While I feel for your friends, they stood by and elected Putin and after his term, stood by and watched Putin elect himself President come dictator, the West never did this, the Russian public did, they allowed Putin and his cronies to rob and subjugate the population, the West did not produce Putin, Russians did, and to be honest they are reaping what they sowed. I agree as things stand things will not return to normal, the only way Russians will ever begin to restore that trust is to revolt and cast off Putin, the oligarchs and the Dumas and restore trust in the country.

but at least they have an apparent plentiful supply of INOP stickers. Don't need crew if they do much more breakages.

Spot on, lines have to be drawn, and giving any doubt to the enemy and the rest of the world that nuclear weapons can be used against a totally unaggressive country, let alone in OUR part of the world, Europe, is dangerous, how many country's would go for the bomb. Its a miracle there's only a handful of country's that HAVE gone nuclear in the last 50 years.
And thankful yet jarring knowing a few have given up on there programs/weapons. Brazil,South africa etc. The fact the uk,usa promised ukraine its protection in renouncing its thousands of nukes and trained forces is a big deal here. Budapest Memorandum. By all accounts we have them let them down, faced by that promise. you cant go by half measures forever, "give an inch", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areas_annexed_by_Germany. we've been lucky in the last generations since then. sacrifices have been made, how many pilots do you all know who have died, training, keeping the peace. I do fear that we clearly have became to cushy in Europe, our governments have cut away again and again gambling on alliances, Nato, and trident. Our grandfathers & fathers are watching, history is watching, and its no time to appease anymore.

Theres some civilizations you cant help, unsolvable. alien. Afgan, china, but the Ukrainians have shown they as we thought willing to take unspeakable pain, take bloody nose. For freedom, to better there society. to be our mates. and you gota put yourself out there for your mates. they've been holding the line. yes they have corruption, but a big deal of this is they want to escape that. and you gona stand by while putin rapes and nukes there country, sending animals of men, the worst of the worst to do his bidding. we've staved off ukraines total collapse this far, (Bucha) how many did we help stop, those javalins and Nlaws, kept them in the fight, to be cowed now.

precisely
https://giphy.com/explore/fast-show-nice

I don't think it was that simple

I think that Chamberlain knew exactly what he was doing when he held up the "piece of paper" - he knew we weren't ready and was prepared to sacrifice his reputation in an attempt to buy us enough time to make ourselves ready. And fortunately it worked ... just

Back in military topic, we"ve learned now what the partial mobilization really means:
mobilizing partially capable, giving them partial training, equipping them with part of the kit, giving them part of the ammo and making then partially combat ready. Eventually only part of them make it to the front, being then parted by Urainian army.

based on this video the mobilized troops will have a training of two weeks prior to sending to units (which most probably means the front). Also, they are told that they won't be coming home until the Special Military Cockup is over.
They don't seem very enthusiastic about it either.

Well the mobilization adds a new equation to the things, best case scenario for the Russians, they can take back the tactical advantage.
However it will just be a grind. we are going on the partial mobilization Russian news as face value. and there already hiding in plain sight with that redacted paragraph.
covert mobilizations been going on for a while now, now its partial,public, is it really just 200000-300000 being drafted this week, its a big country.
Its a wait and see moment, the lead time on arming them up i see is a topic.
Have they been bluffing with keeping tanks & equipment back. will the 2nd wave troops be backed up with new stuff?
Fact they started sending T-62s at one point was crazy, equivalent of centurions. Are they truly scraping the barrel, or just scraping the barrel of the first line/wave troops.

It seems like they have learnt one thing with the drones now from Iran, that part of warfare's changed. who knows what chess pieces we haven't scene. The phrase pawn sacrifice come to mind.

There has to be some elite troops they have been holding back, and can still be used, the withdrawal of units around and amongst the western military districts has been noted.
Can the bayraktars,Himars, newly acquired t-90(russia), t-80s, Hinds & fresh western trained Ukrainian troops now entering the mix, handle whats to come.

New views of the Kherson

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....be02bcd57.jpeg




..

Left by forced conscripted Ukrainians?

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/2...kraine-regions

"We will work with our allies and partners to impose additional swift and severe economic costs on Russia."
Swift..

Fruition's of the recent summit

Worrysome if true.

Imagine being handed one of these and told to go to the front line.

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1573591907447574530

Sometimes it feels like sabotage from the inside.

This is a Rumour Network so I will post this here. No idea how true it may be or what effect it may have on Chinese influence with Russia over Ukraine but President Xi is rumoured to have been placed under house arrest in China.

Chinese President XI Jinping Under House Arrest? Sensation By Subramanian Swamy's Tweet (spotnews18.com)

If its a rifle for training, I have used rubber rifles, hi viz yellow and red, with the same weight and a dynamics for training rather than a working rifle. But if thats what he taking to front he sorta screwed, probably be able to yoink a better one off a body in no time

We had .303 rifles modified to look like SLR’s for drill practice.


Aviation Content:

KA-52 shoot down.

Its coming from indian sources, which to me is only just higher than russian sources

Declaring mobilization was a risky gamble that may lead to Putin’s demise. But not because it is unpopular with the public.….

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...716069377.html

First timer in Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces in the South shot downed an Iranian Mohajer-6 UAV.

Four hours later, Sergei reported with his clean rifle and was promoted to Lieutenant.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....2f45375afb.jpg

Where I am I was trained with the real ones, signed one upon arrival to the forces. Never heard of dummy personal weapons though. To my understanding the Russians are providing the weapons on day 1 and sending the troops to training with their personal weapons. If they only have two weeks of training they wouldn't have enough dummies nor time to practice with them. Reason is very smple: The Russian conscript system is used to push 120000 rather poorly trained (by western standards) conscripts through the system annually, now they are intendng to push 300k - 1M mobilized men through the system in mere weeks...
they've obviously opened the cold war era wartime stocks for this. Meaning old and obsolete everything that no one has taken care of, including the doctrine.

Dummy training rifles were issued upon request for additional volunteer PT training, you could keep them in barracks unlike real firearms. They were generically called blue guns even tho there was red options. There was steyr AUG, EF-88 and M4 commando

we kept the real ones at the barracks with us, although in locked racks while not in service to avoid Private Pyle moments. One had to know the exact location of ones personal issued weapon at all times.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....32a2921d0.jpeg

Putin is now in full downfall mode: the New York Times reports that the Russian dictator is directing military operations personally and has rejected repeated requests from commanders to save Russian lives by withdrawing from Kherson to the left bank of the Dnipro River

I'd hate to be a Russian mobilized troop. Not many of them will return home alive.

Hearing stories from a few friends (one is married to a Chinese) and whispers coming from their families out there in messages that there's lots of military activity in and around Bejing, so......there could be some legs in this story?

There's stories of 6000 flights being suddenly cancelled in China too, plus rail journey suspensions.

The videos and tweets of the Russian Police and the Enlistment Commissars forcing men into trucks and buses is reminiscent of the rounding up of undesirables in the late 30s and early 40s around Europe.
History will judge these weak willed individuals as co-conspirators in the deaths of tens of thousands of their countrymen, there will be no defence of "I was just following orders," as the guards used at Belsen, Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Many of these men will be massacred before they get anywhere near the front line.
While I do not feel remorse for them, I feel like I am watching a deeply disturbing part of history in the making that I had hoped Europe had moved away from.
Will future generations look at the posts on these pages and wonder if we too have become desensitised to yet again death on an industrial scale?

I think we had all hoped that, but sadly it only needs one deranged and corrupt megalomanic to reverse all the progress made since WW2. Sadly, post-Soviet dogma persists, preventing Russia taking a proper place in the community of Nations. And the same applies to China, of course.

The start of the disintegration of the Russian Federation?

Kadyrov now has sizeable forces loyal only to him - as recently shown - and what has Putin left to suppress any uprisings or cecessions?

And in Chechnya, and elsewhere, memories run deep.

As recently stated Russia’s entire southern flank is now afire.

Bring popcorn….

Ramzan Kadyrov just refusing to launch the mobilization in Chechnya …

GeeRam, Flight Radar24 is showing normal flights over China at 21.37 Beijing time. A bit slow for a Saturday but not down by 6,000.

No further inferences

Probably the best motivational speaker I've heard.

This lot have been standing about to long… go get them boys and girls.

I have a theory about the mobilisation, but I hope I am wrong.

During WW2 Russia used to calculate German firepower and times that by the time to cross the ground then throw in that number of troops plus more, so no matter what was fired at them they could not kill them all. That probably is the fate they await, advance at all costs.

I have been keeping my powder dry on this after my initial post but I am also hearing lots of independent evidence that gives the rumour credibility - without being able to 100% confirm it.

Aviation content:

"A Russian SU-30 on fire after being hit by Ukrainian manpads. It crashed along with another Russian SU-25. 24.09.2022. Southern Ukraine."

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFoota...eb2x&context=3

Im still wondering why Belorussia is also so quiet..very odd given their previous election issues

Glad to hear you are OK, please be careful. :)

Bulgakov sacked
 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63021117
The blamegame is underway

Funny you should mention Belarus....