"The 1980's are calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

It seems that the Russian military machine may have been as massively overrated as Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard was in the runup to Gulf War I. The incompetence the Russians have shown in all phases has left every military expert I've seen on TV absolutely gobsmacked. Of course, the concern is that any armed force can be subject to ring rust if they haven't fought for a while. (That's something that has happened to the U.S. several times) and given Putin's demonstrated viciousness they have real incentive to get things cleaned up. However, it is interesting that the same problems with the Russian command and control systems and their logistics have cropped up repeatedly since the Czars were in charge.

By treaty no aircraft carrier can go through the Bosporus which is why the SU/Russia had/have Aircraft Carrying Cruisers instead of aircraft carriers.


I wish I was joking. They for real got around the treaty by putting a couple guns on it and calling it a cruiser!

In other Musk news, he's refused to shut down Russian state media services on Starlink, citing free speech.

Russia had agreed a temporary ceasefire near two Ukrainian cities in order to allow evacuations, but has reneged and continued shelling. From the BBC - no link as it's the live feed so this will soon slip down the page:

Earlier:

Now:

If he did that, it’d be the same as your ISP blocking them, not your cable company blocking them.

In the US, cable channels like Fox often make money by charging cable companies to carry their channel, regardless of how many people watch the channel. With some networks making more money from those fees than the ads they run on their network. In a case like that, it makes sense to cut them as you hurt them financially. But blocking RT on the web doesn’t really do much of anything to them economically and such blocks can easily be bypassed with a VPN.

Yeah that’s a bad precedent to set. It’d be no different from Comcast or AT&T doing that.

Edit: that’s probably exactly what whichever government it is that told him to censor Russian state media wants, precedent for ordering ISPs to censor for the state. Guessing it’s the US. UK already has that precedent, IIRC.

"Governments that are indiscriminately shelling innocent populations must be able to lie to that population about their aggressions, otherwise we risk giving governments too much power" is a hell of a take.

I'll never understand people captured by dogma. No dogma ever is sufficient to meet the needs of reality. They all fail at some point or another.

Oh, and in case you forgot already:
http://wordforge.net/index.php?posts/3396691/

Facebook during Russian interference. Facebook after Russian interference.

One of the big themes on multiple websites I'm on is less Russian bots and trolls saying things specifically to make each side hate each other.

No idea if this is true.

Is this the real reason for invading?

No.
https://www.popsci.com/military-avi...2009-04/battling-over-aging-nuclear-warheads/

People are calling for the pilot be captured (you can see a parachute deploy) and tried for war crimes.

Did the pilot personally do anything in particular beyond being part of the military machine?

I'm not being awkward (for once), just curious given the number of captives already taken why they would be of significance.

From your link

Those parts are necessary for the weapons to work properly, failures of those components means that the bomb might not detonate, not hit its target, or might go off prematurely. That's also describing US weapons, and there's undoubtedly differences between US and Russian components, and as we've been seeing, it doesn't look like Russian military hardware is all that reliable. Their nukes might not be any different, but it's certainly not something we should gamble with.

This won't be the last time I fear.

Well, he appears to have been shot down over a civilian area. It's not out of the realm of possibility that he was dropping bombs on civilians or strafing them with his weapons.

Israeli PM Bennett meets Putin in Moscow to discuss Ukraine crisis

PGM = Precision Guided Munitions

I really don’t get Israel’s stance here.