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They did hand out arms to civilians. Dunno about explosives and rockets. But the plan was to melt back and engage in more guerilla warfare style tactics.
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That’s what prompted his comment, but his idea was to do it before the invasion, as a deterrent. Too late now.
“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly.
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Yeah, I’ve been reading a lot about reports of his increasing paranoia and derangement. Looking at the last two public addresses he made and that security council meeting, it definitely looks like he’s less composed than usual. To be honest, that’s the part that scares me the most.
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Originally published at: Brave Ukrainians tell Russian warship what to go do | Boing Boing
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Seizure of all Russian assets around the globe 
now. Hurt Putin & his enabler’s in the wallet, money and power is what they prize most.
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This incident is already enshrined at Wikipedia. I teared up reading it.
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Added to the post. Thanks.
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Take these seeds: Ukrainian woman offers seeds to Russian soldiers so 'sunflowers grow when they die' - YouTube
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I am saddened this happened, but yeah, Saboton is probably going to write a song about this.
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And don’t forget, those brave mother truckers brought their children to use as shields to thwart attempts to remove them.
You saw constant reference to police not being able to clear blockades or disperse rioters because there might be kids in the trucks and vans and so on.
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I’m less sure about that. Shells are comparatively cheap vs cruise missiles and guided bombs. A shell is $10k, but a cruise missile is like $2m.
Watching this all I keep thinking about the coverage of Russia’s actions in Syria.
They were basically carpet bombing, and shooting off mass amounts of cheap unguided rockets. And there was a lot of discussion of why they weren’t using all the modern cruise missiles and shit they were bragging about constantly around the same time.
Analysts were saying that while Russia has more advanced weaponry, they didn’t have the budget for a ton of it. Or at least didn’t have the budget to just use it continuously. So they routinely relied on dumb bombs and cheaper equipment. Basically keeping the good shit at home, to avoid using it faster than they could afford to replace it.
And I’ve read that Russia has had problems producing it’s headline, cutting edge fighter. Even though it’s basically just an updated version of an existing plane. Down to budget problems.
I’m starting to wonder how much of what’s going on in Ukraine might be down to Russia trying to avoid running out of shit. Also how long they can actually keep this up.
Their GDP per capita is pathetic. And that natural gas money is mostly landing in Putin and Oligarch’s pockets. It’s not like they can just drop a check off at the Russian treasury either.
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Seize enough Russian Mafia money in our banks and they just might get annoyed enough to “remove” him and get things back to normal from their point of view.
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There we go, fixed that for you
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Didn’t seem to stop them when it was Occupy or BLM.
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I imagine Ukraine’s only strategy is to make the cost of invasion higher than whatever goals Russia might have. Counterinsurgency has not worked in the last century, it isn’t likely to work this time either. But it always takes a lot of death, and sometimes a couple of government changes, before the politicals realize it.
For examples see Afghanistan for most of the last 50 years, Iraq, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, just about everywhere the Nazis invaded, much of Africa, almost every colony over the past century. About the only counterexample is Sri Lanka, and that’s more likely a pause.
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There is precedent in the Motherland, I suppose. Here’s hoping.
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Yeah but there’s an increasing amount of “Russia hasn’t gone as hard as we expected” coverage out there.
So there’s a question of why?
And also a question of how long they can keep it going.
If they can’t actually afford to just bowl over Ukraine, then the discord at home might catch up to them.
Most of the smart people out there seem to accept that Russia can’t sustain a long term occupation. Which is why insurgency was a core part of Ukraine’s plan.
Maybe the timeline is shorter than that, maybe Russia just critically destabilized itself.
I’m probably just looking for an optimistic angle, though.
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