Russia - threadbanned users in OP

It's not

Are you having an argument with your self in all this ?

Which is grand i don't mind ,

I'm just failing to see what's gotten under your skin .

The guy has given his professional opinion , on short clips of videos ,

If I watch a clip of something that I have actual expertize in ( limited field ), I critique them, sometimes it's an ooh you don't wanna do that , or an ooh that's not good cos of x , occasionally it'll be ooh you can't do. Oh turn out you can

..my field isn't life or death literally - it isn't millions and millions of dollars of time and investment all concentrated in one moment , that could decide a lot more than money ..

Anyway I'd rather an honest critique than a cheerleader ,

We've been seeing bahkmut holds for at least 4 months now , I wonder if the Ukrainians were originally planning on holding on this hard , it's not that strategically important in itself ,

But as the Russians have pushed so stupidly hard with only limited progress ( they're finally at the city) it's become a "thing " in itself , partly talismatic , but not Verdun levels , but more as a resource sponge ,it's sucking in so much Russian resources that it's blunting the spear ,

To be sure it's sucking in Ukrainian resources too - and if the artillery is 1 to 1 , then that's a lot of the limited Ukrainian artillery..Ukraine seems to be drip feeding their reinforcements in ,as needed

but the Ukrainians are apparently still holding back their reserves not committing to a front -

USAF Airforce One, travelled from Estonia enroute to Germany earlier this morning..

The 737 following at a distance is a USAF 737 support aircraft.

Currently orbiting near the Moldovan coast is a US Navy P-3 Orion ( Aries II). This SIGNIT, anti-Sub and Anti-Shipping asset is built on the old Lockheed Electra. A very old airframe supporting Gen 5 surveillance equipment. The long "tail" at the back is a Magnetic Anomaly Dectector, used in the tracking of Submarines.

He doesn't. The UA knew exactly what it was doing. The drone over head suggests they had real good intelligence on the site. Maybe the Russian troops had just moved in and the UA knew exactly what they carried into the trenches and decided to get them out before they settled in. Best time to get a rat is before he as properly found a new nest.

There are recent OSINT reports about transiting Russian subs:

Here, fishy fishy 😈

Why would they transit a sub by surface at all ?

That was not Airforce One. AF1 is used as the designation only when carrying POTUS. Biden is still in Washington. I think the aircraft in question has a role in wartime communications which may involve POTUS.

This seems to be it.

Hold the line, grind down the enemy, meanwhile build up your forces for a serious offensive. The Stalingrad model.

It's one of the most uncomfortable truths of the whole invasion that I hate being reminded about, as it depresses the hell out of me, but it cannot be ignored or forgotten.

How stupid is this? Wagner advertising stacks of dead bodies-

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/02/16/7389675/

It's abundantly clear that a lot of people don't like anything negative being said about the US, but I'm going to say it anyway - to my eyes, it's looking more and more like the US don't want Ukraine to win outright and want them to give Putin what he wants, to keep Putin in power. Better the devil you know...?

They are possibly worried that a defeat will cause Putin to lose control and be unseated - or an attempt made to unseat him - involving a near all-out civl war between the Army, Wagner, Patriot, Kadyrovs Tik-Tokers and the FSO. Orcistan descending into a fight between warlords, all trying to grab power and likely a share of the nukes, isn't a nice scenario.

All the stuff that could be immediately useful to Ukraine and game changing has been put on the long finger or refused: No planes, no drones, a token handful of tanks 9 months or more away, GLSDBs 9 months away, ATACMS never as there aren't enough of them (yeah, right), despite them being due for retirement and replacement with PrSM soon. A significant proportion of Leopard 2s have morphed into slowly refurbished Leopard 1's.

Even the give up Bakhmut spiel fits because it lets the Orcs keep on rolling, taking more and more of Donetsk and setting things up for the conditions Putin wants for his plan B negotiated peace win.

General Miley's saying Ukraine can't win and should negotiate - where have we heard that before? But General Patreus seems to think otherwise "“And my bet is on the Ukrainians in this regard.” In any case, Russia will not win the war."

While the consistent story out of Washington is that Ukraine doesn't need planes and should instead focus on attrition warfare of more than half a century ago.

Looks like I am not the only one thinking along these lines, I just found this;

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/does-the-biden-administration-want-ukraine-to-win-or-just-not-to-lose-gop-lawmakers-want-to-know

When I'm agreeing with what Liz Cheney is saying and being critical of Biden, something's wrong. Letting the Orcs get away with ourageous agressions against other countries is what created the conditions for this horrible war. Biden has lost it, he seems incapable of learning from the lessons of history. There is no point in making decisions that let Putin win and stay in power because he's not staying in power much longer anyway, given his age and health, you are just postponing the inevitable and given the internal political scheeming and manoeuvering going on in orcistan, you might not even achieve that anyway.

The cost of that postponement, if it succeeds, will be borne by the thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children who will never return under the Putin wins scenario and the brave Ukrainians who are going to die in large numbers, because they will keep pushing for victory, as in Bakhmut, not giving up because it fits with the US mealy-mouthed aims of prioritising stability in Orcistan.