This doesn't bode well for Ukraine and then there is the question of drones. Ukraine's president fires spy chief and top state prosecutor President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday abruptly fired the head of Ukraine's powerful domestic security agency, the SBU, and the state prosecutor general, citing dozens of cases of collaboration with Russia by officials in their agencies. The sackings of SBU chief Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend of Zelenskiy, and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, who has played a key role in the prosecution of Russian war crimes, were announced in executive orders on the president's website. FBI and DHS confirm they are buying Chinese drones despite security concerns “I’m very concerned about reports of the purchase by DHS and DOJ law enforcement of Chinese drones and the national security risks that this poses,” Portman said, adding, “DJI has servers in China. They have support from the Chinese government. The Chinese state security services is one of their customers.” DJI drones, Ukraine, and Russia — what we know about AeroScope Last week, Ukraine accused DJI — the world’s leading drone maker — of letting Russia target innocent civilians with missiles using DJI drone technology. “Are you sure you want to be a partner in these murders?” tweeted Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov last Wednesday. “Block your products that are helping Russia to kill the Ukrainians!” Reading those words, you might imagine DJI is now shipping killer drones to Russia or perhaps that Russia is using DJI drones as spotters for separate missile systems of its own. But that’s not even remotely what Ukraine’s request is about. It’s actually about DJI AeroScope, a system for locating drones and their operators — which Russia is now allegedly using to find Ukrainian drone pilots and wipe them out.
bet somebody got sent to the front lines for this one..doohhh Russia Accidentally Shoots Down Their Own $36M Su-34 Bomber, Ukraine Claims (msn.com) The jet was reportedly downed near Alchevsk, a city in the Luhansk region—one of the areas where the war is currently focused. Alchevsk is currently under the occupation of Moscow-backed separatist forces. Videos and images shared by the Strategic Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Telegram messaging app on Monday appear to show the charred remains of a Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber. In the video, the cameraman states that a Ukrainian plane was shot down, but an inscription on the military plane states that it is a jet belonging to Russia's Air Force, local news outlets said. Ukrainian media outlets, including TSN, reported that a message had circulated on Telegram that the Su-34 jet had been accidentally shot down by Russia's own air defense. A Telegram user called Ruslan reportedly wrote: "The jet is ours unfortunately. Sometimes it happens. I heard the info from a friend, I thought bulls**t, but it was confirmed."
Even Russia admits the western sanctions are causing “colossal” problems. Putin admits Western sanctions are causing Russia 'colossal' problems | Daily Mail Online
They aren't hurting Ukraine. Seems like the right thing to do unless you prefer brute force that NATO could bring to bear to clear allof Ukraine including Crimea
Ukraine is suffering in a much worse manner. Beans and bullets are their issue as well as a trained army. Those that can leave Ukraine are leaving and the rest of the population suffers as the war is given priority.
Russian crude exports dropping as Asia is filling up. This will make Putin reach deeper into his pocket to support the war. Hopefully add'l KSA oil on the market will allow the US to legit encourage India and others to continue to reduce the amount of Russian crude they import Russia's crude deliveries to China and India have plunged 30% from their wartime peak as concerns mount that Asia can't fully absorb Moscow's shrinking oil market (msn.com) Russia's crude shipments to China and India have fallen nearly 30% since they peaked after the war in Ukraine began, a Bloomberg report found, signaling that Asia may not be equipped to fully absorb Russian barrels once European sanctions fully set in. So far, expensive crude prices have bolstered Russia's export-duty revenues and helped mitigate the influence of a shrinking market. Soaring oil prices have allowed the Kremlin to continue funding its war efforts even amid tightening sanctions. Since the war began, India went from importing nearly zero barrels a day of Russian crude to almost 1 million barrels a day last month, according to Vortexa data.
This is odd. Mystery as 'Russian soldiers are killed' in 'unexplained incident' at Ukrainian nuclear power plant | Daily Mail Online
That’s all we need. Next thing you know, Russia is developing its own mutant super soldiers. And then the West will need its own, lest we have a mutant gap with Russia et al. Then it’s inevitable that the mutants will want, like, equal rights and demand to compete in the NCAA. If you thought NIL was going to destroy the sanctity of the game …
I wouldn’t mind a good looking lady mutant nymphomaniac friend. As long as she’s not teenage and a ninja turtle.
It sounds like your question has two parts: 1. Could our government have reasonably predicted the impending food crisis based on the facts that were available, say, one month into the invasion? 2. Can our government even do anything about it? For the first question, I say emphatically yes. If you go back and look at my posts in this thread as early as mid-March, I was pointing out the strategic problem of food even then. Remember, I'm not a farmer, and I'm not an economist. I have some military schooling on economic measures when it comes to strategy, but that's it. And I had a general idea on how much grain Ukraine exports over what it consumes (in technical terms, a metric s**t ton). What I am getting at is that it did not take a genius to put it together that there would be a huge delta in food production this year once it became obvious the war was not going to end in a few weeks. Between the significant number of Ukrainians who have fled and the fact that the lion's share of the male population is under arms, there is a drastic reduction in the number of people working the fields. Instead of being a huge exporter of foodstuffs this year and for who knows how long, Ukraine might need to import food to feed itself before too long, and of course all that food will have to be donated since their entire economy is mobilized toward dealing with an existential threat. So the people who have been eating that food for the last few decades will have to get their food from somewhere else or starve. Are these countries willing to starve for Ukraine, or will they come to terms with the Russians instead? I would find it very, very difficult to believe that no one briefed Jake Sullivan on this obvious consequence of a long war. Since we have done nothing to get ahead of the problem, I can only assume that thus briefed on the long-term risk, our government hoped away the problem instead. To the second, I can only say that we have done it before. During both world wars, the U.S. government managed the production, consumption, and export of foodstuffs in support of ourselves and our allies. I understand that this is not a cheap, fast, or easy thing to do. But if we want to defeat Russia without firing a shot, then we are going to have to make these sanctions hurt Russia to the maximum extent possible while minimizing the adverse effect they have to the U.S. and our allies. Food production is one necessary line of effort. Fuel production is another. We are doing neither.
More on the Zelenskyy firing of SBU law enforcement officials. Given the corrupt nature of the Ukrainian government I can certainly understand this point of view. The President Daily Brief podcast gives an assessment on this news and more. Ukraine’s messy internal politics rears its head as Zelenskyy sacks top officials Indeed, many political experts and anti-corruption activists viewed the removal of Ivan Bakanov, head of Ukraine’s state intelligence service, the SBU, and Iryna Venediktova, the country’s prosecutor general, by presidential decree as Zelenskyy taking advantage of extraordinary wartime authority to consolidate his own power. “It’s not a move to do the right thing. It’s a move to gain more control over our top law enforcement bodies,” Tetiana Shevchuk, a lawyer and activist at the Kyiv-based Anti-Corruption Action Center, said in an interview. ........ In Washington, State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Monday signaled no alarm within the Biden administration. “We invest not in personalities, but in institutions,” he said, adding that he expects the new prosecutor general in Ukraine to have a good relationship with their American counterparts. “Much of what we do pass to the Office of the Prosecutor General, on a routine basis, is open-source information,” he said. July 19th, 2022. Ukraine Admits That Its Government Is Filled With Russian Spies. China Continues to Escalate Against U.S. Ships in South China Sea. First up, The White House is confirming this morning that it will continue to share intelligence with Ukraine just one day after Pres. Zelynskyy admitted his government is full of Russian spies. That has major implications for our intel networks — and our $50B in aid. That’s up first.
Balkanov was his friend of many years, they came up together. This is an article from months ago about them wanting him out for a variety of reasons. Mainly, he wasn’t good at his job. Zelenskyy wants to replace Ukraine’s top spy after security failures
Russian Air Force ‘desperate’ says RAF Air Marshal Royal Air Force Air Marshal Ed Stringer told ‘The OSINT Bunker’ podcast that Russia is failing to adapt, and its air force is showing a level of desperation, acting only in areas it feels safe and using rocket-based ‘terror’ tactics elsewhere.
