23 Likes
Zelenskiy had a dire message for Ukrainians tonight :
“This night will be the hardest… We must withstand,” he said in an address. “This night the enemy will be using all available means to break our resistance. This night they will launch an assault.”
“This night will be harder than the day. Many cities of our state are under attack: Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, our boys and girls in the Donbas, the cities of the south, special attention to Kyiv,” he added. “We can’t lose the capital.”
14 Likes
25 Likes
19 Likes
Between Zelenskiy’s statement, the Russian protesters, and the journalist seeing her own flat bombed…
16 Likes
The technique is called “blinding fire” and its kind of a waste of time if you dont have at least a 0.30 cal machine gun. The vision blocks (periscopes) are several inches thick and made of laminated glass. If a lucky shot hits one it will just crack it but it’ll be mostly usable. And tanks carry spares.
The main gun optics are protected from small arms fire by doors which are opened when about to fire or when being used for surveillance. If you did manage to take it out the gunner still has the GAS sight (gunners auxiliary sight) which is a dumb tube with an eyepiece. Youll never be a good enough shot to hit it.
Just in case anyone felt the urge to try to take out a tank using a rifle.
25 Likes
“ In “The White Man’s Burden”, Kipling encouraged the American annexation and colonization of the Philippine Islands, a Pacific Ocean archipelago conquered in the three-month Spanish–American War (1898).[1] As an imperialist poet, Kipling exhorts the American reader and listener to take up the enterprise of empire”
That’s a weird ass use of white man’s burden. There’s no racial component here as the western countries involved are all majority white countries. Some overwhelmingly so. There’s no western imperialism here as it’s Russia invading another country & being explicitly imperialist.
The people talking about a manifest destiny for a greater country are the invaders, the Russians.
24 Likes
But…movies…
11 Likes
here’s a document which is required reading for one of the courses at the u.s. army war college. it’s 20 years old and doesn’t include any insights from iraq or afghanistan but it is probably a decent critical precis of the lens through which u.s military leadership and possibly nato staff are watching this through.
10 Likes
Molotov to the air vents on the top surface is far easier to aim, especially when dropped from, for example, a window.
18 Likes
Russia seems to have very few friends indeed. Here’s one of the few. Not a great character witness.
9 Likes
Maybe a bunch of hemp rope to get tied up in their wheels…like a stuck vacuum cleaner roller? /s
11 Likes
He is an optometrist, you know
(Nothing against optometrists, it’s just…weird)
8 Likes
ophthalmologist., just like rand paul
6 Likes
I sympathize with the sentiment of containment; and it is difficult to find a metaphor that resounds well.
What we’re somewhat less good at (lately, at least) in the west are propaganda and counter-propaganda campaigns. Of late I get the impression that Russia seeks to disable and interfere with chaos. I think is harder from the outset to seek a specific outcome. The outcome of the war’s end as a goal has the advantage that the memory of war in Russia is still a living memory.
I think your point has mert to the extent that a direct military engagement would end badly (although “direct” doesn’t seem to stop countries sneaking in their latest kit to test out in live battle conditions). I think there should be, and there likely are, “behind the scenes” engagements that will have some effect but with less likelihood of the fight spreading. Opposition to the war within Russia is already enough to be a threat to the regime. We shall see if it rallies enough support where it matters.
2 Likes
One thing that this war highlights is that “direct military engagement” may not have any real meaning anymore. With Anonymous engaged in hacking, various nations supplying intelligence, financial sanctions that can disrupt a economy and thereby bring chaos “back home,” it’s like all warfare is asymmetrical now.
14 Likes
You’re interpreting him very generously.
I absolutely want this war to stop. I want it not only to not spread, but to reverse in a decisive way. Even better, I want the Russian people to overthrow their authoritarian overlord, with this as the final impetus.
What he’s saying is, unless I grossly misunderstand, is that everyone should bury their heads in the sand and leave Ukrainians to hang. That is wrong. Plain and simple.
That is based on context, in which he responds to posts about reasonable escalation of sanctions with, “no, do nothing or you’ll anger the despot!”
28 Likes
I’ll admit that having commercial satellite images that are “military grade of not so yore” is an interesting twist. Spotting Russian transport helicopters lined up on a long highway in Belarus seems like highly actionable intelligence.
As for the hacking… well… I’ve warned about that once or twice myself. It’s interesting to watch Anonymous at work.
8 Likes
Putin’s apologist?
7 Likes
I have a bizarre instinct towards dialectic… not sure if it’s the math training or the Communists in the family 
10 Likes
