ALERT RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE - Consolidated Thread

BuffaloJo

Contributing Member
I can't believe some of you people. You have someone in Ukraine giving eye witness reports and you want to challenge him and not believe what he says. If you don't like his reporting perhaps you should go over there and give us your reports. How many members have been lost just because of such actions of a few ragging on the person reporting who is trying to help us with information?
 

Red Baron

Paleo-Conservative
_______________
I can't believe some of you people. You have someone in Ukraine giving eye witness reports and you want to challenge him and not believe what he says. If you don't like his reporting perhaps you should go over there and give us your reports. How many members have been lost just because of such actions of a few ragging on the person reporting who is trying to help us with information?

I fully agree.

Let's cut Oreally a heaping mound of slack.

My last and only warning.
 

jed turtle

a brother in the Lord
So when S-400s start blowing up inside Russia and
SU-27s start falling in Russian corn fields and
Russian supply convoys start blowing up on Russian Highways

Do you suppose the Russians will consider that existential
enough to enter the codes, turn the keys and depress the launch control?
Because we have already been sharing equipment and targeting information
and have killed generals and sunk battleships.

What coordinates will be entered?

You know, this is a psyop war . . . so INTJ the psyop and figure out where this is going.
INTJs live in the future. . . so, INTJ the future and what do you see?
I see no gasoline or time available this coming fall to cut firewood with. I also see no crops coming to market or even to table from the gardens locally. I see a total collapse coming up, and lack Of jobs and lack of money will be the least of our worries...
 

EMICT

Veteran Member
Thanks you’all. You chose to ‘dump’ on the only one here in Ukraine just because you can’t stand a slant that may involve personal observations, true or false instead of just sifting the grain from chaff on your own.

Sometimes keyboard warriors are dicks.
 

bobfall2005

Veteran Member
Original MG42's are highly desired by collectors.

Prices start at $40,000.

Automatic weapon license requirements are a bitch.
Yes for the collector part.
And, cause.
The Germans made some good stuff.
But they made a lot of mg42s. And the mg42 is Great.
Which lots of folks love. But not just for collecting.
8mm is tuff to get, today. But still around.
There are still a bunch of mg42s all over Europe and Western asia.

For rainy days.
 

AlfaMan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
here is a personal letter from a friend, her daughter is high school age.

i am putting this here so that all you, like doug, and raven and you know who you are... who think that somehow this invasion is justified, or that maybe the massacre in Bucha was really a Ukrainian 'false flag'.


" good early morning '*****'

I'm so happy to write you a letter now...

My heart hurts so much for Ukraine ..

I'm sorry that I didn't write to you for a long time .. I really missed you, but unfortunately in life, not everything is as simple as we would like;(

When the war started, I was in Kyiv and my daughter was in Sumy, I decided to go pick her up, but my journey was almost a day and at that moment Russian troops were already in the city of Sumy. This city is on the border.

I took my daughter and we went to Kyiv, our convoy was fired upon and some people died, I can't forget it. What kind of animals are these soldiers ... We will never be able to forgive ..

I hope this hell ends soon...

We are now in Germany with my sister..

How do you? "

and yesterday aft, i ran into my neighbor, a big jovial silent type, who runs a nice restaurant in town, or used to, in our common space. dressed up in full combat gear, side arm, full chest stash,.. now, i found out, he full time soldier , in charge of a platoon of 19 guys who are intense training... and they are not preparing to go east...

and on a 'light' note, at the big multi-purpose box store in town, they were playing this deep but moving mournful male chorus singing this , over and over:

слава україні


Indeed-glory to Ukraine. May they throw off the yoke of Russian domination. May the Russians go back the where they came from. Sadness and death on both sides-needless deaths.
 

von Koehler

Has No Life - Lives on TB
View: https://youtu.be/P7VtZ7iRvjU

This is a daily analysis from an Ukrainian. He admits that he hates the Russians because of what they have done to his country.

However he does try to be correct in what he covers.

I have watched him for about a week now and I think he is accurate in his calls.

About 5 minutes each.
 
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AlfaMan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Escobar: Megalopolis x Russia - Total War
BY TYLER DURDEN
SUNDAY, MAY 08, 2022 - 08:00 PM

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

After careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”.

Operation Z is the first salvo of a titanic struggle: three decades after the fall of the USSR, and 77 years after the end of WWII, after careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”. No wonder the Empire of Lies has gone completely berserk, obsessed in completely expelling Russia from the West-centric system.


The U.S. and its NATO puppies cannot possibly come to grips with their perplexity when faced with a staggering loss: no more entitlement allowing exclusive geopolitical use of force to perpetuate “our values”. No more Full Spectrum Dominance.

The micro-picture is also clear. The U.S. Deep State is milking to Kingdom Come its planned Ukraine gambit to cloak a strategic attack on Russia. The “secret” was to force Moscow into an intra-Slav war in Ukraine to break Nord Stream 2 – and thus German reliance on Russian natural resources. That ends – at least for the foreseeable future – the prospect of a Bismarckian Russo-German connection that would ultimately cause the U.S. to lose control of the Eurasian landmass from the English Channel to the Pacific to an emerging China-Russia-Germany pact.

The American strategic gambit, so far, has worked wonders. But the battle is far from over. Psycho neo-con/neoliberalcon silos inside the Deep State consider Russia such a serious threat to the “rules-based international order” that they are ready to risk if not incur a “limited” nuclear war out of their gambit. What’s at stake is nothing less than the loss of Ruling the World by the Anglo-Saxons.

Mastering the Five Seas

Russia, based on purchasing power parity (PPP), is the 6th economy in the world, right behind Germany and ahead of both the UK and France. Its “hard” economy is similar to the U.S. Steel production may be about the same, but intellectual capacity is vastly superior. Russia has roughly the same number of engineers as the U.S., but they are much better educated.

The Mossad attributes Israel’s economic miracle in creating an equivalent of Silicon Valley to a base of a million Russian immigrants. This Israeli Silicon Valley happens to be a key asset of the American MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex), as indelibly named by Ray McGovern.

NATOstan media hysterically barking that Russia’s GDP is the size of Texas is nonsense. PPP is what really counts; that and Russia’s superior engineers is why their hypersonic weapons are at least two or three generations ahead of the U.S. Just ask the indispensable Andrei Martyanov.

The Empire of Lies has no defensive missiles worthy of the name, and no equivalents to Mr. Zircon and Mr. Sarmat. The NATOstan sphere simply cannot win a war, any war against Russia for this reason alone.

The deafening NATOstan “narrative” that Ukraine is defeating Russia does not even qualify as an innocuous joke (compare it with Russia’s “Reach Out and Touch Someone” strategy). The corrupt system of SBU fanatics intermingled with UkroNazi factions is kaput. The Pentagon knows it. The CIA cannot possibly admit it. What the Empire of Lies has sort of won, so far, is a media “victory” for the UkroNazis, not a military victory.

Gen Aleksandr Dvornikov, of Syria fame, has a clear mandate: to conquer the whole of Donbass, totally free up Crimea and prepare the advance towards Odessa and Transnistria while reducing a rump Ukraine to the status of failed state without any access to the sea.

The Sea of Azov – linked to the Caspian by the Don-Volga canal – is already a Russian lake. And the Black Sea is next, the key connection between the Heartland and the Mediterranean. The Five Seas system – Black, Azov, Caspian, Baltic, White – enshrines Russia as a de facto continental naval power. Who needs warm waters?

Moving “at the speed of war”

The pain dial, from now on, will go up non-stop. Reality – as in facts on the ground – will soon become apparent even to the NATOstan-wide LugenPresse.

The woke Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, expects Operation Z to last years. That’s nonsense. The Russian Armed Forces may afford to be quite methodical and take all the time needed to properly demilitarize Ukraine. The collective West for its part is pressed for time – because the blowback from the real economy is already on and bound to become vicious.

Defense Minister Shoigu has made it quite clear: any NATO vehicles bringing weapons to Kiev will be destroyed as “legitimate military targets”.

A report by the scientific service of the Bundestag established that training of Ukrainian soldiers on German soil may amount, under international law, to participation in war. And that gets even trickier when coupled with NATO weapons deliveries: “Only if, in addition to the supply of weapons, the instruction of the conflict party or training in such weapons were also an issue would one leave the secure area of non-warfare.”

Now at least it’s irretrievably clear how the Empire of Lies “moves at the speed of war” – as described in public by weapons peddler turned Pentagon head, Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin. In Pentagonese, that was explained by the proverbial “official” as “a combination of a call center, a watch floor, meeting rooms. They execute a battle rhythm to support decision-makers.”

The Pentagonese “battle rhythm” offered to a supposedly “credible, resilient and combat-capable Ukraine military” is fed by a EUCom system that essentially moves weapons orders from Pentagon warehouses in the U.S. to branches of the Empire of Bases in Europe and then to the NATO eastern front in Poland, where they are trucked across Ukraine just in time to be duly incinerated by Russian precision strikes: the wealth of options include supersonic P-800 Onyx missiles, two types of Iskander, and Mr. Khinzal launched from Mig-31Ks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has stressed Moscow is perfectly aware the U.S., NATO and UK are transferring not only weapons but also loads of intel. In parallel, the collective West turns everything upside down 24/7 shaping a new environment totally geared against Russia, not caring for even a semblance of partnership in any area. The collective West does not even consider the possibility of dialogue with Russia.

Hence talking to Putin is “a waste of time” unless a “Russian defeat” in Ukraine (echoing strident Kiev P.R.) would make him “more realistic”. For all his faults, Le Petit Roi Macron/McKinsey has been an exception, on the phone with Putin earlier this week.

The neo-Orwellian Hitlerization of Putin reduces him, even among the so-called Euro-intelligentzia, to the status of dictator of a nation chloroformed into its 19th century nationalism. Forget about any semblance of historical/political/cultural analysis. Putin is a late Augustus, dressing up his Imperium as a Republic.

At best the Europeans preach and pray – chihuahuas yapping to His Master’s Voice – for a hybrid strategy of “containment and engagement” to be unleashed by the U.S., clumsily parroting the scribblings of denizens of that intellectual no-fly zone, Think Tankland.

Yet in fact the Europeans would rather “isolate” Russia – as in 12% of the world’s population “isolating” 88% (of course: their Westoxified “vision” completely ignores the Global South). “Help” to Russia will only come when sanctions are effective (as in never: blowback will be the norm) or – the ultimate wet dream – there’s regime change in Moscow.

The Fall

UkroNazi P.R. agent Ursula von der Lugen presented the sixth sanction package of the Europoodle (Dis)Union.
Top of the bill is to exclude three more Russian banks from SWIFT, including Sberbank. Seven banks are already excluded. This will enforce Russia’s “total isolation”. It’s idle to comment on something that only fools the LugenPresse.

Then there’s the “progressive” embargo on oil imports. No more crude imported to the EU in six months and no more refined products before the end of 2022. As it stands, the IEA shows that 45% of Russia’s oil exports go to the EU (with 22% to China and 10% to the U.S.). His Master’s Voice continues and will continue to import Russian oil.

And of course 58 “personal” sanctions also show up, targeting very dangerous characters such as Patriarch Kirill of the Orthodox Church, and the wife, son and daughter of Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.

This stunning display of stupidity will have to be approved by all EU members. Internal revolt is guaranteed, especially from Hungary, even as so many remain willing to commit energy suicide and mess up with the lives of their citizens big time to defend a neo-Nazi regime.

Alastair Crooke called my attention to a startling, original interpretation of what’s goin’ on, offered in Russian by a Serbian analyst, Prof. Slobodan Vladusic. His main thesis, in a nutshell: “Megalopolis hates Russia because it is not Megalopolis – it has not entered the sphere of anti-humanism and that is why it remains a civilization alternative. Hence Russophobia.”

Vladusic contends that the intra-Slav war in Ukraine is “a great catastrophe for Orthodox civilization” – mirroring my recent first attempt to open a serious debate on a Clash of Christianities.

Yet the major schism is not on religion but culture: “The key difference between the former West and today’s Megalopolis is that Megalopolis programmatically renounces the humanistic heritage of the West.”

So now “it is possible to erase not only the musical canon, but also the entire European humanistic heritage: the entire literature, fine arts, philosophy” because of a “trivialization of knowledge”. What’s left is an empty space, actually a cultural black hole, “filled by promoting terms such as ‘posthumanism’ and ‘transhumanism’.”

And here Vladusic gets to the heart of the matter: Russia fiercely opposes the Great Reset concocted by the “hackable”, self-described “elites” of Megalopolis.

Sergey Glazyev, now coordinating the draft of a new financial/monetary system by the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) in partnership with the Chinese, adapts Vladusic to the facts on the ground (here in Russian, here in an imperfect English translation).

Glazyev is way more blunt than in his meticulous economic analyses. While noting the Deep State’s aims of destroying the Russian world, Iran and block China, he stresses the U.S. “will not be able to win the global hybrid war”. A key reason is that the collective West has “put all independent countries in front of the need to find new global currency instruments, risk insurance mechanisms, restore the norms of international law and create their own economic security systems.”

So yes, this is Totalen Krieg, Total War – as Glazyev spells it out with no attenuation, and how Russia denounced it this week at the UN: “Russia needs to stand up to the United States and NATO in its confrontation, bringing it to its logical conclusion, so as not to be torn between them and China, which is irrevocably becoming the leader of the world economy.”

History may eventually register, 77 years after the end of WWII, that neocon/neoliberalcon psychos in Washington silos instigating an inter-Slavic war by ordering Kiev to launch a blitzkrieg against Donbass was the spark that led to the Fall of the U.S. Empire.


Looks like some of the most blatant agitprop I've seen in a while. A FSB hack did this report; it doesn't have the polish the boys and girls in St. Petersburg would put on it.
 

AlfaMan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
bringing your supplies to a group of 'non supply oriented'

would be the quik end to your supplies

and you, if resisting.

know your people.

If the balloon goes up here; people will try and head for the exits-via roads. Very few, if any people would even consider hunkering down in a church here. The instinct would be to run.
 

EMICT

Veteran Member
If the balloon goes up here; people will try and head for the exits-via roads. Very few, if any people would even consider hunkering down in a church here. The instinct would be to run.
It's hard to run with 2 to 3 PSI overpressure if you're in the 'zone', and Alpha 'you're in the zone'.
 

EMICT

Veteran Member
Russian Ambassador Attacked During WW2 Remembrance Ceremony In Warsaw
BY TYLER DURDEN
MONDAY, MAY 09, 2022 - 01:05 PM

Protesters in Poland splattered "red substance" on Russian Ambassador Sergei Andreyev as he attempted to lay a wreath at a Soviet war memorial in Warsaw, commemorating Red Army soldiers who fought against the Nazis during World War II, according to Radio Free Europe.

Sergey Andreyev was forced to halt the wreath-laying ceremony on Monday when a group of demonstrators opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine shouted "fascist" and "murderer" at him. One of the protesters chucked red substance at the diplomat that exploded all over his face.

Polish police were forced to intervene, and Andreyev was whisked away by his security detail before the ceremony was completed. Russian news RIA Novosti reported the ambassador was unharmed, and the initial report the red substance was "red paint," though other local media outlets say it was red syrup.



A spokeswoman for Moscow's foreign ministry Maria Zakharova denounced the unprovoked attack. The demonstrators "confirmed what's already clear: The West has set a course to revive Nazism," she said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that his motive to invade Ukraine was to "denazify" the country:
"The purpose of this operation is to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime.

"To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation," Putin said in early March.
Meanwhile, Pawel Zalewski, a Polish member of parliament, said Moscow would retaliate against Polish diplomats in Moscow for the events in Warsaw on Monday.

 

von Koehler

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Poland has long lasting reasons to hate Russia.

Russia seized the eastern half of Poland at the start of WWII, and reconquered all of Poland by the end of the war. Stalin ordered his troops to halt and wait while the Germans crushed Polish resistance and destroyed Warsaw.

What followed next was decades of living in a Soviet police state.

The ambassador was lucky to get out alive.
 

AlfaMan

Has No Life - Lives on TB
... and have found more than you have ever spoken too.

A work colleague's wife is from Kiev. She is an absolute hands down two alarm fire knock out too. Also very intelligent and hardcore conservative like her husband. Ukranian women are hot with a capitol H.

I pray for them both daily. They need prayers for protection.
 

Tex88

Veteran Member
Poland has long lasting reasons to hate Russia.

Russia seized the eastern half of Poland at the start of WWII, and reconquered all of Poland by the end of the war. Stalin ordered his troops to halt and wait while the Germans crushed Polish resistance and destroyed Warsaw.

What followed next was decades of living in a Soviet police state.

The ambassador was lucky to get out alive.

And that's just the tail end of living history. Russkis and Poles haven't exactly been best buddies over the centuries.
 

Red Baron

Paleo-Conservative
_______________
Poland has long lasting reasons to hate Russia.

Russia seized the eastern half of Poland at the start of WWII, and reconquered all of Poland by the end of the war. Stalin ordered his troops to halt and wait while the Germans crushed Polish resistance and destroyed Warsaw.

What followed next was decades of living in a Soviet police state.

The ambassador was lucky to get out alive.

And this,

The Katyn massacre[a] was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by German forces.

The massacre was initiated in NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to Joseph Stalin to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, which was approved by the Soviet Politburo led by Stalin.[1] Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the remaining 8,000 were Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents and gendarmes, spies and saboteurs, former landowners, factory owners and officials".[2] The Polish Army officer class was representative of the multi-ethnic Polish state; the murdered included ethnic Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Jews including the chief Rabbi of the Polish Army, Baruch Steinberg.[3]

The government of Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in April 1943.[4] Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London-based Polish government-in-exile when it asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross.[5] The USSR claimed the Nazis had killed the victims, and it continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it officially acknowledged and condemned the killings by the NKVD, as well as the subsequent cover-up by the Soviet government.

more,

Katyn massacre - Wikipedia
 

von Koehler

Has No Life - Lives on TB
When when the mass graves were opened up by advancing Soviet troops, they removed the bodies and created records "proving" the deaths were caused by the Germans.

Many historians have learned to be highly suspicious of Soviet claims.

Reagan had it right when he said, "Trust but verify."
 
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Squid

Veteran Member
you are a musician living in Ukraine in order to find a girlfriend.
you should retest.
Call me crazy but I would trust a janitor who was in country during a war, than armchair qb’s with any testing or list of credentials after their name on the other side of the world.

Even if what they report doesn’t fit your side or narrative it is an opinion and it is There.

Why the cheap attack on why he is over there as if that relates to the information he relates? Attacks on character to attack the arguments some individuals make is a common tool of the progressive left and their minions in the dying media. They can’t argue so the Your a racist or your a Nazi is the last I got nothing argument.
 

Tex88

Veteran Member
The government of Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in April 1943.[4] Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London-based Polish government-in-exile when it asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross.[5] The USSR claimed the Nazis had killed the victims, and it continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it officially acknowledged and condemned the killings by the NKVD, as well as the subsequent cover-up by the Soviet government.

more,

Katyn massacre - Wikipedia

When in the late 80s, during the course of glasnost and perestroika, Sputnik (Soviet propaganda magazine) reported about the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and its secret addendum, and later on the massacre of Katyn, East Germany took the magazine out of circulation. Didn't ban it outright (that would have been even more grotesque) but you couldn't buy it at the state owned magazine stands anymore. Which was about the only place you could buy it, unless you were a institutional subscriber.
Soooo... "fantastisch", the last few East German non-dissidents said, "now we're not even allowed read Soviet propaganda anymore, lets tear it all down then."
 

jward

passin' thru
Aww. In raven's defense, we know for a FACT that SJW, advocacy journalists and the liberals in sheeps clothing do in fact make prodigious use of the personal antecedent in their presentations. And yes, they are constructed to play upon and sway emotions, and/or to credit the operative with "authority" so that they can better influence and steer group dynamic. (They actually teach the technique, iirc)

His warning is a very good and timely one, in general, as our rate of infestation has increased lately. Most, if not all of us, read Oreally as authentic, and welcome his input. It is indeed a look at the trees, instead of the forest, but that doesn't in any way detract from the value, as long as one remembers that it isn't good data from which to extrapolate any meaningful overview of the situation as a whole.

It's not unusual that a site such as this, that is in flux from being professional, news, and knowledge based with a standard of professional, fact based discourse, to becoming a social support system for retirees gets a bit confused at time, and provides one service when another would better serve and ends up doing both less well than it once did... though at times it is unfortunate, it's understandable.
 

Tex88

Veteran Member
Aww. In raven's defense, we know for a FACT that SJW, advocacy journalists and the liberals in sheeps clothing do in fact make prodigious use of the personal antecedent in their presentations. And yes, they are constructed to play upon and sway emotions, and/or to credit the operative with "authority" so that they can better influence and steer group dynamic. (They actually teach the technique, iirc)

His warning is a very good and timely one, in general, as our rate of infestation has increased lately. Most, if not all of us, read Oreally as authentic, and welcome his input. It is indeed a look at the trees, instead of the forest, but that doesn't in any way detract from the value, as long as one remembers that it isn't good data from which to extrapolate any meaningful overview of the situation as a whole.

It's not unusual that a site such as this, that is in flux from being professional, news, and knowledge based with a standard of professional, fact based discourse, to becoming a social support system for retirees gets a bit confused at time, and provides one service when another would better serve and ends up doing both less well than it once did... though at times it is unfortunate, it's understandable.

You're assuming he's the only one I'm in contact with.
 

jward

passin' thru
Phillips P. OBrien
@PhillipsPOBrien



What rhetoric Putin used in his speech is immaterial. If he didn’t declare war, or a general mobilisation, that’s what important. Without concrete steps to build a new force, Russia can’t fight a long war, and the clock starts ticking on the failure of their army in Ukraine
Other thing to take from it—no attempt to set the stage for escalation. No call for the Russian people to make great sacrifice. Nothing at all really.

Putins' speech if you can/want to translate it, Imma waitin' for the movie
 

jward

passin' thru
Aww, I hadn't gotten around to thinking bout you at all yet today- gimme a moment to switch from work to relax mode and I'll circle back to ya when I'm caught up.

Unless u mean that people other than our poster in other areas of Ukraine provide you reports, and you do get a sense of on the ground realities from the group of data? Well sure. Enough input gives a picture that a dot, by nature, cannot.
:: shrug ::
You're assuming he's the only one I'm in contact with.
 

jward

passin' thru
Matthew Luxmoore
@mjluxmoore

16h

Russia not thinking the choreographics of Victory Day as it accuses every other country of going Nazi
View: https://twitter.com/mjluxmoore/status/1523553244378976256?s=20&t=lMopmTf03HyLi9KhuXnQZQ



Anton Gerashchenko
@Gerashchenko_en


While russia parades on Red Square, thousands of its dead soldiers are stacked in bags in refrigerator trains , @AJEnglish reports. russians refuse to take them, so #Ukraine might even have to bury them at our own cost.
View: https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1523607158541094912?s=20&t=lMopmTf03HyLi9KhuXnQZQ
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

US "Running Low" On Javelin Missile Stockpiles After Supplying Ukraine, Warns Congressman

MONDAY, MAY 09, 2022 - 09:50 AM
The Biden administration has transferred 5,000 Javelin, or Advanced Anti-Tank Weapon System-Medium, missiles to Ukraine to repel the Russian invasion. Such a large transfer has alarmed politicians Stateside, who warns the US is running low on weapons stockpiling.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin, told Fox News the US is dangerously depleting Javelin missiles stockpiles when more hotspots could erupt across the world.
What's bad is the president himself seems at times to constantly want to remind everybody what we won't do and putting arbitrary limits on our assistance, I think, undermines our effort. But, the real ugly is that we are running low in terms of our stockpiles.
We just burned through seven years of Javelins and that's not only important as we continue to try and help the Ukrainians win in Ukraine, that's important as we try to simultaneously defend Taiwan from aggression from the Chinese Communist Party. They are going to need access to some of these same weapons systems, and we simply don't have the stockpiles at present in order to backfill what we've spent in Ukraine.
Last Tuesday, President Biden visited the Lockheed Martin plant in Troy, Alabama, where the defense company assembles Javelins. Lockheed is expanding its workforce amid the tightest labor market in decades to build more missiles. The defense contractor is expected to ramp up weapon production in the near term.



On Sunday, president and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation Jim Taiclet told Face the Nation that Javelin production would double from "2,100 missiles per year" to "4,000 per year," adding that production "will take a number of months, maybe even a couple of years to get there because we have to get our supply chain to also crank up."

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1523342122878873601
1:39 min

Western officials and their corporate media counterparts have praised the effectiveness of the anti-tank missile. However, some "Javelins didn't prove useful, especially in urban warfare," according to one Ukrainian military commander.
"We couldn't even launch one. I think it's completely useless in an urban environment, as something always gets in the way," said Colonel Vladimir Baranyuk, the commander of Ukraine's 36th Naval Infantry Brigade, quoted by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
Besides Javelins, the US has transferred shoulder-fired anti-aircraft stinger missiles that are effective against military aircraft. But every US shipment of stingers depletes stockpiles where Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes recently warned increasing production would be challenging due to snarled supply chains.

Could the US be running critically low on missiles at a time the world is dangerously spiraling toward a possible world conflict?
 

jward

passin' thru
Don’t humiliate Putin, Macron tells the EU

Charles Bremner
, Paris
Monday May 09 2022, 5.30pm BST, The Times




President Macron urged Europe to spare his Russian counterpart from “humiliation” and told Ukraine it must wait decades to join the EU as criticism mounted over his failure to follow other leaders and visit Kyiv.

Macron, who began his second term as French president on Saturday, set out his terms for the Ukraine conflict in a speech to the European parliament. Implicitly defending his regular calls to President Putin since the invasion, Macron said that peace in Ukraine would not be served by putting excessive pressure on Russia.

“Tomorrow we will have to build peace. Let us never forget that,” he told a news conference after his speech. “We will have to do this with Ukraine and Russia around the table. This will not be done with negation, nor with the exclusion of one or the other, nor through humiliation.”



Macron has uncategorically condemned Russia’s invasion but his words have reflected a caution that he applies towards Putin in contrast to the charges of genocide and war crimes that have been levelled at him by President Biden and some other European leaders.
The French president called for Ukraine to be part of a new “European political community” that would include countries such as those of the Balkans, Moldova and Georgia, none of which is ready for EU membership.
He also suggested that Britain, which withdrew from the Union after the 2016 referendum, might want to be part of this new club, which was first proposed by the former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta.

“Ukraine by its fight and its courage is already a heartfelt member of our Europe, of our family, of our union,” Macron said. But he warned that “even if we grant it candidate status tomorrow, we all know perfectly well that the process to allow it to join would take several years indeed, probably several decades”.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said earlier that the EU executive would give its opinion on Ukraine’s membership bid in June. While former Soviet bloc states such as Poland are in favour of rapid Ukrainian membership, Germany, France and the Netherlands are fiercely opposed to a fast-track accession that would bypass the exhaustive process that brings candidate states into compliance with Europe’s rules of governance, law and controls on corruption.

Full integration in the federal-minded Union would remain out of reach for years to come for many candidate members, Macron said.

“It is our historic obligation to create what I would describe before you today as a European political community. This new European organisation would allow democratic European nations to find a new space for political co-operation, security, co-operation in energy, transport, investment, infrastructure, the movement of people.”
François Hollande, Macron’s predecessor and former boss, criticised the French president’s prudent line towards Russia, which is shared by Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor. Asked by France Inter Radio about Macron’s regular conversations with Putin, Hollande said: “Speaking to Putin, if it’s just for doing Vladimir Putin’s public relations, should not be done. It’s risky. If there are contacts it should be to pass an extremely strong message.”
Hollande added that Macron “must go to Kyiv in the coming days — it is necessary and would be symbolic.”
Macron has repeatedly said that he would visit Kyiv “when it serves a purpose” to do so, but he is now on the defensive after the stream of visits by world leaders and senior officials. The latest visitors to Ukraine at the weekend were Jill Biden, wife of the US president, and Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister.
Le Monde said today that it was strange that Germany and France had taken a back seat towards Russian aggression in Ukraine.
“In contrast to Ursula von der Leyen or Boris Johnson . . . neither Chancellor Scholz nor Emmanuel Macron have made the trip to Kyiv,” it said. “It is as if the two countries were wrongfooted by a conflict whose start they did not anticipate, and even less its consequences. The German and French leaders are not showing the leadership that could be expected of them.”
Macron was travelling today to meet Scholz in Berlin. Newly inaugurated French presidents have made their first foreign trips after investiture to Germany to symbolise the partnership between the EU’s two core member states.

 
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