Worries are they might use chemical weapons on the Ukraine

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...Brogue_corq%5D

What's the water for? Just a lubricant?

No idea but I read a suggestion it's to stop sparks?

(Not as a mod) EOD on a budget? Hope that went as planned.

And yet there are cretins in this thread seemingly happy for this to continue unabated.

Is that an EOD technique they teach in the British Army?

It would seem that there is no such thing as a civilian so far as the Russian military in Ukraine are concerned. Plenty of evidence on here and elsewhere.

My thought too. Definite change of tone today.

If chemicals drift onto a NATO country does that constitute an attack?

Aimed at me, I guess. So do please tell us what your solution is to stop rockets ?
Maybe since you're now here, you'll answer the questions you have ignored since I posed them to you in our last exchange, namely:
.........or is your preferred tactic to toss around a few insults and then crawl away ?

I do however think {censored by the mod} for writing "yet there are cretins in this thread seemingly happy for this to continue unabated" I am certainly not happy about it , but see no way that outside interference - short of a total-European war - can stop it now. A NFZ that you like so much wouldn't have prevented this horror.

Personal attacks are not the way to proceed, regardless of "what that other guy did"
This warning / reminder is addressed to HelpfulStacker as well. Play the ball not the man.

The family that were seen being killed in the mortar blast have been identified, the mother was a Silicon Valley tech.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/californ...m-16990037.php

American official on the news states "If Russia uses chemical or biological weapons this changes everything".

That makes no sense. Why would he care who started it? He would be dead. Along with everyone else.

Not saying he doesn’t want to go out in a bang, just that your logic makes no sense.

I think the US was wrong to stretch the word 'genocide' to cover what the Chinese were/are doing to the Uighurs in the west. The phrase 'cultural genocide' is a dangerous misnomer. What the Han Chinese are doing is 're-education', systematic forced brainwashing, and ethnic cleansing, perhaps, but not genocide in the traditional etymological sense of the mass killing of a people.

Putin borrowed this loosened verbiage to justify invading the squabbling eastern edge of Ukraine, but what he is now doing in his paranoia to the whole of the Ukraine is a clear war crime, terrorism, and genuine genocide in my opinion. He is systematically surrounding and smashing flat every important city, as they have practiced in Syria. It is also ethnic cleansing as Russian passports are printed out and millions flee. But he hasn't given us any updates as to how many bad-guy neo-Nazis from the Azov brigades around the Donbass and Mariupol he has eliminated.

The only philosophy I can see here so far is a pre-modern, barbaric 'the ends justify the means'. Those 'ends' are a map in his head. Sadly I suspect most in his poor military probably do not know what they are doing in Ukraine or why.

Oil prices are falling as UAE signals upping of output.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...tions-with-ban

Much as I like fast jets, I'm clearly not getting something here.
Surely Polish/Slovakian/Bulgarian MiG-29s however gifted to the Ukraine are just going to end up being blasted out of the sky by Russian SAMS?
Even at high altitude trying to plink convoys etc - they're prey for BUKs etc.
Are 30+ more fast jets going to make a huge amount of difference - looks and sounds symbolic to me.
I see VPOTUS has been dispatched to Warsaw to talk to the Poles.
Wouldn't it make more sense to absolutely flood Ukraine with Stingers and work out a way of getting a number of Starstreaks and Patriots in there as well? Noting Ben Wallace says the UK are thinking about it...
That way you've got both the low and high altitude threats covered off - and you're effectively still denying air-superiority to Russia.
Meanwhile you keep up the supply of NLAWS and the equivalent to strike armour and convoys.

EDIT: OK - I see - Patriot far too large, complex and expensive. Possibly also escalatory. So what's the smallest high altitude missile intercept system you could get away with?

Well, barring a major Ukrainian offensive and victory, perhaps the only way that they can end this tragedy while allowing Putin to “save face”.
Sadly I don’t think he will be taken out of power anytime soon.

1) Cease Fire by both sides followed by negotiations.
2) Ukraine offers that they will declare themselves a neutral Country and not join NATO.
2) Putin declares “victory” and withdraws from Ukraine promising never too return. I highly doubt,however, that he will give up Crimea.
3) Everyone helps Ukraine rebuild.
4) Ukraine gets lots and lots of weapons to defend itself in the future.
5) Much like the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis nobody is happy but a major war is averted.

Far from the perfect ending so many of us wish for by any means.
This is the only viable way out I can see at the moment.
Smarter folks than I probably have much better ideas.

It sure should. It didn’t in Syria, but perhaps it will here.
We are too damned cowed by Putin’s threats and the empty hope he won’t do something worse. Which in turn invites him to do something worse.

As for NFZ, there's AIM-120 ground launchers that could achieve the same result, but you have to be careful not to shoot your own aircraft. Not cheap compared to Javelin, Stinger and NLAW, but good for high altitude targets if that's the problem.

As long as the Ukrainians keep getting supplied with sufficient missiles, counter-battery and drones, Vlad will be digging himself into an ever deeper hole. At what point, if ever, will the missiles run Vlad out of armor and artillery?

In the optimistic scenario that Vlad is forced to stop feeding armor and artillery to the missiles, domestically he will face the news of massive personnel losses that will inevitably trickle through.

Germany exited WWI after the Kaiser abdicated. We can hope for a similar outcome, but another Versailles is best avoided.

Not 'happy' but better (less bad) than all out nuclear war.