TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian 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 2993. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
Maryana Chechelyuk, a police officer from Mariupol, is among 75 POWs freed from Russian captivity today.
She was captured from the Azovstal Steelworks, where she was during the siege with her family.
According to her mother, she was tortured, beaten and starved regularly.
Subtitled by Saint Javelin
🪐 Subscribe to Live: Ukraine
He is now banned from the United Kingdom.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/donald-trump-finally-got-his-travel-ban/56379/
No. Not potato salad. I eat potato salad but want nothing to do with his diseased brain.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/donald-trumps-brain-is-potato-salad/56384/
Good morning Resisters. That was a pretty big storm last night . Arrived pretty late considering the weather lady said 3PM and it got here around 10PM
This isn't really my cup of tea. But they sent it to me unsolicited, so I figured someone might like it.
https://eliflife.substack.com/p/the-case-of-the-paving-stones
The US officials explained that the authorization to strike with US weapons was given in relation to the entire Russian border area, not just the Kharkiv region.
This statement was made by Michael Carpenter, spokesman for the US National Security Council.
“This includes enabling Ukrainians to defend themselves. Yes, across the border against Russian attacks coming from there,” Carpenter emphasized.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has officially confirmed that Joe Biden has given Ukraine permission to use American weapons to strike military targets in Russia.
“Over the last few weeks, Ukraine has come to us and asked for permission to use the weapons we are providing to defend against this aggression, including against Russian forces that are concentrating on the Russian side of the border and then attacking Ukraine. This is a right to the president, and as you heard, he approved the use of our weapons for this purpose,” Blinken said during the press conference.
According to a declassified Pentagon report, North Korean missile debris has been found throughout Ukraine. The report reveals that Russia is extensively using North Korean missiles to attack Ukraine, targeting not only front-line cities, Reuters writes.
The report details various aspects of North Korea's short-range solid-fuel ballistic missiles and includes comparisons of the wreckage found in Ukraine with images of missiles displayed by North Korean state media.
A radical Islamist terrorist attack in Mannheim, Germany.
An Islamist man stabbed people who criticized the Islamization of Europe and attacked police until he shot.
The war in Ukraine has exposed a critical vulnerability in the allies' plans to arm Ukraine: a shortage of explosives needed to produce shells and missiles. Each artillery shell requires approximately 10.8 kg of high explosives, such as TNT, Octogen, or Hexogen, and throwing projectiles over long distances also necessitates significant amounts of propellants.
The situation is even more dire for other munitions, such as the Storm Shadow missile, which has a high-explosive warhead weighing 450 kg. The challenge lies in the limited capacity of explosives manufacturers to ramp up production. The end of the Cold War led many European manufacturers to scale down or cease operations, resulting in the closure of plants and the privatization or mothballing of state enterprises. For example, the UK closed its last explosives plant in 2008.
Restarting these mothballed plants is not a simple task. It requires significant retooling and rebuilding of capacity. Additionally, the industry faces a shortage of skilled workers, as older engineers retire and fewer young people enter the profession. The supply chain for critical raw materials, such as chemical precursors and cotton fibers, is also strained. Nitric acid, essential for producing nitrocellulose, is in short supply due to its use in fertilizer production. Cotton fibers are predominantly imported from China, adding to the supply chain complexity.
This shortage presents a significant obstacle to the allies' efforts to support Ukraine's defense against Russia's aggression, highlighting the need for strategic planning and investment in the defense industry's infrastructure and workforce.
Source:
https://www.economist.com/europe/2024/05/26/there-is-an-explosive-flaw-in-the-plan-to-rearm-ukraine#
From "The Analyst":
THE MISSILE STRIKES ON KERCH
We now have a grip on what these were about.
The plan seems to have been to destroy the Rail ferries that Russia used to move rail freight over the straits into Crimea and back again. This seems to have become the norm because the bridge structures were more badly affected than anyone thought.
Three of these ferries were operational - now only one is. One is very badly damaged and will need repairs, the other seems to have been hit on its upper port side deck and a hole has appeared from the strike.
Russia claims to have shot down the attacking missiles but the ‘debris’ strangely seems to have carried on to its targets.
Another unusual strike by a drone was the Kerch strait oil depot on the Russian mainland side of the straits but well inside the bridge zone and its air defences - which seem not to have worked at all. A large Ukrainian drone managed to dive bomb into the collection of storage tanks and set the lot on fire. Where was the AA?
The attack on Sevastopol showing the use of a Russian drone against a Ukrainian naval drone managed to sink a Russian corvette. Despite it being daylight and some of the naval drones being attacked by helicopters, this happened inside the protected port zone. The sea drones apparently waited for something to go into the port through the open nets and then began their run for targets as the nets were closed behind them.
The missiles used were extended range Neptune’s - possibly the long expected land attack version, followed by ATACMS on the port itself.
The big question then is how did the missiles and the drone get past the air defences? Where were they? Is it that they weren’t activated because the Voronezh-M BMEWS radar systems that cover this area have been put out of commission by Ukrainian drones over the past week?
We’ll never know.
Either way an intense raid and it’s done some damage!
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian 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 2993. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
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