Russia-Ukraine War

So it looks like the initial reports were true. Military training facility hit by two ballistic missiles. But more importantly there was an air raid alert going off and it was ignored. A big loss which could and should have been avoided.

It comes as Romania are in talks to provide one of their 7 patriot's to Ukraine. Hopefully the motion passes because these will help Ukraine shoot down ballistic missiles.

And most importantly no military parades. Even at funerals. Leave that until after the war.

This is a pro Russia account but they post accurate frontline updates. I'm not sure this is something to brag about however especially when Ukraine now controls part of Russia.

When you go offline and actually talk to Irish people though most seem to support Ukraine and if they don't can be easily brought around with a few facts.

Even a genocidal maniac in the Kremlin will require the complicity of a number of others to launch a nuclear strike. And if that ever came to pass, I suspect that they would say, 'enough'.

From RTE:

Taoiseach Simon Harris has paid tribute to the resilience of the Ukrainian people as he visited regions catastrophically damaged during the early stages of Russia's invasion. Mr Harris is in Kyiv for a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2024/0904/1468229-ireland-ukraine/

Lviv residential areas were hit by Russian missiles overnight, quite a few dead kids

Darth as usual making observations that cut to the bone

Politico writes on what I’ve been banging on for while now, key EU politicians and some member states have a lot to answer for deliberately holding back the transfer of 300bn of seized Russian state assets that can end this war

Germany, France, the Dutch, the Austrians and possibly a few more are looking, still, at the post war settlement.

They won't allow the 300bn be touched.

Maybe we should look at having these Putin lackies pushed out of the EU?

Short term is everything.

The F-16s are too few and far between at the moment. As of early August, Ukraine only had ten F-16s available, and that was before one of them was lost. Pilots seem to be even more scarce. I mentioned it a few times already, but until Ukraine has at least one or two full squadrons, and the requisite number of pilots, those F-16s are best used in a purely defensive role, going after cruise missiles and the like, plugging gaps in Ukraine’s air defense system. Given that this mark likely won’t be reached until the end of the year, it makes sense to use aircraft types as launch platforms that are available in some quantity, and where you have sufficient numbers of trained pilots such as the MiG-29.

It seems to me Ukrainians are going about asking for help the wrong way

The only thing Europeans understand is nuclear blackmail from Russia, well both sides can play at it

1. Send a letter to every European state that Ukraine will withdraw (within X weeks) all air defences from 500km radius around each of their nuclear and thermal plants and move to the front, any thermal plants will also now become storage facilities for waste from Chernobyl and fission facilities above
2. Publish this in media widely
3. Invite any combination of European countries to bring in whatever equipment and personnel they want to bring and defend these areas, Patriots, F32s, brooms in case of Ireland, whatever, come and defend your own future
4. Or they can transfer Russian seized assets and these be spend in Europe on buying air defences

Putin is deliberately targeting plants thats can render half of Europe uninhabitable for long time, IMHO that European countries don’t see the danger in this nor want to prevent this is the height of irresponsibility

At some stage European countries will need to admit there is a major war on with existential risks for Europe and start doing something about it

All the most popular parties in these countries right now are Pro Kremlin and Putin.

Russia has properly infiltrated Europe and no one seems bothered.

Depressing times.

I wasn’t talking about bombs, I’m talking about Putin deliberately targeting plants which could endup creating a giant dirty bomb if they explode, meltdown etc like Chernobyl or Fukushima on steroids

And rest of Europe acting like radiation will stop at the borders of Ukraine

Ukraine in last three years have been saying

• give us the the tools and we beat Putin back across border, we use our men to defend Europe while yee guys just need to offer equipment and money

Not much in way of tools have materialised or endsup arriving late or in case of Russian criminal state assets and long range missiles are deliberately withheld

IMHO they should shift the message to

• come and help defend Ukraine, because if we go down you lot standing there looking on and doing **** all will almost certainly also go down with us

We are at the stage where Russia are daily lobbing missiles at civilians and nuclear plants and dams and rest of Europe just shrug like we are isolated from the consequences of Russian atrocities

The Israeli used patriot systems have been upgraded to better target missiles , probably not as PAC 3 , but better than nothing ,

These are currently in storage -

Interestingly they're on loan to Israel ,from the US ,

And Israel have 8 batteries , and large stock of missiles ,

And Israel is leaning heavily on the US for support at the moment ..

Does the US preclude Israel from strike on Iran or hesbolah with US tech - because of threat management,

I agree what I’m trying to say is that Ukrainians have been trying to appeal to European sense of solidarity and defending democracy

Which is not enough

They should instead say

“Either give us the Russian 300bn and let us buy planes, missiles to defend our country and Europe

Or come on in with your men and equipment and establish a no fly/missile zone around majority of the country

Or continue sitting back and praying Putin doesn’t render half of Europe unliveable for next 50,000 years”

It’s time for Europe to step up, the Americans will only go so far and have their own homegrown fascist problems

What do you suggest, start WW3? Nuke'm? Fisticuffs?

K and then?

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/12/treasury-department-russia-sanctions-00162922

Tying the deep striking of Russia and pressing Europe to get off the pot feel like overreactions to the meddling in US elections doesn't it?

K and then?

And then Ukraine might have a fair shot of actually winning the war. It's not an exaggeration to say that much of the misery being inflicted on the Ukrainian civilians and frontlines alike can be attributed to the stupid, amoral non-escalation policy rife in the west. Spearheaded by the Biden administration and Jake Sullivan particularly.

Tying the deep striking of Russia and pressing Europe to get off the pot feel like overreactions to the meddling in US elections doesn't it?

It gives the West an excuse to untie Ukraines arms. Much like happened with Storm Shadow. The British defense minister at the time, Ben Wallace, stated that he had warned the Kremlin that if their new campaign of targeting Ukrainian civilian power infrastructure continued then the UK would furnish UAF with Storm Shadow. Now they probably knew full well that Russia would ignore them. But it gave them clean public image to bump up UAFs capability.

There's no reason that couldn't happen again. And there's no downside to offering the warning. Hey interfere in our elections and JASSMs are gonna start raining down on internationally recognized Russian soil proper.

It's also not an exaggeration to say that Trump getting into the White House is pretty much the one avenue Russia has to a win in Ukraine. Which really could be a world destabilising event.

Devastating news

Forbes says Russia won’t be able to capture Polrovsk

Now the drones shoot back! Imagine the fear trying to dodge a drone dropping grenades and then it's buddy comes along with a gun attached. Warfare is being changed forever.

Anyone catch Jeffrey Sachs on virgin media spout every piece of Russian propaganda for 30 mins???

Unbelievable and was allowed spell out every sound bite we hear from the Kremlin.

Went basically unchallenged.

What would Ukraine be without any US aid?

Biggest drop in 2 years is a long, long way away from "total collapse in four days" nonsense