Putin is juggling three very sharp knives. Chances are strong that one of them will land right on his head.
Cannot happen soon enough. Might not lead to someone better, might be worse, but whoever it is will be too focused on consolidating internal power for a time to pursue wars of conquest. At least for a bit.
The worst-case scenario is if the warlord faction deposes him. The fascist mercs and Chechen terror troopers have built their case for power on the claim they can win the war. But really all options suck and the consolidation of power will be very ugly no matter who wins.
Very, very ugly, and much blood will flow. Not sure there is a clean way out, though. At this point, all options suck.
āWe had been against the war from the beginning, attending anti-war protests in Moscow but after the partial mobilisation, my husband started looking for a way to leave ā we were worried he could be drafted at any time because he has an engineering background. Needing him for military purposes was a horrible thought for us.
This is going to be a business opportunity for the people who tried to clear up after the NVA and the Red Army in the former GDRā¦
Such a sad one.
What do you mean?
I recently listened to a historian shedding a light on the background of the Bandera problem. Difficult story, all in all. Interesting bit of info I didnāt know was hat he was killed in Munich. Interesting bit I knew was that he was definitely supporting the Nazis at one point, and definitely was also prosecuted by them at another point. And those points are fairly close in timeā¦
Stuff like this:
After the GDR collapsed, some companies specialised on mine detection, disarmament or destruction. Some are still in business, elsewhere. I vaguely remember that most areas were declared cleared of mines in 1997.
Some years ago, I worked on a site used by the Red Army until 1990, where ammunition hasnāt been cleared completely - the area is still a no-go zone, basically.(However, some people actually go there for mushroomā¦ 
) The local disarment specialist showed me a collection of stuff to be careful about and told me clearly not to touch anything I would find, but take coordinates and a photo from a safe distance and inform them later.
Solovyov approvingly mentions the remarks made by Prigozhin and Kadyrov.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1578323188655980544
Iām a little surprised that heās so surprised about the numbers.
Iām absolutely not a logistician or military historian; but from what Iāve read the on-paper-as-presented-publicly-by-HQ percentage of active-combatant to total āmilitaryā percentage for a variety of contemporary militaries is in the 10-20% range; and Russia both has a fair number of forces that are either busy standing by at various points on the very long border, of limited relevance to the current situation(non Black Sea navy was cut off from the theatre pretty much day one; Black Sea navy basically canāt get within Neptune range anymore; air force isnāt quite absent but is strangely quiet, strategic missile only becomes relevant if Putin decides to go out with a bang), and a fine tradition of ādead soulsā on the roster of alleged human resources and various half-stolen scrap written up as reserve armor; so delivering ~150,000 active combatants to Ukraine without going full total war mobilization(or even too seriously conscripting people who matter in places that matter) actually seems about right.
Clearly not good enough; and the revelation that even some of the āeliteā paratrooper and specialist forces actually werenāt so hot and ended up getting chewed up by regular, sometimes even reservist, Ukrainian forces is deeply embarrassing; but, under the constraints of a desire to minimize public fuss, maintain defensive capabilities, and endemic corruption, delivering 150,000 actual combatants out of a nominal military force of 2 million just doesnāt sound that shocking. As a US taxpayer Iād hope that we could deliver better quality; but I wouldnāt expect an American combatant/support ratio too radically different.
Beau has thoughts:
why would he stop at just one
The US gov is paying starlink to provide that access. They should start bouncing all of Mucks invoices.
Itās an ironic gift, considering that due to actions of both dictators ŠŃŠ½ŃŠŗŃ ŃŃŠ°ŠŗŃŠ°ŃŠ½Ń Š·Š°Š²Š¾Š“ (Minsk Tractor Works) has been cut off from EU market. Belarusian tractors were very popular here in Poland before war and I bet that losing such market will hurt the factory and Belarusian economy.
