Both his parents are compliance lawyers, his father a professor at Stanford. How delusional could he and they be considering he bought them 130M of real estate ?
Does he mean the one when Chamberlain convinced Czech Republic to give its larger army to Germany, it's superior tank factories, concede territory to both Germany and Poland, to rescind the security guarantees the SSSR gave to Czechia ?
And then "pikachu" face when Hitler proceeded to invade Czechia with the same tanks they were given 2 years earlier, as did Poland, then second "pikachu face" when the Reich and SSSR did the same to Poland a minute later ?
That 1937 moment of titanic hypocritical behaviour ?
Englishmen really always love to play the Great Game, no matter the century...
It's got about half of that combat troops, according to IISS Military Balance 2021, of which 400K are ground troops.
What they do however is rotate them very often. Reportedly they spend a week at a to,e on the battlefield, then they get rest for a week or two, etc.
This way their entire military gets actual combat experience, the troops are always fresh, and the moral is high. Same with equipment, regular maintenance, etc.
Which is basically why they are able to do the slow grind at the pace they want.
>This way their entire military gets actual combat experience, the troops are always fresh, and the moral is high. Same with equipment, regular maintenance, etc.
Russia's military, of course, noted for their experience, freshness, and high morale. Along with having properly maintained equipment.
It's good never to underestimate your enemy out of pure spite, it prevents loss in battle and war.
I also think you entire missed the tense of my answer, which is that they are _getting experience_ in the present, while staying freshly rested. Like it or not its a fact. And ever since the first week (when they arrested 450 officers of various ranks for a litany of failures), you haven't seen mass desertions on their part.
So yes, compared to the Ukrainian Army they are fighting, their morale is actually very high.
And as for repairs and maintenance, spend some time on Russia propaganda channels. Among the voluminous thrash you can discard, you'll see vids of the various large field repair centers where yes they do replace on the regular artillery cannon tubes and a lot of parts for a lot heavy stuff they have, not including their own ghanima.
Also, in regards to maintenance, see above commend about arrests.
Moreover, according to various unconfirmed but western sources, 4500+ mechanics've reportedly been hired by the Russian MIC last 3 months. They gotta be working on something don't they ?
And again, Ukraine, if look the large amount of defeatist interviews of western and ukrainian leaders (including their chief of staff), is completely unable to do any of that, and is losing badly.
Modern wars are as much wars of industry as wars of logistics.
It's difficult for me to imagine someone who is willing to do that, able to find them without help, and actually needs to be convinced of anything there.
>Moreover, according to various unconfirmed but western sources
According to a pseudonymous commenter on HN, various unidentified western sources that are allegedly unconfirmed claim that...
I'm not calling you a liar, certainly not - your assertions are so ridiculously weak, it almost comes off as anti-Russian propaganda.
Assuming everything you say is true about Russia, I don't follow what you are saying, if anything about Ukraine's forces in comparison.
Surely, again, anyone who needs to be convinced would have no idea whatsoever what the "defeatist interviews" are.
If I'm not mistaken about the solar plant we're talking about, not quite :
That Canadian-financed solar plant has basically been held hostage for the last 3 years by president Zelensky's political financier Mr. Kolomoyski.
After having his cronies (pre-Zelenski) vote a law facilitating renewables investment by foreigners (expedited 6 months permits, etc), and selling a Canadian company the land on which it sits, and having said Canadian consortium pour 2.7B$ in the project, he prevented them from operating.
They couldn't transfer any electric power so produced. He blocked them using by his stranglehold on that part of the Ukrainian power grid, and even going as far as having paid his "private security rent-a-swat-cops" from Kharkhov and Dnipro cutting the alternative lines from helicopters (said private security later forming into a military unit calling themselves "azov something..." (ahem, yeah, some of the very same).
He's basically been racketeering them under the protection of the political parties he finances. Canadian've had enough so there's now a several billion dollar court case going on between the Canadian operators of the plant, the local Ukrainian grid operator (part owned by him) and Kolomoyski's own neighbouring power company.
Caveat : some details may be wrong, as this is from memory, somebody would need to check from accuracy.
Except this isn't a competition of popularity, but geographic-politics.
If you lose Turkey, consequences are:
- Lose in max 20 years for good all of the Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaidjan, etc) and the access to oil and gas which US and UK have fought for hard over 30 years (BAC pipeline, Chechnya War, Ossetia War, Ingushetia War, Dagestan War, etc, as well as chaos around Burisma Corp & Hunter Biden, all to create a second huge pipeline through Ukraine, etc)
- Loose all east-Turkic airfields and nuke missile sites, as a consequence lose > half the pressure on Iran, part of pressure on Russia
- Loose the Black Sea to Russia almost in full, even without losing Odessa in this war.
- Loose for good the ring of all originally Gokturkic nations around Russia (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tadjikistan, Ouzbekistan, etc).
- Lose for 100 years Syria, Lebanon and Iraq
- Only Israel will be left to protect the Suez Canal, as Egypt is being lost to Russia (again) and China as we speak. Transforming Israel it into a greater Massada fortress it already is : great plan, no worries there.
- Loose all access the newly discovered oil and gas below the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean: problems for Greece, North Macedonia, Albania, Italy in 20 years.
- In 30 years see Turkey restarting the Ottoman empire against Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc. UAE is already gone (see new Sheiks declarations).
That gains China the almost totality of the new silk road. Also, this loses gains what's missing to China's Belt and Road initiative. It cementis its Eurasian economic influence for 200-300 years.
All of that in 30-50 years max loses the modern Anglo-Saxon influenced economic-cultural-political system the European Union wholesale due to economy.
Worldwide UK then US maritime empires ? Who'll care. At best North+South American influence for the Anglos.
I take your point that NATO needs Turkey more than vice versa, especially as it is now hard to imagine Russia deciding to invade Turkey.
On a 20 year time scale, though, I don't think that gas and oil will see high demand from NATO members. Which countries' oil supply do you think would no longer reach them if Turkey refused to allow transit? For comparison, here[0] are the oil details for Georgia, including the statistics: "Georgia [ranks] 80th in the world and accounting for about 0.0% of the world's total oil reserves".
I agree that it would be very costly from a geopolitics perspective for the West to have Turkey as an adversary rather than an ostensible ally, so I suppose my (non-serious) "two NATOs" plan should have involved both NATOs continuing to exist indefinitely.
Still, I don't think Turkey can demand an unlimited price from NATO, and Erdogan shouldn't try to over-play his position.
> Which countries' oil supply do you think would no longer reach them if Turkey refused to allow transit?
- Current oil and gas from the Caspian Sea Basin, from the Azeris and Iranians[0]
- Future oil and gas from the Caspian (Azeris, Khazaks) [1] [3]
- Future gas from Qatar. The project was frozen due to Syria's Russian and Iranian gas pipeline dalliances. The cynic in me says it's the reason for the Syrian war [2]
> For comparison, here are the oil details for Georgia
Georgia is indeed not important as a producer - depending on whether you count Abkhazia as still in Georgia, or in Russia as there were new discoveries of oil in Ukraine [4].
(note the date of the discovery, note the date of when troubles started in Ukraine... again, paranoid cynic in me says there's a smell to this Burisma thing).
But it IS very important as the location for the existing Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline [5].
> Still, I don't think Turkey can demand an unlimited price from NATO, and Erdogan shouldn't try to over-play his position.
I believe he shouldn't. But I believe he will.
There's been very recent vocal public discussion in his party about Greece and the danger of American bases there (i.e. they're not against Russia, so against whom are they?) and the US being a long-term trustworthy partner (see coup attempt years ago, for which it was Russia who warned Erdogan of the danger).
If Russia manages their "all-in" gamble (win in Ukraine, win at the economic/monetary game), and China extends the Belt and Road, Turks (not just Erdogan) won't hesitate to turn against NATO, attack, and at a minimum get the whole of Cyprus, if not parts of Thrace.
I believe they can allow themselves that, because as much as the Gulf is the economic brain of the elite of the Muslim world, Istambul and Ankara are the heart and center of the vascular system for middle-and low classes. They are litterally the centerpoint of logistics for that system (i.e. Turkish airlines).
He means that legends go on, even without evidence to prove them, because people want to believe they're true even if they aren't.
Is the pilot that was identified really the 'Ghost of Kiev'? Which squadron was he with? What is his combat record? Where can we see that? Where was he shot down? What day and time was that? Were the "Ghost of Kiev"'s 40 kills verified? Where were those kills? When were those kills?
We already stepped in it. A number of pundits and public figures have been tweeting (I know, ironic) sentences in substance similar to "Free speech advocates are the promoters of white supremacy and white colonialism", also said equivalent to Jan 6th supporters.
Some proeminent ones have even quit Twitter altogether with that as a message.
> it like how all of the Mckinsey types who turned into counter-terrorism consultants around 2004.
If you look at a number of developping political scandals, it seems they turned to pandemic consultants two years ago in at least France, Australia, and a couple others.
