TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org

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An unsuccessful attempt by a Russian military to shoot down a Ukrainian FPV drone in the village of Solovyevo, Donetsk region

There is no need to wait for a quick end to the war. The war can last at least until the US elections, said the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, at the World Economic Forum conference.

He called the question of how much more money Europe will have to spend to support Kyiv "difficult".

"If we promised to support Ukraine at the beginning of the conflict, then we should continue to support Ukraine until they are unable to resist and until Putin decides to stop the war. Unfortunately, this will not happen soon. Europeans will not die for Donbas, but we can help Ukrainians not to die for it also," Borrell

The building in Odesa that was attacked by the ruzzians - in what is a blatant war crime - is the residence of ex-deputy Serhiy Kivalov

The building is often called Odessa's "Harry Potter Castle".

Unfortunately, the fire has yet to be extinguished and it is not certain that the building can be saved at this stage.

It is believed that ruzzia used an Iskander-M missile with a cluster warhead against the civilian population walking on the embankment.

Ex-People's Deputy Serhiy Kivalov, an ally of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, received fragmentary injuries to his right thigh in the explosion.

He was hospitalized with venous bleeding at the city clinical hospital No. 10, from there he left for a private clinic.

3 people are so far known to have died, together with a dog.

The number of victims has increased to 20 people. At least two of them are in a critical condition. One of the victims is a 12-year old child.

All the necessary assistance is given to the wounded.

Emergency services continue to work on site.

https://t.me/EveryUkraineWarVideo Subscribe

The number of victims of the Russian strike on Odesa has increased to four. Three women and one man died.

According to updated information, 27 people were injured. Among them are two children (16 and 5 years old) and one pregnant woman. Four wounded are in serious condition, doctors are fighting for their lives.

⚡️ SBU, military intelligence agency chatbots disappear from Telegram.

Chatbots of Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR), the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), or the Digital Transformation Ministry, which were used, for example, to gather information on Russian troops in occupied territories, have disappeared from Telegram and are unavailable as of April 29.

"Today, the management of the Telegram platform unreasonably blocked a number of official bots that opposed Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, including the 'Main Intelligence Bot,'" Ukraine's military intelligence agency said.

⚡️ Military intelligence: Over 18,000 Russian troops of Southern Military District have deserted.

Soldiers of Russia's Southern Military District, whose units are deployed in Ukraine, are deserting their posts in increasing numbers, Ukraine's military intelligence agency (HUR) said on April 29.

Over 18,000 soldiers of the Southern Military District have allegedly deserted, with around 12,000 of them belonging to the 8th Combined Arms Army – a unit often deployed in hostilities in eastern Ukraine.

CONTINUE…
Decades of being the potential tactical nuclear battlefield of Europe has created something akin to the San Francisco Great Quake discussion. Nobody talks about it, nobody wants to think about it and if you ask (and I have), you get shut down and the conversation moves on to anything else.
So when Macron stood there saying it was time for a European nuclear deterrent, and that he was willing to place in effect, a French nuclear umbrella over the EU member states, in Germany you could hear a pin drop.
The reality is in effect already at that point. French, as British, nuclear weapons are already part of NATO’s unified command structure, but subject to withdrawal by either national government when they see it as appropriate.
That however is not the point. For Germany, Macron is doing the one thing they can’t do, and in doing so he is claiming French leadership of Europe, both in a military sense and a political one. That’s hard for the Germans to swallow after years of Merckl being the unquestioned leader. Shultz is no Merckl. Macron is no De Gaulle, but he is certainly raising the point nobody wants to talk about and you can’t ignore him. Western Europe is dumbstruck by it, Eastern Europe has a very different perspective.
It will be interesting to see how Macron makes this stick. Even in France many see it as impracticable and asking for trouble. Either way he’s forced a debate long overdue.

FRANCE & GERMANY: SAME
PAGE OR DIFFERENT CHAPTERS?

There is no relationship more important to the success of the European Union. There is no relationship in the modern world that has been rebuilt from the ground up, to work in a level of general harmony, even to the point of holding joint cabinet meetings. From the ashes of three wars, all of which, from Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 that saw the collapse of the French Second Empire, and Paris besieged, with swathes of Northern France occupied by the newly created German Empire - declared in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The First World War ended with France severely damaged - almost all of the western front remained in France for the whole war. Millions died. But the German Empire was crushed and the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the very same Hall of Mirrors. The Nazis used the treaty as one of their causes. In WW2 Hitler had the railway carriage extracted from a
Paris museum and placed on the spot Germany surrendered on in 1918, only this time France was crushed and occupied. This tit for tat vindictiveness literally shaped world history. President de Gaulle - legendary leader of the Free French knew he had a chance to break the cycle when West Germany was created in 1955 from the occupied territory of the allies. Russia created the DDR.
Since then France and Germany have cooperated and worked together in the EU. Sometimes France takes the lead, sometimes Germany does, it depends on the politics of the time, and the strength of personality at the helm of each country.
Right now it’s France and the Germans are having a tough time of going along with it.
Having just announced a new cooperation agreement to produce the MGCS - the Main Ground Combat System, the pair seem as close as they have been for decades. The new not-a-tank tank is to be robotic, unmanned, AI controlled and ready by 2040. They claim it will represent a technological breakthrough. Call me old fashioned but it’s sounds creepy and dystopian, and like a whole lot of trouble. But then I watch and write a lot of sci-fi.
They haven’t however been able to overcome their differences in the world of 6th Gen fighters. France is utterly determined to sustain its full scale military aviation industry and will not relent on production sharing and technological development. The MGCS was easy in comparison because both countries have a robust tank manufacturing base and could work out a production sharing deal. Germany doesn’t have the military aviation sector France does.
So while both sides agree on most things, it’s not perfect.
What is most certainly not perfect is, in the German Chancellor’s mind -
and many of his supporters - President Macron suddenly and firmly taking the lead in resisting Russia.
They both cowered under the gaze of Putin. They both welcomed the tyrant, negotiated with him and believed he would see reason. There’s always a bit of Olaf Shultz (and Merckl before him) that makes you think he still hankers after that simplistic relationship. It was always going to end badly and they were both warned over and over.
Shultz is a bizarrely German creation. He’s overseeing a radical rejig of Germany’s defence posture and between him and his minsters, eventually provided a staggering amount of aid to Ukraine - far more than France has even started to muster. Indeed France is still way behind. Some of what it provided, such as the peculiarity of the AMX-10 wheeled recon tank, failed hideously in frontline use (as predicted in every wargame it appeared in).
Yet it’s Macron who has seized the leadership role. It’s Macron who said if needed he would send French troops to Ukraine - half of Europe cheered him on, while Olaf Shultz had to lay down in a dark room and bite his fingernails off while crying, before saying Germany won’t be doing that. Nobody was surprised.
This last few days Macron went one step further. If you read his speech you can almost see German leaders feinting at the very thought of any of it. Some will agree but it frightens them to death. CONT../

RUSSIA ‘STUCK’ IN A WAR ECONOMY?
The Analyst
There is growing concern that Putin has now leveraged so much power and control over the state and its people that oppression is now at a level there is no way for the people to get out from under it, even if they wanted to. The means of organising and disseminating information are state controlled or can be shut off without warning. The slightest complaint receives the highest level of punishment. Nobody gets far enough to create a snowball effect that becomes irresistible.
Yet official polling shows growing discontent over the war. Hard fought rights to own property and businesses are being swept away. The state nationalises any business it wants without compensation, fortunes are being taken away without due process or fairness.
But the biggest problem is the scale of the conversion to war production.
Russian manufacturing industries were never especially vast. But they were reasonably  efficient and profitable and privately owned or entwined with western partners and economies.
All of that has gone. The state has taken over. And the problem is, it has no way of easily reversing what it has done and continues to do.
Indeed the costs and difficulties of reversing it have been analysed in the west, and the warning signs are that it would be so huge a disruption and so drastic an economic shift that, even without sanctions of any kind, preventing a jolting and destructive economic downturn would be near impossible. The dangers to Putins rule would then rapidly multiply. Russians don’t want another 1990’s decade of rampant economic dislocations and poverty, yet without massive infusions of cash and a sudden resurgence in the price of Russian gas and oil sales - both of which seem unlikely in the extreme to recover their pre-war levels, there’s no way around it.
Putin faces rising inflation from an overheating war economy that still is nowhere near beating Ukraine. Defence consumes officially, 35% of the state budget but in reality is coupled to security forces expenses it’s nearly 55%. Even that is still only one quarter of the US Defence budget.
It’s one of the reasons they are so incensed by the $61 billion for Ukraine - added to what Europe provides Ukraine has a military budget around 75% of Russia’s. It’s economic odds that simply don’t play out well.  Putins biggest problem is that production is pretty much at peak. They have more shells than they can fire, (limited only by a huge reduction in artillery through losses), as many drones as they need and glide bombs in quantities that are deeply worrying.  Buy they still can’t win the war. And if they don’t and it ends in anything less than a victory or something they can pass off as one, what then? If Putin doesn’t have a resounding victory and then has to plunge the economy into recession his days are numbered.
And that says he won’t. If he doesn’t win in Ukraine he’ll find someone else to fall upon - Georgia, Kazakhstan, any of the former soviet states of the dead empire. A constant state of war means permanent stability from his viewpoint. And that doesn’t bode well   for peace anywhere within reach of Russian borders. Putin has put himself in a place he cannot escape from. It was never meant to be like this. But it is and he’s set his course. Will anyone risk stopping him inside Russia?
@ukrainejournal

The bank official will be back on the stand in Trump's trial. Testifying that Cohen told him the money would not be used for political purposes.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/why-the-first-witness-today-in-donald-trumps-criminal-trial-is-so-important/55748/

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/31819

Russia is holding over 1000 Tajiks
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/31822

450,000 losses for Russia
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/31807

https://t.me/WarriorsUkrainian/26552

https://t.me/Kyivpost_official/21816

The world can not afford another MAGA.

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/the-greatest-danger/55754/

Shevalready told us why she killed the dog. She did not like him. Now, suddenly, he was chasing livestock. Yeah, right Kristi. And what is the moon made of?

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/trumps-potential-vp-pick-kristi-noem-just-stepped-in-it-even-worse-in-dog-shooting-scandal/55758/

Good Morning Resisters everywhere.

Goodnight Resisters everywhere