#Ukraine’s General Staff confirms that air bases in #Crimea were hit with Ukrainian missiles:


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If this counter-offensive continues to be successful, I doubt Putin will be able to remain in office for much longer. A local council from Saint Petersburg is now asking the Russian State Duma to impeach Putin for high treason:

Russian telegrams are saying UA forces are 10km west of Kupyansk, are already able to interdict the main supply route to izyum at risk. If it gets cut they have to resupply through donestk which could be up to triple the distance

The problem as I see it, is that it would be enormously difficult for any new government to dis-engage and give back Crimea: I imagine they could simply withdraw their troops from the territories in the East without too much fuss, particularly as even the Russophile population there has also suffered under occupation. Then there are the tremendously thorny questions of reparations and war-crimes.

Another T-90M bites the dust

Brave but foolish. Stay away from windows, brave people. And cars, umbrellas, tea-pots, door handles ........................

Don't forget the USAF bought the Moldovan MiG-29s and apparently those were made available to Raytheon to develop the kit, whenever that was.

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That

and this ​​​​​

Norway sends Hellfire missiles to Ukraine. In other sources it says 160 missiles.

TF; possibly, but countervailing argument would be that taking action against Putin as the architect of this disaster would provide an excuse to walk away from the field and attempt to put this behind them. The comment from St Petersburg will not be happening in a vacuum.

Putin initiated a campaign based on hubris and lack of comprehension of the efforts taken by Ukraine in responding to the hard lessons of 2014. The consequence has been an unmitigated disaster for Russia of their own making, from elevating their leader to the demi-god, all-powerful but isolated dictator.

The incoming management are likely to be quite aware that their forces are inadequate to achieve a military victory in Ukraine, and each day they are diminished further, and are now approaching the point where the other, currently compliant states in the federation are getting somewhat uppity, like Kazakhstan... Others, such as Primorski Krai in the East are an attractive pickup for China which will be looking for a distraction shortly with little risk to soften the current loss of confidence that is expanding from China's very own subprime-esque blow-out. Russia does not have sufficient manpower, equipment and wealth to hold Donbas or Crimea any longer against insurgency.

The shock of cessation of the invasion is tempered with a potential for life in Russia to return to normalcy, an opportunity to get Big Macs that taste as bad as they do anywhere in the world, to return towards being an international member. Should Russia be re-admitted into polite society? At some point, they will be, the only question is when and under what pre-conditions.

Reparations are justified, but Versailles had a direct line to the rise of the resentments that gave Hitler wings [aviation content...]. Collective responsibility comes with unintended consequences.

Russia is on the spectrum on national security; On one hand they aver to fears of invasion of their borders, and yet they act with their neighbors to de-stabilise the very same borders. That has to get a therapy session, which is everyone's interests, given they retain a decaying/corroding nuclear weapons program. Changes are necessary, but just letting the place collapse doesn't work out well in the end. In 1991, the rest of the world did less than a stellar effort in assisting the CIS states recover from the collapse of the USSR. Had a little more care been taken, the plundering of the states and the rise of the klepocracy may have been averted or mitigated at least. Being purely punitive doesn't make friends for future relationships; there are examples of both ends of consequences.

Would suggest that the UN needs to revisit the implementation of the abstaining in UNSC and UNGA votes of states that are combatants in conflicts. It is unworkable to not apply that existing constraint out of lack of moral fibre in our purported representatives in the UN.

The cost of rebuilding Ukraine and of Russia will be considered to be a nuisance but is additional economic activity for the global community. In the end, we are all in the same boat, as was quite poignantly pointed out around christmas eve, '68.


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Bill Anders

"We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth".

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Jim Lovell

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Frank Borman

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

"And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a merry christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth".

Apparently some books do more than stop tables from rocking about. We can look out and see structures in our universe at redshifts of Z=20 or more, and yet, we can't agree on care for our own rock and the precious resources that we are gifted with. Apparently intelligent life is missing in our area of the universe too.


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Twitter

Twitter

As in attacking an island and missing it.

As in attacking an island and missing it.

:E

NutLoose, NutLoose we have a problem.

Rather overshadowed by the other news of the day - but a collapse of the Russian defences in Kharkiv and around Izyum seems to be underway.


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That was an added on little taster of Russias finest captured of late.

Russian telegram channels claiming that Ukrainian forces are present in Sinikha and Senkove.

Grain of salt, but they did report that Ukrainian forces had made it to Shevchenkove yesterday.


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Someones been smoking again in Crimea, close to Novofedorivka airbase. I would be overwhelmed if the Russian propaganda would come up with some novel explanation instead of the old lies. How about, I don't know, maybe in the lines of "the Ukrainians hit us and we couldn't do s*it about it".