Russia - threadbanned users in OP

We've known about the HiMars since day one ,they were also modified so if they got ATACms through 3rd parties they still wouldn't be able to lunch them from Ukraine,

And was an adviser to pre-breakaway Poland, then the USSR under Yeltsin.

He has some good anti-poverty ideas. Not sure they translate to diplomacy.

Small piece from the Guardian regarding Kyiv at the moment. Looks like they intercepted the missiles that were headed to the capital

In his office in Kyiv’s city hall, mayor Vitali Klitschko is planning for the worst and hoping for the best.

The previous day, in the middle of the sixth mass Russian missile strike against Ukrainian cities that had sent Kyiv’s resident to the bomb shelters and metro stations, no rockets had made it through to hit the capital.

On the mayor’s desk is a newspaper he has had produced and distributed around the city in recent days. Bearing his name, and the headline “We will overcome and win”, it lists all the emergency services in Kyiv that will be available in case of what should be unthinkable but isn’t: the failure of all power and services to a city of 3 million in the depths of Ukraine’s winter.

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, said: ‘They want to freeze the civilian population. They want … to have a Ukraine without Ukrainians.’ Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

Across three densely printed pages are supermarkets with generators that will work in that emergency, the post offices and banks, and arrangements for public transit.

It lists the 45 underground metro stations that will remain open as shelters and provide phone charging and internet, as well as tips for surviving a prolonged blackout.

“It’s for the worst-case scenario,” says Klitschko, a former world champion boxer turned politician, picking up the paper.

We need to tell people what they need to do if the situation becomes critical and they don’t have internet and connection to media.

Life in the city can often seem largely normal outside of the massive airstrikes that have been taking place, often weekly, since 20 October. Restaurants are busy and the streets are jammed with traffic at close to prewar levels, but with the first snow on the ground and the temperature hitting -8C this week, life in the capital is also overshadowed by the risk of a humanitarian crisis.

“Thanks to our military, they knocked out all the missiles fired at Kyiv yesterday,” says Klitschko.

But it was only two weeks ago we came close to a total blackout. Then the temperature was above freezing but imagine the same situation if it happened now when it is close to -10 outside and with no electricity water, or heating. The consequences would be disastrous.

I had a horrible feeling they might pick Putin this year since he's been the main instigator of all of the terrible events that have occurred (and since Hitler was picked one year). Glad they went with Zelenskyy though. Incredible story especially if you consider his position just a year ago and unimaginable if you go back only 4 years.

This invasion will always be what defines him though and cometh the hour, cometh the man. The speech that he gave on the night of the 23rd of February where he addressed the Russian soldiers themselves was something else. He told them not to come but if they did then they would die in Ukraine. The Ukrainian armed forces made sure that he lived up to his word. He didn't take the option to flee. He's made sure to be visible and to communicate to his people constantly. He hasn't been afraid to take tough decisions when it comes to removing personnel. he's constantly badgered governments from around the world and made sure that Ukraine has not been forgotten. He's hosted dozens of leaders personally and visited troops on the front. In short he's played a blinder and has made Putin look all the more like the aged, scared, aloof tyrant that he is.

And why not? after all, they planned to recover Alaska too from the theft in 1867, that deal amounted to whole sale robbery, but it will be put right. ( came from the 2 muppeteers, Solovyov and Margarita)

I assume the legions of Putin bots are in absolute meltdown......lots of "Azov Nazis", "eight years of genocide in the Donbass", "Ukraine is corrupt" and so on.

They can legitimately carpet bomb Moscow as far as I'm concerned and I'd still class it as self defense. The Russians have given them carte blanche to do as they please, they won't but it would be completely fair if they did.

While the strike may seem to many to be reckless, it was, in fact, a strategically masterful play on the part of Ukraine. The drones allegedly used in the strike are highly accurate, despite their age, and the target's were clearly a show of capability towards Russia, given the impact point.

The consequences have been 3-fold.

1. The stragetic bombers are now being moved to other dispersal bases to protect them. This causes further logistical disruption to Russia.

2. The attack has highlighted further failures in Russia's strategic air-defences, where large, highly significant sections of airspace are clearly unprotected.

3. The attack has also forced Belarus to move their military assets from their current positions and I wouldn't be surprised to see the IL-76's stationed in Belarus and indeed Kaliningrad moved further inland.

Regarding the Nuclear arms, they couldn't be safer. First of all, you could detonate a MOAB over them and they wouldn't attain nuclear fusion. That's not how nuclear weapons work.

Secondly, the weapons are stored in two main areas. One in a recently renovated bunker 7km away from Engels and a second, central storage area about 36km from the base.

Both bunkers are protected from a direct Nuclear strike and have blast-doors that ate thousands of tonnes in weight.

Ukraine attacked, in a pre-emptive defensive strike, with a relatively small warhead that caused little physical damage, but massive psychological damage.

The strike was pre-emptive in that the base was about to launch another, highly illegal attack against a sovereign nation's civilian infrastructure, essentially rendering an entire population defenseless against the coming winter. Genocide by proxy, in my mind.

Does it sit well with you that Russia continues to commit horrendous atrocities against the civilians of Ukraine without any response or recourse? Is it OK that women and children die in the hundreds of thousands during the coming winter due to lack of heat, so long as no strikes against an aggressive Russia takes place.?

I've a good mind to send you some pictures of my time in Damascus and Allepo that demonstrate the pure evil ruthlessness of the Russian male soldier. A soldier without empathy nor fear of consequences for his actions, driven by money and a deep, psychopathic desire to kill

Russia will never stop. It is the West's prime responsibility to drive Russia back to the 1930's in terms of military capabilities and to subdue a leader and a nation who have lost touch with their humanity and reality.

Russians are trying to claim that the drone only hit them because it "impersonated" a civilian airliner with a flight plan and transponder, launched somewhere from the caucasus, and then went dark and hit their base.

Far more likely they just fucked up and it went right past air defence, but nobody wants to take the blame

Hit it again.