They get to own the outcome if they do that. Putin has no intent to stop in the East of Ukraine, so these guys get the fallout in their own back yards and with their own citizens. Myopic view if true. Separately, as much as Russia will be hated for the next century, so to will the quisling governments that appease Putin.

Does this constitute appeasement?
Sounds a bit like. If you are winning we will agree to send you stuff but once you start loosing we are not interested as we fear Putin. I think we will be interested soon, very soon.


More likely they have been losing for a while and the propaganda has been painting a rosy picture.
Without NATO help they will loose. The question is what will Russia win and can it keep what it's won?


As Russia did in WW2. Retreat causing the enemy to extend their supply lines beyond what they can easily maintain.

did it say Hungary would receive 350 million a week? :rolleyes:

No, but I believe he did offer an oven ready deal!

The Polish Army will apparently acquire some 500 M142 HIMARS to equip 80 MRL batteries.

SV and Exp

Grow up for Heaven's sake!

Livng rather close to the Ukraine border I need a bit of humour, sometimes.

Iskanders to Belarus

This does look an excellent opportunity to me, for the NATO to step in and destroy that stuff in Belarus, the first moment a launch has been sent off to Ukraine.

I'm with you Exp so in that vein.........

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....0507075c5c.jpg

The problem is, neither EU nor NATO does have a kind of "sin-bin". The EU was wringing itself into bendy reasoning to at least punish Orban financially, when Covid came around.

Let alone, when the NATO would decide to action, Orban will be on the emergency brake.

Yep, this would have made the difference, even when it would have been small battle groups. Unfortunately, it did not happen.

Which emphasizes why the Russians want their mobile nukes at the Finnish border. For the reach distance, it doesn't matter, for the failure fall-out it does.

At the military level, failures are calculated, so just have enough extra capacity. Though, this amount of failures is high.

Aiming points: Just practical items: When you see the rocket ignition flash, but no rocket departure, etc. When the rockets land in Russia itself. When the rockets land in farmland, etc.

Regarding the war prediction: The Biden government did have pretty accurate predictions when and what was going to happen. The performance time-line did surprise everybody, the whole world, including Putin.

And the WMD/Iraq: That was upfront clear, the whole WMD was complete nonsense. The Second Iraq war only happened because Bush senior told Bush junior, he did regret, he did not finish off Saddam Hussain. And then, subsequently, further encouraged by Cheney and his war industry. Sorry for the thread-drift.

Yep, Orban is more and more becoming a Putin slave, just like Lukashenko.

Yep, that is an important one. And that includes China, implying the financing of the China military (large scale export of consumer/industrial thingies to Western countries) will be scrutinized.

As someone who resides in said country, that happened a long time ago and there are too many sweet deals to lose with Putin if the latter is removed - hence the current Hungarian stance. If you listen to the "Kremlin File" podcasts - there is a whole show about how the Russians corrupt governments with infrastructure deals - hmmm, just like the Paks II deal for the new nuclear power station that is being financed and built by the Russians. It's so sensitive that the whole deal is a state secret and nobody but the ruling party here know what is going on.

And the Chinese with e.g. Sri Lanka.

While I share some of your skepticism of the US Intelligence systems, there is no question that all those AWACS, P-8, and similar aircraft flying around near the Ukraine are gathering massive amounts of information regarding the performance (or lack thereof) of the various Russian weapons systems.

Really? I'd expand but not in the scope of this thread.

So what's the purpose of these munitions?