Ukraine vs Russia III

Canada is banning over 300 types of firearms and is in negotiations with Ukraine to determine how the firearms that are seized can be donated.

https://apnews.com/article/canada-firearms-ban-ukraine-81ccaa341badb74bb27d34fc4bb29b17

Can you imagine how many firearms could be donated to Ukraine if the US donated the ones it seized? Heh.

 

Better still, send the AR-16s, the Bushmasters and their owners.

Then the NRA hats will see how useless they are without C3, which is the sort of thing only "the govimmint" they bellyache about all the time can provide

 

I couldn't find one, but if you can, we can put it there.

 

Why bother? As the saying goes "if he's still alive on Monday, I'll be very impressed".

 

In Ukrainian news:

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From Anton Barbashin

Wow. Kemerovo region MP says there are over 3000 families of soldiers killed in Ukraine. Mediazona had only identified half of that. Overall they have identified 82k. So double that to get a good approximation
https://zona.media/news/2024/12/06/3_tysyach​

 

Launchkhuti?!?! I've been there several times. It's largeish village of about 6k

Kutaisi's another story. The city proper is about 125-130k but if you add in the satellite villages, it's closer to 170k. After typing out that list in a hurry, I missed it when commenting

And demonstrations starting there is fairly significant. Ivanishvili is from a small county to the North-Eat of Kutaisi and he lavished money on that county during the awful poverty of the 1990s.

In a deeply personalist culture like Georgia's that earned him a lot of loyalty. It's fading now.

 

The town of Maryinka before and after its liberation.

From people and trees, that is

 

A day ago Ukraine sent a number of sea drones to attack former natural gas platforms that the Russian are using as observation points. At least two were completely set ablaze, and those things are not something that soldiers could likely escape from. And we know there were soldiers on them because Ukraine has started carrying regular FPV drones on their sea drones, so we got a very nice view.

 

Just a straw in the wind, but a rather larger straw than usual IMO

'To address its budget shortfall, Russia has also begun selling off gold reserves. Between June and early December, 50 tons of gold were sold, leaving 279 tons in reserve.'
In comparison, the Bolsheviks managed to spend/ export/lose about 800-900 tons of gold between 1917 and 1921, leaving 400-450 tons under Soviet control.

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France will restart the production of SCALP-EG cruise missiles. This has been confirmed by parliamentary reports.
https://senat.fr/rap/a24-146-8/a24-146-8_mono.html​

 

The collapse of the Assad regime may have worked in Ukraine’s favor. As we know, Trump absolutely hates any signs of weakness and having the Assad regime collapse within a week or two and Russia doing nothing about it us a major sign of weakness.. Trump and Zelensky were both at the reopening of Notre Dame and met privately. The Ukrainians left that meeting feeling pretty positive about what Trump said and Trump even made a comment critical of Putin. People also made a big deal about Trump wearing a yellow and blue tie and coming over to Zelensky after their private meeting to shake his hand and congratulate him.

https://bsky.app/profile/jayinkyiv.bsky.social/post/3lcqrxn2xtc25

It could also just be Trump’s squirrel brain at work and just repeating the last thing his advisors said to him.

 

Crypto to the rescue!

 

Trump certainly has got some thinking to do. He made hay out of the Afghanistan debacle but Putin's been far more damaged by this clusterfcuk of a collapse when the stakes for him were far, far higher.

I'm sure Macron has told him that selling Ukraine down the river is going to make Syria look like a summer camp accident. If he hasn't, Gen. Kellogg will. Repeatedly. Putin has suddenly been shown to be weak, Trump despises weakness and what Putin, Melon Husk, Gabbard, etc. want him to do is going to leave him looking - in his own words - "weak, weak, weak!"

My guess is that Zelensky's talk of territorial concessions is a ploy to please Trump and get Trump to offer Putin an objectively bad deal for Ukraine but still one with far too much in it for Putin to accept, never mind adhere to. Once he rejects it, the fur will fly

 

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He will own it just like he owned the Afghanistan withdrawal.

 

Again, this should go to the Syria Thread. Unless it specifically pertains to Russia's waning influence & power.

 

Perhaps this is meant as a homage to the Great War's Black Devils, bicycle infantry unit famous (here anyway) for its role in the Battle of Halen.

 

Constant reports, including from leading Russian milibloggers, that Putin is preparing to evacuate Syria completely.

He'd better, because anti-Assad forces are gathering near Latakia to bring things to a head and what few people appreciate is that the Alawite heartland is in the mountains behind the coastal towns and villages, which are largely Sunni. Even if Russia has the resources to spare, there's no basis for their base.

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This is about Russia. Anything that weakens Russia, whether it's their influence on the world or the price of potatoes in Moscow, is important to Ukraine. That's why Ukraine sent soldiers into Africa to harass Russian troops there.

 

Discourse in Moscow right now, including foreign policy experts.


Be sure they're drawing conclusions about the war as well and whatever their position on Ukrainian independence, conclusions are being drawn about Putin's judgement and decision-making too. Russia may end up keeping the bases but how likely was Assad to have actually expelled them?

Going all-in was Putin's decision and his alone. His credibility is heavily damaged as a result.

 

Tatiana Stanovaya is very well-connected. Her assessment of the future is sobering:

Assad’s collapse has also shaken Putin, making him less inclined to demonstrate flexibility with Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has, to some extent, cost him Syria, which reinforces his unwillingness to compromise. ​

 

One or two AR15s out there that could be useful


In the 1950s, Eugene Stoner designed a light weight, rapid fire rifle. The AR-15 became the standard-issue weapon for military service members.

The weapon was once banned in America, but now an estimated 20 million are in civilian hands.

"And what's remarkable is that if you go back just to 1994, there were only 400,000 in the country at that time," said Zusha Elison, co-author of the book "American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15."