TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org

From the Analyst:
BUYING NEW EQUIPMENT AIDS UKRAINE

This year the whole of NATO will buy an additional $57 billion in new military equipment. That’s equal to the entire Russian defence budget in 2021. Poland is second on the list and represents almost a fifth of that amount.
Wether it’s imported or home manufactured each new tank and aircraft, howitzer and IFV is replacing an old one. Although in Poland’s case it’s will create an entirely new army. By 2028 it looks as if there will be so many IFV’s every household in Poland will get one for emergencies.
Yes it’s an exaggerated point but that’s the level Poland is at in terms of massive military buildups. It will be the most powerful military in NATO outside of the US, equal to Germany, France and the U.K. combined.
All of this means all of what they did have is likely to head East into Ukraine. And the same can be said about just about any other piece of kit purchased by any other country. If it’s new and a replacement, what it replaces is almost certainly good enough to be used against the Russians.
The problem lies in ammunition and the speed of procuring it. We’ve discussed this before and nothing much has changed.
The point is that new NATO buying equals Ukraine getting the old kit to use. And that can’t be a bad thing unless it’s so obsolete it’s not worth using.
Buying new equipment for Ukraine is also taking place under various assistance packages. For example Holland and the US are financing the purchase of howitzers in Czechia. The U.K. is underwriting the manufacturing of 152mm ammunition in Bulgaria and Romania. There are many more similar programs under way.
There’s a general feeling that NATO nations move too slowly. And frankly I think that’s always true. It given time things are starting to move. As percentages they seem small in fiscal terms. However European & US economies are so vast that even a small increase is bigger than Russias 2022 defence budget. The U.K. for example officially spent $68 billion against Russia’s $66 billion. It’s more about what you can get for your money though - and the U.K. gets far less in volume but much more in quality.
Is NATO going too slowly? Some countries are some countries aren’t. Germany as always seems asleep at the wheel after briefly waking from a long slumber. The U.K. has a staggering capacity to say its spending more and get less and less every year, while not actually making a sensible decision about anything. Politicians without any comprehension of the defence industry are another problem. Britain is about to enjoy that luxury again in the next few months.
France sings a song loudly and then exits stage right without an encore and nobody notices. Exhortations of creating a wartime defence economy seem to have slipped into the mists of time.
NATO is doing better. But it can do much more. Some are doing more than others, as always.
I still think that we haven’t been fast enough or quick enough getting kit to Ukraine. And we haven’t sent enough - we have given them enough to survive but not necessarily enough to win.

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!

Free at last!!!

https://t.me/WarriorsUkrainian/9621

“Turn the city to the water” and build a Ukrainian Rotterdam: how architects see Mariupol after liberation

Despite the fact that the city is still occupied, a new look is already being invented for it.

We tell readers Pravda_Gerashchenko about the project of Ukrainian architects and designers Re:Mariupol.

Authors, funding and time of the project
The initiator of "Re:Mariupol" was a native of the city, Sergei Rodionov. There are 4 more architects in his team. It is planned that the recovery will take $14.5 billion and 15 years. The World Bank, EBRD, USAID plan to finance the project.

Rodionov was inspired to create Re:Mariupol by the experience of the city of Rotterdam. It is also a major industrial center with a port that was damaged by the fighting but was rebuilt after the Second World War.

What will happen in the new Mariupol
▪️ "security hub" in the form of an international military base;
▪️re-planning of streets according to the concept of "15-minute city", so that in a quarter of an hour you can get to any service;
▪️landscape parks instead of factories and combines;
▪️construction of a new station, ship canal, ring road, international ferry terminal;
▪️ light rail lines;
▪️restoration of 19th century buildings in the center;
▪️conservation of the Drama Theater as evidence of war crimes of the Russian Federation;
▪️memorial park-reserve instead of "Azovstal";
▪️observation deck on the 250-meter CHP pipe;
▪️The cultural and historical space "Center of Steel" dedicated to industrialization and metallurgy instead of the blast furnaces of the plant.

The authors note that the final project is still far away. Even the current version has yet to be coordinated with residents and businesses. But in ambitious plans to build a modern European city.

Rest in Peace

https://t.me/WarriorsUkrainian/9604

"FROM THE ANALYST"

RUSSIA AT BREAKING POINT

Why we know the Russians are close to their breaking point on the southern front, is highlighted by one of their VDV Divisions, the 7th.
This unit obtained some of the best, and they were deliberately mixed up with mobiks to strengthen their resolve. And it worked quite well.
But what was wrong with all of this and why is it failing so badly now?
Firstly the VDV were an elite airborne unit. Not regular infantry. There use is as assault and strike, the initial breakthrough forces that crack the front and everything else pours through the gap they create.
Instead, they were watered down with mobiks. They lost their elite shock status and became very good infantry diluted by very bad infantry.
The fact they were deployed in the first place into frontline positions as good infantry, already tells you Russia had nothing much else left.
Now they have been diluted further and suffered heavy losses.
And just to emphasise that what few are left are struggling but are still considered essential, even few in number, they are rushed around like an infantry fire brigade. Used to fill gaps and bolster flagging defences.
Now they have been diluted even further - they’re not even a cohesive unit. They have been broken up into three pieces not even under the same command. And still they are racing from one spot to another as the Ukrainians pop up in one place and they race to defend it, only to find the Ukrainians have gone somewhere else.
This is an exhausting process. Yet Russia depends on the VDV units to hold everything together, while treating its commanders badly and showing little or no gratitude. The Moscow operation seems to think these men are just another expendable in a long line of expendables. They have no real value to Moscow, when they’re gone they’re gone and they’ll try something else.
This inhuman and wasteful approach is all very well in a Stalinist society of unquestioned state control ruled over by an iron fist. Putin might think that’s how it is but nobody sees it that way.
This isn’t an army of 5,000,000 and it never will be. This is an army stretched to breaking point, held together by false promises and lies and only their reputations keep them fighting.
We know and Ukraine knows they’re spread thin.
The VDV are close to their wits end.
Like the Waffen SS, sooner or later they become nothing more than a uniform, rendered down by necessity and broken by attrition and failure.
Russia is near breaking point in the south - everything points that way.
Now is the time to act, don’t squander this chance to finish them: make The West see Ukraine can win this and silence the doubters for good.

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦

Good Morning Resisters everywhere.

Goodnight to Resisters everywhere

On the transfer of F-16s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EBHshWK8WjM&feature=youtu.be

"Neutral" China helps to arm Russia - media

China supplies Russia with helicopters, drones, optical sights and critical metals used by the defense industry, writes The Telegraph .

“Russian firms have received tens of thousands of Chinese cargo since the start of the war in Ukraine. 1,000 drones, 6 helicopters, optical sights, titanium alloy products used in the manufacture of weapons, and aircraft parts, including for military aircraft, were delivered from China to Russia,” the investigation says.

Two months before the start of the war, the Chinese company Shantou Honghu Plastics, which calls itself a wholesaler of children's toys, sent 1,000 drones to Russia. They were received by the Russian company Samson, which also positions itself as a wholesaler of games and toys. According to the public register of companies, the authorized capital of the company is only 10,000 rubles, which indicates its fictitiousness.

Then, four days after the start of the war in Ukraine, the Chinese company Hems999 delivered two helicopters to Russia. Another Chinese firm, Tianjin Huarong Aviation, has donated four Airbus helicopters to Russia since the start of the war. They were all obtained by the Russian firm Ural Helicopter, whose main customer is the Russian National Guard, headed by Viktor Zolotov , Putin's longtime bodyguard.

Trade between China and Russia will exceed $200 billion this year, a new record, even as Chinese exports to other countries have dropped significantly. Exports of goods with potential military applications have more than tripled a year.

📸 The Telegraph.

In Colorado marijuana brought in more tax revenue than cigarettes or alcohol
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/colorados-marijuana-tax-brought-in-more-revenue-than-alcohol-or-cigarettes-last-year-new-state-report-shows/

Netherlands will give it's entire fleet of F-16s to Ukraine!!!
https://t.me/liveukraine_media/12962

China is arming Russia
https://t.me/liveukraine_media/12953

Good Morning Resisters. 76⁰ here and steamy.

The number of promised F-16s has reached 61.

https://t.me/WarriorsUkrainian/9509

❗️ Artificial intelligence, a maximum payload of 2.5 kg and automatic flight mode: the Ministry of Defense has approved domestic SkyKnight UAVs for military use

SkyKnight 2 is quite fast, powerful and quiet at the same time.

If the operator already has the skills of piloting on DJI, Autel, on stabilized platforms, he will learn SkyKnight 2 very quickly, approximately in a week.

When the operator determines the target to be hit, the drone will fly to it in automatic mode, because it will already be controlled by the on-board computer.

Even due to the loss of communication due to jamming by enemy EW, this drone will still fly to the target determined by the operator.

LONG RANGE WAR

Yesterday's long range warfare took both sides by surprise.
Ukraine managed to strike with drones, an airfield 700km away to the north and by all accounts, destroyed at least a pair of Backfire Tu-22M bombers. That they have this capability and that there were no defences has upset the Russian milblogers like little else.
Ukraine also used a single ballistic missile, type unknown, to strike Crimea, seemingly to test Russian air defences - the S400 complex is more than capable of dealing with up to twenty ballistic weapons in a single attack because they’re so predictable - another reason ATACMS is not necessarily the ideal weapon Ukraine thinks it is.
The disaster of the day was the tragic nature of the Russian attack in the theatre in Cherniv. Up to 100 died including many children.
This was the venue for an unapproved drone developers fair - the local authorities hadn’t been told about it and it had been organised by a low level politician attached to the Ministry of Defence.
Drone developers had been invited by her to show off their work. Rather than keep it low key, it was publicised the night before on local TV and the next day down came a Russian Iskander, wiping out some of Ukraine’s best drone designers. The woman who organised it didn’t comprehend her own stupidity until after the event. Russia used it to say that it was also full of NATO officers and they killed 60 of them, so it got plenty of traction on state media there. Cherniv is also just a stones throw from the Russian border.
Long range warfare and strikes on strategic Russian installations has clearly reached a new level of sophistication. Somewhere inside Russia there have to be people working for Ukrainian intelligence services.
The destruction of port facilities at Novorossysk, the optics factory destruction and the neighbouring shell refurbishment operation. Yesterday the advanced technologies research centre, that is trying to develop manufacturing to stop Russia being dependent on imported tech, just went up in smoke. And just to add to it a slap in the face to the FSB at Novorossysk where someone managed to get in to their car park and raised a huge Ukrainian flag on their flagpole.
And just to finish the day Ukraine managed to hit Berdyansk port with a missile. This is good as it’s still possible to do, but the downturn in Storm Shadow strikes following the Russian attacks on the Su-24 base is more than obvious. I’m guessing, but I don’t think there’s more than one operational, and there weren’t many more than 4-6 left in the first place serving with the 7th Bomber Wing. 17 had been confirmed destroyed/shot down out of 24 operational aircraft at the war’s start, 55 donor frames were scattered about Ukraine that could be used for parts.
How this is overcome I don’t immediately see a way forward. The missile is massive at 1.5 tons and it takes a certain size and type of aircraft to mount it and get it airborne. MiG-29, F-16, are too small. It can fit the Gripen because of its multi use design, Mirage 2000, Typhoon, Rafael and F-35. There’s still a long shot possibility that the U.K. could supply its recently retired early Typhoons, but they were considered obsolete, too expensive to update. It was cheaper to buy new models. Gripen is the only hope of restoring that capability longer term.
A mixed bag of events, militarily the loss of the Su-24’s is one of the biggest setbacks Ukrainian aviation has suffered in a while. They’d taken a superhuman effort to keep them flying in the first place.
But…Gripen is coming…

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦
The Analyst
@DiDiAussie

42 is a good start

https://t.me/militarnyi_eng/1512

More Ukrainian UAVs
https://t.me/militarnyi_eng/1511

7:50 PM and 97⁰. Calling it a night and going inside where it's cooler.

Video of the Cherniv attack. The people all knew to drop and cover.

https://t.me/liveukraine_media/12932