WW3? Ukraine/US vs. Donbass/Russia

[Bill Ryan]

A brief mention of the countries attending the 14th BRICS summit, chaired by China on 23-24 June, just a few days ago.

Besides the founding nations of Russia, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, present were

• Algeria
• Argentina
• Cambodia
• Egypt
• Ethiopia
• Fiji
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Kazakhstan
• Malaysia
• Senegal (representing the 55 countries of the African Union)
• Thailand
• Uzbekistan.

There are some fairly major nations there (none in Europe, of course), and this is one of the steps towards the inevitable new multipolar world.

[marielle]

I really enjoyed Robert Barnes' analysis of the different factions within the U.S government and how they are handling the Ukraine war:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Cb9UjL_ZoKw

His discussion of the "Deep State Divide" is very interesting--parts of the deep state want OUT now and other factions, such as the State Department want to escalate.

Let's hope saner heads prevail.

[kfm27917]

severodonetsk has fallen

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=81PRbWC9dgo

[Vicus]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0cZLquO2QTE

[Vicus]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=d-BzyGQ_XSg

[Vicus]

The United Kingdom and its allies are facing a “1937 moment” in light of Russia’s most recent invasion of Ukraine, and therefore must “mobilise” its armed forces to “meet today’s threat and thereby prevent war in Europe,” the head of the British Army said on Tuesday.

Speaking before an annual army conference in London, General Sir Patrick Sanders, who became the head of the Chief of the General Staff earlier this month, warned that while the UK is not officially at war with Russia it must “act rapidly so that we aren’t drawn into one through a failure to contain territorial expansion.”

“It is dangerous to assume that Ukraine is a limited conflict; one of its obvious lessons is that Putin’s calculations do not always follow our logic,” General Sanders said.

The Army chief went on to warn that while Ukraine may have secured early victories, he noted that the Russian military “wages war at the strategic, not the tactical level – its depth and resilience means it can suffer any number of campaigns, battles and engagements lost, regenerate and still ultimately prevail.”

“We don’t yet know how the war in Ukraine will end, but in most scenarios, Russia will be an even greater threat to European security after Ukraine than it was before. The Russian invasion has reminded us of the time-honoured maxim that if you want to avert conflict, you better be prepared to fight,” Sanders declared.

He went on to note that with the growing threat of Communist China, the United States will become more engaged militarily in the Pacific theatre and therefore the United Kingdom and European members of NATO will necessarily bear more of the brunt in confronting the threat posed by Russia.

Despite the British government allocating £41 billion to Army equipment over the next decade, prior to the war in Ukraine, the government had announced that it would be looking to decrease the number of active soldiers in its ranks in favour of drones and other cyberwarfare. Sanders said that this should be taken off the table due to the potential need for troops on the ground in a land war in Europe, describing the idea as “perverse”.

Other NATO nations have also been stepping up their spending on defence, notably Germany, which has consistently failed to meet the two per cent of GDP requirement of the treaty, a failure that was persistently noted by former President Donald Trump. Following the invasion of Ukraine in February, Chancellor Olaf announced that it would commit an additional €100 billion to defence spending annually.

The statements from the top commander of the British Army came amid the backdrop of the G7 summit in Bavaria, Germany. At the summit, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the most hawkish ally of Ukraine — perhaps due to Britain being less reliant on Russian energy than its European counterparts — contended that the West should not engage in peace talks with Russia as the prospect of ceding Ukrainian territory in any agreement would only serve to embolden future territorial expansions through war.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/202...ar-ii-lead-up/

[Vicus]

ARE YOU PREPARED FOR NUCLEAR WAR IN 2022?

A horrific world war started in late February 2022. At present, NATO-allied nations are on a collision course with the Russian Federation. The Russians don’t want to fight the USA and Western Europe, but the American and European ruling classes want the war. A billion people could die sometime this year. Are you prepared for it?

https://www.trunews.com/stream/are-y...ar-war-in-2022

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/ILRUSSO1/status/1542151362028470272

Here is an article from The Barent Observer written in January 2022 about Rosneft :


Rosneft might have made a major discovery in the Pechora Sea

January 21, 2022

The Medynsko-Varandeyskoye license is believed to hold as much as 410 million tons of oil.

According to Interfax, the state company in the period 2020-2021 drilled an exploration well in the license area located along the southeastern coast of the Pechora Sea.

The drilling of the well named Madachagskaya-2 reportedly proved the “existence of industrial resources of oil,” information obtained from Rosneft shows.


Rosneft controls a total of 28 license areas in Arctic waters, among the Medynsko-Varandeysky area in the Pechora Sea. Map by Rosneft
Further exploration of the well is now under planning. That includes also the drilling of an additional well, Interfax reports.

The upcoming well is expected to be conducted in the period 2023-2024.

Rosneft is believed to have drilled a first well - the Madachagskaya-1 - in the area in 2017.

Project information indicates that the well drilling is conducted horizontally from the Pesyakov Island, the small piece of land along the Pechora Sea coast. Nearby is Varandey, the site of Lukoil’s oil terminal.

The license area is located closely also to the Prirazlomnoye, the offshore oil field that has been in production since 2013.

aters in the Pechora Sea are shallow and in the area of the license area — only between 10-19 meters.

The license was originally controlled by Arktikshelfneftegaz, the Murmansk-based company that ultimately was acquired by Rosneft. It is today called RN-Shelf-Arktika.

Reportedly, Rosneft negotiated with Chinese state oil company CNPC about joint development of the resources in the Pechora Sea. However, the Chinese company saw too many risks in the projects, Interfax informs.

Rosneft controls a total of 28 offshore licenses in the Arctic, eight of them in the Pechora Sea.

The rest is here

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/in...ry-pechora-sea



https://solicoop42.org/rosneft-repor...e-pechora-sea/

Rosneft Reportedly Made a Major Discovery in the Pechora Sea
Daniel H. Joyce
January 21, 2022
According to Interfax, the state-owned company during the period 2020-2021 drilled an exploration well in the license area located along the southeast coast of the Pechora Sea.

The drilling of the well named Madachagskaya-2 would have proven “the existence of industrial oil resources”, according to information obtained from Rosneft.

Rosneft controls a total of 28 license areas in Arctic waters, including the Medynsko-Varandeysky area in the Pechora Sea. Map by Rosneft
Further exploration of the well is being planned. This also includes the drilling of an additional well, Interfax reports.

The next well should be completed during the 2023-2024 period.

Rosneft reportedly drilled a first well – Madachagskaya-1 – in the area in 2017.

Project Information indicates that the drilling of the well is carried out horizontally from the island of Pesyakov, the small piece of land along the coast of the Pechora Sea. Nearby is Varandey, the site of Lukoil’s oil terminal.

The license area is also located near the Prirazlomnoye, the offshore oil field in production since 2013.

[kfm27917]

The New, New, New World Order

Voiced by Amazon Polly
History ended in 1991. That, at least, was the myth put about by a certain triumphalist brand of neoliberal. The West had won the cold war. The communist beast had been slayed. And the looming twenty-first century would be an American one. From that point on, there would be just one globalised system in which states traded and played according to the values and rules of the USA and its western vassals. This was, if you will, the New World Order 1.0 – the new American century and the economic Great Moderation.

There were detractors of course. The late Immanuel Wallerstein pointed out that peak America happened in 1945 not 1991, while the late Chalmers Johnson argued that the true meaning of 1991 was that the USSR had merely collapsed first, and that the USA would surely follow suit – not least as the consequences of its – often violent – attempt to dictate the global rules came home to roost. Although broadly correct, the detractors tended to mistake inevitability for imminence, and were disappointed by the two decades of western, debt-based economic growth which followed. Indeed, even the unravelling – following the peak of conventional oil production in 2005 and the resulting banking and financial crash in 2008 – has also proceeded at a snail’s pace. Nevertheless, the 2008 crash and the ensuing depression spurred the western elites to re-imagine their New World Order.

The New, New World Order was the somewhat amorphous Fourth Industrial Great Green New Reset promoted by western oligarchs like Mr Gates and by the disciples and minions of real-life Bond villain Herr Schwab and his World Economic Forum. This was the fantasy of a highly technological economy powered entirely by the solar energy arriving on Earth moment by moment rather than by the millions of years of solar energy stored in the oil, gas and coal which still provide 85 percent of the energy that drives the global economy. And as with climate change itself, so long as it was all a long way in the future, and so long as the costs didn’t have to be paid up front, the majority of western populations could buy into the narrative.

I say “western,” because our inward-looking worldview, fuelled by a narrow and imperialistic media and an intellectually bankrupt political class, tended to gloss over the fact that the overwhelming majority of the world’s states never bought into our imagined New World Order 2.0. Indeed, and for good reason, the majority of the world’s people had learned to despise a western empire which has systematically syphoned the wealth from their countries while thwarting – often violently – any attempt on their part to develop governments that act in their national interests. Not that this, in and of itself, would have been a problem for the western states – the USA is still by far the biggest military spender on the planet, and is fully capable of bombing a small country back to the stone age.



Largely ignored by an arrogant western technocracy though, was the fact that immediately after the 2008 crash, the non-western major economies of the world – Brazil, Russia, India, China and others – began planning the eventual move away from the dollar currency and trading system which has dominated global finance since the end of the Second World War. It is this dollar system, remember, that as early as 1968, Jacques Rueff, economic advisor to De Gaulle, called an:

“Exorbitant privilege [to run a] deficit without tears, [to] lend without borrowing, and purchase without paying.”

So long as the world had to trade in US dollars – and woe betide any leader or country that tried an alternative – the people of the non-western economies had to provide America with the equivalent value of a dollar for every dollar of imports they needed. Between 1944 and 1971, this meant providing exports worth a thirty-fifth of an ounce of gold for every dollar of imports. Later, after the Nixon administration’s deal with the Saudi royal family, it meant whatever the going dollar value of oil happened to be. For the USA in contrast, the only cost in obtaining a dollar’s worth of imports was the cost of the paper and ink used to print new dollars – and in the current system merely the additional bytes on a central bank computer somewhere. The USA getting something for nothing from everyone else – including developed vassals like France, which is why Reuff was so annoyed – was the very essence of empire, syphoning the world’s wealth back to the motherland where its elites could enjoy lifestyles which would have made the Gods of Olympus jealous.

For an undeveloped or developing country though, the dollar system was, and is, far more punitive. Without tradable goods to exchange for dollars, the only way of funding imports – including of commodities and goods required for economic development – was to go to western investors or to US-backed institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to borrow the dollars they needed. But in addition to wanting interest, these lenders have imposed stifling western, neoliberal austerity on these countries which, in practice, have worked to impoverish indigenous populations.

It should come as no surprise then, that the majority of the world’s population are fearful as well as sceptical about the various New World Orders that the western empire claims are universal when, in reality, only around twenty percent of the world’s countries have bought into them. Indeed, the majority of the world’s states have been looking for an alternative to the western empire’s version of a world order for decades.

For an increasingly tired and economically fading western empire, there were two geopolitical imperatives after 1991. The first was similar to Bismarck’s in 1891 – to prevent the empire from becoming a minority among the world’s Great Powers. Bismarck’s successors’ failure was the Germany ended up allied to the weakest Great Power – Austria – while Britain, France, and Russia drew closer into an alliance. Their twentieth century US equivalents made the same mistake by gradually alienating both China and Russia to the point that both, previously hostile, countries began to have more in common with each other than with the western empire.

Crucially, both China and Russia have developed a common interest in mutually supporting one another in any conflict with the western empire, whether economic or military – the western empire increasingly expanding its European borders eastward while simultaneously threatening a military clash with China over Taiwan. More importantly, and despite western perceptions to the contrary, there has been growing recognition that while the Eurasian (and African and Latin American) economies can get along just fine without the western empire, the same is not true in reverse. Central to the neoliberal turn within the western empire from the late 1970s, a large part of European and American manufacturing was offshored. At the same time, investment was pulled from commodities – including energy – leaving the western empire largely dependent upon the wider world for energy, commodities and part-finished components.

The theory – which is currently being tested to destruction – was that whoever controlled the world’s currency ruled the world. This is classic energy-blindness, of course, since it views currency separate from the material real wealth that ultimately gives it exchange value. Without the dollar oil trading system, the US dollar is just another middle-ranking piece of paper, while the European currencies derived from it are – most likely – of more use for setting fires now that the electricity and gas are going away.

It is only the dollar-based banking and financial system – itself on the life support of quantitative easing and low interest rates – which has kept the western empire in the game since 2008. And in such a weakened state it was paramount that the western states avoid doing anything foolish like, say, crashing their just-in-time supply chains or, even more catastrophically, starting an undeclared economic war with the new, resource-rich Eurasian-centred coalition. Even the vehemently neoliberal and Russophobic Guardian has begun to notice that the western empire may have inadvertently embargoed itself:

“The days when solidarity with Ukraine meant putting a blue and yellow flag on your social media profile and watching TikToks of farmers merrily stealing Russian tanks are over. Britain is not strictly speaking at war, but ours is now a wartime economy. This country has entered a new and unfamiliar form of conflict which does not risk the lives of British soldiers, but effectively puts our economic wellbeing on the frontline instead. Withstanding the economic storm now buffeting us, as war pushes the price of both oil and wheat ever higher, is the contribution most ordinary Britons didn’t quite realise we were going to be making to the war effort.

“Life is already tough for millions thanks to the soaring fuel and food prices, which have driven up what would have been rocketing inflation anyway (caused globally by countries roaring back to life post-pandemic, and exacerbated in Britain by Brexit). But it’s going to get tougher when the weather gets cold enough to put the central heating on…”

This though, is only the tip of the iceberg, because while the shooting war in Ukraine is likely to be over before the clocks go back, the damage to the western empire is permanent. The many countries that have chosen not to sanction Russia are increasingly being drawn into a new trading bloc based around Russia, India, and China (the 11th, 5th and 2nd largest – in dollar GDP terms – economies respectively) the bloc (in blue in the chart) accounting for more than 75 percent of the world’s population:



You don’t have to like or agree with Vladimir Putin to take seriously the speech he made to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum last week. Five paragraphs – from an otherwise long and somewhat dull presentation – stand out:

“Many trade, industrial and logistics chains, which were dislocated by the pandemic, have been subjected to new tests. Moreover, such fundamental business notions as business reputation, the inviolability of property and trust in global currencies have been seriously damaged. Regrettably, they have been undermined by our Western partners, who have done this deliberately, for the sake of their ambitions and in order to preserve obsolete geopolitical illusions…

“When I spoke at the Davos Forum a year and a half ago, I also stressed that the era of a unipolar world order has come to an end. I want to start with this, as there is no way around it. This era has ended despite all the attempts to maintain and preserve it at all costs. Change is a natural process of history, as it is difficult to reconcile the diversity of civilisations and the richness of cultures on the planet with political, economic or other stereotypes – these do not work here, they are imposed by one centre in a rough and no-compromise manner.

“The flaw is in the concept itself, as the concept says there is one, albeit strong, power with a limited circle of close allies, or, as they say, countries with granted access, and all business practices and international relations, when it is convenient, are interpreted solely in the interests of this power. They essentially work in one direction in a zero-sum game. A world built on a doctrine of this kind is definitely unstable…

“Russia will never follow the road of self-isolation and autarky although our so-called Western friends are literally dreaming about this. Moreover, we are expanding cooperation with all those who are interested in it, who want to work with us, and will continue to do so. There are many of them. I will not list them at this point. They make up the overwhelming majority of people on Earth. I will not list all these countries now. It is common knowledge…

“We believe the development of a convenient and independent payment infrastructure in national currencies is a solid and predictable basis for deepening international cooperation…”

What we are being told here – and what is obvious enough to anyone who has been paying attention to what the rest of the world has been up to since 2008 – is that the emerging economic bloc has chosen this moment of self-inflicted economic injury by the western empire to accelerate plans for a New, New, New World Order which claims to be a fairer, gold and commodities-backed system than the fiat US dollar system which had dominated – and exploited – the planet for the past eight decades.

To be clear, this is not about the BRICs system replacing the dollar. Rather, it is about the emergence of a multi-polar world similar to that of the late nineteenth century. Rather than a single currency backed by the threat of violence – what we euphemistically refer to as the military-industrial complex – the New, New, New World Order will operate multiple currencies whose value will be backed by commodities and determined by the true strength of the economy where they are issued.

This spells serious economic woes for western economies which have depended upon dollar privilege to enjoy wealth and lifestyles far in excess of anything their real economies could hope to achieve. Britain, for example – whose biggest export good is Scotch whisky – will struggle to find anything with which to trade with the New World Order 3.0 states once it becomes obvious to all concerned that the things we “manufacture,” like Nissan cars or pharmaceuticals are merely the final assembly of components made elsewhere. As someone once noted, “if you import and assemble all of the parts of a car, then spray it with paint before re-exporting it, you are not exporting cars, you are exporting paint!” Take away Britain’s re-exports in a post-dollar system in which our money-laundering banking and financial system no longer has value, and it is difficult to see how we pay our way in the world.

On the bright side though, as we shiver in the dark, our bellies gnawed with hunger, we can console ourselves with the fact that the human population is only in overshoot because of the excess consumption within the western economies in general and the affluent regions of the USA in particular. Only those exporting states with negative embedded energy trade scores (in blue in the chart) stand to thrive in the future. Those in orange will have to adjust their standard of living closer to the global average:



Moreover, since the obscene wealth of the western elites is about to be inflated and/or defaulted into oblivion, they will finally be able to look the rest of the world in the eye when they discuss carbon reduction without that nagging New World Order 2.0 feeling that they are viewed as inveterate hypocrites by everyone else… Collapse, it seems, is the greenest option of all!

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2...w-world-order/

[Bill Ryan]

War reporter Andrey Rudenko is in an Azovstal bomb shelter, presenting evidence about how some of the foreign mercenaries (or their bodies, if they were already dead) may have been "disposed of".

Just 2 minutes. The video comments include a great deal of interesting speculation about what really may have happened here.

Foreign mercenaries (or their bodies) were burned as unnecessary witnesses at Azovstal


Source: https://www.bitchute.com/video/qwUmUK9JhqQC

[Bill Ryan]

A neat little comment today at The Moon of Alabama.

The West turned Ukraine into a gun pointed at Russia's heart.
Russia slapped the gun away and kicked Ukraine in the balls.
The West said, "That's not nice!"

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/spriteer_774400/...09681166327808

https://twitter.com/spriteer_774400/...11328936402945

https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/stat...02287631867907

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/stat...13179060752384

https://twitter.com/GeromanAT/status...22132138090498

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/DeuNachrichten/s...59234711830539

https://twitter.com/DeuNachrichten/s...59242161004544

https://twitter.com/DeuNachrichten/s...59252713836552

[Bill Ryan]

A much-praised Twitter thread from Will Schryver. Here's the whole thing, and this is the text:

~~~

Observations on the Ukraine War, 28 June:

I've watched a LOT of drone footage from this war. I've seen, from a bird's eye view, the construction and logic of the field fortifications Ukraine constructed, with US guidance, over the course of eight years.

The logic of these ubiquitous pre-prepared fortifications harkens back to the 1864-65 Battle of Petersburg (US Civil War), with many WW1 innovations – a logic where victory depends on: - you not running out of men and ammo - the enemy being comparatively stupid.

Of course, when you think about it, the revealed logic of Ukraine’s long-prepared strategy for this war is, in many ways, a reflection of American military delusions and vanities, which multiplied and solidified over the course of the brief and fleeting “unipolar moment”.

Despite not having “won” a war since 1945 (and then only truly against the Japanese), the US military is consumed with the vanity that it has always dominated opposing forces in every conflict. There is some measure of truth in this perspective.

But it is irrelevant. Because, since no later than the Korean War, the US has not faced a peer or near-peer adversary in a high-intensity conflict. The US military has not been, for almost three-quarters of century, truly tested “under-fire”. This is an indisputable fact.

Consequently, the Pentagon’s self-perception of unquestioned supremacy has served to disinform and corrupt its doctrinal and procurement decisions for multiple generations of its officer corps. For most US generals and admirals, all putative opponents are underestimated.

That said, I believe a great many have now been awakened from their intellectual slumber by the manner in which the Russian armed forces quickly assessed the Ukrainian order of battle, and then professionally adapted their strengths and tactics to decisively defeat it.

Here is a brief summation of the Russian tactical approach to the Battle of the Donbass:

Step #1: advance reconnaissance units (often in force, with dozens or hundreds of drones overhead) to assess the situation; draw fire; relay to commanders raw video and geo-coordinates.

Step #2: with target-correcting drone swarms relaying real-time strike video, proceed to savage the fortifications with towed and mobile artillery, MLRS in gradations of strength and precision, and even horrific thermobaric munitions for particularly suitable targets.

Let smoke clear.
Repeat Step #1. Still something moving there?
Repeat Step #2. Repeat Step #1. Dead bodies everywhere?

Step #3: Send in tanks and infantry to mop up. Move to next series of fortifications. And so on and so forth.

This is why Ukraine now suffers hundreds of KIAs every day. And why, for months, the Russians have suffered very few casualties – at least a 1 to 10 ratio. Probably much lower. The artillery (with occasional air and precision missile strikes) is doing all the fighting.

But back to Ukraine’s apparent strategy for this war, and the apparent US influence on that strategy. I will preface my commentary on this issue by stating that I am now thoroughly convinced Ukraine’s fatal blunder was following NATO's advice.

I’ll grant the remote possibility that the Pentagon/CIA had a cogent view, far in advance, of the relative unlikelihood that a half-million-strong, well-armed, and presumptively well-trained (by NATO) Ukraine military didn’t have much chance against Russia.

But watching drone video of Ukrainian fortifications has convinced me the NATO brain trust effectively disdained Russian military capability, and its commanders, in the course of their eight-year-long preparation of the eastern Ukrainian battlefield.

They clearly believed the Russians would be stupid enough to assault Ukrainian fortifications using “modern” tactics entirely ill-suited to the task at hand. Their vanity persuaded them the Russians would beat themselves to pieces against an entrenched well-armed force.

Indeed, they were so confident of the genius of their plan that they persuasively encouraged many hundreds (if not thousands) of now-killed or captured NATO veterans to “share in the glory” of humiliating the Russians and bringing down the Putin regime once and for all.

They deluded themselves into believing the Russians lacked: strategic and logistical acumen, a sufficiently well-trained force, and – arguably the biggest miscalculation of all – sufficient stockpiles of ammo to conduct a protracted high-intensity conflict.

In short, I have come to believe the US/NATO actually persuaded themselves that this “Mother of All Proxy Armies” they built in Ukraine seriously had an excellent chance to soundly whip the Russians in a battle situated on their borders.

In other words, they not only grossly underestimated their enemy, but they ignored centuries of history that they somehow convinced themselves had no relevance to their 21st century aspirations to defeat Russia militarily and take a great spoil of its resources.

But, as is now readily apparent to all objective, knowledgeable military analysts around the globe, the US/NATO-trained Ukraine proxy army been savaged by a patient, methodical, and significantly outnumbered Russian force, using century-old doctrines and tactics.

Even more revealing is that once-vaunted and universally feared US/UK weaponry – almost all of it rather antiquated – has proven to be far less “game-changing” than the pea-brained strategists in Washington and Whitehall mistakenly believed.

Javelins, NLAWs, and Stingers have been exposed as effectively useless against their intended targets. M-777 howitzers break down after just a few fires. GPS-guided “precision” munitions are routinely jammed by Russian EW counter-measures.

Worse yet, the inculcation of NATO field doctrines in the minds of the AFU officer cadre has resulted in pervasively inflexible responses to battlefield events that developed contrary to expectations; discipline has disintegrated; improvisation has been paralyzed.

To be sure, if one were to go by the laughable assessments of western think-tank propagandists and their dutiful lackeys in the media, “Ukraine is winning” and “the inept Russian military has been humiliated”. But more discerning observers around the world know better.

What sober military men in potential adversary countries across the globe see is that Russia has, with one hand tied behind its back, eviscerated the massive, relatively well-armed and well-trained Ukraine military. The US intimidation factor has been forever compromised.

More geopolitically significant, at least in the near future, is that European NATO members can also read the scorecard of this war: they now understand as they never could previously that standing on the NATO side of the field is hardly a guarantee of security.

I am convinced NATO will not survive the results of this war in Ukraine. Sure, they’ll “keep up appearances” for the time being, but there can be no doubt that most now understand that siding with a rapidly declining empire is fraught with great risk and minimal gain.

More concerningly, the Chinese have been watching all of these developments with great interest. They are almost certain to be emboldened to act decisively to secure their sphere of influence in the emerging multipolar world. Great dangers now await in east Asia .

[Kryztian]

Another crack in the NATO/G8 wall. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz laughs and then doesn't answer the question when asked about giving the Ukraine "security guarantees" after the war is over. Pretty sure he wants that Nordstream pipeline turned on before the weather gets cold.

[kfm27917]

https://en.topwar.ru/198131-ukraina-...bmp-m-80a.html

Ukraine received Slovenian BMP M-80A

Challenges and limitations
Slovenian infantry fighting vehicles have recently arrived on Ukrainian territory and have not yet reached the combat zone. However, it is already clear that such a technique will not be able to change the situation. Moreover, along with it, the Ukrainian army receives a number of additional problems of various kinds.

First of all, a small amount of “new” technology becomes a problem. In recent months, Ukraine has lost hundreds of infantry fighting vehicles and other armored fighting vehicles. 35 Slovenian M-80A, even together with other equipment from other countries, will not make up for these losses. Accordingly, the infantry will still lack protected vehicles with a fire support function. Moreover, the number of equipment will continue to be reduced as a result of Russian strikes.

With all this, the combat value of the Yugoslav M-80A is low. So, they are protected only from bullets and small-caliber projectiles. Any anti-tank weapons, large caliber artillery or aviation armament almost with a guarantee strikes and destroys such equipment. Increasing the level of protection is possible only through attachments of various kinds, but this does not completely solve the problem.

Noteworthy is the specific composition of weapons. The M-80A carries a 20mm automatic cannon and an obsolete ATGM. This seriously limits the possible firepower, and in addition, leads to supply problems. So, for the HS.804 gun, 20x110 mm shells are required, which were not in service with the USSR and Ukraine. If they cannot be obtained from abroad, the already limited fire performance will become even worse.

Operational problems are to be expected. Even the newest serial M-80A is already over 30 years old and they managed to develop a significant part of the resource. Whether it will be possible to establish maintenance and repair processes, as well as to ensure the supply of the necessary spare parts, is a big question. However, the received cars may simply not survive until the next repair.

Thus, the Slovenian M-80A infantry fighting vehicles will practically not help the Ukrainian army in any way. At the same time, Slovenia was able to get rid of most of the obsolete cars, suitable only for recycling. In addition, she showed her loyalty to the Kyiv regime and its foreign partners, and also confirmed her readiness in principle to help with the supply of weapons and equipment.

However, such assistance will be very limited and may soon cease. Not so long ago, the Slovenian Minister of Defense stated bluntly that his country no longer has stocks of materiel to transfer to Ukraine. Accordingly, the current 35 infantry fighting vehicles may be the last aid from Slovenia. Whether the remaining cars will be transferred from storage, time will tell. But subsequent deliveries of other equipment, it seems, are no longer possible.

[kfm27917]

Lithuania pays €3 billion for Russian energy – could the dependence be cut?

https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-englis...endence-be-cut

[Mashika]

ha ha ha ha ha ha, oh no....

She's very pretty, but you can already see in her eyes how she's getting taken over by 'the beast' of war, she's going through a lot, i bet so. Those eyes are the ones that say "i have seen how people end up once hit by those shells, and now they are coming my way"

I know, i know dear sestra. Why did i come here? Why? What a stupid situation to be in

https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/13103


That this is a public video now, says that maybe, just maybe, the video was taken from the dead hand of whoever was there at the time recording it, and she did not made it out. It's just a 'maybe', but a big one these days

Just so you know, she's covering her eyes because she doesn't want to see dead coming, she's acting like a child just there, she just reverted into one. *because she knows she's about to die and hopes someone comes and makes everything safe*

And she was sent to die there, she understands that now. This is not new, the way her eyes moves is a very known thing, we just see it starting here

That's 'shell shock', and if you have not seen it before, look for it on youtube, is not something new at all

*Look at her eye movement* when she looks at the camera, it's already there, at initial stage

Look here at minute 0:49, she's starting that process right there, i have seen it before

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=X-elmAeX_4U

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Mashika (here)
ha ha ha ha ha ha, oh no....

She's very pretty, but you can already see in her eyes how she's getting taken over by 'the beast' of war, she's going through a lot, i bet so. Those eyes are the ones that say "i have seen how people end up once hit by those shells, and now they are coming my way"

I know, i know dear sestra. Why did i come here? Why? What a stupid situation to be in

https://t.me/DonbassDevushka/13103

~~~

Yes. Thank you so much for sharing that. The realities of war. Almost no-one here will have seen this with their own eyes.