Is it a surprise that a country most severely impacted by fuel shortages is looking to do more business with Russia? This is why sanctions on energy are destined to fail. There are way too many energy hungry pleb countries that if presented even with a slight discount (which adds up to tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars) will jump to seize it.



https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/28/cash-strapped-sri-lanka-gets-russian-oil-to-ease-shortages

This post was edited by ofthevoid on May 28 2022 07:12pm

Finally some reason: Zelensky just admitted in his latest speech that Ukraine will not be able to win back all of the territory they lost to Russia over the past years by military means, because that would cause hundreds of thousands of additional casualties.

Good. Ukraine will imho try to win back the region around Kherson and perhaps some parts of the western Donbass in the coming months if and when they stop the Russian advances and get supplied with heavy arms from NATO - but they need to come to terms with ceding Crimea, Mariupol and the bulk of the Donbass. The sooner both sides temper their expectations and the sooner the will to fight for territory which will obviously belong to the other side in any reasonable peace treaty wanes, the sooner we can get to a ceasefire and then to an end of this war.

well its an update anyway. thanks for sharing.

also this from the bbc:

"Russia's ambassador in Britain has told the BBC he does not believe his country will use tactical nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. Andrei Kelin said that according to Russian military rules, such weapons are not used in conflicts like this one. Russia has very strict provision for their use, he said, mainly when the state's existence is threatened. "It has nothing to do with the current operation," he told Sunday Morning."

whether its true or not, it is a step back.

This post was edited by ferdia on May 29 2022 01:34am

Well, they are making progress with conventional military means at the moment. Painstakingly slow imho, and it remains to be seen how long they can keep up the intensity of their current operations in and around Sieverodonetsk, but it's progress nonetheless. Thus, they currently have no reason to continue saber-rattling with their nukes.

i made a mistake and posted this in the gun thread, meant to post it here:

just posting this here for visibility, noting some people might not have watched this movie:



just browsing some of the comments on youtube:

"dont usually comment on youtube, but a lot of people dont realize that this is how the Taliban was formed. Hence the last line in the movie, Wilson is quoted saying "We were fucked inthe endgame."
"William, it is sad to see that you missed the point. Everything that Charlie Wilson did led us further into the quagmire that Afghanistan became. We -well some of us, most of us weren't paying attention - wanted Afghanistan to become the Soviet's Vietnam. But it became another of ours."
"Wilson's efforts to catalyze American aid to the under-represented Islamic community was an eerie foreshadow to the discontentment-mismanagement based Israel-Palestine hostilities of modern day that led up to 9/11.
"people commenting badly this movie did not get a thing of it.....at the end of the movie Charlie asks for money to rebuild afghanistan...to bring education and culture, otherwise all efforts made will be useless if not dangerous....and the answer from other congresmen is "we have defeated russian...afghanistan is not our priority anymore"...... this is such of a message.....if you make war and don't bring money for reconstruction of culture and education.....it will be useless...."

We dont think conquest way in Europe.
In the past there was an union between Poland and Lithuania, we were single country, and Ukraine was also a part of this union.
When the countries decided to go their own ways, there were some tensions, I admit that. And people had different views, and the divorce wasnt particulary easy.
But now since 1945 the borders are set. And since it was 77years ago, nearly nobody living even remember times when the borders were different.
The borders are now super stable, and nobody even thinks about getting extra territory.
What for?
For some 100 years old history that nobody alive even remembers?
I dont know a single person here that would say "hey, we should attack some country to get some extra territory/people". We are pacifist people.

I also dont agree with a description that Poland was backstabbing everywhere, many countries attacked us in our long history, we werent worse. in fact I personally believe we were on the better half of the countries, as we had a some kind of medieval democracy, with many freedoms, a relatively weak King and a relatively small army. When we had to defend, the people gathered for defense, instead of the regular army.

Russian siege warfare is no joke. They move slow but they get into place, they turn your city into rubble, they make that rubble bounce, and when everything is dead they loot.

"Denazification".

Right, but Russians have their problems too.
Three months into its wider war on Ukraine, Russia is running out of tanks.
As a result of losses during hostilities, the Russians were forced to withdraw from storage T-62 tanks.
The T-62 is an obsolete tank, that was in production in the Soviet Union from 1961 to 1975.
Some T-62s are still usable because they’re simpler than more modern types are, with fewer delicate electronics. Also, there are more of them and thus a greater chance a few battalions’ worth of T-62s escaped catastrophic rust.
The appearance of T-62s near the Ukrainian front isn’t the only sign that the Kremlin is growing desperate. Having lost as many as 15,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen killed in action in three months, the Russian armed services also are short on trained personnel.

It’s not for no reason that the Kremlin has been paying the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian mercenary firm, to round out depleted army formations and even pilot air force planes.

Old tanks. Mercenary pilots. These are signs of deep degradation in the Russian military as it concentrates its best remaining forces for a fresh offensive in eastern Ukraine aimed at surrounding the city of Severodonetsk.

To add to your list: Russia is increasingly using anti-ship missiles against land-based targets, which strongly hints at them running low on guided missiles.

Sounds like

NATO Members Informally Agreed Not to Send Heavy Weapons to Ukraine

https://en.defence-ua.com/industries/nato_informally_agreed_to_not_supply_heavy_weapons_to_ukraine-3072.html

Meaning we could see more loot, rapes, executions in the next months, till russia eat all what it want ?
Hard to believe. Zenlensky may not stay silent on this.