Russia - threadbanned users in OP

France have a big presence in Africa ? All I know is that they were in Algeria

They had a very significant presence in West Africa - there's even a word (in French) for the region: Françafrique. France maintained strong military ties until very recently, when local militias and heads of state decided they wanted to be rid of the last vestiges of the colonial yoke. Naturally enough, they sought help from/were encouraged by everybody's favourite sponsor of Peace and Goodwill to All Men, a certain Vladimir Putin (& Co.) It was quite bizarre to see - only last year,in Mali - black Africans proclaiming their love for Russia in helping them fight against a white European former imperial power.

France still has four military bases in West Africa - Sénégal, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon and Djibouti.

20 Days in Mariupol takes the Oscar, good speech !

What's their Boards.ie username? Timmysomething?

This is some gap in munitions / shell production from West to Ukraine. Whats equally as worrying is the Wests way lower production vs Russian production IF ( some say when ) the day comes Russia invades further west into Europe

Russia appears on track to produce nearly three times more artillery munitions than the US and Europe, a key advantage ahead of what is expected to be another Russian offensive in Ukraine later this year.

Maybe .. but still a threat and alot of it still works. Shear volume in some cases can count and backed by an putins war time economy which is competely focused on war and where Putin & Co dont give a crap about the state or its people. these are all "advantages" vs the west for the long term .. Of Course, IF they can keep this up. We also see this shear volume mentality where fodder to the meat grinder is concerned. That matters also .. if you throw enough at a thing then it will have successes?

I am all for arming Ukraine to the hilt and also have no issues what so ever with Ukraine attacking where it wants inside Russia including the Kremlin. The sooner the better as far as Im concerned, bring the war to the heart of Russia. And i think Ukraine should be resourced accordingly with weapons and support to do that job. I really dont care what Putin thinks, THAT has been the problem with the wests attitude to Putin for too long now. Gloves should be well off now

Artillery is an issue here due to lack of air support, in any NATO-led scenario, the artillery would be wiped out in days and the massive amounts of ordinance worthless.

What is shows is that russia is planning future operations against non-NATO countries, the air-superiority gap to NATO is too large.

Meanwhile in the land of HYBRID Warfare:

I wonder re that recent Linkedin outage & FB, Insta etc before that last week I mentioned over at the Social media platform thread here??

Microsoft said Friday it’s still trying to evict the elite Russian government hackers who broke into the email accounts of senior company executives in November and who it said have been trying to breach customer networks with stolen access data.

.. Microsoft said Friday that the hackers stole “secrets” from email communications between the company and unspecified customers — cryptographic secrets such as passwords, certificates and authentication keys —and that it was reaching out to them “to assist in taking mitigating measures.”

Cloud-computing company Hewlett Packard Enterprise disclosed on Jan. 24 that it, too, was an SVR hacking victim and that it had been informed of the breach — by whom it would not say — two weeks earlier, coinciding with Microsoft’s discovery it had been hacked.

“The threat actor’s ongoing attack is characterized by a sustained, significant commitment of the threat actor’s resources, coordination, and focus,” 

“This has tremendous national security implications,” said Tom Kellermann of the cybersecurity firm Contrast Security.

“The Russians can now leverage supply chain attacks against Microsoft’s customers.”

A direct admission that Russia is behind these hacks on MS and HP and others

And about this - "significant commitment of the threat actor’s resources, coordination, and focus" - that really does point at state deep pockets to finance such things on on going basis

Think part of it is to do with the nations supplying them. The various countries were expecting to be in the second or third tranche of deliveries.

Problem is that someone has to go first. Would be embarrassing in some ways if the French came up with "alternative" supplies first.

I don't know but it is a US plane, the US was probably expected to be the one heavily supporting it in terms of maintenance, parts and weapons.

As of now the US is off the board (as regards funding new military supplies) so I am wondering if the block on the US aid package is having (or could have) any impact on the timeframe?

Maybe should have gone with a European plane as the mainstay for them in hindsight, even if there's far fewer available and less capacity to supply weapons for them (and it might also denude European air forces for a time?) there is less reliance on what is going on in US politics.

We are really dancing around this. Putin with his threats that if Western boots land on Ukraine soil it will signal to him to go nuclear. There are already western boots on the ground in Ukraine FFS, inc Irish de-miners as far as I know?

How dare Putin make these threats about who Ukraine has on its own soverign territory. Its about time the west grew a pair and have European troops in Ukraine to act as support behind the front lines and police borders with Belarus etc.

They have a seal on the box, lol.

On first paragraph, yes I think Trump (1st term) was seen as a random fluke, rather than a harbinger or a symptom of something and reaction to it has been too slow.

On second paragraph would not agree there, but basically the European/EU countries cannot consider NATO and the alliance with the US in the way that they used to (and have since WW2). Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

Even in Cold war (when Western Europeans had very large militaries and spent lot more, many had conscription etc.) it was expected the US would be the glue, provider of certain capabilities, and the main organiser + ultimate backstop, coming to the rescue but this doesn't seem to be certain any longer and has become at least partly subject to back and forth of US domestic politics.

They have to start to consider deterring & fighting border threats like Putin's Russia without any help provided at all from the US (they cannot do that fully/well enough at present I think).

When you start to consider implications, it is a big deal (for Europeans), and we could be in for some serious changes.

Yeah, but neither is well known for their fact-based public speaking. Who knows what will happen.