TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
Why Don-old does not have a prayer of winning. He does not understand how Americans feel about Russia. How deep the feelings go.
https://open.substack.com/pub/twogrumpyoldmenonukraine/p/ukraine-is-dead-gone-donald-trump?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
🛢️🤔 Russia has been delivering crude oil directly to European ports for several weeks. This is shown by analyses of GPS data. This violates current EU sanctions, - FAZ
Tankers carrying Russian oil have been heading directly to ports in the EU for several weeks. This was the result of research by Greenpeace, which documented the program "Report Mainz".
This violates current EU sanctions. Russian crude oil transports by ship to the EU have been banned since March 2023. The transports mainly involved ships from Greek shipping companies, some of whose ships are classified as part of the so-called Russian "shadow fleet". These are tankers suspected of helping Russia to circumvent sanctions.
Polish FM to Russian Ambassador to UN: How does what you are doing to kidnapped Ukrainian children, differ from what German Nazis did to your children and ours? When will you return the remaining thousands of stolen children to Ukraine? This is Russia's shame, that will not be forgiven or forgotten!
🪐 Subscribe to Live: Ukraine
Trump says he will be working at McDonald's soon
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/donald-trumps-mcdonalds-meltdown-just-came-full-circle/58306/
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So how do we respond to this doctrine? It’s becoming increasingly difficult for Putin to say these things and not finally act upon them. This is quite a tight red line.
If we ignore it and Ukraine uses missiles from the west inside Russia after this blatant attempt to blackmail us out of doing so, what does he do? If he doesn’t react that’s the end of the line for his red line policies. If he does - well that’s a whole can of worms and you know where that might go.
Have no doubt this policy change is 100% for our benefit, it’s aimed right at us and it’s very specific. It’s possibly the most blatant and precise of the redlines Russia has laid down.
We know where they stand and the only question is do we believe them?
I suspect Biden and Sullivan will
not be willing to risk it. If they won’t nether will the UK or France be able to use their missiles. On this, Putin wins.
His ability to unilaterally change the rules is quite remarkable. Can you imagine the US saying that if a nuclear power used a non-nuclear states missiles on Ukraine that would initiate a nuclear response? Yet that’s what Russia is already doing.
So it seems this is a red line that actually might work. Yet you have to wonder what happens if we ignore it and he does nothing? The credibility of nuclear weapons other than as a last resort is all that’s left - and that is where they should be.
Personally he puts his power on the line. A strongman cannot be seen to be weak and many already think he’s not been strong enough. We must be careful what we wish for.
‘The Analyst’ MilStratOnX
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦
MILITARY & STRATEGIC:
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SARMAT TEST WAS MORE THAN JUST AN EMBARRASSING FAILURE
The recent failure of the SARMAT ICBM test in Russia was the cap on a week long Russian effort to persuade the west that red lines still existed and we were close to crossing them.
During the preceding week, Lavrov, Medvedev, Putin and Russian state TV made various comments and ran programming, making it seem they were frustrated with the way we were not accepting their earnest insistence that American or British/French missiles, might be used on Russian territory- and this was a step too far. The SARMAT test was supposed to be a clear signal that Russia meant it - TV pundits actually used the example of SARMAT hitting Paris or London in a little over three minutes (it’s actually nearer fifteen with a three minute impact warning but at that stage does it matter?)
Let’s just discuss this fearsome missile known as the RS-28 SARMAT (Russian for satan).
During the Cold War most Soviet missiles of this type were designed by the state bureau and manufactured in Ukraine. When it came to engineering excellence Ukraine was the Soviet Union’s go to industrial region. Heavy shipbuilding at Nikoliyev - all the carriers were built there, Antonov aircraft manufactured in Kyiv, etc etc.
The largest Soviet ICBM was the SS-18. A range of 18,000km and a throw weight far above anything America had ever made, its delivery bus could distribute ten 500kt warheads and their decoys across a wide area. It was a fearsome weapon.
It also had another technological advantage that made a difference: cold launch.
This is a pressurised inert gas canister under a platform on which the missile sits.
As the silo door opens the pressurised canister blasts the platform with the missile on it as much as 20m in the air - watch a test and you can see the platform discards instantly, at which point, as the missile momentarily hovers, the main booster cuts in with enough power to drive the missile rapidly skyward.
The resulting smoke and heat is considerably less, which means that American infra red satellites that are their for the purpose of detecting a launch, have precious fewer seconds - as many as 60 less, before they can detect for certain the heat plumes of the missiles.
This system is I am sure what went wrong in the silo. The gas canister wasn’t pressurised at all or partially. The sequence of the launch is automated by timing, so no ejection, missile in silo, platform still attached, missile boosters fire all in sequence, missile cooks itself into a humongous explosion - there is little more explosive than solid fuel - and bang, silo
incinerated in massive high temperature detonation.
The SS-18 you see, was an engineering masterpiece of destruction built by Ukrainians.
The SARMAT is a Russian copy of it they have taken twenty years or more to duplicate and back-engineer and it still doesn’t work reliably. Three out of four tests have failed, this one was just the most spectacular.
That having been the case and
still thinking they haven’t made their point - the UN meetings were due this week and Zelensky would meet Biden for one last effort to get permissions across the line, another new effort was made by Putin personally.
Russian Nuclear doctrine would now be modified to consider the use of the missiles supplied by a nuclear power (important because that covers off the UK and France too), but used by a non-nuclear power (Ukraine), as a joint attack against Russia, and therefore open to nuclear response.
It’s an interesting twist on removing the line between ownership and supply, but it also fits in with his previous and long standing statements about what he claims is Ukrainian inability to operate these weapons without western help.
For that we can lay the blame at Olaf Sholz. Who was it who insisted that German troops would have to work in Ukraine if Taurus was supplied? Thus adding fuel to Putin’s already distorted beliefs. The actuality is that isn’t true but it’s too late now. CONTINUES…
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
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