Comments by "" (@GWNorth-db8vn) on "The Enforcer" channel.

  1. Appeasing Putin has worked about as well as appeasing Hitler did.
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  2. The problem I have with the Israeli/Palestinian situation is that I can argue either side's points with equal sincerity. Going back further in history just makes the whole thing grayer.
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  3. The buffer zone Putin originally wanted to create was somewhere around Moldova, after absorbing Ukraine as part of Russia. The goalposts keep moving East.
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  4. It's like a symphony of terrified Russian bots in the comments today. Always a hopeful sign.
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  5. When Georgia gets their land back, they can use another decent port.
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  6. I think it's important to make a distinction between kamikaze drones and cruise missiles. No one is driving a Shahed. It's programmed with its target and released.
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  7. I've been thinking the same thing from the start. I think they're slowly realizing that appeasing Putin's feelings won't work. He has to lose to end the war, or he'll just take a breather and move on to the next step. He won't get any more reasonable by dragging it out.
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  8. All of the above.
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  9. That building at the NPP is probably the turbine hall. It sounds like it and it has the overhead crane beams to move heavy objects. It's attached to the reactor building, and one of those trucks catching fire there would be a Bad Thing. What's interesting about the refinery attacks is that they're not economic strikes. Natural gas is a separate industry with its own huge infrastructure, and the Ukrainians haven't been hitting that. Russian crude is "heavy sour" oil which contains a lower percentage of valuable volatiles and a lot of sulfur. It is party refined to get the good parts, then the rest is "mazat", a thick oil used in boilers and ships. It has to be pre-heated to use in a burner. The amount of mazat that Russia produces to get the valuable fractions is so high that it is abundant and cheap domestically and there hasn't been any incentive to modernize to cleaner fuels. Russian ships and factories produce clouds of black smoke as a result. Without these refineries, Russia won't be able to produce enough diesel, gas, lubricants to fill the army's needs and the transportation of everything it needs to move inside its own territory. Hard times ahead for the Rodina.
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  10. Chechens are clan people. Kadyrov's clan made a deal with the Russians to put him in power, but the other clans haven't forgotten. What Chechens have always been famous for is never forgiving an offence and showing up with hundreds of relatives at the home of anyone who offends one of them. They were never known as fighters or warriors. They're more like gangsters.
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  11. A lot of that has been done by hobbyists over the years, and cheap sensors meant for cell phones made a huge difference. People have been building autonomous model planes that can fly themselves to a point, circle, and take video before returning home since the nineties. A guy in New Zealand built a half size autonomous Tomahawk about twenty years ago and had it confiscated by their version of the FBI. It's like the quadcopters. Give the nerds the money and we'll build anything you like.
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  12. Taking out the design bureau won't slow down production of air defense systems. It will make sure they can't come up with improvements to make them actually defend things, though.
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  13.  @eliotness4029  - Generic troll post by someone who doesn't actually read English
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  14. They mickeymoused that, too. There's an integrated fire finder and counterbattery system that's standard on NATO guns and SPG's. The Americans sent the 777's without it and only started supplying them after the Dutch started sending complete systems.
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  15. It's been dragged out over and over for eighty years. As my sainted Granny used to say "Shit or get off the pot"
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  16. Russia's been slowly eliminating the Eastern peoples since they conquered them hundreds of years ago. Putin saw an opportunity to speed the process along.
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  17. Transnistria was in an interesting spot during the Cold War. It was the edge of the actual Soviet Union with a buffer zone of virtual puppets between it and NATO. It's also a thin strip of land at the south end of the Carpathian mountains, and the only real passage between East and West until the Great European Plain in the north of the continent. The Soviets stored their equipment and supplies there in massive amounts, enough to support their entire southern front in a hot war. Not much of it has gone anywhere, and that might be what Russia's counting on. It's also been marked on NATO targeting maps for fifty years.
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  18. Wouldn't be surprised if they're talking about a failed launch of a Russian drone.
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  19. Yes, we'll all go together when we go Every Hottentot and every Eskimo When the air becomes uranious We'll all go simultaneous Yes, we'll all go together when we go -Tom Lehrer We're finally back to the world I learned to understand and accept as a child and young man.
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  20.  @Piccyman1  - This is an unusual type of troll around these parts. This is an actual Chinese troll, repeating the CCP official talking point of the day. There are other examples of it on this comment section and other videos.
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  21. It doesn't hurt natural gas, which is used for heating. It will sure mess up their transportation and military requirements.
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  22. The Americans were daylight bombing from the start. The Brits tried it early and lost so many planes they switched to night raids. The Americans didn't want to be seen carpet bombing civilians, so they bombed in daylight and pretended to be trying to hit specific military targets. The net effect was the same. They both kept up their own schedule right to the end. The Americans did bomb Japanese cities at night, but they didn't have the same horror of killing non-whites as Europeans. The Mosquito was designed from the start to be a fast daylight intruder. Too fast for the fighters to catch, too low for the AA guns to get a shot at. It gave the Brits the ability to actually hit precise targets with a small strike rather than simply wiping out cities.
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  23. They pulled out one unit, and that got blown out of all proportion again. There are still SAM systems in Crimea, but fewer and fewer of them as the Russians run low on them everywhere. The situation near Belgorod is worse for them than Crimea.
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  24. @@jamesstewart514 - By "We" you mean Russia doesn't want them sent. It's a standard Kremlin propaganda talking point.
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  25. This is their normal peacetime intake. Everyone gets called up for a year. They won't be doing the usual peacetime things, though.
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  26. Putin's purges are more of his old school Soviet attitudes and methods. "Corruption" when applied to anyone at the rank of Colonel or above, was always used by the Soviets as a way to show that someone, or a group, was out of favor. Popov isn't the only one who should be nervous. "Corruption", when applied to lower ranks, is used as a way to send a message that things need to be tightened up. Early in the war, there was a classic example of this when a Lieutenant, a Captain, and a Major were charged with corruption for selling off fuel. The Colonels are the ones who make the most profit off grifts like this, but none were charged. It's a way to send a message without directly dealing with people who have patrons higher up and connections. When a General gets charged, all the people who supported him and the ones who rode his coattails are also at risk, and they know it. Tends to make them even more compliant.
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  27. They make bobcats in red now? I can see that being distracting.
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  28. Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos battalions!
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  29. Engels was Marx's co-writer.
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  30. Port visits are the main thing the Russian navy's surface ships do. It's the only reason the Kuznetsov has ever left the wharf. They're a coastal patrol force with a few showpiece ships. Lately, they've been using them mainly to launch missiles at civilian targets from as far away as the Caspian. Barges with tubes mounted could do the job as well. Slick looking ships, though. Full points for style.
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  31. I know I'm a weirdo, but I'm interested in the M14. Assault rifles are after my time, but I know what a .308 feels like and how heavy a 14 is, so watching someone else handle one actually tells me something.
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  32.  @cherryfressh6188  - History is never simple. Nobody ever woke up in the morning and just decided to do something heinous for no particular reason. Everyone does what they think is the right and decent thing. Neither side of this conflict has clean hands, but neither is composed of slavering monsters, either.
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  33. I bet those holes in the killdozer tank are from bolts and such when the metal was in its original use. On a pedantic note, the "dragon's teeth" are actually caltrops. Dragon's teeth are anchored to concrete underground and a vehicle climbs up them and gets stuck. Caltrops roll when they're pushed and one point comes up and lifts the vehicle. There are also hedgehogs, which are 3D crosses welded from angle iron or train track. They're held in place by the points being driven into the ground when something drives up them.
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  34. He's the kind of officer who they used to leave alone in a room with a pistol with one round in it.
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  35. People will be moving in with their babushkas on the farm, and horses will be worth more than their weight in vodka.
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  36.  @jochemlambers  - CIA doesn't co ordinate military movements. They provide information to the people who know how to do that, and they provide advice to the Ukrainians.
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  37.  @eliotness4029  - You're replying to a statement with a random insult that has no reference to the statements you're replying to. Like a bot copy pasting off a list.
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  38. The Port of Sevastopol is the only prize on Crimea. It dominates the Black Sea. The rest of the place is rocky mountains or poor farmland that's been dry since 2014, when the canal supplying all of its water was cut off. Without the Fleet, the port's useless.
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  39.  @bradburke8232  - The whole area is a patchwork of old grudges and hatreds. Countries don't matter as much as tribal loyalties, and they don't match any borders.
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  40.  @Radbot776  - I have no idea whether I've met any. Probably. We don't ask here. Chechens' history and reputation under the tsars and Soviets is a matter of record. They've built themselves a whole new mythos in the last generation, but they're still the same tribal mobsters they always have been. Does Kadyrov strike you as a typical twentieth century leader or a medieval warlord?
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  41.  @chrisbrown8748  - We're talking about how a war is fought, not who fights it or what you think of their reasons.
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  42. Sorry. They've done way too many despicable things in the last thirty years to be considered the good guys in anything. Here's a tip - If you have to claim that your religion puts you on the right side of anything, you're not.
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  43.  @TankandDimples  - No idea. Probably not a field.
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  44. Putin's mansion "Outside Sochi" is actually about 145 km (85 miles) from Sochi, just outside the much grittier and less desirable city of Novorossiysk. Sochi is the ritzy expensive tourist area made famous by the Olympics. The compound's at: 44.421827, 38.212339 It's outside Sochi only in a real estate agent sense, like when they say a place is minutes from town, meaning 45 minutes.
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  45.  @steakinbacon8593  - They won't have to pay to dig it, and they only have one real port now. It's a hole filled with water. Even Russians can't go too far wrong. If they want' to put any useful part of their fleet there, it will take years to enlarge it enough and they'll never finish it in time anyway.
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  46. The only similarity between the two wars is that they're both wars.
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  47. You're not wrong, but this is Andrew.
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  48.  @ABa-os6wm  - Evolution in action.
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  49.  @simonewing4222  - So far, it has always been boring threats. They make them, we don't.
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  50. Only in the western, ethnic Russian areas. The rest of the country still has mud roads.
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  51.  @jb31842  - As long as they don't go out of control and distract someone.
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  52. Like bugs laughing about how the boot is scared to come down on them.
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  53.  @BOOGIECali  - It's my Neanderthal ancestors' land. Get off my yard.
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  54.  @cherryfressh6188  - Which version of what happened in 1948 is a big factor. There are a lot of things that each side would like to re-arrange slightly or forget altogether. I think I mentioned that I can argue both sides' points. Let's not do that. There's tragedy enough for most folks and benefit for a few.
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  55.  @Domesticated_Ape  - Y/M/D is the logical way to format a date. Much easier for a computer to sort a list that's actually in order. It's just more alphabet that way.
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  56. That's more about your politics than anyone needed to know.
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  57. The real art comes with butchering foreign words so confidently that people think you know what you're doing.
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  58. Not much to strip out of it. Seats and the dashboard. It's just an aluminium pipe frame with skin other than that.
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  59. Wonder if either are hiring around here.
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  60.  @arwo1143  - No, it'll be rooms full of drafting tables and guys with slide rules. Seriously, they don't have the design and manufacturing in the same facility. The office in the city is for engineers and executives with clean hands. There's no need for them to be anywhere near the plant.
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  61.  @riversandrds  - One thing to bear in mind about that area is that it was wiped down to scorched earth in WWII and rebuilt the way the Soviets wanted it. They took the opportunity to move large numbers of the surviving Ukrainians out and replace them with Russians. That's how key areas like Crimea and the Donbas became majority Russian. They eliminated the small family farms and replaced them with huge collective farms, which is why Ukraine has such huge fields and small villages. Each village was the people working on the collective. The excess rural population were either moved to apartments in the cities or given a small plot on the outskirts for a vegetable garden. Most of Belgorod is like a huge country village, streets of houses on half-acre plots with no services or businesses except the bus. It's a completely Soviet-ized landscape that was built for their purpose of governing the peasants.
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  62. Uh huh. Sure Ivan.
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  63. Georgi is just repeating Mercado''s point of view. He ignored everything that led up to the lawsuit and left the impression that they've been attacking poor innocent Mercado. The cliques are showing themselves.
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  64. Peacekeeping requires that both sides agree to a ceasefire and invite the peacekeepers in. Peacemaking is different. That's just a different way to say War.
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  65. Can I interest you in learning about the Cult of Matt?
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  66.  @PSNPerfectNinja  - The computer module that links to the fire-finder radars and allows several guns to be operated as a unit and automatically targeted for return fire was left off. It mounts to the left side of the barrel on a flat vertical plate. The plate was there with nothing on it.
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  67. Relieved of command. Two years is a long time.
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  68.  @Lennart_Jensen  - And computers all have to translate to Y/M/D or it's just a jumble to them. Then they have to translate it back for the carbon units.
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  69. Oh, explosive robots are flying over and people are shooting other explosives into the sky. Think I'll find a nice open place to watch.
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  70. That is a major passage to everywhere in the Caribbean.
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  71. maffs is hard
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  72. There's nothing along the border area to hit with either. It's the famous Prip'yat Marshes, which have swallowed whole armies. About five roads cross it.
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  73. Depends on what you need done. Spec Ops aside, every army has its own traditions and history. Americans are best at breaking stuff from a distance, Canadians will stand up and charge anything, ANZAC's can't be dislodged from any dent in the ground, Germans counterattack. What they do now is always influenced by institutional preferences bred into each service.
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  74.  @KirkFickert  - Europe can't do it. However things got here, the problem exists and pretending it's someone else's problem won't make it go away. Get the thumb out and do what needs to be done, don't whine.
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  75. Terrorism means attacking civilians to make a political point. These are legitimate targets of war and vital to the enemy's supply lines. Not terrorism. This will raise prices all over the world as Russian supply dries up and the countries who've been dependent on them will turn to other suppliers. The increased demand on the supply will cause price increases as it always does.
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  76. Havana's 90 miles from Key West Naval Air Station. I'd be very surprised if they didn't have a few antiship missile systems there that could do the job all on their own.
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  77. A Eurofighter loitering around for the amount of time a Bayraktar does would require many refuelings and put the crew at risk. No air force would do that. Nobody ever died piloting a Bayraktar.
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  78. As the old saying goes, do you want to fight them on the Golden Gate?
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  79. He's gotta be backed into a corner sooner or later.
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  80. It's a daily roundup, not up-to-the-minute action news.
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  81.  @sarj743  - It broke since their last video. Can't you find a typo to bitch about?
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  82. Happens to me all the time. YouTube ain't quite right upstairs sometimes.
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  83. The "control towers" on the dam are cranes used to lift the gates. The next gate after the damage is open. One of the cranes is still intact, so they can operate the gates from there to the damaged section if the track's still good. They'll probably open up the ones they can and let the reservoir drain. The power plant doesn't need the height difference anymore. They'll be able to repair this once it's safe to do so.
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  84. I don't think the dam actually burst. It sounds more like the spring runoff and rain were more than the reservoir could hold and it's being released into the river. The levees downstream are failing from the river rising, not a sudden flood. It's a whole stretch of river that's the problem. I've heard a few versions of what is actually happening, and that seems like the most likely today.
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  85.  @garethhhhh  - The USAAF lost more then 8,000 aircraft over Europe. I can assure you the Luftwaffe hadn't been destroyed before they got involved. The RAF had fought them to a stalemate, but there was no prospect of wiping them out. The US joined at the end of 1941, 3.5 years before any end. There wouldn't have been an end if the US and USSR hadn't got involved. I'm sure it makes a more enjoyable story your way, but that's not how things really went.
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  86. The US better get its thumb out. Just sayin'
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  87.  @Germerican2510  - The good old days of Tom Clancy. I broke out a map of Iceland the first time I read it.
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  88. Without the train ferries, the crossing has been destroyed in the sense of a route by which trains can be carried across the water. I'm sure you understand enough English for that. "Vessels comprising seaborne crossing across Kerch Strait damaged and crossing no longer available" suit you better, Professor?
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  89. Employed Russians have phones.
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  90.  @andrzejzie7046  - NATO hasn't stood up yet. FAFO, Ivan.
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  91. It's authoritarianism. Communism was a pretext for authoritarianism. Putin doesn't bother with pretexts. He tries to show raw power.
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  92. They'd have to clamp the guns in a vice to get any meaningful results. You're not supposed to aim at anything with an AK, anyway.
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  93.  @jimjones9239  - Babble on, Ivan.
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  94. But what does the Bhagavad Gita say? It's about 3,000 years older if you want original sources.
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  95. Opportunity. Religious fanaticism is their life.
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  96.  @jakewebb7995  - If they're not shooting at you, both of you have a bigger enemy to worry about.
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  97. Why not? It's certainly no secret or anything unusual. There will also be a bunch of two man teams with radios moving around keeping track of smaller Russian units by their radio transmissions. This stuff's routine.
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  98.  @DUKE_of_RAMBLE  - Drone used to mean autonomous, then it turned into hobby quadcopters. They fly at close ranges and are controlled. Cruise missiles aren't controlled. They're aimed and fired and go on their way without any further input. This was a cruise missile that failed to navigate to its target, not a drone deliberately attacking a field.
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  99.  @jameswilliams9655  - It's probably an accident and the result of Russian incompetence. Of course you don't want it in your back yard, but it's not an attack. It matters whether the Russians are incompetent or deliberately attacking.
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  100. Different century, different war, different circumstances. Russia has no right to target civilians. Simple enough.
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  101. It's a friendly country. All sorts of people must be there doing similar work.
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  102. There is a particularly fine cult available.
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  103. They're YouTube's ads. If you don't turn ads on, the video doesn't get suggested to anyone.
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  104.  @sichere  - This is just this week's line from the M trolls. He's mostly given up on the stealing nonsense and now he's attacking everyone else's journalistic integrity, mainly the Enforcers' or anyone who mentions them.
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  105. Popoff got off the boat. Never get off the fuckin' boat.
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  106. "Good Evening, everyone" while I'm holding my second cup. Sounds about right.
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  107. Deeds, not words.
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  108.  @EnforcerOfficial  - I'll enjoy it, alright.
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  109.  @markthompson4885  - I've handled an M14 but not fired it and I've shot 7.62. My spoiler impression of it was that it's a heavy rifle, which can be a good thing, and the lines look like the recoil would seat it into your shoulder. My competition shooting was mostly done as a teenager in the Army Cadets with a .303 Lee-Enfield, much as my grandfather's competition shooting was mostly done as an adult veteran with the same model. It's an enjoyable rifle to shoot once you get used to the balance. I was on a four man team with two brothers who won Gold and Bronze at the Commonwealth Games shooting .303's, and a guy who got pissed off if he shot a 100 9x.on the .22 range. I was definitely fourth man.
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  110. The last I heard, five were in cold shutdown but still fueled, and one was on standby running at a fraction of power. Wouldn't take more than a few minutes to pull all the control rods out, and meltdown wouldn't take more than that with the cooling shutdown.
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  111. The explosion may affect the plant's safety, which is IAEA's concern. They certainly can't call out the Russians if they don't want to get thrown out, though.
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  112. Take out the seats, dashboard and 150 kilos of humans. Autopilots for R/C planes have been available since the 90's, and cheap cell phone sensors and processors make it possible to add object recognition, which isn't difficult when it's aiming for the tallest towers on the site. You could literally build one of these using stuff from the hobby store and an industrial motion control company. Servos in this range are off the shelf standard stuff.
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  113. Military experience isn't an advantage for a Defense Minister. It's an appointed managerial job that mainly involves setting budgets and other organizational arrangements. The people involved in actual military decisions are a few steps down the ladder and should be there on merit. An accountant might be a better choice than a general.
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  114. The USSR pretty much broke even economically, but at least everyone got something. Industry takes people and involves huge amounts of raw materials. When the USSR collapsed, the rich found oil by far a simpler way to fill their pockets and nothing went back into investment. Every city and town in Russia has the concrete shells of factories that have been abandoned for decades and stripped of metal for scrap. Except for the two showpiece cities and a few hellholes still mainly involved in arms manufacture, the entire country is a wasteland. They can't expand their production of anything because the factories, equipment, and skilled people don't exist anymore.
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  115.  @andyfreeze4072  - Neither side is my enemy, or especially my friend. You obviously feel differently. Apparently, you also feel a need to repeat what's been said a thousand times before.
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  116. You're skipping some of his words. He didn't say HiMARS can fire Storm Shadow.
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  117. The trolls are frantic tonight. Always a good sign.
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  118. Think Russia and Ukraine when the USSR split up. The Serbs have the attitude that they should be the ones ruling all the parts of the former Yugoslavia.
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  119. Most of my comments disappear some days. Only in the daytime for some reason. Probably for the best.
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  120. I gave up on teaching Americans English a long time ago.
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  121.  @Philip-hv2kc  - Romanes eunt domus?
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  122.  @puraLusa  - Russia wants it to feel secure. It's the only chokepoint between Moscow and southern Europe. They don't need it for anything.
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  123.  @agustinlara2356  - By asking, you just joined. Quitting isn't quite as pleasant, but we don't need to talk about that.
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  124.  @PSNPerfectNinja  - I'm not, and that's probably what I'm talking about. The place where something belonged was obvious.
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  125. What's new? It's been about to be the end of the world since the 1950's. It makes zero difference to anyone's decisions, nor should it.
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  126. Ignore the pretty graphics. We're basically talking about a small bunker with a bunch of radios and gear like computers. Not really bases, listening posts. Information comes in and gets passed up the line. There's no war room with generals making major decisions.
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  127.  @ugli88  - Logic doesn't depend on convenience. We do it the way we do because it's easier for humans, not because it's a logical way to do things.
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  128.  @trmon8890  - Of course they have sights and can be aimed. By far their most common use is spray and pray, though. Point it in the general direction and count on luck. Accuracy at range isn't a priority with assault rifles. They're good enough for most purposes, but long range shooting takes a full-fat rifle round. Assault rifles are for assaults close in or defending against assaults close in.
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  129. La légion. Les légionnaires. Vivre la france.
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  130. There's an Eglin AFB in northern Florida. It has its own golf course and marina, of course.
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  131. @arca7229 - The ratio sounds reasonable. Russia has been sending in wave after wave of troops who accomplish nothing except to die. Ukraine has been defending and using weapons from a distance.
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  132. They're sill attacking, but you can't really call what they're doing advancing. They take a few hundred meters and then get wiped out. They're retreating in the north and thinning out their forces in Crimea.
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  133. I have no idea what a counteroffensive will look like. I certainly didn't expect the wide front grinding down that actually happened. The grinding down has gone far enough and the initiative for the next step is all Ukraine's. This one is bound to be a lot different.
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  134. Cope harder, orc.
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  135. In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
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  136. The drone factory looked like offices.
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  137. A long time ago. They did it quietly over a week or two after they entered.
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  138. This is Enforcer Matt, and they're good ol' boys from mid Alabama.
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  139. All of the above. Add in a dash of influence from those who profit from chaos.
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  140. You should see what we do to German and French place names.
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  141. Escalation is entirely up to Putin. He'll be stopped in Ukraine or he'll have to be stopped other places later. All we're doing is helping Ukraine defend themselves. What it takes to do that depends on what Russia does, but it needs to be done. Putin's feelings about it are his problem. He intends to escalate as far as it takes to get a victory out of his mistake. We're responding, not escalating.
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  142. Different century, different war.
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  143. It's a nationalist attack against an occupier. They happen to be religious fanatics who will take any excuse to be barbaric toward the infidels. These are medieval people.
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  144. And yet they haven't all shut down their web sites and started leaving the phone off the hook. Sad effort, Ivan.
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  145. Putin's not sane. In his mind, it's Victory or Armageddon. Just like Hitler.
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  146. As the bishop said to the actress.
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  147. He cannot tolerate a challenge to his power, and he likes to let his victims have time to think about what's coming. He's a standard psychopathic dictator type.
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  148. Russian Jews flying to Moscow from Tel Aviv to get away from the war. It was a refueling stop along the way.
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  149. They must have spent the extra money on mufflers. Iran was using Austrian made engines at the start, but they must be making their own now or getting them from China.
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  150. It's a corvette, not a cruiser. People say lots of things for lots of reasons. That looked like someone setting a fire on a ship to me. I'm sure we'll get overheads soon enough to see whether it looks damaged or goes somewhere.
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  151.  @Toxicbananaz007  - Clerical garments are optional. Garments are optional, for that matter. The Cult of Matt is open to all, and each finds his own way to revel in the glory that is Matt.
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  152. More to come. I'm getting too old for this shit.
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  153. Those are devastating percentages to lose of any industry, probably the difference between plenty and not enough.
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  154. It's that damn Bama accent again. The subtitles should read "This ass tear"
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  155. They were always just a missile truck for the Exocets.
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  156. That's hilarious, Ivan.
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  157.  @Lord_Samael_de_Monasteriis  - I inherited my uncle's Enfield after years of not firing one, and I was shocked at how mild it was. I love the cock on close action and the spring-loaded release. You can flip the handle up with your thumb and it smoothly ejects and the bolt slides all the way back, or you can fan it open and closed at a hellish rate. The Enfield is Canada's sweetheart. My uncle was a pilot, and they weren't issued rifles. The stock's been cut so it will fit in a duffle bag, and some poor Brit probably got shit for losing it.
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  158. More western air defense could make it lethal for Russian planes to get close enough to launch anything but cruise missiles. If the French send even a few systems and operators, they could make a large difference. Voronezh also has a brand new nuclear power plant. They might want to keep that in mind when they're talking about blowing up other countries'.
    2
  159. It's all guesses. Most simple multiple rocket systems are unguided, though.
    2
  160.  @bluflaam777LSA  - maffs is hard.
    2
  161.  @genericscout5408  - They do have a habit of changing a few things and claiming that a missile or weapon is a new and more advanced system. They must have an instrumented range somewhere, like White Sands or Kwajalein Atoll in the US. I bet it's been working lately trying to figure out what they can do better with what they have.
    2
  162. Nicely put together and to the point. Not loving the intro, though.
    2
  163. Better hope the West is as deluded as you are, Ivan.
    2
  164. Yes, we'll all go together when we go Every Hottentot and every Eskimo When the air becomes uranious We'll all go simultaneous Yes, we'll all go together when we go. - Tom Lehrer
    2
  165. Normally I'd start by saying that I can't speak for the Enforcers, but I can this time. You are welcome and valued here whether you can donate or not.
    2
  166. They do live streams every night but Monday.
    2
  167.  @denisem.1042  - I'm at a "wait and see" stage again. I fell for an early Russian version that sounded convincing, which was a much smaller event than we're seeing today. It's really flat sandy land like Ukraine, and the river comes down from the mountains to the north. The river meanders on a wide flood plain, and there are levees and embankments everywhere.
    2
  168. The whole thing's an FSB setup.
    2
  169.  @Atheos-1  - I only call Southerners Yanks.
    2
  170.  @Atheos-1  - I've been all over, and no one ever thinks I'm from where I'm really from. I've been a Yankee in the south, a limey in the west, and a Texan in Canada. In German, I'm an Ostfreisser, which is like a German Newfie.
    2
  171.  @panamafloyd1469  - The Canadian Boy Scouts' wisdom has spread far, it seems. You start cooking when there's no smoke at all.
    2
  172. No country can lose 20% of its POL capacity and continue to function. Things are going to stop moving and being produced inside the country and the army will be restricted in all its supplies and movement. Hard times coming for the Rodina, Ivan.
    2
  173. As long as the dike around the cooling pond stays intact, they're fine. There is a small channel in the original river bed going to the water inlet pumping station, and a larger one to the north side where trucks could pump water in. Rainwater is plenty to keep the pond filled with all the reactors shut down. ZNPP is the other type of Soviet plant from Chernobyl. The heat exchangers are directly in the pond. They don't need to pump water constantly to keep them cool.
    2
  174.  @beepseatsfindingfoodtreasu8756  - There's an Eglin in Florida. Engels is in Russia.
    2
  175. I'm almost surprised the Drunk Douchebag Navy from Miami didn't come out and harass them.
    2
  176. They may want him to declare Belgorod an open city and withdraw his forces. Civilized countries do that to avoid having a city full of civilians massacred.
    2
  177. They're paid by the CIA, of course.
    2
  178. Let's not send any Archdukes to find out.
    2
  179.  @alexanderjdivic4784  - Well, not so much. We were all just as happy to let the Serbs rot behind their own borders as we were to let the Russians do the same. It has nothing to do with hating Russians or littler versions. Invade your neighbors and get curb-stomped. Nothing personal.
    2
  180. And a thousand new subs a day regular as clockwork. It's a movement, I tell you.
    2
  181. It has nothing to do with the government's finances. It's a present for Putin.
    2
  182.  @Chuck_Hooks  - He mentioned that Congress has to pass the funding. Discuss that if you like. You're not discussing that. You're just repeating the same talking points as the rest of your tribe.
    2
  183. Traditional Russian saber rattling. Nothing to see here.
    2
  184. Two drones.
    2
  185. Everybody brings a tugboat. If they have to call a commercial one, the charge is usually 10% of the ship's value. The captain signs the contract agreeing to pay whatever a panel at Lloyd's of London Insurance decides, and that's the usual amount. It's called the Lloyd's Standard Form of Salvage Agreement. They keep it high to encourage ship owners to look after their ships. Otherwise, the insurer ends up paying for the whole ship if it sinks. If the captain doesn't sign, the tug goes home. A commercial ship has also voided its insurance at that point. If the salvers try and fail, the ship is still covered.
    2
  186. There aren't any actual screws involved, so opposable thumbs aren't even required.
    2
  187.  @cmtwgrdk2748  - What it means is that the Russians have lost so much air defense ability around Belgorod that they've had to prioritize where it gets used. Belgorod is really part of Russia. The meat grinder isn't just for infantry and tanks. The heavy stuff further back is getting hammered, too.
    2
  188.  @timjefferson2137  - You have to be pretty young or naïve to think that bulldozing settlements is the root cause of anything. Of course none of us was around. We can read, though.
    2
  189.  @cherryfressh6188  - Well, when you hear a loud trumpet, tell me what the final score was.
    2
  190.  @cherryfressh6188  - Yes, I know. That certainly wasn't the beginning, though. It's also a skinned-down ignoring of the movements and motivations of the Palestinians at the time. It's a cherry-picked account of events using loaded language, of the sort both sides want to be actual history.
    2
  191. The livestreams have a link to the map in the description.
    2
  192. Everything in Russia has been abandoned and stripped of any portable metal. Every city in the country has an area of concrete ruins that once were an economy. The rulers in Moscow simply don't care about the peasants.
    2
  193.  @virtualalias  - I'm sure a cell phone has the computing power to run something like this. They have GPS, 3D position and movement sensors, memory, and cameras all built in.
    2
  194. The bulge on the front of the frigate is a bulbous bow, which cuts down drag, making the ship more efficient and slightly faster. It's very unlikely that it keeled over because of top loading. More likely to be something like a broken pipe or water inlet system flooding compartments on one side. That ship looks more American in style than anything else.
    2
  195. This is worse than Gulags. The gulag was a system of prisons, both criminal and political. What we're talking about here are concentration camps, and Russian concentration camps are certain to be extermination camps. They've made no secret of their wish to eradicate Ukrainians as a people and even as an idea. Never again is now, and it's being allowed to proceed again.
    2
  196. As well you should.
    2
  197. He's American.
    2
  198. Sounds more like Russia lobbing missiles at the city during the visit than an actual assassination attempt. Iskanders are able to hit a fifteen meter (50 ft) circle when remote guided, so 150 meters away is too far. Unless the Russians were being uncharacteristically clever and guiding one near the convoy deliberately. They probably just launched a few at the general area on autonomous mode.
    2
  199. The Cyrillic "X" is generally written as "KH" in English. Russians pronounce it like "K", Ukrainians pronounce it more like "H". I'm sure NEXTA is a made-up mock English name, and it's supposed to be pronounced as if it were English.
    2
  200. And still somehow only Russia has attacked and invaded anyone.
    2
  201. Not in English they ain't. Don't give the Germans or Dutch any ideas, either.
    2
  202. The word "fenestre" or "fenetre" means "window" in a lot of languages. "Window" is actually an odd word, though.
    2
  203. It could be a million different things, professional, political, or personal.
    2
  204.  @Philip-hv2kc  - I had a German Latin teacher, and the scene in Life of Brian was a documentary. It's all Greek to me now, of course.
    2
  205. I wouldn't be coming to work the next day. We don't know what all was hit. This looked like the shipping end of things.
    2
  206. They're supposed to be automatically disabled in off-limits areas like Russia. Unless Elon says otherwise.
    2
  207. They've built some of the new railway line, but I doubt it will ever carry a train. Too close to the Ukrainians, and you can't hide a bridge.
    2
  208. The Russians will use them but never trust them. They'll quietly clear them out to Uzbekistan or someplace similar if they end holding those territories in a stable way.
    2
  209. They send ancient Bear bombers once in a while, mainly around Alaska. Their ships aren't a real world-spanning fleet. They mainly stay at home and make visits like this once in a while.
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  210. Anyone can report a comment. It's a petty and cheesy way to avoid defending your position.
    2
  211.  @leszekscioch4500  - YouTube autodeletes comments for certain words, or just because it's full of glitches. I didn't do it.
    2
  212. That's a lot of tracks and bridges to guard. That's all low land with small rivers and drainage everywhere. The Russians build concrete railbeds these days, which would definitely be useful to Ukraine later. Bridges are a lot more fragile.
    2
  213. Seems more sensible if they're close to land.
    2
  214. The world isn't a comic book, and people aren't caricatures. Team America wasn't a documentary.
    2
  215. Smoke whose what?
    2
  216.  @SebHaarfagre  - Because you can display a list in reverse order and the data comes in logically sorted blocks. It doesn't require a database to sort by fifth through eighth digits, then third and fourth, then first and second. It's all one continuous block of data. You're much more likely to want to analyze date from a set of one particular month or year than a particular day. Written date format is a cultural option, nothing to do with logic or superior usefulness.
    2
  217. If Ukraine doesn't get what it needs, the other countries will need those weapons for their own defense, and their own troops will get killed doing it. If Ukraine does get what it needs, the war ends there and no one else's country gets devastated. There's absolutely no sign of Zelensky wanting to be friends with China and he hasn't said a word anywhere about wanting them to be an ally. I'd accuse you of being a Russian troll, but they usually don't sound this dumb.
    2
  218. Calling for peace means calling for surrender and submission to the whims of a psychopathic tyrant. The Pope's not a monster. He's been speaking with the voice of God and surrounded by manipulators for too long. He's irrelevant to the real world.
    2
  219. Neither of the above. It's a normal port visit. Four ships aren't a threat.
    2
  220. This isn't "Up to the minute ACTION NEWS live from the streets as it happens". It's a daily short summary.
    2
  221.  @johnallen6945  - I can tell you where I was on my birthday in 1977, though.
    2
  222. They're mobsters without a "no snitch" rule. They're also the cops.
    2
  223. This ratio actually sounds reasonable, but both numbers are certain to be wildly inaccurate. Equipment and materiel are Russia's limiting factors now, not warm bodies.
    2
  224. We don't talk about politics here, and frankly she wouldn't be worth discussing anyway.
    2
  225. The trolls are pretending the Red Army is still a thing.
    2
  226. They lost that many men the first week. Russia also wiped out the entire NATO army and air force along the way without noticing.
    2
  227. I bet it was one rocket being tested and it ruptured somewhere.
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  228. Your planet sucks.
    2
  229. Well, hello sailor.
    2
  230. I've liked Denis since he was making flying videos, but he does tend to get a little too optimistic or too pessimistic. They're not pretending to be neutral. They're reporting and keeping their personal opinions out of it to avoid the inevitable flood of angry trolls that anything else will produce.
    2
  231. "Roughly"?
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  232. And that's why politics is off limits here. It's just people repeating the idiotic talking points of the day and spewing trigger words to say how much they've been told to hate someone.
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  233.  @whoguy4231  The phrase you're looking for is "useful idiot"
    2
  234. Well, you gave the pedants and trolls something minor to bitch about. Well played.
    2
  235.  @erikriza7165  - He's a favorite of the Russian trolls.
    2
  236. I think cyberbullying someone for a year and threatening their lives and their family's might be a little lower than that.
    2
  237. They're Americans. Grammar trolling just shows that you're looking for something to bitch about.
    2
  238. Mary Schiavo, former head inspector of the FAA, made a list of safety rules for passengers on commercial planes. One was "Never fly on a Russian-made plane"
    2
  239. "Better" must mean something different in your dialect.
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  240. You're babbling, son.
    2
  241. The innocents always take the brunt of war.
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  242.  @jackied962  - Russian bots are like fortune cookies from the world's worst restaurant.
    2
  243. The majority of residents in Crimea identify as Russian and speak Russian. A century of Soviet and Russian ethnic cleansing, forced deportations to central Asia, and replacement with Russians has seen to that.
    2
  244. Just like Ukraine is part of Russia.
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  245. "Our" government, Ivan?
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  246. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, America is failing Ukraine and the West. How and why things happen inside the US are none of our business, as you are so fond of reminding us. Quit playing games and pointing fingers and get your shit together.
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  247. The Belarusian coup thing seems like the old commie revolution strategy turned against them. If you want to take over a country, you force the government to react to you by cracking down and repressing large numbers of people. This makes them angry, and they join the revolution. When enough people are against the government, you storm the government buildings and declare yourself the new government. Russia recognizes you and sends forces to help you hold the territory. The Soviets and Cubans did this everywhere.
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  248. Come for the livestream at 10 PM. It's actually a pair of brothers, and the other one is even more human than this.
    2
  249. You noticed they're burning churches and synagogues, right? These are not our friends by any stretch of the imagination. Like putting a scorpion and a tarantula in the same jar. You don't really care who wins.
    2
  250. YouTube demonitizes such things, but you can still show them.
    2
  251. No one said Russia has pulled out of Crimea. It's become obvious that they can't defend it against attack from the air. The ships have been pulled out, which were the main thing that needed defending. Russia is not advancing anywhere. They take half a field at the cost of thousands of lives, then the Ukrainians take it back.
    2
  252. You know how people jump to defend the AK? I'm gonna have to do that with Scooby Doo vans. They remind me of guinea pigs' faces.
    2
  253. I think the Germans haven't been getting ready because they're a little sensitive about making the other Europeans nervous. I'm not inclined to hold what their grandfathers and great grandfathers did in a different century against them.
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  254. Of course they do. Every military has magazines on its bases to store large amounts of ordnance. They're obvious even on Google Maps.
    2
  255. The House has refused to take up the bill so far. The House being one person who decides what gets considered in the House. The rest of the government is rarin' to go.
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  256. Or maybe they found out what he did in Romania that summer.
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  257. Why? Russia doesn't like forests?
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  258. Lukashenko never intended for those troops to do anything. They were just looking busy to keep some Ukrainians tied up. If the Russians/Belarussians did try to come in from the North again, all the bridges, rail lines, and other targets to stop them would be inside Belarus and Ukraine has the means to destroy them this time. Lukashenko doesn't need that. I seriously doubt Putin actually handed over any nukes, either. More noise to stir up FUD.
    1
  259. Special forces don't operate air or maritime defense missile systems.
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  260. The problem with anyone mainly concerned with China is they're always part of one side or the other. The anti-CCP types are led by a Chinese billionaire living in New York. He's part of the Falun Gong movement and publishes Epoch Times, an anti-CCP propaganda "newspaper" that's also full of right-wing nonsense. Every piece of news from inside China has been manipulated and spun to fit someone's agenda, and none of it can be trusted.
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  261.  @DUKE_of_RAMBLE  - The main thing "kamikaze drone" brings a picture to most people mind's of a quad with an RPG controlled remotely via a camera. This is a long-range missile following flight path, not being steered by someone who wanted to fly it there.
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  262.  @katk2819  - You are seriously determined to miss the point, which I've already explained.
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  263.  @jameswilliams9655  - That's where your understanding of English and mine differ. An attack is a deliberate action. An accident is accidental. The reaction to them should be different. "Missile bad" isn't a useful way to analyze or predict anything.
    1
  264. Cool. YouTube is censoring replies to religious bigots.
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  265.  @user-irj1nxa3cof2z  - I hate people using religion to promote their hatreds. I don't hate any particular religion. You obviously can't say the same, therefore "bigot".
    1
  266. Russia made them and used them for centuries to terrorize and suppress the peasants. They're the descendants of slavic types who moved south to get away from the expanding empire of the Tsars. They mixed with the people already in the region and became fierce fighters to defend themselves. Then the Tsars hired them as a personal army to keep the peasants in line. Eventually, they became absorbed as part of the empire themselves. That ended with the Soviets and they became a collection of clans who both cooperated and competed with each other. Then Russia blasted them back to the Stone Age, hired Kadyrov, and turned the area into a dictatorship. Russians have always hated Chechens, and Chechens have always hated everyone but their own brand of Chechen.
    1
  267. Seems extremely unlikely. They're going where they were announced to be going, and there are probably as many security people on board as sailors.
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  268. Putin's conditions for agreeing to talks amount to a surrender of Ukrainians sovereignty and ability to defend itself against further aggression or ever join NATO. He's never been serious about talks of any sort, and he never keeps his word anyway.
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  269. Sounds sus.
    1
  270. You're a funny guy.
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  271. They have a lot of rusty old garbage on the books. Maintaining nukes is expensive, and so are yachts and castles. No one in Russia can be confident any of them would actually work. Putin's just running his mouth again.
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  272. The first one is The Cossacks Were Riding. That has the "yes sir, no sir, yes sir, no sir" part.
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  273.  @donaldshotts4429  - If they're provided with what they need, it won't be a month after month war. Russia's army is ready to crack and the collapse of the country will follow quickly after that. One mush-faced coward in the US Congress is preventing that.
    1
  274. No one says Eye ran ian. It's always Eye rain ian. They call themselves Persians anyway.
    1
  275. There's no Ukrainian forces in Crimea, and the majority of the people are ethnic Russians and now Russian citizens. Putin and Russia consider it part of Russia, and it is the main strategic prize and reason for this war. Why would he nuke it?
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  276. I believe that's it, alright. Gave myself eyestrain looking. That looks like a repurposed agricultural facility. The road's not paved, which would be a bare minimum for a real military depot. The buildings aren't dug in, and there's no sign of security posts.
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  277. No.
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  278. 51.248657, 58.590468 Google Maps already shows it flooded.
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  279. I tried to reply to you, but apparently YouTube considers Schwarzenegger quotes to be threatening or harassing behavior.
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  280. They're demanding he "end the circus". That could easily mean declaring Belgorod a free city and pulling his forces out. They didn't offer to negotiate anything.
    1
  281. Countries like Poland and Czechia have straightened their heads out from the Soviet brainwashing. Ukraine was under the Russian thumb until 2013, and they've been at war since then. This is Ukraine rejecting the East and joining the West. You can't expect them to change all their attitudes overnight, but they certainly have no lingering loyalty to the old system.
    1
  282. Who knows? The fat lady hasn't sung yet.
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  283. Most of you Russian trolls pretend to be polite with your bullshit.
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  284. They don't actually pretend to be joining the good side. They're Russians trying to make changes in Russia that will suit them.
    1
  285. NATO's never had a single troop in Ukraine. Ever see a cartoon where a bug is waving his little arms and threatening a human's foot?
    1
  286.  @dwaynesimons-d2c  - Europe can't do it without the US. They don't have the stocks on hand, whatever anyone might think of that decision.
    1
  287.  @teodor4ik183  - The also reduce horsepower and fuel mileage on a two-stroke. They add back pressure that keeps the exhaust from fully escaping and reduces the amount of new mix being drawn in. It "chokes" the motor by mixing exhaust with the new charge. There is a type of exhaust that increases both, called a tuned pipe. That uses the shock waves to cancel each other and creates a vacuum at the exhaust ports. It also makes it a lot louder.
    1
  288. You sure about that?
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  289. It sounds more likely to be some sort of assault boats, and they're not hard to drive.
    1
  290. Russia doesn't work that way. Everyone lies to the one above him, and he lies even more to the one above him. By the time it gets to the top, all plans have been exceeded and everything has gone much better than expected. No one is about to tell Putin anything negative. That's an admission that he has failed and must be punished.
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  291. Plugging other channels is considered obnoxious everywhere. Coming to badmouth one is just juvenile. Grow up.
    1
  292. Only in paper. A kilo of coins would still be less than a kilo of sugar.
    1
  293. India doesn't claim to be our ally. They're not Russia's either. Neutral countries get to look after their own interests.
    1
  294.  @Bawamba  - We can apply sanctions and expect our allies to honor them. Turkey is betraying a trust. Demanding that a neutral country honor them is a violation of their sovereignty. Sanctioning their companies when they are in complete compliance with their own and international laws would be convenient, but that's not how it works.
    1
  295.  @Bawamba  - Stop buying and sanction are two different things. The government can't force its citizens or companies to stop doing business with a neutral country's, or that is a violation of many international laws, treaties, and agreements, as well as the accepted behavior of one sovereign country towards another. Officially embargoing a neutral country's goods is an act of war. No matter how righteous you feel your cause is, you can't force others to take your side or help you in it. It's not grade school. The biggest kid doesn't get to change the rules every time it makes things easier for him.
    1
  296. Ukraine won't hold out another year without American support. They get their act together now or throw away any trust and influence America has in the world.
    1
  297. It's a different type of war.
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  298. Roll, Bama.
    1
  299. Russia isn't a major precision manufacturer anymore. They get things like that from China.
    1
  300. Sounds like the original story was a little off kilter, and it's been repeated and misread. A bunch of stuff doesn't make sense, even to a confirmed landlubber like me. Somebody's got some asplainin to do. Is there an Officers' Country near the control room? I could see a problem in one compartment that happened to be their quarters causing a number of officer casualties.
    1
  301. People who hate guns tend to be on the left, but people who like them are everywhere.
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  302. Putin will probably try to get the Russians pumped up to volunteer and go fight terrorists, and they'll all end up in Ukraine.
    1
  303. 100% of trolls make up bullshit.
    1
  304. I don't believe IAEA's spin on anything anymore, and what the Russians told the IAEA is double sus.
    1
  305. Russians sneak into battle like rats. Chinese run in screaming. N.Koreans mostly just die.
    1
  306. Keep whistling past the graveyard, Ivan.
    1
  307. Korea's going nowhere. Kim's taking advantage of chaos to strut a little.
    1
  308. This situation has gone well beyond politics as usual. Pretending otherwise just plays into the hands of the side that redefines reality as it sees fit.
    1
  309. They're Bamans. We're just lucky they don't call every place France.
    1
  310. It doesn't have to work or even be realistic. Russia has three armed forces inside its borders and will have to bring in enough force to counter all of them and any potential reinforcements. They have to treat it as the vanguard of an army or an army is what they'll get. It'll create chaos in their transport and logistical systems and tie up a lot of people and equipment that will then be left in a useless place and have to be moved again.
    1
  311. They passed an interim bill that funds everything but Ukraine. The masks are off.
    1
  312. Bad decisions based on faulty assumptions aren't treason.
    1
  313. He is surrounded by Machiavellian schemers who are his only source of information and opinions, and he speaks with the literal Voice of God. He's lost the plot years ago.
    1
  314. I think "dam" is a bad translation and should read "embankment" or "levee". There's nothing like a dam in Orsk, but there are levees all along the river and a big new one about five meters high running along the south side of the colliery. It's also not covered in grass yet. That might be what they're talking about. I think the colliery flooded first, then the new embankment held the water for a day or so, then it failed. The levees have failed at several more places since then, and almost the whole city is flooded now. It wasn't a dam burst that caused the flood. There's flooding along a thousand miles of the river from a huge spring melt and rain in the mountains. The news we're getting is all slightly reworded translations of a single original source, and there just aren't any real details coming out, like one decent sketch map.
    1
  315. Western countries have been there training them since 2014 They don't send line units for that. They're teachers from various training commands, not fighting troops.
    1
  316. In any kind of a shooting war, the Russian Baltic Fleet would have to retreat up the Neva river into inland Russia. The Baltic is so thoroughly wired that anything moving on the water can be taken out by an anti-ship missile or rocket-launched torpedo without even needing to be spotted.
    1
  317. And that's the way it is.
    1
  318. Every country plans to fight a war against every other country. Putin's grand strategy is obvious and no leaks are required to confirm it.
    1
  319. Putin's an oldschool kind of guy, and deleting someone's whole family is probably one of the things he admired about Stalin. After WWII, every relative of Hitler the Soviets could find disappeared into night and fog. Third or forth cousins who didn't know they were related were rounded up and didn't return.
    1
  320.  @markthompson4885  - .3.03 and 7.62 are pretty comparable, but .30-06's have noticeably more kick. I've had a .303 come off my left shoulder and caught the handle on the cheekbone, but that was youth.
    1
  321. He said something about turning the other cheek. Everyone runs out of cheeks pretty fast.
    1
  322. Special Forces are often used as instructors. That's what Green Berets are for.
    1
  323.  @BLOODRAINxp  - Instructors are troops, too. You're just itchin' to bitch.
    1
  324. It's being built, but the chance that it will ever be able to carry any traffic is pretty slim. It's close enough to the front for any bridges to be easy targets, and no one can guard an entire rail line from sabotage.
    1
  325. NATO will enter the war if one of its members is attacked. Russia's decision, not ours.
    1
  326. Everyone has bad days, but the Russians don't have any good ones.
    1
  327. Embassies are sovereign territory of the country that owns them. They aren't part of the host country. Diplomatic immunity is a different thing.
    1
  328. Not on the Don River at least. Fueling stations are usually near the outlet of a river, where ships are going out to sea or coming in. They load the finished products for export at the coast, so that's where the pipelines and systems for bringing the fuel are. Inland is just a highway.
    1
  329. Pro-Ukraine, please.
    1
  330. Hard "G" in Dagestan. There's no "J" sound east of France.
    1
  331. Russians aren't pickup people. Small cars or real trucks.
    1
  332. WWII was 80 years ago. The Italians lost an entire generation of young men in WWI who didn't go on to have sons to fight in WWII. Their economy never recovered and they were a rump force in WWII. Their grandchildren aren't them.
    1
  333. Zelensky has to keep the whole West convinced that the war isn't at an unwinnable stalemate. We have no idea what their stocks of anything are. No army fires everything off as soon as it arrives in the country.
    1
  334. Ukrainian setbacks/Russian gains have been on the order of a couple of hundred meters at a time at a cost of thousands of Russian dead. Russia hasn't "broken through" anywhere, and the Ukrainians have lots of big new missiles and other supplies now.
    1
  335. They sometimes sack their employer's capital, too.
    1
  336. In the last two years, the Russians have moved the front line forward by a few kilometers, and lost millions of square kilometers back to the Ukrainians. They're succeeding all the way to their country's grave.
    1
  337. Would you care for a plum?
    1
  338. Don't be so sure.
    1
  339. I don't see the Ukrainians doing any mass amphibious landings. They don't have a navy for one thing. They'll make Crimea untenable and the Russians will have to do another goodwill gesture, then the Ukrainians can march in.
    1
  340. They still fight over religion and ethnicity in the Balkans. They've always done it and don't show any sign of joining the modern world any time soon.
    1
  341.  @thomaswrzalinski7454  - Only a fool would want or expect them to.
    1
  342. They're defending the border of the West.
    1
  343. Canada declared war at the same time, but we're usually too polite to mention that. Before Lend-Lease, the Yanks rolled planes up to the border and threw across a rope that we could use to pull the plane into Canada.
    1
  344.  @Tomcharles-vu1vr  - Be part of the group and help make it a place that others will feel comfortable, and you've contributed. Even the people who do contribute large amounts are just folks like the rest of us. Ranked memberships would kill this place.
    1
  345. And on your planet, hamburgers eat people.
    1
  346. I'd bet on a measurable rise in background downstream as the dust and such gets flushed out of the mine, but it won't be anything to be concerned about. Uranium ore is rock and it doesn't dissolve in water.
    1
  347. He figured it out. Hopefully, he'll have to figure out worse names than that soon.
    1
  348. These are the videos the Russians release. Of course they're going to show civilians being hit. We don't know what was behind the buildings a hundred meters away and really being targeted. The rockets we've seen hitting have been at the edge of a pattern that's several hundred meters in diameter, so it's safe to say that what's being hit is not what they were aiming at.
    1
  349.  @krunchie101  - They were all NATO troops specially trained to sound Russian and wearing Russian uniforms.
    1
  350.  @krunchie101  - And their families will get letters telling them to sue the Ukrainian government for the death benefits the Russian army promised them.
    1
  351.  @М.Столић  - What they say is propaganda. They don't really expect to take Moscow either. What they're really trying to do is not public information. Russia always claims to have wiped out every attack of any kind. No matter what the reality on the ground is, they're full of shit this time too.
    1
  352. I think a lot of what happened is that The Greatest Generation aren't with us anymore to keep the memories of the horror alive.
    1
  353. That was not intelligence. It was an article in Komsomolskaya Pravda, once the official newspaper of the Communist youth group and used to make announcements by the Soviet government. Putin's an old-school kind of tyrant. That article came directly from one of his writers.
    1
  354. Just science fiction threats. One nuke isn't much use in a surprise attack. EMP's have to be detonated at too low an altitude for a stable orbit, and a satellite doesn't need a nuke to be destroyed.
    1
  355. "The" Ukraine hasn't existed for more than thirty years, Ivan.
    1
  356. The Two Minutes Hate has been going on on Fox "News" for quite a few years now. There's a whole list of words that once had specific meanings but are now all nothing but trigger words to stir anger, hatred, and fear without the need to think or understand. "Liberal, communist, fascist, p*dophile" and many others mean "doubleplusungood" to the mob. Orwelll was right about how it works.
    1
  357. When it breaks your windows. They're Russians. They don't care about anyone else's problems but their own.
    1
  358. Which Russian oblast is "GB"?
    1
  359. @mnemet - He's using it as an example of the slurs used by their opponents, not as a description of anyone.
    1
  360.  @Atheos-1  - I love them. It's hilarious, especially when they're trying to be insulting. I can be mistaken for a lot of different types.
    1
  361.  @carlthor91  - I'm certain I've never been that far north. I'm closer to 45 N. Your days must be about three hours long.
    1
  362. Pretexts and talking points. They want to cut funding to Ukraine because their Great Leader is a licker of Putin's ass. If they were serious about the government's financial position, repealing two trillion dollars worth of tax cuts to billionaires would be a start.
    1
  363. The America First Party was a pro-Nazi party with Charles Lindbergh as its figurehead. In a sense, the MAGA clowns were around before WWII. They're the successors to America First, one more outbreak of the fascist sickness that keeps cropping up.
    1
  364. Even Mercado's not using that old line anymore. Only the true weirdo still think it's convincing. He's pretending to be outraged at their journalistic integrity these days.
    1
  365.  @steveshoemaker6347  - Sorry I asked. Life's too short.
    1
  366. They've sent more accountants to keep track of the aid than troops. I'm sure if you wait long enough, you'll be able to FOIA the ledgers and such and do the math yourself. "America First" seems to be a popular theme for the Russian trolls the last few days. Don't help Ukraine, watch your country's position in the world collapse as a result, and we'll see how isolationism works out. America isn't a self-sufficient country of farmers anymore. It needs resources from the entire world,, and maintaining its position in the world is how it can take care of its needs at home.
    1
  367.  @amigatommy7  - He's famous all over the commie world. They named towns after him and I'm sure there must be an Engels nuclear power plant somewhere.
    1
  368. That's always a factor with Russia. When they first marched in, there must have been trillions of rubles worth of things being reported as destroyed that had actually been sold years ago.
    1
  369. Everyone is certain of their own opinion, right or deluded. They all repeat the same talking points over and over and no one's listening. It's toxic crap that distracts from the common purpose.
    1
  370.  @jgreen2015  - Yes, I know. There are plenty of channels to swap repetitive statements. This isn't one of them.
    1
  371. If they're shipping them through Romania, they're probably boats that fit on train cars.
    1
  372. By "border" you must mean airport. Neither of those groups are known for walking across the desert.
    1
  373.  @Eduardo8olvera  - It's certainly not most of the immigrants. You just notice the ones you're interested in.
    1
  374.  @Eduardo8olvera  - You're supposed to be interested in all people, not just the ones who confirm your grudges.
    1
  375. You don't actually read your own words, do you?
    1
  376. You Russian bots are like fortune cookies from a crappy restaurant.
    1
  377. Are you on about 1918?
    1
  378.  @cyberGEK  - Freaky little zombies.
    1
  379. And vice versa. Institutional religions are all a method of control through fear and manipulation of emotions and tribal instincts. As are authoritarian regimes. Birds of a feather.
    1
  380. The Cult of Matt believes that the credits should be in alphabetic order. Enforcer Matt first, then The Enforcer.
    1
  381.  @JeepGirl941  - I doubt they want to negotiate with him. Of course he won't give in. He's a psychopath. He'll go down Hitler's road of letting the entire country and its people be destroyed. If they won't or can't do what he orders, they've failed and no longer have any use or interest to him.
    1
  382. You poor trolls are just getting pitiful now.
    1
  383. Seems as good a reason as any. Russians have so many things to be pissed about.
    1
  384. It's generally because you used a word YouTube doesn't approve of. Sometimes it just glitches out and you can't reply to a particular post no matter what you say. There's no blacklist. YouTube will give you a warning, then a timeout, then close your account.
    1
  385. Sorry, but that's how 95% of the human race measure things.
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  386. When they say "Avdiivka", they mean the district, not the town.
    1
  387. Yes sir.
    1
  388. The Americans didn't ask Ukraine to stop attacking the refineries. That was a single source story from "unnamed sources in the US government", in other words nonsense. The response from a real official when asked about the story was that America has never approved of Ukraine attacking targets in Russia. He didn't say they should stop and he wasn't reading some official policy. "Not approving" means "We didn't tell them to do it", not "We think they should stop".
    1
  389. Putin as Charon standing on the bank of the Styx with his ferry sunk at the dock. Turns out that both sides are Hades for the lost souls who want to cross.
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  390.  @danielmartin7838  - The guy they traded Powers for was a whole Cold War spy novel in his own right. All the stuff from the movies, including a nickel with a shelf that pulled out of it to store microdots and the exchange at Checkpoint Charlie.
    1
  391. So far, Russia's losing. Three generations of Soviet weapons production are scrap metal in Ukraine. Russia will never be viewed as a superpower again. It will be lucky to come out of this with all its republics still part of the federation.
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  392. My dyslexia's been reading it that way for years.
    1
  393. No politics here, please. Everyone's heard all the talking points before anyway.
    1
  394.  @Chuck_Hooks  - I'm not censoring you. The house rule is no discussion of politics. I'm not American, btw.
    1
  395.  @Chuck_Hooks  - You're still repeating your talking points like a good bot.
    1
  396. That's this week's Russian troll talking point, alright.
    1
  397.  @benbrown3926  - The Russian trolls are pushing exactly that talking point. It really doesn't matter who's posting it. It's being used by Russia as propaganda. Trying to convince people that all the aid money has been wasted and gone into corruption is one of their standard favorites and has been from the start. When you find your sincere convictions being mirrored by the enemy's propaganda, might be time to question where those convictions came from.
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  398.  @VaraLaFey  - I got this account on Sep 27, but it's because my computer blew up and I never bother to remember passwords.
    1
  399. I get the Ukrainian women who've been wanting to meet me, but mostly creepy ads for the Cult of Elon. "What would Musk do in this situation?" or "How would Musk solve this?" kind of stuff.
    1
  400. Rockets were fired at civilians.
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  401. They just have to get it past the restricted anus in the House.
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  402.  @pjhgerlach  - I believe they did have to tow Kuznetsov once. Fleet tugs aren't like little harbor tugs, btw They're ocean going ships with massive towing winches and cables, pumps and equipment that can be lifted onto a ship, and often a detachment of divers to make patches and inspect things underwater.
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  403. It carries eight Kalibr missiles and is small enough to send to the Black Sea via the canal system if they needed to. It's a new, modern ship and it's owned by Russia. It's a threat.
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  404. Single source rumors. Probably not true.
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  405. It looks like the river rose and washed out a levee or just over the banks. Google Maps is already showing it flooded. 51.248657, 58.590468 There's a big levee along the south side of the river that looks alright, but everything north of it is underwater.
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  406. Russia can hope all they want. They don't have the means to do it anymore. Putin's only interested in peace talks if they start with Ukraine surrendering its sovereignty.
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  407. Psychopathic dictators do that.
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  408. Russia said they were going to Belarus. I'm betting they got about a km from the theater and FSB had them covered by dozens of cars the entire distance.
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  409. You mean Russia's finally going to break out the "good" unit's they've been threatening with since Day One?
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  410. They belong there as much as anyone. Unless someone's a purebred Neanderthal, he's the descendant of immigrants.
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  411.  @user-irj1nxa3cof2z  - I don't think it's up to us or anyone to decide who has the right to exist in a place where they've been for a millennium. You're coming perilously close to justifying ethnic cleansing. Don't become what you oppose.
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  412.  @user-irj1nxa3cof2z  - I'm not from the Balkans, you got that right. Everybody came from somewhere else.
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  413. The other Arab countries not letting them in is what made them this way. Their grandparents walked to the borders to give five professional armies a clear field. No one forced them to leave; their own leaders told them to do so, expecting all the Jews to be dead in a week. When that didn't happen, the Israelis would only let them in if they would agree to be citizens (yes, I know that's oversimplified), and the Arab countries wouldn't let them in at all. They've been too useful as a way to distract the peasants from getting upset at their own rulers. They're spent three generations in "temporary" camps, getting more radicalized the entire time.
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  414. The irony drips. Thank you for helping him spread his lies. Cyberbullies couldn't operate without suckers like you to do that.
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  415. It's a top heavy truck with stiff suspension. Dump trucks do that all the time.
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  416. You could try mentioning what he's saying. "Look it up" has been the rallying cry of too many whackjobs the last few years.
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  417.  @cherryfressh6188  - And lots of other people owned it before and since.
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  418.  @OvaHendrix-j4t  - Your English is getting pretty Slavic, Ivan.
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  419. Of course he will. Putin doesn't have reasons, he has pretexts. He does exactly what he would have done no matter what the propaganda says.
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  420.  @nspowers7130  - How many times do you need to have "why" explained to you? Georgis chose to repeat Mercado's side and completely ignore all the things he's been doing for the past year. I'm not putting anything on him.
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  421. They also tend to weed out anyone competent who might present a challenge to them. Popularity is a death sentence under a dictator. They never leave a viable successor as a result. There's always a power struggle between all the court retainers.
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  422. As a lifelong nerd, I think everything is explicable if you only know the right maths to use. Right up until the Big Bang. That's a discontinuity and we can't know anything about the laws of physics or cause and effect any earlier than the first microsecond of our universe. That leaves plenty of room for God to live.
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  423. France wants any European war fought far from France. If that means helping to keep the war where it is, seems like a good plan.
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  424.  @robertrobert8325  - In case you didn't notice, the barbarian horde is coming for Europe again. The French haven't forgotten. The war's already started.
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  425.  @robertrobert8325  - Ukraine had support from the richest and best equipped country in the world. They're in danger now without that. Europe is stepping in now that they're needed.
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  426.  @Lika-p8h  - WTF?
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  427. I hope it doesn't come to French people dying in France, and they don't want that to happen again. Putin won't stop until he is stopped.
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  428.  @SvdSinner  It's off the shelf stuff now. Your computer, phone, radio, and autopilot all figure out how to do things. You just tell it where to go and what to do when it gets there. Flip the prop and it does the rest.
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  429. All this to stop an expansionist dictator.
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  430. As the kids say these days, whatever.
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  431. There's a link in the description for the live streams. He removes the markers and starts over once a week.
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  432. It's been a long time since 1940.
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  433.  @Percocet_6.2  - Long enough for the jokes to have gotten really out of date and stale. France has fought and won a lot of battles throughout history, and they lost one. They weren't cowards then, either. Poor planning and strategy. The troops didn't break and run, and hundreds of thousands of them made their way to England and came back to fight. Hundreds were parachuted into France as secret agents, caught and tortured to death, and the resistance rescued thousands of downed allied airmen shot down, destroyed bridges and rail lines, and took Paris back from the Germans on their own. It contributes nothing to a discussion of French capabilities and intentions to reduce the world to a joke that your grandfather knew wasn't really true.
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  434. Quisling.
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  435.  @EnforcerOfficial  - Thanks for sticking your head up on a Monday. That's the most hopeful news yet in this thing.
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  436. There are a few things on my "While the missiles are flying" list.
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  437. The White House signs the checks and every step of the process of shipping aid is under the Executive Branch. What's required and what happens may not be the same thing. Remember "First I'll need a favor, though"? That was aid passed by Congress.
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  438. Vlad didn't release the tape.
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  439. Most of Russia's weapons were made by the Soviets. A lot of them were made in Ukraine. Russia can't make a fraction of what they're throwing away. Ukraine can keep getting lend-lease until the cows come home.
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  440. A twisted, messed-up little man with a YouTube channel and some major jealously. Standard cyberstalker type.
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  441. Sensible people go down to the basement when they hear something like that. Primitives gather in crowds to watch.
    1
  442. Of course you haven't actually watched a second of them.
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  443. Cheap equivalence for emotional effect does a disservice to both.
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  444.  @Joe__Smith  - Kosovo separated legally under Serbian law at the time. It's not part of Serbia. You can't just pick a random moment in history and claim that gives you the right to violate the international order now.
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  445. They still think red is the "good" color.
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  446. I'm always happy to slag the Brits, but God Save The King.
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  447. They're not fighting on Ukraine's side. They're fighting against Putin's regime and the Ukrainians are helping them because they're useful. None of them claim to be friends.
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  448. I think our only real hope for Putin is The Praetorian Solution, where his guardians sell the job to someone else and then clear him out of the way.
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  449. You mobilize reserves. You conscript meat.
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  450. The walls have really closed in around him. He can't keep looking busy while not actually doing anything forever and saying NO to Uncle Vovo once will be his last.
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  451. The problem with taking nuke plants off the grid is that it makes them melt down.
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  452. He knows he's full of it. He's speaking to the peasants in his own country who believe what comes out of their TV.
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  453. Peacekeepers means both sides have agreed to a ceasefire and invited them in.
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  454. Rumor is that the Russians had four of those ground-to-space comms stations. One's gone, a lot of their airborne tracking capability is gone, and hopefully they'll be reduced to each unit reporting planes or missiles going over on the phone.
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  455.  @bishopofsahs  - Lots of people have said that about the US. "Do the research" is the rallying cry of every conspiracy nut and political looney on the internet.
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  456. If they come in force with all their modern assets, they'll be going after the Russian Air Force on the ground hundreds of km inside Russia.
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  457. Were they wearing black shirts and led by a scowling fat man?
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  458. Maybe trying to dodge bullets. Maybe damaged controls or communications. It's certainly harder to hit something that keeps changing direction, but that seems too close for what it's doing.
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  459. Suck up the pride and phone them. You don't know what you've got until it's gone.
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  460. The Canadian military budget has been either cut or ignored by every government for the last sixty years, You lot sound just like Trumpers, you know.
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  461. Depends on how much damage. They might have to remove big sections to repair internal damage.
    1
  462.  @TheMartymar1976  - It's one of the leading causes. If they started a fire below decks and damage is visible above deck, that ship is done for a long time, if not scrap.
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  463. It actually isn't the congressmen. Their House Leader refuses to call a vote, which would pass overwhelmingly. The loud ones can vote however they want.
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  464. Most people say "Kosovans". We mostly ignore what people call themselves in their own language. The Deutsche and Niederlanders can testify to that.
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  465. Do you still like to suck the hotdogs before you swallow them whole?
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  466. The US didn't pay a penny into "NATO's bills". Individual countries spend on their individual militaries. None of it goes into a common pot. The US has a huge military for many more reasons than deterring Russia. Europe supplied the potential battlefield and kept America from having to worry about defending its own territory. That's the investment you made.
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  467.  @susannehartl3067  - The administrative costs are insignificant. The personnel are from the various militaries, and the only real cost is the buildings to put them in.
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  468.  @susannehartl3067  - The talking point being used is the US has been bankrupting itself paying Europe's bills, and therefore Europe should have to support Ukraine alone. My point is that the money the US has spent on defense went into its own forces, and any amount that went into NATO was miniscule.
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  469. They can't understand that an alliance doesn't mean a power and its puppets and satellites. Russia has never had any allies. They've fought a common enemy together with other countries, but it was convenience and necessity, not any shared interests or values. They believe that the President of the US can simply order any other NATO country to do what he wants, and they never do anything without his orders or approval. Peasant barbarians with a thousand year history of being kept ignorant.
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  470. @us - Russians still act like commies in a lot of ways. It it's on the books, it's ready for service. Money is budgeted for maintenance and it disappears a bit at a time as everyone reports to his superior that all norms have been met and no one actually does anything. The people on top pay wages to people who don't exist, the next step down get kickbacks from the people who are supposed to do the work, and they sell any supplies they receive to do it to pay off their boss. When it becomes disastrously obvious that required materiel no longer exists, one person from each rank up to major gets arrested and charged with corruption. The colonel is safe because he has an ally among the generals. He wouldn't be a colonel if he weren't greasing a few palms higher up.
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  471.  @Newfoundlander1916  - It's what the Russians like to call "borderlands". It was part of the country, but the people were still slightly suspicious foreigners. Moldova was an internal buffer strip, and Transnistria would have been the chokepoint for either side in an East-West battle. The Soviets ethnically cleansed the people in the borderlands and replaced them with ethnic Russians loyal to the Rodina. The Moldovans weren't replaced as so many were because the land was meant to be the glacis to protect the entire country from the south western flank, and the local population wouldn't be much help or hindrance in a battle of that scale. They cared about what the people in Ukraine would do and their loyalty because it was an important agricultural/industrial area and valuable in its own right, not simply because of its location. That's why so many genocides and mass deportations gave it so many areas with majority Russian populations. Straight out of Machiavelli. The USSR was simply the Tsarist empire renamed, and the subject peoples weren't treated as equal citizens, all propaganda to the contrary.
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  472. The heavy industries in Russia all belonged to the State. Now each industry belongs to one individual who answers only to Putin.
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  473. That's exactly what Russia and its useful idiots have been saying since Day One.
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  474. Could well be. There will be court cases from the shadow owners, too.
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  475.  @miastory247  - You kids today with your universal angst and your horrible music.
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  476. It's much simpler to just Bamafy words and pronounce them the way they look to us. In the case of Nexta, the "X" is probably meant to be an X anyway. In most Cyrillic languages, "X" is pronounced "K". It's only Ukrainian that pronounces it as "H". Same with the "G".
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  477. The Kosovans don't need backing up. NATO is standing in front of them.
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  478. That should be short and interesting. You do realize that Russia is barely a second rate power now.
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  479.  @cjjohnson9413  - Sure I can. Nuclear weapons aren't power. They can't be used to accomplish anything and are irrelevant to the military art. If Russia wants to win a war, their conventional forces have to do it, and they aren't in the first or second rank at that anymore. The first and second rank military powers are all in NATO. Russia is the flaccid rump state of a rump state that has been crumbling for more than a century. The massive military power it once had no longer exists, and its equipment and the industries to make it have been allowed to rust by a corrupt inheritor. This is Russia's last war as a former major power.
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  480. Their CIA paymasters will be happy to hear your opinion.
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  481. It's a really long subject, and every word will offend masses of trolls. They're not trying to make people stop talking about it, they just want people to be stating their own version of it.
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  482. The problem is that the European countries don't have massive stockpiles of anything that they can send. The US does. If they don't get the thumb out, that makes WWIII a sure thing.
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  483.  @johngarner6046  - If a Livestock Disposal guy offers you some steaks, don't take them.
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  484. "The United States has requested" is way too vague. There are so many agenda-driven people that you have to know who's speaking to know what he's really trying to do. We've seen too many quotes from low-level officials giving their own dumb opinions and being reported as policy. I wonder if the Russians are trying to stir up memories of the Chechen theater attack in 2002.
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  485. That's not a certainty, but even if they do get the finger out and get the aid flowing, it's cost them a lot of future influence and made them an ally that no one will be able to rely on.
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  486.  @lgnfve  - You're expressing a simplistic view of a man based on old stereotypes and assumptions about "strong man" leaders. Macron is doing what he does for real reasons, not because his thought processes are those of a child. The grownups are doing grownup things. Pretending they're acting out of childish motives isn't a useful way to understand the world. It just makes you easy to fool.
    1
  487. It's called geofencing. The satellite will ignore a receiver in an off-limits area.
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  488.  @Kevlar_soul  - So the fact that someone hasn't been trained on something is a reason to cripple what you do send so they never learn. I get it.
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  489. I bet now that they're making them in Russia, Putin didn't want the competition.
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  490. Says the guy repeating Russian talking points.
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  491. Semi-submersibles travel along the surface, so the water depth makes no difference. Not sure what kind of foreigner still gets triggered by the words Anglo-Saxon and expects others to get triggered, too. There are an awful lot of people in the West who aren't Anglo-Saxon. Why cant they be our lying pawns, too?
    1
  492.  @rogerout8875  - It's a real Chinese troll. Savor the moment. My account is less than a month old, but that's because my computer blew up.
    1
  493. Numbers are meaningless. Maps don't lie.
    1
  494. Nuclear weapons are irrelevant. People seem to have forgotten that. They have them, we have them, and so what? They make absolutely no difference in the way anyone should respond to anything.
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  495.  @Countcho  -If you tell a computer to print a directory of dated entries. It comes out in order of each day with month and year secondary, a useless format. GUI's like Windows rearrange that for humans. Rearranging inputs and outputs to match spoken language takes compute cycles and adds code that takes longer to run. Computers don't think. They do one simple operation at a time, and they operate on math, not spoken language. They just do a lot of simple things all in a row quickly. Keeping code simple is the Golden Rule of programming. Translating dates adds a little bit of complexity and makes the system just that little bit slower. There's nothing more logical about either system. One is in spoken order, the order is in reverse order. They're used because of the language people speak.
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  496.  @DaReaperZ  - Not in a long time. Why get personal? The truth of a statement has nothing to do with who says it.
    1
  497. This was the administration building for the bureaucrats. Accountants, secretaries, and fat bosses in cheap suits. It's not a barracks.
    1
  498. The Russians tried to turn all their former frontier puppets into failed states. They wanted a buffer zone, and they lost all their European conquests from WWII when the USSR broke up. If they're always fighting each other, they're no threat to Mother Russia.
    1
  499. They're not sure what kind of ship, but it had to be loaded. Flames a hundred feet high.
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  500. Hang onto your dreams, Ivan.
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  501. I think that was a very poorly translated statement. They're talking about assault boats, not ships.
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  502. "The" Ukraine was a province of the USSR. It hasn't existed in more than thirty years, and Ukrainians are offended by people still using that name. It's a country called Ukraine now.
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  503. Russia is definitely not Catholic. They're Russian Orthodox, the competition. Ukraine is mostly the same.
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  504.  @alanmcmillan6969  - I don't think he has a thought in his head that wasn't put there by some scheming aide. No one can question his opinion, and that is whatever he's fed by the most ambitious members of a Machiavellian organization.
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  505.  @alanmcmillan6969  - There's a little thing called Separation of Church and State. Gonna get off on some bizarre moralistic rant again today, weirdo?
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  506. We translate X into KH because it sounds like a lot more like "K" than "H". Our "K" sound is a sharp out breath using the tongue to stop and release the air. Russian uses an open sound with the breath continuing through but restricted by the tongue, which makes it sound like a guttural "K". We don't hear any sounds in Russian that sound like an "H". Ukrainians say "H" where Russians would say "G", and that makes it obvious which language it is.
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  507. Rubble and crossroads are all there is in this war. The "higher" ground and forest don't change hands much as they're too easy to defend and too hard to attack.
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  508.  @jameshickok2349  - Just being generous
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  509.  @trmon8890  - We didn't have AKs.
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  510.  @trmon8890  - We're talking about AK's, the preferred weapon of monkeys everywhere. Nothing to do with me.
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  511. You're about ninety years too late, tovarisch.
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  512. So far, "Russians who want a free country" who managed to get power have turned out to be interested in freedom for their own and the same old same old for everyone else.
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  513. Russian-held Ukrainian territory.
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  514. Things and troops go through Belgorod to the front. It doesn't have bases full of troops and vehicles ready to go. That would be a really bad place to put a permanent base. They were counting on the Rosgvardia militarized police to deal with small raiding parties, which are all they've seen so far. No one expected this. I think they will get troops in there and the FOR will withdraw again.
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  515. They haven't so far, but Putin wasn't in quite as foul a mood yet by then.
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  516.  @Mike-xw4gm  - That was just the first week.
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  517. Who do you think has been training their special forces since 2014?
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  518. It's just Russia showing their usual contempt for rules. The Poles would have known where the missiles were going and that they weren't going to hit anything in Poland. Waste of missiles and would give away their defenses to shoot them down. Russia gets to make a stink and NATO gets called weak for doing nothing when nothing was required.
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  519. Just before the Fall of the USSR, the borders got opened up enough so people could drive from Russia and the commie countries and make their way into Austria. There were cars left along the shoulders of all the roads to the border crossings. They were models that weren't allowed into modern countries and all got abandoned there. The lineups of people who hadn't given up yet were covered in a cloud of blue smoke.
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  520. Everything in the Russian world is blue or green. Blue is useless against energy weapons in our atmosphere. Nitrogen scatters blue light and the thermal blooming stops the beam. Lasers that travel through air are infrared or ultraviolet and higher frequencies. Particle beam weapons don't care what color something is.
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  521. Nobody wants Moscow anymore. St. Petersburg was the capital in those days.
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  522. Fox "News" consists mainly of opinion hosts of Carlson's ilk. They have some airtime in the afternoons at lowest viewership time that's real news and sometimes actually blunt descriptions of reality. Those people tend to get fired after a few episodes of bucking the narrative, but they're allowed to do it those few times. It's a transparent ploy to legitimize the propaganda.
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  523. I lived the first half of my life during the Cold War, and I never hated the Russians. Even stories about their barbarism in Berlin at the end of WWII were something from a different time, done by people who had advanced themselves since then. It turned out that the worst horrors about the Russians were true, and they haven't changed one bit in the last three generations. They're still a horde of barbaric peasants from the East trying to conquer and destroy the West.
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  524. The "Twice-promised Land"
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  525. The whole story came from one social media post. The Chinese might have lost a sub, the rumors have been going around for a month. The rest is someone's fantasy novel.
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  526. Nope. Not something they're likely to give in detail, either.
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  527. Nukes are the most useless weapons systems ever made. They were never made to use. They're to keep the other people from using theirs. Poland doesn't need nukes.
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  528. Western countries have been sending in trainers and advisers since 2014. Odessa in 2021 was several hundred kilometers from the nearest Russian, and no one was fighting anyway.
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  529. That's probably why they put all three together. I doubt it will work. Some are in the business of obstructing everything.
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  530. Cutting through the border may be obvious, but the Russians didn't fortify it and have no major forces in the area. There are no prepared defenses for Ukraine to walk into. They can't be strong everywhere, and the Ukrainians have picked a place where they aren't. There's nothing stupid about hitting your opponent where his guard is down.
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  531. Science!
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  532.  @AfricanLionBat  - You keep saying fake strikes, but YouTube gets to decide that. Libel, defamation, and death threats really happened. That's not about someone's business and it's not just bad words. Mercado has tried to ruin their business, their efforts for charity, and their lives. Spare the outrage until you find out what's actually going on. You're helping on the wrong side of decency in this.
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  533.  @dogwhistle8836  - Bless your heart.
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  534. Ships can go a long ways without refueling. Tankers need to fill up too, though.
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  535. Oddly enough, most of Belgorod IS a village. The core is a standard Soviet city, but a huge area all around is nothing but dirt roads with houses on small plots of land and no businesses or services. It's where they moved the excess rural population when they collectivized all the farm land. They gave each a bit of land to grow vegetables and raise a few animals, just like all the towns and villages in the countryside. There, the people of each village were a collective working a large area of fields.
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  536. Debris from an intercepted missile hit the beach. They might have thought about that when they fired the interceptor missile.
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  537. That's a weird linguistic quirk that doesn't have an analogue in English. "The Ukraine" isn't belittling in English and "The" isn't a word in Russian. The phrasing Ukrainians find offensive involves using words around 'Ukraine" that indicate either that it is a single individual thing or part of a larger thing. "In Ukraine" and "In The Ukraine" as translated into English are actually the same word for Ukraine with two different words for "In". English just doesn't work that way. English names are just names. They don't have any other information built in.
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  538. Nationalism and socialism have nothing to do with each other.
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  539. maffs is hard
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  540. Are we talking about a radiotelescope, a spacecraft tracking radar and comms complex, or a torture camp run by a bald man with an eyepatch?
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  541. Setting up listening posts in friendly countries to watch unfriendly countries is one of the CIA's jobs.
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  542. It's hilarious the way the trolls go straight to "nazis" as if that had something to do with the real world. Stalin and his gang liked to blame things on Kulaks and wreckers, both equally imaginary. Old Russian tradition.
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  543. Any excuse to refer to the favorite Russian line about corrupt Ukrainians.
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  544.  @xjinit  - The Russian talking point about corrupt Ukrainians comes from the days when Putin's puppet was running the country and doing his best to turn it into a failed state. Corruption was encouraged then, and they're been fighting to get rid of it since. What we're talking about here isn't the corruption Russia likes to harp on. This is treason, pure and simple.
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  545. A lot of the artillery work Russia is doing seems to be of the old area bombardment type, while Ukraine has been using theirs surgically and getting first shot hits since the first days, with the same equipment. That's been their saving grace so far. The guns are doing the lion's share of the work in this war, and Ukraine needs more of them. A lot of things have needed to be rewritten. MANPAD's and SAM's have neutralized air for the most part, and mines and ATGM's have removed armor as a decisive force. Artillery is back to doing the job it's always had.
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  546. Seems like we'd be on the Russians like a marmot on a plum if that were the case. They've basically turned themselves into a free lunch. NATO's never annexed any territory or committed any genocides. Russia can't say the same.
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  547. This is Andrew, The Enforcer hisself.
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  548. As a kid who learned how to make black powder when I was about twelve, that looks like something I would have caused back then.
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  549.  @shannonjames8998  - I can't swim that long.
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  550. So, you're a Polish quisling of an American puppet of a Russian dictator. Might as well just invade yourself and get it over with.
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  551. That didn't happen even two years ago.
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  552. Russia has at least one more cycle in her of revolution followed by a new authoritarian regime. The peasants haven't changed, and they've fallen for it every time so far.
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  553. Russia gets their panties in a bunch over anything Ukraine does. Putin's feelings are his problems.
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  554. Ukraine had nothing to do with this.
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  555. Without a host giving context, it's just a bunch of blurry videos of who knows what. This isn't a war video channel. It's an analysis and discussion channel.
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  556. If you want an instant "In" with Canadians, remember that the second "T" in Toronto is silent. The full-on local version is more like "Trawna", but Turono will do.
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  557. He can speak for NATO, but none of its member countries.
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  558. I'm not praying for it, but I'm also not peeing my pants and running in circles. The bad guys are trying to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt among the West, and it's working.
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  559.  @r423fplip  - It' was in the process of being put back into working order. The Russians stripped a lot of stuff off it for the other ones. They might have meant to use parts from it and Minsk to make one ship.
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  560. I'll take a guess. It was a rocket test run by a guy named Dyatlov.
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  561. It's a really weird linguistic thing. They don't actually have "The Ukraine" and "Ukraine" in Slavic languages. It's the same word but the words used in context with it show whether it's a singular thing or part of a larger thing. They use different words for "In", for instance.
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  562.  @bc-guy852  - I doubt anyone means it as an insult. English doesn't work that way. It is worth changing the habit. I've managed to stop thinking of everything east of Germany as just more Russians.
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  563. Poland was one of the early victims, but they weren't a player. They did literally nothing to Germany.
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  564. That seems unlikely. The Russians have been using up troops at far too high a rate to keep a large force on garrison duty. They'll have to bring in forces from somewhere and that takes time. They've gotten used to raids that pull back as soon as opposition starts to appear, and this isn't what anyone was expecting.
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  565. They aren't making gains there, either. They keep sending a force into the town, then the Ukrainians wipe them out. Russia claims to have taken the town, but they don't mention that they have taken and lost it a few times.
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  566. maffs is hard
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  567.  @daveballjoint5285  - "maffs" is how it's spelled here.
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  568. They already did that when they came back and re-took their country. The real world isn't the comic book version. That's just simpler than learning about history.
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  569.  @williamcunningham6442  - The ones who could get out and keep fighting did. Thousands were killed by the Gestapo suppressing partisans inside the country, Many parachuted back in to act as agents in occupied France, and most were caught and tortured before being killed. They helped thousands of shot-down airmen to escape capture. They provided detailed intelligence of troop and ship movements. They blew up bridges and railroads all over Normandy and prevented the Germans from moving up reinforcements in time. The Free French Army was what they had, and it did its part. France didn't just roll over and show its belly or ever accept the conquest. They are not the idiotic stereotype of cowards who immediately surrender and kowtow. They are a country with a long and proud martial tradition.
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  570. We're basically monkeys.
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  571.  @user-irj1nxa3cof2z  - Humans. We still have all the old monkey instincts to hate and fear strangers, and we're just as easy to panic and lead to violence. Civilization is our effort to rise above that, but some don't want to make the effort.
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  572. Good for you, fool.
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  573. In the days when the Russians were supporting and training terrorists all over the world, the Muslims called America the Great Satan. They called the Russians the Lesser Satan. They were under no illusions about the Russians helping them out of friendship. They're just as interested in fighting against Russia now as fighting the west.
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  574. You should mention that those criticisms and claims are being made and repeated by the Russian propagandists and useful idiots. So is the call for Western countries to withdraw and cower while Russia achieves its aims. Why must you turn this into a house of lies, Ivan?
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  575. NATO was invited into TFY by both sides as peacekeepers.
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  576. Nationalism just means he's on his nation's side. _______ nationalism means someone's on the side of their tribe and to hell with the nation.
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  577. Ukraine doesn't disappear people. My grandparents' basement was full of more dangerous stuff to get into than any street.
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  578.  @ApacheMustache  - Some, certainly not all. That's never been a normal or common thing in any democracy. It's common in countries whose name contains "Democratic", but that's not the same thing.
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  579. NATO has no official business until someone attacks one of its members. It's not involved in Ukraine.
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  580. France can't do that because it's against international law. Mercenaries are illegal combatants and it's illegal to employ them. The Foreign Legion are enlisted members of the French Armed Forces.
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  581. Meatwaves don't count as advanced tactics.
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  582. I don't think he is a useful idiot. He doesn't believe his own bullshit, it's purely a tool to manipulate the mouthbreathers
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  583. We don't have the excuse that we don't know it's happening, either. Same as WWII, nobody's going to risk anything to help the victims of genocide. They'll only act when they're directly threatened or attacked. Genocides always get into full gear when the perpetrators have won a campaign and think they're beyond any consequences for their actions. The Armenian genocide started after the Turks won at Gallipoli, the Holocaust started after the nazie conquered huge swaths of territory and thought the war was all but won. African genocides start after one side has defeated the other's fighters and sets out to eliminate the women and children. Give Putin a military victory and security in Ukraine, and his genocide will be more vicious and efficient than any before him.
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  584. That's the real location of Wakanda.
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  585. The UN is supposed to be a place where enemies can talk. That's all it was ever supposed to do. What the employees think is their business and they should keep it to themselves.
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  586. They were considered a top grade luxury car in the USSR.
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