russia dry” via the war in Ukraine, “why should that betoken a reorientation towards European security, rather than the opposite? If the US is willing to take risks to weaken Russia as a strategic competitor, that is presumably to be better able to focus on China. And that poses the greater strategic question: on China, are Europe’s interests aligned with those of the US and what has Nato got to do with it?”

Bracing for a Russian Loss

As political scientist Graham Allison recently argued to Der Spiegel, Russian President Vladimir Putin could be more dangerous—and could resort to the use of low-yield nuclear weapons—if he thinks a total Russian loss in Ukraine is imminent. At Foreign Affairs, Anders Åslund focuses on another potential consequence of a Russian loss.
 
“The conventional wisdom is that Putin’s Praetorian Guard, the Presidential Protection Service, is so strong, well paid, and loyal to Putin that it will protect him against any coup attempt,” Åslund writes. “However, the cost of Putin’s continued leadership to Russian society is so great that it would be surprising if no group would mobilize against him.” In that case, the West must figure out how to handle a destabilized Russia—hopefully, Åslund argues, by helping to rebuild it.

Ukraine’s Most Important Front?

Most of the fighting is taking place in Ukraine’s east—a fluid situation more than a stalemate, as Michael Kofman reiterates in the latest War on the Rocks podcast—but at Grid, Joshua Keating suggests we think more about another front: the Black Sea.
 
Debatably, it’s the most important in this war, as Keating portrays it. Black Sea exports are critical to a Ukrainian economy that’s shrinking rapidly amid Russia’s onslaught, and those exports are currently blocked. Port cities have fallen to Russian forces, but as significantly, Russia has exerted naval control, Black Sea waters are mined, and merchants are unwilling to ship through such danger, while “insurance rates are skyrocketing.” Key Ukrainian grain exports can’t be airlifted or trucked efficiently, Keating writes, and Ukraine’s Soviet-gauge rail lines require reloading before cargo can be shipped through neighboring countries.
 
That’s a problem for Ukraine, but also for the rest of the world: As The Economist wrote recently, Russia’s effective Black Sea blockade is a major reason why global grain prices have skyrocketed, putting poor countries on the cusp of a “food catastrophe.” Keating notes the importance of other exports, too: “Ukraine produces around half the world’s supply of the neon gas used to produce semiconductor chips. Ukraine is also a major producer of the wire harnesses used in European cars’ electrical systems. All of these goods have traditionally left Ukraine by sea.”

JohnInCarolina

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/26/biden-white-house-secret-planning-helped-ukraine-counter-russia/

likely behind the paywall for most of you, so I'll just take some liberties here because I think it's interesting.

The first instruction that Secretary of State Antony Blinken got from President Biden was to “reset” America’s alliances and partnerships abroad so that the United States could deal with the challenges ahead. That strategy would prove decisive in combating Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

Blinken and other officials gave me new details this week, describing a series of behind-the-scenes meetings over the past year that helped forge the U.S.-led coalition to support Ukraine. His narrative validates President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s observation in a 1957 speech: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

The Biden administration’s secret planning began in April 2021 when Russia massed about 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. The buildup turned out to be a feint, but Blinken and other officials discussed U.S. intelligence about Russia’s actions with leaders of Britain, France and Germany at a NATO meeting in Brussels that month. Their message was, “We need to get ourselves prepared,” a senior State Department official said.

Germany was a reluctant but essential ally, and the Biden administration made a controversial decision last summer that was probably crucial in gaining German support against Russia. Biden gave Germany a pass on an initial round of sanctions against a company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in exchange for a pledge from Chancellor Angela Merkel that if Russia invaded, Nord Stream 2 would be scrapped. When the invasion came, Merkel was gone but her successor, Olaf Scholz, kept the promise.

By avoiding a crisis with Germany early on, Blinken said, “the net result was that the foundation was in place when the Russians went ahead with the aggression.”

This U.S. diplomacy gets high marks from Emily Haber, the German ambassador to Washington. “The wording in the joint statement [about Nord Stream] was vague, but the administration trusted the old — and later the new — chancellor to follow up on it. Which is what happened,” she told me. “A sublime form, I thought, of partnership management.”

The Ukraine threat got red-hot in October, when the United States gathered intelligence about a renewed Russian buildup on the border, along with “some detail about what Russian plans for those forces actually were,” Blinken said. This operational detail “was really the eye opener.” The Group of 20 nations were meeting at the end of October in Rome, and Biden pulled aside the leaders of Britain, France and Germany and gave them a detailed readout on the top-secret evidence.

“It was galvanizing enough that there was an agreement … to fleshing out the consequences for Russia if it went ahead with the aggression,” Blinken said.

CIA Director William J. Burns traveled to Moscow on Nov. 1 to warn President Vladimir Putin that the United States and its allies were prepared to arm Ukraine and impose crippling sanctions on Russia if he invaded. Putin apparently thought Biden wouldn’t be able to deliver.

Persuading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to take the invasion danger seriously wasn’t easy, initially. Blinken spoke to him at the COP 21 climate summit in Glasgow in early November and provided a summary of intelligence about Russia’s plans. “I basically had the task of telling him that we thought it was likely that his country was going to be invaded,” Blinken recalled. Zelensky was skeptical, according to a State Department official.

Threatening sanctions can be an empty diplomatic ritual. But in December, Blinken and his colleagues began seriously discussing with allies what steps they would take. The initial venue was a Group of Seven foreign ministers meeting in Liverpool, England, on Dec. 11. The attendees publicly committed that there would be “massive consequences and severe costs,” Blinken remembered. As a result, he said, “when the aggression actually happened, we were able to move immediately.”

NATO military planning accelerated along with the diplomacy. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, the NATO commander, told me that his colleagues began preparing in December and January the “ground lines of communication” that would allow rapid shipment of arms into Ukraine. They studied entry points for supplies and other practical details. This weapons pipeline delivered Stinger and Javelin missiles before the invasion began Feb. 24 and has transferred huge numbers of heavier weapons since then.

U.S. intelligence provided Ukraine with a preview of Putin’s battle plan. Though Russia had surrounded Ukraine with 150,000 troops, Putin’s real strategy was a lightning, decapitating strike on Kyiv by a relatively small group of elite special forces. The Russians planned to seize Antonov Airport in Hostomel, west of the capital, and then use it to quickly pump troops into Kyiv.

The Ukrainians knew the Russians were coming. Burns had secretly traveled to Kyiv in January to brief Zelensky on the Russian plan, according to two knowledgeable officials. The Ukrainians used the U.S. intelligence to devastate the attacking force at Hostomel, in what may turn out to be the decisive battle of the war. “The Russians had no Plan B,” explained Marek Menkiszak, a Polish intelligence analyst with the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw.

Menkiszak explained the significance of the intelligence coup that revealed the decapitation plan: “The Russians trapped themselves. … It was not meant to be a full-scale war but a special operation” that would topple Zelensky’s government and install a pliant, pro-Moscow regime.

Through the buildup to war, Biden sometimes seemed to misspeak. But he had a clear-eyed view of the evolving strategic terrain. Early on, for example, Biden concluded that the best way to derail Putin’s hope for dividing NATO would be the accession of two strong new members, Finland and Sweden.

Biden wooed Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. He called him in December and then in January to talk about the Russian threat, Blinken said. Biden then invited Niinisto to visit the White House in March, and while they were sitting in the Oval Office, Biden suggested they call Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, reaching her late at night. By May, the two were visiting the White House together, celebrating their countries’ plans to join NATO.

The Biden administration’s organization of this coalition to support Ukraine may look simple in retrospect. But it was a complicated coordination of diplomatic, military and intelligence resources that pulled together dozens of nations at what may prove to be a hinge point in modern history. Putin thought he could roll through Biden and the West to an easy victory in Kyiv. The Russian leader made a catastrophic mistake in overvaluing his own strength and underestimating the resolve of Biden and his team.

lousubcap

@JohnInCarolina - thanks for posting the above.  Solid read and a glimpse behind the complicated and intertwined international stage.  
Now to finish the job!

dmchicago

Can’t be true. Biden is a “retard”. 

dmchicago

Ya gotta eat!

Legume

dmchicago said:

Ya gotta eat!

I can’t read Ukrainian, are those Gardettos or Chili Cheese Fritos?

Legume

Either is fine.

dmchicago

Flaming Cheetos. Duh. 

lousubcap

Tuesday Russia-Ukraine update:

"RUSSIA, UKRAINE - FIGHTING

Russian troops pushed deeper into Eastern Ukraine yesterday as they continue their assault on the major eastern city of Sievierodonetsk. The city is important to Russian efforts to capture the eastern industrial region of the Donbas before more Western arms arrive to bolster Ukraine’s defense. As Moscow’s advance on Sievierodonetsk intensified, Russian forces also shelled parts of Ukraine’s northeast, and a struggle continued for control of a southern region.Yuras Karmanau and Elena Becatoros report for AP 

Russia has seized control of the Ukrainian city of Lyman in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials confirmed yesterday. Fighting continues around Lyman, which had offered access to bridges over the Siversky Donets River, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a video posted on YouTube.  Meryl Kornfield reports for the Washington Post. 

As the war in Ukraine approaches its 100th day, the course of the invasion is beginning to tip in Russia’s favour. Russian troops entered the outskirts of Severodonetsk yesterday, one of the last strategically significant cities in the Luhansk region still under Ukrainian control. If the city falls under Russian control, it would give Russia near-total control over half of the Donbas region. As part of the new Russian war aims, this development marks a significant advancement. Ishaan Tharoor provides analysis for the Washington Post." "

lousubcap

Worth a read: 

"Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

May 31, 2022

Fault Lines in the West

On the war in Ukraine, the West is not monolithic, Felicia Schwartz and Amy Kazmin write in a Financial Times essay.
 
Specifically, points of contention have emerged over how the war should end. Surveying the fault lines, The Economist writes that Western powers “are splitting into two broad camps, explains Ivan Krastev, of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, a thinktank in Sofia. One is the ‘peace party’, which wants a halt to the fighting and the start of negotiations as soon as possible. The other is the ‘justice party’, which thinks Russia must be made to pay dearly for its aggression.” 
 
The magazine counts the members of each: “The peace camp is mobilising. Germany has called for a ceasefire; Italy is circulating a four-track plan for a political settlement; France speaks of a future peace deal without ‘humiliation’ for Russia. Ranged against them stand mainly Poland and the Baltic states, championed by Britain. What of America? Ukraine’s most important backer has yet to set out a clear objective, beyond strengthening Ukraine to give it a stronger bargaining hand.”
 
So far, Western powers have avoided a strategic crisis by saying the matter is Ukraine’s to decide, The Economist and others note. At Der Spiegel, six authors summarize the same debate, pointing to concerns that the war is heading toward “an extended and bloody standoff”—and that the longer it drags on, the likelier it is Western unity in backing Ukraine will erode.
 
Meanwhile, there is broad recognition that the war’s outcome will hang, to a large extent, on the kind and quantity of help Western powers send to Kyiv. “The Ukrainians are increasingly edgy because they worry that western support is going soft,” warns Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman."

Edit to add the below from The Atlantic:

Isabel Fattal ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Our writer argues that students should not return to school in the fall until Congress passes new gun-control laws. Then: How to know whether a midlife career change is worth it.

Concrete pressure (The Atlantic) Living with America’s gruesome pattern of mass shootings is like being locked in a “house of horrors,” my colleague Gal Beckerman writes, with “a schoolroom of slaughtered children around every turn.” And yet, “as awful as it is to say, we’re learning with every killing,” he suggests. “We’re moving closer to the kind of movement that might actually make a difference.” Sixty-three percent of Americans support an outright ban on assault weapons, but a lack of political will and a gridlocked Congress are preventing any progress toward new gun-control legislation. Moments like this one, “when the ideals of a critical mass clash with the rules that govern our collective lives, can … give rise to effective social movements,” Gal explains. But successful movements demand tough trade-offs—and the gun-reform effort is no exception. Students should refuse to go back to school until Congress does something. “One thing we’ve learned from the pandemic is that when children aren’t in school, society strains,” Gal proposes. “This would make a strike an extremely powerful form of leverage. A walkout with enough students involved and taking place over days, not minutes, puts concrete pressure on officials, from the municipal level all the way up to Washington.” The media shouldn’t turn away from the story of mass shootings—even when public interest wanes. “After a week or 10 days, the outraged public grows tired of hearing about the carnage, loss, and inaction. The audience starts to drop off. The ratings dip,” the former CNN Newsroom anchor Brooke Baldwin writes. Paying field crews is also expensive for networks. “But 19 children and two teachers? There is no higher cost than that.” Further reading: “I don’t know why these children had to die like this, terrorized.” Elizabeth Bruenig reflects on the helplessness of the Uvalde children."

Botch

lousubcap said:

Concrete pressure (The Atlantic) Living with America’s gruesome pattern of mass shootings is like being locked in a “house of horrors,” my colleague Gal Beckerman writes, with “a schoolroom of slaughtered children around every turn.” And yet, “as awful as it is to say, we’re learning with every killing,” he suggests. “We’re moving closer to the kind of movement that might actually make a difference.” Sixty-three percent of Americans support an outright ban on assault weapons, but a lack of political will and a gridlocked Congress are preventing any progress toward new gun-control legislation. Moments like this one, “when the ideals of a critical mass clash with the rules that govern our collective lives, can … give rise to effective social movements,” Gal explains. But successful movements demand tough trade-offs—and the gun-reform effort is no exception. Students should refuse to go back to school until Congress does something. “One thing we’ve learned from the pandemic is that when children aren’t in school, society strains,” Gal proposes. “This would make a strike an extremely powerful form of leverage. A walkout with enough students involved and taking place over days, not minutes, puts concrete pressure on officials, from the municipal level all the way up to Washington.” The media shouldn’t turn away from the story of mass shootings—even when public interest wanes. “After a week or 10 days, the outraged public grows tired of hearing about the carnage, loss, and inaction. The audience starts to drop off. The ratings dip,” the former CNN Newsroom anchor Brooke Baldwin writes. Paying field crews is also expensive for networks. “But 19 children and two teachers? There is no higher cost than that.” Further reading: “I don’t know why these children had to die like this, terrorized.” Elizabeth Bruenig reflects on the helplessness of the Uvalde children."

We rarely see Beau lose his temper.  Worth a watch:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h3BSsymV6M

lousubcap

Wednesday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Russia has taken near-total control of the major eastern city of Severodonetsk according to Luhansk’s regional governor, Serhiy Haidai. In a tweet released yesterday, Haidai wrote that perhaps as much as 70% of the city had fallen under Russian control. According to the governor, the fighting in the city had destroyed all of its critical infrastructure and 60% of its housing capacity. The complete capture of the city would represent a much needed symbolic and territorial victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Reis Thebault and Bryan Pietsch report for the Washington Post. 

Russia announced today that it has successfully completed the testing of its hypersonic cruise missile system. The new missiles, which can travel at nine times the speed of sound, will be deployed to the Northern Fleet of the Russian navy, according to its admiral Alexander Moiseyev. Reuters reports.

Danish energy company, Orsted, announced today that Russian gas producer Gazprom was cutting off its gas supply after it refused to settle its contracts in rubles. This announcement comes just one day after Gazprom cut off the supply of gas to a Dutch energy company for the same reason. According to the CEO of Orsted, Mads Nipper, “The situation underpins the need of the EU becoming independent of Russian gas by accelerating the build-out of renewable energy.” APreports. 

Germany will supply Ukraine with its most advanced air defense system, the IRIS-T, according to the German Chancellor Olaf Schulz. This comes following months of pleas from Kyiv to supply the Ukrainian military with more advanced weapons systems and despite warnings from the Kremlin that countries that do so will face harsh repercussions. Reuters reports. 

The E.U. announced yesterday that it will send nearly $10 billion in financial aid to Ukraine. Concluding a two-day summit at which E.U. nations also agreed to a blockade of 90% of all Russian oil, European leaders announced that they would provide $9.7 billion in “immediate liquidity” to Ukraine, though it will be conditioned on reducing corruption in Kyiv. Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Richard Pérez-Peña report for the New York Times. "

Edit to add the below:

"President Biden assured the global community yesterday that the U.S. is not seeking to depose Vladimir Putin. In the same New York Times Op-Ed in which he announced the provision of the new weapon system to Ukraine, Biden said that the U.S. is not seeking an armed confrontation between NATO and Russia and that removing Putin from office is not one of his administration’s goals. Morgan Chalfant reports for the Hill. "

JohnInCarolina

http://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1532086222499233794?s=20&t=8AzDyjTihN3SVfGjHW04KQ

HeavyG

They're great against a third world adversary but wouldn't Russia be able to fairly handily shoot those down?

JohnInCarolina

HeavyG said:

They're great against a third world adversary but wouldn't Russia be able to fairly handily shoot those down?

You mean seeing as how they’ve demonstrated so much battlefield competence so far?  We shall see.

Regardless, these things might as well be fighter jets, except when they get shot down, you don’t lose the pilot.

nolaegghead

HeavyG said:

They're great against a third world adversary but wouldn't Russia be able to fairly handily shoot those down?

That’s what I first thought, but they might be hard to find.

lousubcap

From the war so far, I would bet against the Russian Third world military.  Rapidly descending into the Third world abyss that is the entire country.  The only card they have is the nukes that give the Russians any clout.  You can never neutralize that but the West is doing a solid job of peeling away any other pretenses of power.
I fully understand the holding back of a shoot 'em up with NATO (AKA USA) because of the nukes but that is all that Vlad has left in his playbook.
As I see it and you need to measure the above with the author.  Off soap-box.  

HeavyG

JohnInCarolina said:

HeavyG said:

They're great against a third world adversary but wouldn't Russia be able to fairly handily shoot those down?

You mean seeing as how they’ve demonstrated so much battlefield competence so far?  We shall see.

Regardless, these things might as well be fighter jets, except when they get shot down, you don’t lose the pilot.

What we've yet to really see much of so far is Russian fixed wing squadrons. Don't know why.

Russia has plenty of advanced AWACS capability so they will likely be quite able to see/track/vector their resources to take down an MQ1.

On the other hand, by the time the equipment is packed/shipped and the Ukrainian troops are trained (which takes a few months) the invasion may already be over.

JohnInCarolina

HeavyG said:

JohnInCarolina said:

HeavyG said:

They're great against a third world adversary but wouldn't Russia be able to fairly handily shoot those down?

You mean seeing as how they’ve demonstrated so much battlefield competence so far?  We shall see.

Regardless, these things might as well be fighter jets, except when they get shot down, you don’t lose the pilot.

What we've yet to really see much of so far is Russian fixed wing squadrons. Don't know why.

Russia has plenty of advanced AWACS capability so they will likely be quite able to see/track/vector their resources to take down an MQ1.

On the other hand, by the time the equipment is packed/shipped and the Ukrainian troops are trained (which takes a few months) the invasion may already be over.

Total mystery why Ukraine was happy to buy them then I suppose.  

HeavyG

JohnInCarolina said:

HeavyG said:

JohnInCarolina said:

HeavyG said:

They're great against a third world adversary but wouldn't Russia be able to fairly handily shoot those down?

You mean seeing as how they’ve demonstrated so much battlefield competence so far?  We shall see.

Regardless, these things might as well be fighter jets, except when they get shot down, you don’t lose the pilot.

What we've yet to really see much of so far is Russian fixed wing squadrons. Don't know why.

Russia has plenty of advanced AWACS capability so they will likely be quite able to see/track/vector their resources to take down an MQ1.

On the other hand, by the time the equipment is packed/shipped and the Ukrainian troops are trained (which takes a few months) the invasion may already be over.

Total mystery why Ukraine was happy to buy them then I suppose.  

Well there are lots of weapons systems the Ukrainians would love to have that the US/NATO/Israel won't sell/give them so I'm sure they're delighted to take whatever we're  actually willing to share.

lousubcap

Thursday Russia-Ukraine update:

"Official documents and military decrees reveal that hundreds of Russian troops defied orders in the invasion of Ukraine. The documents, obtained by the Wall Street Journal, show that troops escaped fighting in Ukraine or refused to take part in the war. After Russia’s army suffered severe losses early in its invasion of Ukraine, desertions and insubordination among soldiers, Interior Ministry troops and members of the National Guard has compounded the problem. Matthew Luxmoore reports for the Wall Street Journal.

In a national referendum held yesterday, Denmark voted to join the E.U.’s defense framework - the Common Security and Defense Policy. Nearly 67% of voters chose to end a three-decade policy of opting out of the defense framework in a move that further signified the desire for stronger defense ties on the continent in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen welcomed the outcome, saying she was “very, very happy” with the decision. Amy Cheng reports for the Washington Post. 

The U.K. ministry of defense announced today that it would send advanced medium-range missiles in conjunction with the new U.S. package. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace says the U.K. will send an unspecified number of the sophisticated M270 launchers, which can send precision-guided rockets up to 50 miles. AP reports. 

The U.K. approved yesterday a new gas field in the North Sea in order to shore up energy supply. The move comes as the supply of gas from Russia becomes increasingly unstable, with Gazprom cutting off both Denmark and the Netherlands in the last three days. “We're turbocharging renewables and nuclear, but we are also realistic about our energy needs now,” British Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng wrote on Twitter. AP reports. "

lousubcap

A good read about the way ahead for Ukraine:

https://news.usni.org/2022/06/01/ukraine-will-make-no-deals-to-cede-territory-to-end-war-with-russia-says-ambassador?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=5f4095b1a4-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1450b-5f4095b1a4-230648085&mc_cid=5f4095b1a4&mc_eid=da66ed6ca4

Gulfcoastguy

Just a little reading material.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/06/01/conservatives-angry-democrats-media/9753198002/?gnt-cfr=1

JohnInCarolina

Gulfcoastguy said:

Just a little reading material.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/06/01/conservatives-angry-democrats-media/9753198002/?gnt-cfr=1

Looks like it's behind the paywall.  I was only able to read the title and the first few sentences.  Just FYI - happy to read through if you want to cut and paste directly into this thread.

Gulfcoastguy

I can't do that but give me a while and I can scan it from Papyrus news. Odd, when I did a direct search on USA Today the entire article came up.

Gulfcoastguy

You might have to enlarge it to read all of it.

JohnInCarolina

Gulfcoastguy said:

I can't do that but give me a while and I can scan it from Papyrus news. Odd, when I did a direct search on USA Today the entire article came up.

Could be that the paywall was just triggered for me because I’ve visited usa today on my browser enough in the past.  These days I think many of these online newspapers are set up the same way - they let you read for free until they discover you’re coming back frequently.  It’s kind of a loss leader approach.