Make of this what you will. Here is video from a what appears to be a seababy showing the Su-30 flying extremely low overhead, then video from another drone showing the seababy racing across the water, followed by what appears to be a missile flying in the air. The video does not show the missile launching from the seababy, nor it hitting the Su-30, but Ukraine is claiming it is for the kill Ukrainian special forces successfully shot down a Russian Naval Aviation Su-30SM multirole fighter while raiding a Black Sea oil platform Tuesday. It appears one Ukrainian MANPADS team scored a hit on the Russian fighter (with a spot from a circling Ukrainian drone). pic.twitter.com/eB6PoGolEl— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 12, 2024
Really enjoyed that one. Quality boom. There's also the video of multiple cluster munitions going off around a company of Russian infantry. One report says there's a hundred casualties from that.
You mean this one? Definitely not 100, but certainly a good amount of 200s and 300s. Unlucky https://t.co/dc4MhJJbBV— Def Mon (@DefMon3) September 12, 2024
There's comment in that thread about how the Poles are being advised by an "ally" (probably the US) not to shoot down Russian drones that pass through their territory. That's some cowardly BS. The Poles should be encouraged to shoot down any drone that violates their airspace. This constant fear of Russian "escalation" is nonsense.
As Chinese banks no longer deal with Russian companies, a lot of intermediaries have sprung up to facilitate deals. But it's hardly an ideal solution. It is a slow process, sometimes with months-long delays, and expensive, especially for small dealers. There's been frauds that take the Russian's money and disappear. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7093205
Major General Christian Freuding, head of German military assistance to Ukraine is in Kiev. He gives his assessment of the purpose of the Kursk operation and the military utility of authorizing the use of western long range weapons in Russia. Yesterday evening, Major General Christian Freuding *¹ who is currently in Kyiv, gave his assessment of the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region and the use of standoff weapons on Russian territory on ZDF heute journal. As always, I have added English subtitles for you.*¹ =… pic.twitter.com/hKcIqBleSG— German Aid to Ukraine (@deaidua) September 14, 2024
Looks like the Ukrainians are springing the trap in western Kursk's Glushkova district. They've made a breakthrough in the rear of the Russian counterattack and are attempting to split the previously uncontested pocket below the Seym river in two. Some Russian voenkors are freaking out about several hundred to 1,000 conscripts in danger or encirclement. Then again, those guys live for clicks so a note of caution or two (or ten) is advisable.
Ok, now we know more about this. It wasn't a MANPADS from a drone, it was from a small boat with Ukrainian soldiers on it. Ukraine has now revealed it was part of a massive raid where over a dozen small boats with special forces soldiers fired rockets and small arms into the ‘Crimea-2’ drilling rig in the Black Sea which the Russians were using as an observation point. The Su-30 was flying low in an attempt to strafe the boats, but was itself shot down.
Russia's most recent financial quarter showed a GDP growth of 0.5%. The five previous quarters were all around 1% or slightly higher. This could just be a one-off, so we can't draw conclusions yet, but it might be the sign of the start of stagflation. The vast amounts of cash being dumped into the war economy has led to price inflation which the government is trying to tamp down with high interest rates (which were just raised another full percent) but the war spending is going to keep happening. So every other part of the economy is going to start sucking - if not now, sometime soon. If you aren't in the oil industry or welding infantry fighting vehicle parts together, tough luck.
Ukraine just took deliver of 18 new 2S22 “Bohdana" self-propelled howitzers (roughly equivalent of the French Caesar system), designed and built in Ukraine but totally funded by Denmark. As I said a while ago, the Ukrainian defense industry can build more than it does, but Ukraine doesn't have the money. While there have been cooperative efforts, and a lot of the drones built in Ukraine are funded with grass-roots private donations from around the world, this is the first example of another country directly funding heavy equipment construction. While I understand countries wanting to support their own industries, this sort of aid brings many benefits to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian minister of Strategi Industries (i.e. armaments) was interviewed on CNN or DW 2-3 weeks ago. He claimed that Ukraine's own factories were working at an average of 30% of capacity because of a lack of funding for production and that production could double in about 6 months if the money was available. On the Danes' part, their logic is that it takes too long to increase production in the West, never mind set up new production lines, it costs a lot more while servicing & repair is more responsive
Safe or unsafe, this story is another reminder of how inhumane Russian treatment of Ukrainian POWs is. Where is UN on that?
The rules are - don’t post that shit here. If it’s NSFW, it’s not ok here. And if you link to it - have the courtesy to warn viewers what it is.
More predictions that the Russian economy is about to go into the crapper. Yes, the war economy is chugging along, but it is at the expense of pretty much every other business in Russia. They are running low on not only money, but manpower. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1835729687848345627.html
The only substantive action the UN does is undertaken because of the Security Council and that is not going to happen for obvious reasons.
Yup.. Unless Russia is expelled from the Security Council, no actions can be taken at the UN level for any violations of the Geneva Conventions. If/when this war ends and Russia loses, I expect there to be a number of trials in absentia at The Hague for most/all of Russia's military command for the rampant POW abuses. It's also not just the summary executions of Ukrainians attempting to surrender, but also torture, starvation, etc. that Ukrainian POWs suffer in Russian POW camps.
Where does data about the Russian economy come from? Isn't it all self-reported? Are the there reasonably accurate external sources that can estimate the state of the Russian economy? I mean, if these are Putin-genrated stats, aren't they essentially meaningless?
Russia isn't China. They have a history of putting out accurate numbers for a long time and the current ones are in line with those before the war. And they have very well regarded economists running things with a pretty remarkable level of independence given how Putin is shaping the economy.
With the world-wide economic slow down dropping the price of oil, Ural crude is now trading for about $60 a barrel. That is really bad news for Russia. Any reduction in price is bad for them, but $60 is a break-even price for their budget. Today Putin was making some general statements about how important a "responsible budget policy" is to Russia which to me sounds like some hard decisions are going to have to be made.
Things go boom. An absolutely massive ammo dump in Russia just got obliterated. Well.. it is in the process of getting obliterated… The ammunition warehouse in Toropets, Tver region, in Russia has been turned into volcanic region. It is still exploding. Absolutely spectacular view and possibly the biggest single event of that kind in this war.Source: Telegram / Sternenko pic.twitter.com/9tdkYDgmp3— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) September 18, 2024
I'm going to post a video, and I'm going to warn you in advance that this is from a Danish YT war channel, but the statistics and figures are all factual correct from German and other foreign sources, so not from Danish made statistics, but obviously it's still kind of made to promote the Danish contribution to Ukraine, perhaps because it's contribution is otherwise vastly drowned and overlooked, because of the size of the country. You could say much the same about especially the Netherlands, the Baltics and Poland if you ask me. Adding to the above, it should be said, that it's much easier for Danish politicians, from the far right to left in the parliament, agreeing to these donations, unlike the UK that has a £22 billion budget deficit this year, and the enormous debt of the USA, then "tiny" Denmark has seen an increasing government budget surplus in the range of around $9bn to $18 billion a year since 2021, despite a huge increase in military spending's and the several $ billions worth of military aid for Ukraine. Not to forget, that when Zelensky visited the Danish parliament to give thanks for not least the F-16 donations, also making an outdoor speech for a large crowd of Danes outside the parliament building, only 1 protester showed up, waving a Russian flag. I guess she was a Russian immigrant or from the Russian embassy. Every single party from the most far left to the most far right in the Danish parliament, support the military donations to Ukraine.