Ukraine vs Russia III

Orban has announced that he wants to renegotiate Hungary’s membership in NATO to include the ability to opt-out of NATO operations outside of NATO territory.. This is largely so Hungary doesn’t have to vote to approve NATO support for Ukraine.

https://www.politico.eu/article/hun...-country-russia-vladimir-putin-west-official/

Sadly, he is not negotiating Hungary’s departure from NATO..

 

I really don't understand why NATO has no exclusion mechanism. EU is understandable, because it is an economic and political entity, but NATO is a military alliance. Has the founders never envisioned the possibility that an enemy regime could come to power, at one point, in a NATO country? If Soviet Union, for instance, successfully engineered a communist coup in, say, Greece in 1960, what was NATO going to do?

 

They don’t need an exclusion mechanism. In your situation above, the US would simply withdraw from NATO and set up a new alliance with everyone else except Greece.

See what happened to SEATO.

 

Isn't that cumbersome? Imagine all the paperwork that needs replacing.

On the other hand, it means we can form "NATO 2: Electric Boogaloo". Hungary would be seething to miss out on that.

 

Ukraine attacked another Russian over-the-horizon radar site, this time the Voronezh-DM. It probably isn't that useful against aircraft, but more against ballistic missiles like the ATACMS, and it does theoretically cover southern Ukraine.

 

Yep. Although dated, the S-300 is still a decent piece of kit but the S-400 has been a complete disaster.

For everyone not selling air defence systems to India that is .

 

Yep. Which gives us all a way to recognize pundits who don't understand war without them saying they don't understand it.

Ukraine has attacked a Russian over-the-horizion ballistic missile early warning radar in Armavir, Russia. This particular radar node is a (very small) part of its nuclear apparatus and its destruction destruction is being spun as having limited military value for Ukraine due to its coverage limitations but, "something, something . . . destabilizing and dangerously escalatory".

ATACMS are tactical ballistic missiles, which means Ukraine is prepping the ground to hit targets with ATACMS. Since the radar is in Armavir, those strikes will likely be in/around Crimea. Targets like the Saki airbase, which was hit this morning.

 

I'm generally loath to use personalized insults and I think it's wise to stick to that in discussing wars. In addition, I lived in Hungary for many years, so I tend to pull my punches a bit when discussing it and its foibles.

Therefore, let me speak with restraint: Orban is a fat, lazy, bloated, thieving pussy bitch. As long as he gets enough shiny toys in return, he'll do anything. If doesn't, he'll walk loudly while waving a feather. Doubly so if backing it up means he loses shiny toys.

He's also under real pressure from splits within his own camp, which is a first, so he's ginning up a new external enemy that he can paint as traitors in cahoots with Soros, the LGBTQ+ lobby, blah, blah, blah.

Once the election is over, he'll find something else to do. Again

 

From the Institute for the Study of War, a map of Russian bases within ATACMs range.

 

Find out who the commander who ordered it was and who the pilot was.

Find their home addresses.

Send letter bombs.

Should put an end to it pretty quickly

 

The Russian bomber took off from the Baltimore airfield near Voronezh where all the aircraft park in the open. They are unconcerned with retaliation because Ukraine can't use American weapons in Russia.

 

Interesting if true....

“Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview published on May 25 that the U.S. has told Russia that if it uses nuclear weapons, there will be an American response using conventional weapons on Russian forces in Ukraine,” the Kyiv Independent reports.

Said Sikorsky: “The Americans have told the Russians that if you explode a nuke, even if it doesn’t kill anybody, we will hit all your targets in Ukraine with conventional weapons, we’ll destroy all of them.”

 

His 3rd cousin Igor Sikorsky immigrated here in 1919 from Kiev, Russia where he pioneered the development of helicopters. Probably one of his that took out the president of Iran.
♫
Ps...I heard it through the grapevine...

 

1. You owe me royalties.
2. This is how diplomacy is done. Those guys have their own lingo and ethics and rules and it’s completely opaque to us outsiders. When the message is a kind of double bank shot like this I always assume the entire point IS the ambiguity.

 

And Germany had a conniption when Ukraine used it’s Patriot launchers to shoot down the Russian aircraft over Russian territory. Since the glide bombs are dropped while the aircraft are still in Russia, Ukraine can’t do anything about it..

 

Maybe Ukraine fired them inside their own territory and they accidentally over shot by 50 mi +/-. Could happen to anybody.

 

and some people are having a meltdown over it.

This person is the Defence Editor for The Economist.

If you’re trying to persuade allies to let you use long-range strike weapons on Russian territory, a live subject at the moment, then why on earth would you hit an early-warning radar that has little obvious battlefield utility but does affect Russia’s nuclear deterrent? https://t.co/PHKfF8a9qZ

— Shashank Joshi (@shashj) May 24, 2024

 

It makes sense to me. Ukraine wants Russia to know that it is going to slowly keep losing everything that it considers important as long as the war is going on. It's why Ukraine keeps targeting navy ships when the Battle of the Black Sea ended a long time ago.

What Russia hitting a shopping mall says is "Your people don't matter to us at all. Surrender everything and maybe we won't kill as many. Maybe".

 

Astonishing the number of very well-informed analysts who haven't clocked that Kiev is using Jerusalem's tactic of using its own equipment to do something that scares the crap out of D.C. bedwetters to extract more and better kit that it really wanted in exchange for promising not to do it again.

Until they do

 

A Russian artillery officer posted on Telegram about North Korean shells. I would post a picture of the translation, except it's 95% swearing. I mean, the angriest, most vicious swearing I've ever read. It's quite impressive actually. Basically, they suck, they are a danger to the artillery crew, you have to fire the gun from a protected location, and because they are stored in whatever the North Korean version of cosmoline is it also take a lot of work to get them ready.

But it does mean Russia can fire a lot of shells. One Ukrainian front-line report said that Russia basically fires constantly all day long every day.

 

Maybe we were underestimating the T-90M's speed. Why else would the Russians put a spoiler on a tank?



Unfortunately we will never know because it was totally gutted in yesterday's failed massed armor attack on Chasov Yar.

 

There was a pretty big fire at the Luhansk airstrip last night. This was probably a strike on a SAM site or ammunition storage. The field is way too small for military aviation use, even if Russia wanted to put aircraft that close to the front.

 

Luhansk airfield asks "what air defence doing??"

❗Repeated Powerful EXPLOSIONS at the #Luhansk airfield

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/q0JHi19rsK

— Азов South (@Azovsouth) May 27, 2024

Reportedly the aviation institute and/or the nearby airfield were targeted. Probably fuel depots based on the impact videos but impossible to be sure at this stage