Japan forks over 100 military vehicles to Ukraine (mostly trucks). They even concluded a Japanese handover ceremony, where a representative from each side stares at the other's shoes while they both hang on to a folder in a bid to win the highly-coveted Operating Manual for the Toyota trucks. Japan transfers 100 military vehicles to Ukraine AP
Time for Putin to start a gripe session about Ukrainian air power. Sweden is going to start training Ukrainian pilots on Gripen 4th Gen aircraft. The Gripens were designed to defend against Russian aircraft, require a shorter runway than F-16's, and are easier to learn how to fly. I don't know why Sweden is saying that they don't plan on providing the aircraft to Ukraine: why would you let them train on the aircraft if there was no chance they would get any to fight with? Maybe they want F-16's to enter the battle first, and then they will provide Gripen aircraft. Ukrainian pilots to train on Sweden’s Gripen jets, says minister
Russia decides to sell Zelenskyy's holiday home in Crimea to raise money for the war. Who is going to buy it? What Russian with two nickels to run together will have enough confidence that Russia can prevent Ukraine from overrunning Crimea? Ukraine war latest: Kyiv shoots down salvo of Russian missiles and drones It seems more like a cheap ploy to get Zelenskyy to change his counter-offensive plans to focus on Crimea, which is probably not as valuable a military target as eastern Ukraine at the moment. Russia is getting bottom-of-the-barrel desperate.
win for the good guys, hopefully that ship was full of Iranian drones. long range weapons being put to good use to disrupt arms shipments Ukrainians claim to have destroyed large Russian warship in Berdiansk (msn.com) Ukrainian armed forces on Friday identified a large Russian landing ship that they said they destroyed at the port of Berdiansk in southern Ukraine the day before. The port, which had recently been occupied by Russian forces with several Russian warships in dock, was rocked by a series of heavy explosions soon after dawn on Thursday. ........................... In a statement, the armed forces said: “In the Azov operational zone, according to updated information, a large landing ship “Saratov” was destroyed during the attack on the occupied Berdiansk port. Large landing ships “Caesar Kunikov” and “Novocherkassk” were [also] damaged. Other losses of the enemy are being clarified.” Several Russian ships had been unloading military equipment at Berdiansk in recent days, according to reports from the port by Russian media outlets. The United States said that Ukraine likely did conduct a successful attack against Russian ships in Berdiansk, according to a defense official, though it is unclear what type of weapon or weapons were used in the attack. It echoes a similar statement from the British Ministry of Defence, which said that Ukrainian forces have attacked “high value targets” in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including a landing ship and ammunition depots at Berdiansk.
The average German in the 30's were probably just as kind as the Germans today, but they supported the Nazis' rise because they were their devils. I suppose human nature doesn't really change. The guy standing next to the guy with the Nazi insignia had a Right Sector tattoo on his face. We have very few pictures of that unit, and 3 are already clearly identified as neonazis, just by pictures. This suggests to me that it's not an isolated occurrence. IMO if there aren't many Nazis then you don't need them to win and it's best to not work with them. If there are so many that you can't win without them, then you should ask yourself what it means to win. I've said it many times before, great nations fall from within, not from without. Russia cannot possibly bring us down, but the rise of a militant far right (or far left for that matter) can.
Not quite. Hitler did something in the 20's and early 30's to change German culture. He formed youth groups that appeared (to the parents, at least) to be something similar to Boy Scouts. In the youth groups, he taught them a warrior culture, got them in good physical condition, taught them how to fight, and indoctrinated them on his vision of a Nazi Germany. They were raised to be his ruthless army of the 40's. Later in their training, he taught them to reject their parents and give their loyalty to their new leader. In short--they were brainwashed to immunize them to the horrors of warfare. Kindness was one thing that would not be tolerated. Kindness was already in short supply in the 1920's because of the abject poverty the Germans were in after WWI. By 1936, all Aryan children over the age of 6 (six!) were required to join a Hitler youth group. "You're seven--time to learn how to fight." https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/joining-hitler-youth The rest of the world was probably lucky that Hitler didn't wait a few more years to start WWII. I can't imagine how ruthless his armies would have been if they consisted primarily of soldiers that were in his youth groups from age 6 (a six-year-old in 1936 would only be 15 by 1945), and how powerful they would be with a few more years to develop wehrmacht technology and the factories to mass-produce it. You should probably read up a little on history. There are a lot of little details that add up to the bigger picture. Most soldiers are in their 20's, with a large percentage of them in their early 20's. They are not fully mature at that age. They are just starting to replace childhood fantasies (superheroes, Dungeons & Dragons, video games, etc.) with something more mature, and they are often drawn to a narrative that offers order, power, and control. (That's why a 21-year-old on a power trip started releasing top secret information.) The Nazi narrative does exactly that--it offers a sense of order, power and control. Most soldiers get that narrative from the military itself and their part within it, but there will always be some people who don't fit in and will look for a counter-culture identity, a sub-culture that makes them special. It seems to happen in most western militaries. I don't know that the U.S. military does enough to discourage the Nazi sub-culture. The people who join the military are not completely representative of the population. Many join because their other education/employment options are limited (possibly because they didn't pay attention in school, or just didn't fit in). A photo with multiple neo-Nazis in it should not be unexpected. They will tend to hang out and bond with other neo-Nazis, and serve together in the same unit if they can. Diversity is not their strong suit. And yes, Russia could bring the U.S. down, if they attacked us with nuclear weapons. It would be suicidal on their part, of course. But it could happen.
Yes, I believe they began the “withdrawal.” But their withdrawal simply means handing over duties to regular Russian troops. Thus, if Backmut is not held, Prigozhin gets to point the finger again at his political enemy, the defense minister.
This is a silly argument. And you aren’t going to persuade anyone with it who is not at least partially sympathetic to Russia’s plight. I mean, what are we saying here? Was Ukraine’s secret Nazi government (with its Jewish puppet leader, of course) getting ready to embark on a campaign of conquest against its neighbors when Russia came to our collective rescue? How generous of them. But it just so happens — right? — that their selfless “special military operation” coincidentally lines up with long-term national security objectives to reunite former Soviet peoples under benevolent Russian leadership. One more point on the Ukrainian Nazi narrative. It certainly occurs to me that when one’s country has been invaded, as Ukraine was in 2014 and again in 2022, it tends to bring out extreme forms of nationalism. If we had a bully of a neighbor contemptuously slice off a significant piece of our territory, murder our people who resisted, put our fields to the torch, rape our women, kidnap our children, then — hell, I don’t know — it might make some of our violent, angry, young men even more violent and angry. Has that been happening in Ukraine since 2014? Probably. And as part of our reconstruction package to Ukraine, we can help Ukraine resocialize its young men to a safe and secure environment … after Russia has been defeated and humbled.
But you realize those are pictures of Russians right? Russians who decided to side with Ukraine against Russia. It's one thing when some elements of the Ukrainian army are neo-Nazis, which BTW despite what you say is not tolerable to me, it says something else when a sizeable portion of Russians who decide to fight for Ukraine against Russia are neo-Nazis. To spell it out for you, it says something about the degree that each side tolerates Nazism. I've been on the internet long enough to know the futility of changing people's minds. Minds do change, but usually long after the debate is over, long after the desire to win an online argument ends. I just want you to try to remember, say a day in 2020/21, when the topic of white supremacy/Nazism came up and what yours thoughts were about working with them, then what you thoughts are about it now, and how far you've progressed. Whatever you went through, many others in this country have also gone through. That's why certain politicians can cozy up to the likes of Proud Boys or Oath Keepers and get away with it. Advancing your own political goals is important to you right now. You're naive to think you can just put the lid on extremism once whatever your objective is achieved, but chances are extremism will consume you before that happens. Whatever you aim to achieve, if you're desperate enough to work with Nazis to achieve it, it's probably something very difficult and will take a very long time. During that time extremism will feed on your support until it's out of your control. Thats how the fringe becomes the mainstream.
Motivational video message From Ukrainian Armed Forces CIC. In prep for counter offensive? “…defeat the killers of my brothers, the rapists of my sisters….”
Apparently, Russia is being selective about which airlines are allowed to fly over the giant country. Finnish Airlines, right on the border with Russia, is on the no-fly list and has to fly around the massive country, almost bankrupting the airline. Finland is surrounded by Russia on more than two sides, so flights have to take a very long path just to clear Russian territory to get anywhere. A nine-hour flight from Helsinki to Beijing now takes 14 hours. Ten percent of Finnair's fleet does not have the range to complete their routes to Asia. They have been leasing aircraft to other countries' airlines to get some use out of them. China's airlines have been benefiting from cooperating with Russia, as they get to overfly Russia, while Europe's carriers cannot. France wants to deny landing rights to airplanes that overflew Russia, but the rest of Europe seems willing to accept the uneven playing field. The U.S. is only allowing 12 flights a week from Chinese carriers. How Putin’s war redrew the skies – and forced airlines to fly to ‘hell and back’
A useful article that goes into why a small percentage of soldiers in most western countries are fixated on Nazi culture, and how the media came to its overblown coverage of the issue in Ukraine. The misinformed media actually predicted in 2014 that Nazis in Ukraine's military would take over Ukraine's government in a coup. Never happened. Ukraine's government was aware of the issue, and took steps to marginalize the Nazi culture in the military, preventing them from promoting or expanding their culture within the military. The policy: keep those views to yourself and train hard. An ignorant person might suggest that Ukraine should boot the Nazis from the military, of course. But they are in an existential fight for their freedom, obviously, and they need every able-bodied person they can get to fight the Russians. The U.S. had Marine Corps Scout Snipers take up the SS runes as their unofficial symbol in 2012. They were punished, naturally. But the U.S. was not in an existential fight in 2012, and could afford the disruption to one of their front-line fighting groups to get the situation corrected. Illia Ponomarenko: Why some Ukrainian soldiers use Nazi-related insignia
Yep, one of those passenger jets would suddenly be involved in some spying mission to justify bringing it down...whether by a landing or the other way.
Rumor has it that Prigo is going into exile. Possibly to Sudan. Someplace where he won't talk too loudly. Prigozhin to be sent to Sudan: What fate awaits Wagner leader?
