General elections have a lot to answer for...

From an article in The Times.
Latvia strips Kremlin supporters of residence permits

An example how the sanctions affect Russias military sales. Although one factor probably is that the Russians may have warned of the disminished ability to provide them at all, neverminding whether due to sanctions restricing component availability or RF needing those themselves in Ukraine. Nevertheless, good news.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/a...-russian-deal/

Shells lying in the road 5k from the ammo dump blast.

You are going to love this, well done Ukraine and thank you for the thoughts.

Nice use of the Clash and their version of that song. :ok:
Not sure how they'd get some aviation themes with Rock the Casbah, but I am sure they could figure it out.

Isn't there also an issue that Russia relied upon various industries in Ukraine for components too, especially with regards to aviation components?

Hmm you might have a point there...

Speaking of Chinooks nice to see the Odihams finest at work in the region

https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles...ward-presence/

and with our soon to be new NATO members in Santas grotto

https://www.raf.mod.uk/news/articles...ox-in-finland/


With the recent Russian losses, and the increased shelling around the nuclear plant i wonder how things will pan out around xmas time?

cheers

I hope I’m not the only one who believes it would have been a bad idea to threaten the use of nuclear weapons after the end of WW2. I accept their potential use in retaliation of aggression against the US and its in accordance with signed treaties, for intended purpose of deterrence.

Yeah, it's very unfortunate that the Russian propaganda has been allowed to have so much influence globally. And I doubt it's in Russia's interest to have more global warming, seeing how many wildfires they had this year. But, since one way of fighting global warming is to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels, which would mean less money for Russia, they have an indirect motivation to support the positions of climate change deniers.

In fact, when it's in its interest, Russia can be against fossil fuels. When those fossil fuels are not extracted in Russia, that is. For example, in 2013 Chevron came to Romania to drill some exploratory wells for shale gas extraction, through hydraulic fracking. Needless to say, Russia didn't like that at all. So, through various channels, they pumped disinformation about the risks of hydraulic fracking. After some large protests at the site where the first wells would have been drilled, which descended into violence, Chevron abandoned the project.

The Russians/Soviets were offered participation in the Marshall Plan, and they turned it down. As it turns out, the Molotov Plan didn't work out quite as well. Comecon was so successful that ... wait, no it wasn't.

Was it not Patton that recognised the threat and said keep on going after Germany was defeated.

I hope I am not the only one that is unhappy that we swapped Hitler for Stalin in Eastern Europe and the Baltic, when the West had it in it's power to do something about it. I think dealing with an angry Russia confined to its pre 1939 borders would have bee a much better prospect, than the whole cold war thing we got with the Warsaw Pact.

He certainly advocated for that, but he was unable to get his chain of command to agree. :p

Probably more releated to CATSSA, while supply could be concern, russia even pre ukraine never had a great record at supplying parts. Imagine CATSSA would be used to discourage lessor countries from going russian

His idea was to rearm the nazis and join them in the fight.

Your verb is wrong. His idea was to rearm the nazis and joinlead them in the fight (as allies to our soldiers) against the commies. He was never going to join the Nazis. And as I noted above, his chain of command was uninterested in the war being recommenced. I suspect that Churchill may have sympathized with the feeling, but Great Britain was spent and I don't think he'd have advised taking that course of action.

The Ukrainian position is pretty understandable, they have every right to ask for that, and they also have every reason to be wary of any agreements that rely on the integrity of the Kremlin; recent history suggests that Gepetto has been working overtime in Tuscany....

The Russians have a number of options, and most are not desirable.
1. They can escalate;
2. They can continue with the current master plan...;
3. They can conduct a partial withdrawal to 2014 lines;
4. They can conduct a full withdrawal to pre 2014 lines.

Escalation
The cost to Russia to date has been considerable, escalation increases those losses and the outcome is if successful gaining ownership of a wrecked country, and having to wear the cone of shame for the next century. A bargain wrapped in a disaster, inside a catastrophe. The fight doesn't end with the takeover of the terrain, it only begins, and that risks the complete stability of the rest of Russia. Oooops.

Continuation
When on a bad bet, just keep laying down the further bets, as that has always worked at Vegas.... not. The cost to Russia in capital terms, resources, military capability, lives of their defence force, and in Rubles, on top of the cost to their economy as it collapses to levels of more than a decade ago is problematic to stability fo the federation. Not looking good at all.

Withdrawal to 2014 lines
The "love" expended on the Donbas and other locations by Russia won't be forgotten readily; the behaviour of the Russian army in the field doesn't lend itself to winning hearts and minds. Expect that a prolonged asymmetric war would ensure within the Donbas, and as the population is effectively homogeneous to Russia proper, that would end up at the home door step.

Withdrawal to pre-2014 lines
Of any specific concern that Russia has had was the matter of the Black Sea fleet. With the global warming situation, the Baltic and Northern fleets will become ice free 24/7/365 in the next decade, and it is possible that even Kamchatka will follow suit. Vladivostok is very close to ice free if not already, being kept open at worst by ice breakers. Within the Black sea area, Russia has a good port in Novorossiysk, which is completely ice free. Russia would still feel compromised by the Kerch waterway, which is their access to the Sea of Azov, the Don river and the major port of Rostov on Don. There is a possible opportunity to demilitarize completely Crimea and have it supported by a standing UN force, to ensure that no militarization arises from either side. The sad part is that Ukraine had entered into an agreement in the post 1991 condition to let Russia maintain access to the Black Sea fleet using Sevastopol as a base, and the action of Russia was to undermine that largesse in 2014.

Putin can pull success out of this on the home front as being the peace maker, which oddly is in the best interests of Russia. That is, Russia has a historic anxiety towards it's territory, and arguably uses that paranoia as a justification for it's appalling action to it's neighbors. The damage to the relationship of Russia with neighboring states is not in the interest of the Russian citizenry. Returning Russia to a position of international accord is important, unless we all want to revisit the best and worst of the Cold War. Did that, didn't like it so much. Russia needs to be resuscitated at some point, but it also needs to wind back the anxiety that is in their psyche, while having a bit of a belly button cogitation on what is in the interest of the public as far as graft and corruption is concerned. Re-nationalizing resources that were plundered in the aftermath of 1991 would be a good start. Giving the oligarchs a minor residual compensatory amount may smooth that sort of transition back to a normal market working for the masses. Energy wise, Russia needs to move away from being dependent on such resources, they have enough on hand to reset their economy to other alternatives.

Russia will need help on various matters by the global community to normalize their economy, and to deal with the festering problem of nuclear waste etc that has lost it's headline space in recent months but remains a present danger. Not much help will be forthcoming unless a comprehensive understanding can be achieved that resolves the Russian concerns, and any such agreement has to be robust enough to survive the recidivist history towards agreements that Russia has cataloged over a lone time line.

The kinetic character of warfare with current art munitions precludes an 30 year or 100 year war scenario, the expenditure and losses are of biblical proportions in the field, Russia is losing around a company a day, a couple of battalions a week, and Ukraine is suffering losses that are at the very least a substantial percentage of the Russian losses, on a historic attacker/defender ratio for a non-blizkreig event (Sitzkrieg 2.0?).

While Russia may consider it's interests lie in no less than a 2014 line of ceasefire, that may not be the most cost effective balance all up. The concept of cost/gain balance that was being taught pre 24 Feb 22 suggested there was no rational basis for the "Special Military Operation"; 6 months later, the glaring deficit in rationale has been reinforced by the global deterioration of the strategic position of Russia in the context of an "us v them" model. NATO has expanded considerably, the alliance is stronger for the threat that was imposed, and by any measure Russia has lost a very large proportion of it's forces, and shown severe deficiencies of their equipment, leadership, manpower, policies, procedures and practices in the field.

An exit strategy that doesn't provide for any territorial gain by Russia may seem unpalatable, but that can be made more attractive by action by the global community that may wish to improve global security while returning Russia to the international community. It is a shame to lose the richness of the arts and history of Russia due to the errors of a single individual who acted incautiously based on questionable intelligence as a consequence of his "manner" of management. Ukraine still needs to be remediated, the load of recovery will befall on the rest of the world one way of the other.

An excellent precis of the options available to Russia, however, as noted many times previously, the psyche of the average Russian walking the streets would not countenance any of the better options above unless a radical re-assessment of their actual fallibility occurred. This would require a mental leap beyond anything they can tolerate. Possibly a revolution might do it, but simply changing the government just gets you more of the same.

IG

I dont speak russian so cant confirm it but theres videos going around on social media of russians protesting with placards that have pictures of russian servicemen who have lost limbs in ukraine. Apparently they are begging US and UK to stop sending weapons to ukraine. Sound like a form of cognitive dissonance to me.

To revert to an aviation theme, an utter SA failure occurred from the start of this at all levels; perception, comprehension and projection. Similar factors plague the continuation of the war (special cluster F%8#, for naval aviators)

Perception errors stem from prior experience that reinforced mental models that just ain't so. The actions in Chechnya, Syria, and even Ukraine 1.0 gave an overly optimistic expectation of the capabilities of the Russian forces in all areas. The expectation of an OP PLAN "Z"? giving a certain victory in 72 hours would have had Sun Tzu running out getting more quills to write with. The consequences of that assumption continue to reverberate in the field today. Ukraine took the hard lessons of the last 8 years and did something about it, Russia basked in the glory of taking on an unprepared and unexpecting neighbor with a sneak attack worthy of it's own "day that shall live in infamy". When Russia came about again to the rinse & repeat cycle, not too many people were going to cross the party line and advise the Count that there was a bit of a gap between fact and reported status of the might of the realm. Normalization of deviation had also occurred, Russia expected the West to sit back and just cluck away in disdain. The Russians did not factor that NATO, even in a diminished capacity, was able to come together and find common cause in the injustice that had befallen Ukraine, and the inherent risk that an attack on Ukraine imposed on NATO as well. Who knew! Who knew that it was a bad time of the year to undertake combined force actions with mechanized brigades, on ground unsuited for the activity, it had been ever thus.

Comprehension failures abounded in this scratching of the kitty litter. The consequences of the steep learning curve that Russia was given by Ukraine in the first week was lost thereafter, and remains uncorrected to date. Russia had an option to either sort it out or get out, and they chose a third option, rinse & repeat, as it always works better the second time around without correction. Russia managed to dump enough stores and bang on civil population areas and to rape, pillage and murder enough people to be able to suspect that the winning of hearts and minds would be incompatible with the loving kindness shown by the Russian conscript in the field under the quality supervision of the army. That is an own goal, and continues to replicated at every opportunity, stupid is not fixable apparently.

Projection of the consequences of "play it again, Sam" dropped through the floor gratings. Conflict takes 2 to play, and assuming the other side is just going to acquiesce or be less irritated than you would be is a recipe for a lousy day. From day 1, it was evident that there was considerable response to the actions of Russia, and yet the continued ratcheting up of sanctions and of munition supplies to the Ukrainians have Russia bemoaning their fate. This is also the Russian tourist status in the European countries complaining of being less than cordially welcomed, and of the lament that the world's arms being provided to Ukraine are causing hardship and suffering of the poor invader.

The global failure of SA extends to the resolution of the conflict, but adds inertia, resentment, hubris, and self-interest into the mix of making rational choices. The rational options are few, with some variants turning them into a spectrum. Continuing on a bad path hoping for a change in the dice from General Winter or other saviors is tantamount to just hope, and hope is apparently not a rat cunning plan.