TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org

https://open.substack.com/pub/babkina/p/things?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Two Grumpy Old Men interview an American farmer in Ukraine

Dan Rather
https://open.substack.com/pub/steady/p/patriotism-politics-and-plastic?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

🎼 I've got a feeling..

A message spotted on a ruzzian channel - with music added for your enjoyment.

🎼 I've got a feeling..

A message spotted on a ruzzian channel - with music added for your enjoyment.

Japan Warns Russia Over Violating Airspace, Fires Flares for First Time

Tokyo mounts a more aggressive response than in previous incursions by Russian planes.

TOKYO—Japanese jet fighters fired warning flares at a Russian military reconnaissance plane that violated Japan’s airspace on Monday, the first time Tokyo has taken such an aggressive stance against incursions of its airspace mostly carried out by Moscow. 

A Russian IL-38 patrol plane entered Japanese airspace three times between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. local time Monday as it flew over waters off Rebun Island, the northernmost part of Japan’s major Hokkaido island, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Yoshimasa Hayashi, said.

Tokyo has lodged an “extremely stern protest” with Moscow for the violation, Hayashi added. 
Russia’s Defense Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

On Monday, Japan’s air force scrambled F-15 and F-35 jet fighters in response to the first airspace violation, and the jets began firing flares during the third one-minute incursion by Russia around 3:42 p.m.

It was the first time Japan’s air force has fired flares since it started deploying only defensive measures against airspace violations in 1958.

Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said the air force took the action only after issuing warnings to “the opponent.” He refused to comment when asked if the Russian patrol plane was flying with other Russian aircraft. The plane wasn’t undertaking particularly dangerous actions, he said.

Excellent quality satellite images of the consequences of the drone attack on the arsenal near Tikhoretsk in the Krasnodar Territory of ruzzia

It can be seen that train wagons with ammunition were being unloaded at all affected ammunitions warehouses during the strike.

A very well chosen time.

Anna Bowles

https://open.substack.com/pub/annabowles/p/new-weapons-hit-zaporizhzhia?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Good News
https://open.substack.com/pub/jefftiedrich/p/we-could-all-use-a-good-news-monday?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Operational information as of 4:00 p.m. 09/22/2024 regarding the Russian invasion

Since the beginning of the day, 65 combat clashes took place at the front. The occupiers continue to actively operate in the Pokrovsky and Kurakhiv directions. Our defenders stop the enemy, hold the lines and destroy the plans of the Russians.

During the day, a number of settlements of the Sumy and Chernihiv regions suffered from enemy terrorist attacks. The enemy fired artillery at Brusky, Malushyn, Pavlivka, Zhuravka, Velyka Pisarivka, and Boyaro-Lezhachy; Esman, Bilovody, Zhuravka, Buvalyne and Yastrubshchyna were hit by air strikes. Also, according to available information, the enemy carried out ten airstrikes on the territory of the Kursk region, using 12 air defense systems.

In the Kharkiv direction, two enemy attacks took place in the Vovchansk region. The battle continues. The situation is under control.

In the direction of Kupyansk, the enemy tried to advance to our positions during the day in the areas of Petropavlivka, Synkivka, Hlushkivka, Kruglyakivka, Lozova and Stelmakhivka. Five enemy attacks are still ongoing. In total, ten clashes were recorded in the direction. The occupiers dropped a total of nine aerial bombs on the districts of Kupyansk, Kupyansk-Vuzlovoi and Pershotravnevoy.

The aggressor increased the number of attacks to five in the Lyman direction . Fighting took place near Cherneshchyna, Druzhelyubivka, Novosadovo, and Dibrova. Two skirmishes are ongoing.

On the Siverskyi direction, the enemy tried to break through our defenses in the Vyimka area. The situation is under control. The occupier also carried out airstrikes with guided aerial bombs on the areas of the settlements of Ivanivtsi, Sviato-Pokrovske and Sloviansk.

In the Kramatorsk direction, our defenders continue to repulse two attacks by the occupiers near Kalynyivka and Klishchiivka. Near Hryhorivka and Stupochki, five enemy attacks have already been stopped. The enemy used unguided air missiles on Stupochki.

In the Toretsk direction, the invader, with the support of attack and bomber aircraft, attacked four times in the districts of Dachne, Toretsk, Shcherbynivka, and Nelipivka. There is a battle near Toretsk.

The greatest activity of the enemy currently remains in the Pokrovsky direction . Clashes of varying intensity have started here 21 times today. Fighting is currently ongoing in six locations in the districts of Novotoretsk, Grodivka, Novogrodivka, and Marynivka. During the day, the aircraft of the occupiers flew in the direction of Oleksandropol.

A difficult situation remains in the Kurakhiv direction . Six assaults were repulsed near Hirnyk, Tsukuryny, Zhelany Drugo and Katerynivka, and four skirmishes are ongoing near Kostyantynivka and Hirnyk.

In the Vremivsk direction, the aggressor is attacking near Vugledar and Vodyanyi, four clashes are currently underway. Enemy aircraft also struck near Bogoyavlenka, Urozhany and Rivnopol.
No active actions of the occupiers were noted in the Gulyaipil and Orihiv areas today. The enemy is carrying out airstrikes and artillery fire on the positions of our troops and populated areas.

In the Dnieper direction, our defenders repulsed one enemy assault.

Ukrainian troops are exhausting the enemy along the entire line of battle and in the rear .

Join the Defense Forces! We will win!
Glory to Ukraine!

AFU report.

🇺🇦@ukraine_report 🇺🇦Liz

👀 A real thriller from the soldiers of of the K2 battalion of the 🌜 54th Brigade, who have taken occupiers prisoner with the help of a drone more than once. After a failed assault, a Russian soldier spent a whole week in a trench without food or water and miraculously survived several drops from a drone. Later, he crawled out and asked to be taken prisoner

A UAV operator with the call sign "Staiher" dropped him painkillers, water, and a note with instructions. During the crossing, Russian artillery tried to finish him off, but here too he was incredibly lucky

Totally unreal news

⚡️ Breaking news! Sensational discovery by an international team of paleontologists.

The death of dinosaurs 65 million years ago was not caused by an asteroid. An asteroid could not have caused such enormous damage.

Dinosaurs became extinct due to the fall of debris from a Ukrainian UAV!

⚡️Ukrainian forces break through another section of Russian border, 95th Brigade claims.

Ukraine's 95th Separate Polesian Air Assault Brigade said on Sept. 23 it had broken through another section of the Russian border.

The brigade published a video purporting to show the breakthrough of engineering barriers, the crossing of airborne assault units into Russia, and the first battles near the border.

Video: Ukraine's 95th Separate Polesian Air Assault Brigade

Wasting no time upon arrival in the US, President Zelensky immediately visits an ammunition factory in Scanton, Pennsylvania.
He is there to thank the workers. They dramatically increased production for Ukraine

📢 Subscribe to Kyiv Post

President Zelenskyy signs an artillery shell in Pennsylvania.
https://t.me/WarriorsUkrainian/36214

https://t.me/WarriorsUkrainian/36215

And yet, in 2022 and 2023, your words and actions signalled a categorical refusal to negotiate with the enemy, whereas now you seem to have opened a window to the idea of negotiating, a willingness to ask if negotiations are worth pursuing.

If we go back two years, to the G-20 summit, in Indonesia, in my video appearance, I presented our formula for peace. Since then, I’ve been quite consistent in saying that the Russians have blocked all our initiatives from the very beginning, and that they continue to do so. And I said that any negotiation process would be unsuccessful if it’s with Putin or with his entourage, who are all just his puppets.

Everyone said that we have to allow the possibility of some kind of dialogue. And I told them, “Look, your impression that Putin wants to end the war is misguided. That’s a potentially fatal mistake you are making, I’m telling you.” But, on our end, we have to demonstrate that we do have this desire for dialogue—and ours is a genuine one. Our partners think we should be at the negotiating table? Then let’s be constructive. Let’s have a first summit where we all get together. We shall write up a plan and give it to the Russians. They might say, “We are ready to talk,” and then we’d have a second summit where they say, “This formula of yours, we agree with it.” Or, alternatively, “We disagree. We think that it should be like this and like that.” This is called dialogue. But to make it happen, you have to prepare a plan without the Russians, because, unfortunately, they seem to think that they have a kind of red card, as in soccer, that they can hold up and block everything. Our plan, however—it is being prepared.

I understand that you are going to present this plan to Biden?

The victory plan is a bridge. After the first peace summit, our partners saw that Russia was not prepared for any talks at all—which confirmed my message to them and my insistence that without making Ukraine strong, they will never force Putin to negotiate fairly and on equal terms. No one believed me. They said, We’ll invite them to the second summit and they’ll come running. Well, now we have the second summit planned and they don’t look like they’ll come running.

And so the victory plan is a plan that swiftly strengthens Ukraine. A strong Ukraine will force Putin to the negotiating table. I’m convinced of that. It’s just that, before, I was only saying it and now I’ve put it all on paper, with specific arguments and specific steps to strengthen Ukraine during the months of October, November, and December, and to enable a diplomatic end of the war. The difference this time will be that Putin will have grasped the depth of this plan and of our partners’ commitment to strengthening us, and he will realize an important fact: that if he is not ready to end this war in a way that is fair and just, and instead wishes to continue to try to destroy us, then a strengthened Ukraine will not let him do so. Not only that but continuing to pursue that goal would also considerably weaken Russia, which would threaten Putin’s own position.

What happens if Biden says, “With all due respect, this is a difficult time, the election’s coming up, I’m having enough trouble with Congress without trying to increase aid packages for you,” and he rejects your request—do you have a Plan B?

We have been living in Plan B for years. Plan A was proposed before the full-scale war, when we called for two things: preventive sanctions and preventive reinforcement of Ukraine with various weapons. I told our partners, If Ukraine is very strong, nothing will happen. They didn’t listen. Since then, they have all recognized I was right. Strengthening Ukraine would have significantly lowered the probability of Putin invading.

I’m now proposing a new Plan A. This plan means we change the current course, where it’s only thanks to the strength of our military, the heroic devotion to the European values of our people and our fighters, that we have stood our ground. If you don’t want this war to drag on, if you do not want Putin to bury us under the corpses of his people, taking more Ukrainian lives in the process, we offer you a plan to strengthen Ukraine. It is not a fantasy and not science fiction, and, importantly, it does not require the Russians to coöperate to succeed. Rather, the plan spells out what our partners can do without Russia’s participation. If diplomacy is the desire of both sides, then, before diplomacy can be effective, our plan’s implementation depends only on us and on our partners.

You were right, this plan is designed, first and foremost, with Biden’s support in mind. If he doesn’t want to support it, I cannot force him. If he refuses—well, then we must continue to live inside Plan B. And that’s unfortunate.

What would that look like? I mean, if Biden says no?

That’s a horrible thought. It would mean that Biden doesn’t want to end the war in any way that denies Russia a victory. And we would end up with a very long war—an impossible, exhausting situation that would kill a tremendous number of people. Having said that, I can’t blame Biden for anything. At the end of the day, he took a powerful, historic step when he chose to support us at the start of the war, an action that pushed our other partners to do the same. We recognize Biden’s great achievement in this respect. That step of his already constituted a historic victory.

And what would you say, maybe not even to Biden but to the American public, many of whom feel that we cannot raise our engagement and support for Ukraine any further than we already have?

I would tell them that Ukraine has done everything possible to keep America out of this war, actually. Putin counted on defeating Ukraine in a quick campaign and, had Ukraine not stood its ground, Putin would have marched on. Let’s consider what the consequences would have been. Number one, you would have some forty million immigrants coming to Europe, America, and Canada. Second, you would lose the largest country in Europe—a huge blow to America’s influence on the Continent. Russia would now have total influence there. You would lose everyone—Poland, Germany—and your influence would be zero.

The American public should realize that the fact of Ukraine still standing is not the problem. Yes, war brings difficulties, but Ukraine’s resilience has allowed America to solve many other challenges. Let’s say Russia attacked Poland next—what then? In Ukraine, Russia has found fake legal ground for its actions, saying that it’s protecting Russian-speaking people, but it could have been Poland or it could have been the Baltic states, which are all NATO members. This would have been a disaster, a gut punch for the United States, because then you’re definitely involved full scale—with troops on the ground, funding, investment, and with the American economy going to a wartime footing. So saying that you have been in this war for a long time is just not true. Quite the contrary: I believe that we have shielded America from total war.

Here’s another crucial element: this is a war of postponement for the United States. It’s a way to buy time. As far as Russia is concerned, Ukraine does not even need to lose outright for Russia to win. Russia understands that Ukraine is struggling as it is; it already stands excluded from the European Union and NATO, with nearly a third of its territory occupied. Russia might decide that’s enough, so it might strike Poland just the same—in response to some provocation from Belarus, for example. And so, after two and a half years of your support and investment—for which we are very grateful—you can multiply them all by zero. America would have to start investing from scratch, and in a war of a totally different calibre. American soldiers would fight in it. Which would all benefit Russia tremendously, I should add.

During the Presidential debate, moderators asked Trump whether he wanted Ukraine to win against Russia, and he sidestepped the question. He just said, “I want the war to stop.” It must have troubled you to hear his answer and to consider the prospect of his winning.

Trump makes political statements in his election campaign. He says he wants the war to stop. Well, we do, too. This phrase and desire, they unite the world; everyone shares them. But here’s the scary question: Who will shoulder the costs of stopping the war? Some might say that the Minsk Agreements either stopped or froze the fighting at some point. But they also gave the Russians a chance to arm themselves even better, and to strengthen their fake claim over our territories they occupied.

But isn’t that yet more cause for alarm?

My feeling is that Trump doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how. With this war, oftentimes, the deeper you look at it the less you understand. I’ve seen many leaders who were convinced they knew how to end it tomorrow, and as they waded deeper into it, they realized it’s not that simple.

Apart from Trump’s own reluctance to talk about Ukrainian victory, he has chosen J. D. Vance as his Vice-Presidential candidate.

He is too radical.

Vance has come out with a more precise plan to—

To give up our territories.

Your words, not mine. But, yes, that’s the gist of it.

His message seems to be that Ukraine must make a sacrifice. This brings us back to the question of the cost and who shoulders it. The idea that the world should end this war at Ukraine’s expense is unacceptable. But I do not consider this concept of his a plan, in any formal sense. This would be an awful idea, if a person were actually going to carry it out, to make Ukraine shoulder the costs of stopping the war by giving up its territories. But there’s certainly no way this could ever happen. This kind of scenario would have no basis in international norms, in U.N. statute, in justice. And it wouldn’t necessarily end the war, either. It’s just sloganeering.