TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/donald-trumps-newfound-fortune-falls-to-pieces/55459/

A Z heartbreaker. Sure glad I am through with dating

Boris Johnson called on the West to urgently provide assistance to Ukraine

"If the war in Ukraine ends in a catastrophe, it will happen for only one reason - because of the inaction of the West. Every month we wait is a month when more Ukrainian children fall under the bombs and die. Every week during which we do not do the obvious - we do not give the Ukrainians the weapons they need - is a week during which Putin moves closer to his heinous goal - to torture a European country to death. Every day, the pressure on Ukrainians increases - and yet the decision is in our hands. We know what to do. We've done it before and we can easily do it again," Johnson emphasizes.

https://t.me/EveryUkraineWarVideo Subscribe

https://kyivindependent.com/military-thousands-of-ukrainian-soldiers-sent-to-combat-units-as-part-of-rotation/

CONTINUED (3/3)

We’re already seeing evidence of a shortfall: Russian troops riding into battle in unarmored freight trucks and even open-top golf carts that the Kremlin purchased from a Chinese company.

It should go without saying that golf carts don’t last long in combat with, say, Ukraine’s angriest anti-tank missile teams and most skilled drone operators. It doesn’t matter if the Russian army in Ukraine has 300,000 or 400,000 people if those people utterly lack protection on the battlefield.

The fragility of Russia’s army might be more evident if Ukraine’s own army weren’t starving for ammo and, at times, incapable of shooting back. When Ukraine’s 2023 offensive petered out late last year after achieving modest gains, Russia seized the initiative—and went on the attack all along the front line.

The timing couldn’t have been worse for the Ukrainians. At almost exactly the same moment in mid-October, Speaker of the House Johnson refused to bring to a vote the $60 billion in fresh funding U.S. president Joe Biden had proposed for Ukraine.

Johnson is a close ally of former president Donald Trump, who was impeached in 2019 for attempting to coerce Ukrainian officials to support a smear campaign targeting Trump’s political opponents. Trump has since called on Ukraine to surrender portions of its territory to Russia.

Deprived of the hundreds of thousands of artillery shells and thousands of surface-to-air missiles that Biden had hoped to buy for them, Ukrainian forces have had to make hard choices: retreating from positions that, with enough firepower, they might have held.

A 2,000-person Ukrainian garrison quit the city of Avdiivka in mid-February after inflicting tens of thousands of casualties on the attacking Russians—and then running out of ammo. Now another 2,000-person Ukrainian garrison faces the same terrible dilemma in the canal district of Chasiv Yar.

At the same time, Ukraine’s best air defense batteries have fallen silent for a want of American-made missiles. Ukraine’s biggest cities—Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa—are increasingly defenseless as more Russian missiles and bombs pummel them.

Six hundred Ukrainian civilians, including children, died in air raids in March. A missile raid on Kyiv last night destroyed the city’s biggest power plant, casting thousands of homes, and vital weapons workshops, into darkness. “More air defense, and our assistance, is needed now,” Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, pleaded yesterday.

Ukrainian troops are losing ground, but they’re losing ground to legions of poorly-trained Russian troops riding in antique vehicles. They’re losing ground only because they’re running out of ammo. Ukrainians’ “ability to defend their terrain that they currently hold and their air space would fade rapidly—will fade rapidly—without ... continued U.S. support,” Cavoli said.
Conversely, with U.S. support, a rearmed Ukrainian military could protect its cities from Russian raids and, on the front line, achieve firepower superiority over a Russian military that’s fast running out of modern weapons.

The choice, tragically, isn’t the Ukrainians’ to make. It’s up to one man, an American. The leader of a thin Republican majority in one house of the U.S. Congress.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, for one, understands the politics and the stakes. “If Ukraine's partners act decisively, I am confident that we can defeat Russian terror before it spreads further,” Zelensky wrote today."

Note: In the above article Forbes appear to make use of fairly optimistic numbers. Estimates of how long Ruzzia can draw on old stock vary, with 18-24 months also mentioned by analysts as a "moderate" forecast.

The Ukrainians defeat most Russian attacks, inflicting catastrophic casualties on increasingly under-equipped Russian assault groups.

But the Russians keep coming, and keep gaining ground. And the one person who can stop them—Republican Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson—so far has refused to do so.

All Johnson has to do is bring to a vote an overwhelmingly popular bill that would send $60 billion in aid to Ukraine. Aid that would pay for the ammunition Ukrainian forces need to hold off Russian forces until the Russians finally deplete their reserves of old Cold War weapons.
In 26 months of hard fighting, the Russian military has lost 15,300 tanks, fighting vehicles, howitzers and other weapons in Ukraine, along with hundreds of thousands of troops. The Ukrainian military’s own losses are a third as heavy.

And yet the Russian force in Ukraine is bigger than ever. “The army is actually now larger—by 15 percent—than it was when it invaded Ukraine,” U.S. Army general Christopher Cavoli, NATO's top commander, told the House Armed Services Committee. “Over the past year, Russia increased its front-line troop strength from 360,000 to 470,000.”

That’s possible only because the Kremlin drafted more than 300,000 men starting in late 2022 in addition to increasing bonuses for volunteers. At the same time, Russian brigades have curtailed basic training for new recruits in order to speed fresh forces to the front.
But these unprepared new recruits don’t survive very long on the front line. Lately, between 800 and a thousand Russians have been dying every in the wider war, according to the Ukrainian defense ministry.

Russian soldiers die as fast as they arrive in Ukraine. The Estonian defense ministry concluded, in one recent study, that killing 100,000 Russians this year would permanently damage, if not collapse, the Kremlin’s mobilization effort.

Ukraine is on track to kill 300,000 Russians this year. It isn’t sustainable.

Nor are Russia’s vehicle losses sustainable. Russian industry produces 500 or 600 new tanks and maybe a little more than a thousand new fighting vehicles every year. The Russian military loses more than a thousand tanks and close to 2,000 fighting vehicles every year—and the loss rate is increasing.

There’s a gap—one the Kremlin fills by pulling out of long-term storage tanks and fighting vehicles dating back to the 1970s, or even the ’60s or ’50s in some cases. But these old vehicles are a finite resource. Built during the Soviet Union’s industrial heyday, they cannot be replaced with new production.

Ominously for the Russians, the most recent projections anticipate that, as early as mid-2025, there won’t be any more old tanks and fighting vehicles left in storage. “Time is running out for Russia,” wrote Artur Rehi, an Estonian solder and analyst.

CONTINUES (2/3)

The Clock Is Ticking: Russia Has A One-Year Reserve Of Weapons - Forbes

"As Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its third year, three main dynamics are shaping the battlefield.

First: Russia is fully mobilized—politically, industrially and militarily. But this mobilization is depleting resources the Kremlin can’t renew. Most importantly, stocks of old Cold War-vintage weapons.

In other words, Russia is strong, but fragile.

Second: Ukraine is mobilizing, too, but it still relies on foreign aid to meet urgent financial and military needs—and Russia-friendly Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are withholding a decisive portion of that aid.

Third: Ukrainian tactics are superior to Russian tactics, helping Ukrainian formations to defeat much larger Russian formations. But tactics are irrelevant when and where Ukrainian forces simply run out of ammunition.

The interplay of these three dynamics explains the seeming contradictions that are evident every day along the 600-mile front line of the wider war.

CONTINUES (1/3)

⚡️ Great Britain will probably send its DragonFire laser weapon to Ukraine: it can shoot down UAVs, - The Telegraph.

London plans to introduce this new weapon into its army by 2027. But its prototypes may end up in Ukraine even earlier, said British Defense Minister Grant Shapps.

"There is a live conflict going on in Europe right now, and we have a unique modern weapon to solve it, which can be useful," Shapps said.

A special feature of DragonFire is its cheapness - the declared cost is 10 pounds (490 UAH) per shot.

This is really a product for years to come, says Shapps.

❗️If Putin captures Kyiv, it will be a disaster worse than the war in Vietnam, — Boris Johnson for The Telegraph

💬 "If this happens, I think it will be an absolute disaster for the West, a disaster for America and any concept of American leadership."

It's a pity that only a few people in the West understand this. They say out loud that they understand, but in reality, they don't. Because if it were otherwise, Kuleba would not have written in desperation that in response to the request to provide the Patriots, a deaf wall appears in front of him.

More footage from the scene of the explosion of Prozorov’s car in Moscow

The main version of what has transpired, reportedly, was the detonation of homemade explosives at the moment when the former SBU officer turned on the ignition.

Prozorov worked in the Ukrainian special services until 2018, transmitting data to the FSB on the progress of the war in Donbass.

Judging by the footage, the injuries appear limited.

❕ Russia has a stock of tanks and combat vehicles only until the middle of 2025, — Forbes

The year 2024 is the last significant opportunity for the Russian Federation to achieve significant success in Ukraine from a military point of view. Ukraine is actively working on solving its problems, and significant progress is expected by 2025. After the adoption of the law on mobilization, it is expected that by the end of 2024, the improvement on all fronts will gradually unfold at all levels, - writes the Estonian military and analyst.

Belarus moves to classify depiction of ‘non-traditional relations’ as ‘pornography’, and representatives of the LGBT community have been equated to necrophiles and bestiality.

The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Belarus has amended the instructions regulating the distribution of erotic products.

Now in Belarus, homosexuality, polyamory, pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, sadism and exhibitionism, as well as “the practice of cross-dressing for the purpose of arousal and transgenderism itself” are on the same list.

In February, Belarus’ Prosecutor General Andrey Shved said that the country’s parliament was set to review a draft law punishing the promotion of “abnormal relationships, pedophilia and the voluntary refusal to have children”.

The self-proclaimed dictator Lukashenko said in March 2023 that “non-traditional trends”, including families choosing not to have children, represented an attempt to “depopulate and weaken” Belarus.

Experts have noted a tendency for russia and its belarusian satelite to copy each other’s repressive legislation in recent years.

Source

@freerussia_report

The Kremlin’s Creeping Nationalizations Hit Chelyabinsk Businesses.
Metals plants, agribusinesses and food firms owned by Chelyabinsk’s top businessmen and politicians have been subject to nationalization suits brought in hasty proceedings in courts.

The Kremlin’s wartime campaign of forced nationalization has hit the Ural Mountains region of Chelyabinsk, a major industrial center, harder than most.

Since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian prosecutors have targeted 55 enterprises — metals, chemicals, agribusiness and even a major car dealership — for compulsory state takeover, according to figures from sate-controlled RBC.

But in recent weeks, metals plants, agribusinesses and food firms owned by Chelyabinsk’s top businessmen and politicians have been subject to nationalization suits brought in hasty proceedings in Russian courts.

These assets are likely destined to be transferred to regime loyalists, analysts agreed, in order to create a new generation of loyal oligarchs.

In late March, prosecutors announced two nationalizations of Chelyabinsk businesses — of the most famous pasta brand Makfa and the country’s largest winemaker the Ariant group — on the same day.

Those cases followed prosecutors laying claim to the Chelyabinsk Electro-Metallurgical Plant, which produces 80% of russia’s ferroalloys, in late February.

The pretexts for these wartime nationalization suits range from claims of “unlawful privatization” to enterprises “coming under foreign control” and alleged breaches of anti-corruption legislation.

“Where once the state was raiding foreign investors’ pockets, now it’s open season domestically,” Nicholas Trickett, a senior analyst at S&P. The nationalization trend could thus be seen as “creating a new interest group” of “winners” among the ruZZian elite “who are fully invested in [the war’s] continuation.”

Forced nationalizations have caused disquiet in russia’s big business community, with leading businessmen reportedly bringing the issue to Putin at a closed-door meeting in November 2023, according to the Vedomosti business daily.

In a rare burst of criticism, the Moscow Stock Exchange expressed concern over a specific nationalization case, the Solikamsk Magnesium Works, in December. Prosecutors claim that around 10% of the shares in the factory were acquired by private investors unlawfully.

“It turns out that the law is not being observed at all,” a top exchange official said on the Solikamsk matter.

Meanwhile, Putin had been till trying to reassure russian big business over the past year, saying there would be "no full-scale deprivatization.”

Read more

He said the same about the war... 🤥

@freerussia_report

Election deniers are idiots-or they think we are.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joycevance/p/lara-trumps-dangerous-lie?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Jeff Tiedrich

https://open.substack.com/pub/jefftiedrich/p/why-the-fuck-is-an-88-count-indicted?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

He used campaign contributions.

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/dont-call-it-the-hush-money-case?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

The discharge petition needs 25 more signatures
https://t.me/noel_reports/10761

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4585578-aguilar-johnson-speaker-ukraine/

Zelenskyi's evening speech

--

I held a meeting regarding our missile program with the Commander-in-Chief, Minister of Defence, Minister of Strategic Industries, and heads of relevant enterprises. Serial production, and new samples of missiles. The details aren’t public, but our "defence industry" has the necessary results. And the main thing is for the army to implement these results now. Today, I also discussed the current situation on the frontline with the Commander-in-Chief. There was also a report by the Chief of the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.

I am grateful to everyone who gives strength to Ukraine! I am grateful to everyone who fights and works for the sake of our state and our people.

Glory to Ukraine!

Hungarian rulership optima-forma. It extended the state of emergency for another 6 six months due to the war in Ukraine by a (Fidesz) majority in Parliament. In Hungary, the state of emergency has been ongoing for more than four years. It allows the government to take more power.