Does the friend for whom you’re asking actually run an East European country?
I would consider that question ironical - conveying something rather different from the outward meaning of the words - but not sarcastic, ie mocking, vilifying, hurtful.
I object to neither of these things, particularly considering who the targets of your sarcasm are
Let me continue asking for that friend: should this mean there are people incompatible with democracy - in Eastern Europe, too (not 'only' in the Middle East)....?
"Canada is planning to supply Ukraine with 80,840 CRV-7 rocket engines and 1,300 warheads in the next few months in addition to the 2,160 CRV-7 rocket engines that had been already delivered to Ukraine. In addition, the Department of National Defense of Canada plans to transfer 970 units of machine guns under the C6 designation and 10,500 9mm pistols, as well as a number of decommissioned armored vehicles, 29 units of M113 armored personnel carriers and 64 Coyote LAV infantry fighting vehicles."
"Ukraine cleared to use armour donated by Canada on Russian territory."
"Canada's package includes advanced pilot training, critical equipment and other supports for Ukrainian airbases and aircraft."
As to slowness, the politicians are in the position of hastening the military who do not wish to send problems or create transport issues across the Atlantic and into Poland for delivery to Ukraine. No one overlooks the urgency.
Tom, it's now the third time this year that ammunition dump has been hit by Ukraine. Is the Russian military bureaucracy really so rigid that it can't say after the first attack; "Maybe we should move our supply depot somewhere else?" Or is there another explanation?
Btw, why the hell is anyone still living in that village next door? Is life in Russia really so cheap? Don't worry, I'm being rhetorical. Well all know the answer to that one.
Personally I would guess that there is a cousin of someone operating that dump and he gets profits if ammo is stored there. Of course this profit is shaped with his familien, family being important in Russia I have been told. But, this is of course just one theory, inertia is certainly possible as you say.
Europe is densely populated. The front line goes from village to village. There is very little uninhabited non-agricultural land, and that mainly belongs to nature reserves.
Not Russia. It's the biggest country in the world. There is a huge amount of non-agricultural uninhabited land, almost none is nature reserves. It's mostly taiga or open steppes. Take a look at a map.
Again, look at a map. If you had you'd know this happened near the Volga. Nowhere near the border. Not a nature reserve in sight, just lots of open land & forest. Doesn't matter how touchy you are about Russia, it's still a dumb idea to store thousands of tons of munitions next to a settlement.
Thanks for the update, informative and intersting as always. All sarcasm detected appreciated. (Not sarcastic here, I leave that to you. Divisjon of work is fine.) But. You not bet that any member of the Trio Fantasticus slepes bad at night. You hope. I am afraid you are wrong, people like that are very good at avoiding responsibility, but I will join you in that hope.
Sad to see that internal politics is a factor in Ukraine's weapons development and production when the stakes are so high.
Just as the fact that complaints from the Isolationists in the US on the amount of aid to Ukraine miss the facts that -
Don't know the current status, but in July, 2023 only about half of the promised heavy hardware had been delivered;
Values of the munitions shipped is undoubtedly calculated on replacement cost spent in the US economy and often for munitions that would have reached end of service life and would have had to be destroyed in some cases (at an additional cost) or refurbished.
Battlefield experience is pushing military strategy, tactics, end technology in rather new directions and areas.
Finally, the US military has had a rude awakening on just how much an actual ground war (rather than a 'police action') requires in reserves of ammunition leading to expansion of production facilities in the US - something that would have been a major shortfall were the feared 'War with China' to occur.
On the comment of the fight between Zelensky and Peterovitch (?), aka president 5 and 6 of Ukraine. Author Andrej Kurkov who regularitet writes in a small Norwegian newspaper wrote that before the fullscale attack the war breking and being fougth was between those two presidents. What you wrote about Z sabotaging Surlien fots that bill. I would guess it could have been the other way round had Z owned a plant and P the opportunity to sabotage. Nice it isnt.
"the Trio Fantasticus has bought enough time for the VKS to withdraw all of its Su-34-units (plus all the VKS’ Su-24-units) outside ATACMS-range"
Okay, but... let's assume Ukraine would have been cleared to use the missiles, which would be the reasonable move, and would have struck some Russian airfields, blasting maybe 10-20 planes. The rest would have been pulled back, just like in this case. So now, VKS hasn't lost these additional planes, but otherwise did exactly what it would have done in the reasonable case.
I presume the Trio are affectionately patting themselves on the shoulder for having achieved a strategic victory without crossing any imaginary red lines.
Iv'e heard that nonsense about EU / USA defense sector prolonging the war because they worry about UA competition. Complete economic bullsh*t. UA had 52 mil. of people in 1993, 44 mil. in 2021 and now about 38 mil. You see, the population declined even before the war. They had 1,16 birth per women in 2021 - that's not enough to keep the population. And most of UA refugees since the war do not want to return back. Unless they change that trajectory, they are not economic threat neither to USA nor to EU. (OK, they may build and sell some good stuff, but overall cannot beat big companies.)
Zeliensky is talking about EU membership - but that would just trigger more emigration from UA, like e.g. Romania.
Shortly, UA defense sector would have problem to find enough people and to keep them, too.
Note: similar problems are in EU, USA, Japan, China, ... too. Just western EU and USA have growing population because of immigration.
Yep, but Israel would not be able to make this success without substantial US aid. And many Israel high tech products are joint cooperation with US or EU defense sector. E. g. Arrow 3 sold to Germany last year is made jointly by IAI and Boeing.
Same with UA defense industry. For US and EU companies it's more like an opportunity either to make own factories in UA (e.g. Rheinmetall) or to make some joint ventures. Like with Israel, there will be some competition, but benefits from cooperation would prevail. Prior 2014, UA defense sector made most of bucks of modernization, maintenance and selling of their Soviet-era stockpiles, i.e. directly competing with Russia (and Belorussia). USA and EU will be happy to support UA to expand to these markets and limit Russia (and China) revenues. Yes, some stuff would find way to EU and USA, too. But not something to threaten big guys like Rheinmetall or Boing definitely.
Just, expecting the USA to help Ukrainian defence sector become direct competition.... sorry, that's simply not going to happen. 'Services' - yes. 'Pro-activity/own initiative/competitive products' - no way.
The drones that Ukraine uses right now are an order of magnitude cheaper than whatever the West proposes. They are likely to find their buyers, just like the Turkish drones do.
Exactly, nobody expects USA would help UA to make e.g. fighter jets competitive to F16. But why not to help UA to produce cheap drones? USA would never be able to be competitive with e.g. China or Turkey on these.
Dear Tom, thank you! I find a-musing reading this list of military equipment (https://media.defense.gov/2024/Sep/06/2003538487/-1/-1/0/UKRAINE-FACT-SHEET-PDA-65.PDF) sent by US so far, and especially knowing that it is about 50% of the total international assistance sent over the 30+ months of war (so I roughly double each item). From one hand it seems somehow sensible (makes sense) on some items, from the other, knowing the intensity of this war, I wonder how UA survived on this so far.
I want to clarify that the factory manufacturing Bohdanas, Kramatorsk Heavy Duty Machine Tool Building Plant (Краматорський завод важкого верстатобудування) doesn't belong to Petro Poroshenko, it belongs to Efimov Maksym Viktorovych (Єфімов Максим Вікторович). He is people's deputy in the Ukrainian Parlaiment (Verkhovna Rada), and he was in Poroshenko's Party since 2014 to 2019. Thus, author's reasoning about political rivalry between Poroshenko and Zelensky stands. However, since Zelensky became President, he cut substantially financing for military acquisitions. He saw "peace in Putin's eyes" and started to build roads and other infrastructure without any bidding on companies' side for the government contracts. Businessmen loyal to Zelensky got any contracts they wanted.
Inquiring minds want to know - what is that magical move that the US and various EU allies need to make that will immediately, finally, and unquestionably end the war right the hell now?
Send their airplanes to intercept the Russian missiles and drones over Ukraine. Possible also bombard the troops - like they do for Israel.
All in all, how does that happen that Russia has the internationally-recognized right to send its airplanes inside Ukraine and bomb there anything it likes - without any invitation from Ukraine, while the countries that Ukraine invites and asks for help are afraid on breaking something in the international laws if they accept the invitation and send their air force into Ukraine?
" the Ukrainian defence sector would be a serious competition to the US defence sector". it's not only about the defense sector. the "west" is ready to deliver as many diapers to Ukraine as they physically can, but they will never do one thing that can actually save Ukraine: support Ukrainian competitiveness. (I don't want to give concrete examples, but some of our "partners" are actively damaging some sectors of Ukraine's economy just because they can)
There is no smoking incidents any more, there are “landscape fires” now
Global warming.
You see?
That's how quickly one's way of thinking can get obsolete, nowadays... :P
Does the friend for whom you’re asking actually run an East European country?
I would consider that question ironical - conveying something rather different from the outward meaning of the words - but not sarcastic, ie mocking, vilifying, hurtful.
I object to neither of these things, particularly considering who the targets of your sarcasm are
Let me continue asking for that friend: should this mean there are people incompatible with democracy - in Eastern Europe, too (not 'only' in the Middle East)....?
How could you miss the biggest reason for a party: Portugal has finished delivering 6 Ka-32 helicopters promised back in 2022!
What about the 80 000 rocket engines from Canada?
"Canada is planning to supply Ukraine with 80,840 CRV-7 rocket engines and 1,300 warheads in the next few months in addition to the 2,160 CRV-7 rocket engines that had been already delivered to Ukraine. In addition, the Department of National Defense of Canada plans to transfer 970 units of machine guns under the C6 designation and 10,500 9mm pistols, as well as a number of decommissioned armored vehicles, 29 units of M113 armored personnel carriers and 64 Coyote LAV infantry fighting vehicles."
"Ukraine cleared to use armour donated by Canada on Russian territory."
"Canada's package includes advanced pilot training, critical equipment and other supports for Ukrainian airbases and aircraft."
As to slowness, the politicians are in the position of hastening the military who do not wish to send problems or create transport issues across the Atlantic and into Poland for delivery to Ukraine. No one overlooks the urgency.
Tom, it's now the third time this year that ammunition dump has been hit by Ukraine. Is the Russian military bureaucracy really so rigid that it can't say after the first attack; "Maybe we should move our supply depot somewhere else?" Or is there another explanation?
Btw, why the hell is anyone still living in that village next door? Is life in Russia really so cheap? Don't worry, I'm being rhetorical. Well all know the answer to that one.
Personally I would guess that there is a cousin of someone operating that dump and he gets profits if ammo is stored there. Of course this profit is shaped with his familien, family being important in Russia I have been told. But, this is of course just one theory, inertia is certainly possible as you say.
Let's hope his family don't have to live in the village next door.
Europe is densely populated. The front line goes from village to village. There is very little uninhabited non-agricultural land, and that mainly belongs to nature reserves.
Not Russia. It's the biggest country in the world. There is a huge amount of non-agricultural uninhabited land, almost none is nature reserves. It's mostly taiga or open steppes. Take a look at a map.
That depends on the region. You won't find any differences close to the Russia-Ukraine border. https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/gpw-v4-population-density-rev11/maps
Again, look at a map. If you had you'd know this happened near the Volga. Nowhere near the border. Not a nature reserve in sight, just lots of open land & forest. Doesn't matter how touchy you are about Russia, it's still a dumb idea to store thousands of tons of munitions next to a settlement.
Thanks for the update, informative and intersting as always. All sarcasm detected appreciated. (Not sarcastic here, I leave that to you. Divisjon of work is fine.) But. You not bet that any member of the Trio Fantasticus slepes bad at night. You hope. I am afraid you are wrong, people like that are very good at avoiding responsibility, but I will join you in that hope.
Sad to see that internal politics is a factor in Ukraine's weapons development and production when the stakes are so high.
Just as the fact that complaints from the Isolationists in the US on the amount of aid to Ukraine miss the facts that -
Don't know the current status, but in July, 2023 only about half of the promised heavy hardware had been delivered;
Values of the munitions shipped is undoubtedly calculated on replacement cost spent in the US economy and often for munitions that would have reached end of service life and would have had to be destroyed in some cases (at an additional cost) or refurbished.
Battlefield experience is pushing military strategy, tactics, end technology in rather new directions and areas.
Finally, the US military has had a rude awakening on just how much an actual ground war (rather than a 'police action') requires in reserves of ammunition leading to expansion of production facilities in the US - something that would have been a major shortfall were the feared 'War with China' to occur.
Sad , but not surprising that internal politics play such a rolle. They allways do however.
On the comment of the fight between Zelensky and Peterovitch (?), aka president 5 and 6 of Ukraine. Author Andrej Kurkov who regularitet writes in a small Norwegian newspaper wrote that before the fullscale attack the war breking and being fougth was between those two presidents. What you wrote about Z sabotaging Surlien fots that bill. I would guess it could have been the other way round had Z owned a plant and P the opportunity to sabotage. Nice it isnt.
9 September?
"the Trio Fantasticus has bought enough time for the VKS to withdraw all of its Su-34-units (plus all the VKS’ Su-24-units) outside ATACMS-range"
Okay, but... let's assume Ukraine would have been cleared to use the missiles, which would be the reasonable move, and would have struck some Russian airfields, blasting maybe 10-20 planes. The rest would have been pulled back, just like in this case. So now, VKS hasn't lost these additional planes, but otherwise did exactly what it would have done in the reasonable case.
I presume the Trio are affectionately patting themselves on the shoulder for having achieved a strategic victory without crossing any imaginary red lines.
Iv'e heard that nonsense about EU / USA defense sector prolonging the war because they worry about UA competition. Complete economic bullsh*t. UA had 52 mil. of people in 1993, 44 mil. in 2021 and now about 38 mil. You see, the population declined even before the war. They had 1,16 birth per women in 2021 - that's not enough to keep the population. And most of UA refugees since the war do not want to return back. Unless they change that trajectory, they are not economic threat neither to USA nor to EU. (OK, they may build and sell some good stuff, but overall cannot beat big companies.)
Zeliensky is talking about EU membership - but that would just trigger more emigration from UA, like e.g. Romania.
Shortly, UA defense sector would have problem to find enough people and to keep them, too.
Note: similar problems are in EU, USA, Japan, China, ... too. Just western EU and USA have growing population because of immigration.
And Israel has a population of how many, 8 million? And still, even its defence sector is frequently seen as a competetion by the US defence sector.
Monopoly is the only thing about which everybody there is curious.
Yep, but Israel would not be able to make this success without substantial US aid. And many Israel high tech products are joint cooperation with US or EU defense sector. E. g. Arrow 3 sold to Germany last year is made jointly by IAI and Boeing.
Same with UA defense industry. For US and EU companies it's more like an opportunity either to make own factories in UA (e.g. Rheinmetall) or to make some joint ventures. Like with Israel, there will be some competition, but benefits from cooperation would prevail. Prior 2014, UA defense sector made most of bucks of modernization, maintenance and selling of their Soviet-era stockpiles, i.e. directly competing with Russia (and Belorussia). USA and EU will be happy to support UA to expand to these markets and limit Russia (and China) revenues. Yes, some stuff would find way to EU and USA, too. But not something to threaten big guys like Rheinmetall or Boing definitely.
All truth.
Just, expecting the USA to help Ukrainian defence sector become direct competition.... sorry, that's simply not going to happen. 'Services' - yes. 'Pro-activity/own initiative/competitive products' - no way.
The drones that Ukraine uses right now are an order of magnitude cheaper than whatever the West proposes. They are likely to find their buyers, just like the Turkish drones do.
Exactly, nobody expects USA would help UA to make e.g. fighter jets competitive to F16. But why not to help UA to produce cheap drones? USA would never be able to be competitive with e.g. China or Turkey on these.
Because they:
* don't have means (any company able to produce *cheap* drones)
* are not interested (cheap drones are too *cheap* to be highly profitable)
Very true! The only company actually moving to change this is Anduril which has also been serious about supporting Ukraine.
Dear Tom, thank you! I find a-musing reading this list of military equipment (https://media.defense.gov/2024/Sep/06/2003538487/-1/-1/0/UKRAINE-FACT-SHEET-PDA-65.PDF) sent by US so far, and especially knowing that it is about 50% of the total international assistance sent over the 30+ months of war (so I roughly double each item). From one hand it seems somehow sensible (makes sense) on some items, from the other, knowing the intensity of this war, I wonder how UA survived on this so far.
Indeed. In grand total, that's about enough for a reinforced mechanised division of the US Army - and 1-2 weeks of good fighting...
Thanks Tom on to #2
Kramatorsk Heavy Machine Tool Plant which makes Bohdana SPGs is owned by Maxim Yefimov.
Where are you getting information that Poroshenko has something to do with it? It doesn't sound right.
AFAIK, that was just the prototype.
I want to clarify that the factory manufacturing Bohdanas, Kramatorsk Heavy Duty Machine Tool Building Plant (Краматорський завод важкого верстатобудування) doesn't belong to Petro Poroshenko, it belongs to Efimov Maksym Viktorovych (Єфімов Максим Вікторович). He is people's deputy in the Ukrainian Parlaiment (Verkhovna Rada), and he was in Poroshenko's Party since 2014 to 2019. Thus, author's reasoning about political rivalry between Poroshenko and Zelensky stands. However, since Zelensky became President, he cut substantially financing for military acquisitions. He saw "peace in Putin's eyes" and started to build roads and other infrastructure without any bidding on companies' side for the government contracts. Businessmen loyal to Zelensky got any contracts they wanted.
Inquiring minds want to know - what is that magical move that the US and various EU allies need to make that will immediately, finally, and unquestionably end the war right the hell now?
Send their airplanes to intercept the Russian missiles and drones over Ukraine. Possible also bombard the troops - like they do for Israel.
All in all, how does that happen that Russia has the internationally-recognized right to send its airplanes inside Ukraine and bomb there anything it likes - without any invitation from Ukraine, while the countries that Ukraine invites and asks for help are afraid on breaking something in the international laws if they accept the invitation and send their air force into Ukraine?
Start providing military and financial aid in serious.
" the Ukrainian defence sector would be a serious competition to the US defence sector". it's not only about the defense sector. the "west" is ready to deliver as many diapers to Ukraine as they physically can, but they will never do one thing that can actually save Ukraine: support Ukrainian competitiveness. (I don't want to give concrete examples, but some of our "partners" are actively damaging some sectors of Ukraine's economy just because they can)