Russian invasion of Ukraine

Ukraine is about to get a massive military aid package from the US, all thanks to Iran.

AIPAC is the most powerful lobbying group in the US and the only one Trump listens to. For the last 7 months Trump, through his MAGA proxies in the House of Representatives, has been blocking military aid to Ukraine including a Senate bill that combined Israel and Ukraine aid. Iran's attack on Israel last Sunday was a turning point that made military aid for Israel an urgent priority for AIPAC. Aware that Biden will not sign off aid for Israel unless aid for Ukraine is passed first, AIPAC turned the screw on Trump.

Russian tanks have some new adaptations https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1780382319997546548

They’ll need a fresh crew after a couple of those missions. Being near a small howitzer when it’s fired rattles your brain, can’t imagine being in a tin can rolling over anti-tank mines.

House celebrations after the Ukrainian aid vote goes through.

Bradleys, on transporters, just across the border in Poland,
ready to roll.

Here's a pair of '70s Soviet self-propelled guns, on their way to Ukraine. Apparently they were seized from Iraq and ended up in a private collection in the UK. The owner sold them to Ukraine. https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1783128693218414789

Ukraine’s foreign minister says "the era of peace in Europe is over" and we all have to live with war. But this is nothing like the build-up to WW1 or WW2, it's all caused by just one person. If he was out of the picture I doubt the Russian government would have the will to continue with his mad project. He doesn't always hide underground. Find out where he's going and give Ukraine lots of bunker busters. Or help some Russians to assassinate him. There's got to be a way.

I feel like there was one in particular guy who was pretty heavily involved in WW2 starting.

https://media.defense.gov/2024/Apr/24/2003448840/-1/-1/1/20240424_UKRAINE_FACT_SHEET.PDF

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Beautiful.

@nick_h. A Russian political expert told me that Putin’s role is as the ultimate arbiter and final authority among Russia’s cleptocrats, plutocrats, oligarchs, para/military leaders, and state-tolerated mob leaders, all of whom lived through the bloody infighting of the 90s. Once he makes a decision, no debate is allowed, and it’s agreed and accepted that public complaint or disobedience will be answered overtly with incarceration, extreme violence or death.

He’s the single apex predator in an ecosystem full of predators, psychos and wanna-be supreme leaders. Every other major player who’s still alive, influential and free has adapted to survive and thrive abiding by his rules, and they have a vested interest in preserving the status quo, lest they lose it all in a reshuffle.

Prigozhin is the prime example. A billionaire with a veteran army at his back, poised to march on Moscow, and he chickened out. Opinions vary, but I suspect he realised Putin wouldn’t replace Shoigu with him despite Shoigu actively sabotaging Wagner in Ukraine, and when he realised he didn’t have the backing to challenge Shoigu or even Putin directly, he threw in the towel, possibly with assurances that Putin wouldn’t harm him. Then his plane fell out of the sky killing everyone onboard.

He's a one man regime. No rivals. Probably the richest man in the world*. Commands his army to go to war for the sake of the nationalism which apparently justifies his rule.

*https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/how-russian-president-vladimir-putin-secretly-became-the-worlds-richest-person/news-story/302a422aca6502c7346cc26435ab2e75

A close-up of the Russian Shedtank https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1783556281585873189

Obviously inspired by the Arab Spring helmets.

Cluster bombs on Odessa:

https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1785236222459154705

The US has given Ukraine cluster munitions since last year. Obviously a different situation if Ukraine is using them against a purely military target with no risk of collateral damage.

(Nvmd. Misread the tweet, thought the use of cluster munitions was the main point.)

One of Putin's generals called him and said "Mr. President, we need to use just one timezone across Russia. These multiple timezones are just too difficult. Last week I sent men to Tashkent and they arrived too late. This week I flew to Novosibirsk and they told me I was too early for the meeting ".

Putin's response: "I know what you mean. I called Prigozhin's family to offer my condolences and they told me the plane had not yet taken off".

Bleak assessment

https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/05/02/a-fresh-russian-push-will-test-ukraine-severely-says-a-senior-general

Russia has a total of 514,000 land troops committed to the Ukrainian operation, he says,

That's way more than I would have guessed. It's crazy to think the people of Russia are still putting up with this.

There's a 7 minute long video on one of the Telegram channels where a cheery Russian soldier is walking along a bombed out tree line between two Ukrainian fields. As he walks there's just no end of dead Russian soldiers. The corpses are in varying states of decay suggesting repeated waves of attack and retreat. I could only half watch, but comments underneath the video claim they counted roughly 100 uniformed corpses.

Yeh that video is grim, read a tweet explaining where it was and that basically was still contested and under Ukrainian artillery range so bodies weren't getting retrieved and were just building up over a longish period

It's fascinating that a large number of Russians must have seen that video, yet they do... nothing. The obvious retort to that would be something along the lines of Putins absolute control of media and the public sphere, harsh crackdowns on disset and so on. But if seeing undisputed evidence of the meat wave tactic and its consequences won't turn Russian sentiments around, what would it take?

Or the majority are there by thier choice, they're paid what they view a good wage and think when signing up the risks are worth it so they do nothing?

It’s such bad odds though man. 50,000 dead and 150,000 casualties according to latest best guesses. Somebody further up the page said 514,000 active troops in the theatre right now. That gives you about a 5/2 chance of getting tagged by something and a 10/1 chance of dying.

There is no way you would take that chance if you had free choice and honest information. Misinformation and rampant nationalism got them good.

You make that choice when you have no information but also no prospects,I imagine if you live 2000km from Moscow in a small rural town or deindustrisled city, someone offering you the chance to earn double the national average salary a month sounds pretty attractive and you're just going to do it for six months or a year right, how unlucky would you have to be for it to go wrong.....

It's not urbanites from West of the urals signing up